For the Love of Print
Making magazines is a creative endeavor like no other. If you know, you know. A small band of industry veterans has set out to capture that essence—the pure … magic?, the vexing challenges, and the uncertain future—in a popular podcast that’s documenting the industry and looking to what might lie ahead.
By Sean Plottner
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE MAGAZINE BUSINESS?
Its golden age came and went during the latter part of the 20th century, opening in the 1960s and closing out with two decades of nonstop flourish and creativity in the 1980s and 1990s, when megapublishers such as Time Inc. and Hearst Magazines and Condé Nast ruled the newsstand. The best magazines monitored the pulse of our culture, created communities, and innovated relentlessly. They were the original influencers.
Today the huge circulations, familiar brands, billions of ad dollars, celebrity editors, and inventive magazine-making that only print enables have all slipped under the surface. Print-based purveyors of the culture have given way to technology. The ugly phrase “content creation” has wormed its way into the vernacular, shoving “magazine making” aside. Digital rules. Is this all the fault of a guy named Jobs? Did the magazine behemoths contribute to their own demise by failing spectacularly at monetizing and planning their digital futures?
Yes and yes. Yet, as the podcast Print is Dead (Long Live Print!) reveals, the answers are far more complicated—and intriguing. Created by magazine creative director and host Patrick Mitchell three years ago, the show features hourlong interviews with the legendary designers, editors, writers, photographers, publishers, illustrators, and photo editors who produced the publications that filled our mailboxes and started conversations. It also features creators who have forged ahead in the new media land- scape and considers the future of print and magazines. Mitchell and his cohost, Debra Bishop—another seasoned magazine art director—have assembled a volunteer team of magazine lifers to produce a homemade passion project that provides listeners with an engrossing glimpse into a bygone era.
“I think of it as a love letter to magazines,” says Mitchell. “And it’s not a goodbye. It’s about an industry that had an incredibly outsized role in society and the culture for decades, one that’s been decimated by advances in technology. We look at the consequences of that—and the opportunities it presents.” He’s produced more than 45 hourlong conversations about masthead climbing and redesigns and deadlines as well as failures, firings, and budgetary fireworks. The guests share stories behind the stories, reveal their regrets, and imagine the future. They’re funny and self-deprecating, poignant and revealing.
“I think of it as a love letter to magazines.” -Patrick Mitchell
Illustrator Brad Holland describes lugging his portfolio through the mean streets of Manhattan in the late 1960s, fresh off the bus from Ohio. Writer Kurt Andersen chronicles how Spy emerged as a result of his brainstorming with co-founding editor Graydon Carter as they played Pac-Man during a lunch break in Times Square. New York Times Magazine creative director Janet Froelich remembers the frantic newsroom of 9/11—and how her team produced an unforgettably moving cover in three days. Legendary editor Tina Brown proffers that American journalists take them- selves far too seriously. Rolling Stone co-founder Jann Wenner proudly insists his magazine changed the world for the better. And of course there’s Time Inc.’s Daniel Okrent, who first uttered “print is dead” in a 1999 speech at Columbia Journalism School.
Mitchell’s team leverages their own magazine skills—storytelling, curation, reporting, and a website with a bold graphic environment, a bounty of transcripts, archival art, and links.
Mitchell is no stranger to the magazine business. He has his own design firm, and his resume includes award-winning stints as creative director at Fast Company; O, The Oprah Magazine; Nylon; and Inc. Prior to the pandemic he had dabbled in some podcasting, and in February 2022, when Dotdash Meredith (who even knew it existed?) shut down print versions of Entertainment Weekly, InStyle, EatingWell, Health, Parents, and an international edition of People in one casual swoop, he realized the decline in consumer magazines had exploded into an ending. “I thought, shit, it’s over,” he recalls. “All of these people, all this talent. What are they going to do? Will this all be forgotten?”
“All of these people, all this talent. What are they doing to do? Will this all be forgotten?”
PID was born. Originally, Mitchell planned to hold conversations on location in bars, but the noisy environments led him to set up a home studio, where he now records, edits, and produces the podcast. (See sidebar.) Former longtime New York and Inc. editor George Gendron and graphic design guru Steven Heller spearhead a team of contributors.
Several threads weave their way through many of the episodes, according to Mitchell. First, from an early age, many of his guests demonstrated an almost genetic disposition to focus their talents on print and serve an audience. The visual artists: “I was drawing before I was walking,” Neville Brody says in one episode. “I was always going to be an artist.” Roger Black started a neighborhood newspaper as a first grader in Texas, and Gail Anderson made hand-drawn teeny-bopper magazines (think Tiger Beat) in junior high. And the editors: Former New York editor Adam Moss recalls growing up obsessed with Esquire and New York from his mundane Long Island suburb. Ms. founding editor Gloria Steinem explains that she always wanted to be a journalist. “It seemed the most attractive, magnetic, full-of-learning, and diverse profession I could imagine,” she says.
