Long mourned as dying, or given up for dead, print is still kicking.
This is not the desperate daydream of a person clinging to the ink-on-paper world — I do use a computer, I do have an iPhone, I do know what Bluesky is — but rather a revelation based on recent observations.
It was only a few months ago that I agreeably wandered around the 22,000 square feet of City News Cafe, at 4018 N. Cicero Ave. It has been there for decades, a paradise of print as represented by about 4,500 magazines (and a few newspapers and books), colorfully lining shelves and attracting people from many miles away.
I talked for a while with the store’s owner, Joe Angelastri, who also owns the smaller but nevertheless magazine-packed Chicago-Main Newsstand in Evanston (both open seven days a week, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.).
“I really don’t think people will tire of reading in the traditional ways,” he said. “I still have confidence in ink on paper.”
So do many others and some examples are the print catalogs that have been jamming your mailboxes over this holiday season. There are many theories offered to explain why this is happening.
Unlike digital ads that can be blocked or skipped or easily ignored, direct mail must be physically handled and that creates a bond and makes it more likely that a potential customer will engage with it.
Digital fatigue has set in, making many consumers increasingly eager for physical experiences that allow them to disconnect from screens.
With so much competition in the digital space, it’s harder than ever for brands to stand out and break through the “noise.” Print is able to help build stronger, more personal connections and also — quite important it seems to me — tap into a sense of tradition and nostalgia.
An irony is that one company that has jumped into the print world is the outfit that started the e-commerce revolution. In 2018, Amazon started sending out print toy catalogs when Toys “R” Us stores closed.
Many other companies are into the print rebirth. Such is the case with the clothing company J. Crew, which stopped printing catalogs in 2017 but is back this year with a new fall catalog. Brendon Babenzien, men’s creative director at J. Crew, explained it to Esquire magazine (published six times yearly with a print circulation of about 620,000) recently, saying “I had been longing for the catalog for a long time. The catalog is this physical thing that really gives a little more gravity to the images and the clothes. And the timing is really good, essentially, because we do live in the digital age. It feels like now’s a really nice time to see something different.”
Another business giant is also in the print game. Costco delivers 15.4 million copies of its Costco Connection monthly to its “executive” members who pay double the yearly membership fee of $65 for the magazine and other perks. Another 300,000 are distributed through Costco warehouses.
It started in magazine form in 1997 and is a gathering of photos and stories focused on the dizzying wide array of products sold at the stores, from toilet paper to pasta sauce, coffins, saunas, gold bars and even life insurance. But it is also peppered with practical news and features, all professionally written, and recent issues have included recipes, advice on a number of topics and troubles, travel stories and an interview with actor Mark Harmon. And more.
It is extremely popular, its monthly 140-or-so pages, and has featured on its covers such stars as Oprah Winfrey, Bruce Springsteen and Tom Hanks. Jimmy Kimmel is such a fan that he recently told the New York Times, “A lot of people want to be on the cover of Vogue or Rolling Stone. For me, it’s The Costco Connection.”
But still, this is only the third largest magazine by print circulation, behind AARP: The Magazine (published bi-monthly) and The AARP Bulletin (10 issues a year), both publications of the American Association of Retired Persons and have circulations of 22.39 million and 22.08 million, respectively. And quite respectable too, given that such venerable print magazines have more modest circulations, for instance, Reader’s Digest (2.71 million) or People (2.55 million).
The AARP magazines offer all manner of practical stories about medical breakthroughs, financial advice, and various news and entertainments to its mostly gray-haired audience. It also has such cover stars as Robert DeNiro, Jon Bon Jovi, Brooke Shields and Samuel L. Jackson, who at 75 tells the magazine, “I pay attention to my body because I’ve had things happen to it. I have to work at being flexible. … I use Pilates on a mat with exercise bands and a Pilates reformer machine.”
Most of the top 10 print magazines modestly increased circulation in the last year and perhaps that’s a good sign. Like many people, I often feel overwhelmed by social media and numbed by its flood of information. Interesting to note that the Oxford University Press, the publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary, has just chosen “brain rot” as its 2024 Word of the Year, which seems to address online activity when they define it as “supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material considered to be trivial or unchallenging.”
I hope you are not now dreaming of a future with newsstands sprouting on city corners. That will never happen. Print may be undergoing a health spurt — Life magazine, one of the most famous and popular magazines in history, died in 2008 but is scheduled for a comeback next year — but the ever-rising costs of printing and shipping (i.e. delivery) will eventually bring the end. Until then though, somewhere the ghost of Gutenberg is smiling.
rkogan@chicagotribune.com
