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I first heard the phrase “Print is dead” at least 25 years ago uttered by Playboy’s own Business Manager Jim Radtke. He would stroll through the editorial offices, a scowl on his face, a pencil and paper in hand. We didn’t appreciate his visits or the sentiments he expressed. We were believers in magazines, especially Playboy Magazine. We all understood the job of selling magazines was getting tougher and tougher but hearing the bell being tolled by one of our own had a very demoralizing effect.

However, Jim was a numbers guy and the numbers were increasingly against Playboy and the men’s magazine lifestyle market in general. In order to do our job, we pushed Jim and his bad news out of our minds as soon as he wandered back to the corporate side of the offices.

Playboy’s circulation from its first issue in 1953 until September of 1972 was on a consistently upward trend. The September 1972 issue sold over seven million copies, 90% of the copies printed for newsstand distribution. From that moment forward, there began a slow and consistent decline only interrupted when we had what we called a “blockbuster” pictorial or article—a nude pictorial on a hot movie or TV personality, a timely article or interview such as the John Lennon interview published almost simultaneously with his murder.

There were lots of reasons for the decline, many of them out of Playboy’s control. Censorship pressure from the Meese Commission and radical right wing religious groups, a dramatic decrease in the number of newsstand outlets, the dreaded “PC” term in which it was not longer deemed acceptable to read or look at a men’s magazine that featured nudity. And, of course, the internet. The list goes on and on.

And Playboy made its own share of mistakes. Accustomed to years of selling 90% of its print run, panic hit the corporate minds when that percentage began to drop. The solution offered, cutting the print run, only meant fewer magazines in the market place, and did nothing to increase the percentage of sale.

Playboy was not alone. Magazines, always subject to the whims of cultural change, began to fold at an increasing rate. Recently we saw the demise of Newsweek, The Sporting News, Spin, Professional Photographer. Even MacWorld folded its print edition. And most recently, American Photo announced it was ceasing publication.

In 2012, 82 US magazines went digital or out of business altogether. That was actually a bit better than 2011 when 152 print titles bit the dust. However, the magazine industry is far from dead. There are 7,240 US titles at last count generating over 15 billion dollars in ad revenue. However, as any visit to your local Barnes and Noble or supermarket newsstand will tell you, with few exceptions, magazines have become a niche market, catering to special and very specific interests.

And let’s face it.

There haven’t been any magazine geniuses such as Hugh Hefner or Jann Wenner lighting up the market place with innovative ideas for new magazines.

Let’s hope there’s another Hef lurking around the next corner, dummy magazine under his arm as he pursues financial backing and a printer willing to take a gamble.

Everyone predicted that movies would kill radio and that television would kill them both. Now it’s the internet that looms as the potential old media killer. However, radio, television and the movie business didn’t die; they simply morphed into something else, perhaps not as good at times or not as big but still viable media businesses. The same will be true for magazines despite the fact that my college age boys rarely if ever pick up a magazine or newspaper. I predict they will when someone puts some ink on paper that is sufficiently interesting to them.

In the meantime, photographers just keep shooting, whether it is film or digital, whether for print or the internet. And there’s both beauty and hope in that effort. So hang in there and don’t listen to the Jim Radtkes of the world. Print is suffering but it is not dead.

~ Gary Cole

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