“It’s in their bones,” says Mitchell.
The creators rhapsodize about the thrill of collaboration, another recurring theme. Great teams drive great magazines. “Everyone has talked about the joy of being on a team, working toward the same goal,” Mitchell says, “All believing in it and committing to each other—the love of making something together.” The Hollywood Reporter and US Weekly editor Janice Min: “Oh my god, there’s always these teams that are like kismet. You cannot make up that chemistry.” Wenner: “It was like being with the gang and playing, you know? Whether it was all-nighters or not, the actual creative moments were great.” Joanna Coles of Hearst says collaboration, “the fun of learning from people,” is what she misses most from her magazine career. Moss talks about the thrill of working with his teams as they created new elements for New York. “Magazine are people,” he says. And then there’s Brown: “I want people who are going to be willing to go into battle with me.”
Speaking at a recent conference for magazine editors, Mitchell mentioned three additional takeaways he’s gleaned.
Reinvention: The creators possess a nonstop drive to improve, innovate, and put a personal stamp on a design or story. “Their work is always evolving and changing,” says Mitchell. “Adapting, freshening, viewing things in another way. It’s the soul of creativity.” It’s also about putting yourself out there, he says—and conquering the fear of doing so. For example, Scott Dadich, a designer who has executed dozens of redesigns and gave National Geographic (a print survivor) a makeover that injected new life into the legacy brand. Designer Gail Bichler talks about “the typographic moment” that strikes when she’s thinking of ideas for an opening spread. Former Esquire editor David Granger explains how he had to create three sample tables of contents as part of his job interview, and Min describes the excitement of learning she would be turning The Hollywood Reporter from a monthly trade snore into a dynamic consumer weekly. Design a publication! Create a prototype! She was all in. Then there’s renowned photographer Mark Seliger, who personifies reinvention. He’s evolved from portraiture to documentary photography to directing music videos to writing songs to even forming his own band, Rusty Truck, which has released three albums.
Bonus Bits: Wring out a magazine, Mitchell notes, and so much info comes out of it, much more than what’s listed in the table of contents. The same is true of the podcast. Unsolicited and unexpected tips, quotes, and other nonessential tidbits emerge from every interview. Fashion tips from Granger (“always wear white to the face,” picked up from Esquire writer Tom Junod). What a John Deere 450 bulldozer can do, compliments of portrait photographer Dan Winters. “It’s just like a good magazine. These are the things they are chock-full of and made for,” says Mitchell. “You pay $7.99 and get 50 or more bits of useful info? It’s worth every penny.”
Readers Want Paper and Crave Curation: They want magazines that funnel all the noise into something readers need. Print allows for curation that a website simply can’t provide. Print begins and ends in your hands. No doom scrolling. No diverting pop-ups or links. No lithium batteries required. No wormholes.
“There’s so much information out there, but so little of it is curated,” says Coles. “More than ever, a magazine is needed now.” Adds Andersen: A magazine issue is “this thing that the editors, for better or worse, have chosen to put together in this way right now.”
As Gendron says: “We need gatekeepers. You’re going to be your own gatekeeper with the internet? Good luck with that, man.”
There’s nothing wrong with paper. It is universally loved—and missed. Print can also brand in a way no other medium can. Tyler Brûlé, founding editor of Wallpaper and Monocle, describes the reaction clients have to his digital proposals these days: “We want that feeling you created with Monocle in print. What can we do in print to enhance our brand?”
The old magazine business model is broken and obsolete. In just the last 12 years, ad revenue has declined by nearly 50 percent. PID will not fix that, but most episodes end with a relevant fantasy question: What kind of print magazine would you create if you had unlimited resources? The answers vary. Elements of LIFE magazine come up often. So do pet projects that never launched. Some respondents get a bit gloomy, such as photo director Kathy Ryan. “When I started out, you turned to magazines and papers and books for photos. That was it. And now it’s completely different,” she says. “People see hundreds and hundreds of pictures every day. So where is our place in that?” But most of the creators play along, and the podcast has banked some promising startup ideas (just in case any billionaires are interested).
The show already serves as a spirited testament to the magic of magazine making and the power of print, but Mitchell isn’t hitting the brakes. Downloads number in the hundreds of thousands, and editors and designers—old school and new—are reaching out to be interviewed. On his website magazeum.co, which already presents transcripts, portfolios, and archival material from all his guests, Mitchell is amassing a collection of magazine memorabilia, blog posts, book excerpts, artifacts, and archival gems that add up to a promising magazine museum-in-the-making. Season five of PID launched in September, along with the second season of a companion podcast, The Full Bleed, which debuted last spring. Fittingly, the new offering explores the future of magazines—and the magazines of the future.
Sean Plottner is editor of Dartmouth Alumni Magazine at Dartmouth College. He is an editor-at-large for Print is Dead (Long Live Print!), and he never leaves home without a magazine—or four or five—in hand. Connect via plottner@pagesthemagazine.com.
