The world might be going online, but premature warnings of how the printed word is dead (or will die) seem a little out of touch. Yes, most magazines, papers, books and other publications are now widely – even primarily – read online. And with growing numbers of people owning hand-held devices such as the iPad, the old “but you can’t carry them about with you/read them on the train” criticism of e-media is now also going out the window. But still there seems to be something that keeps us clinging on to printed pages.
Case in point: one of the dot-com world’s biggest success stories, Net-a-Porter, will launch a new printed magazine this week, complete with iPhone-generation It Girl Alexa Chung gracing the front cover. What with Net-a-Porter being an online-only shop, with an already-successful online-only magazine to match, it seems a little surprising that the digital media pioneers should choose to launch a paper magazine. But if there’s anyone who can forecast trends, it’s the style mavens who run go-to fashion sites like this one, so perhaps printed page is not ‘so 1996’ after all.*
*But there again, the nineties are so cool right now, perhaps in a perverse way it is so 1996 and that’s why it’s having a renaissance. Frailty, thy name is fashion.
I, myself, must confess I’m quite partial to weighty feel and glossy pages of printed publications – despite living 90% of my waking life vicariously through the internet. There does seem to be a shift in demand, however. I might enjoy flicking through the many pages of The Sunday Times over tea and toast, but during the week, I prefer to receive the latest headlines in my inbox. Likewise, cheap women’s weeklies are dead to me (give me blogs any day), yet a glossy art, fashion or design quarterly can always lure me in – despite their often-hefty price tags. Irish Arts Review is €10, or €56 for an annual subscription (baffling considering there are only four issues per year – do the maths on that one), yet isn’t lacking readers.
Evidently, a well put together printed magazine has an aesthetic or luxury appeal that the online editions just cannot seem to match. For people like myself, whose jobs are largely based on the internet, perhaps picking up a printed publication marks a distinction between ‘work time’ and ‘leisure time’. We don’t always want a magazine that we can hungrily digest whilst waiting on the Dart/Tube. We want Slow Media: long lazy afternoons spent reading for the fun; hours ogling designs, without being left with square eyes at the end of it. To turn off, tune in, and drop out…
Rosa Abbott is an arts, fashion and culture obsessive originating from Yorkshire, England, and currently living in Dublin, Ireland. On top of being a student at the illustrious Trinity College, she is a freelance journalist, writing for a number of Irish publications, and also edits the visual arts section of entertainment magazine Totally Dublin.
When she’s not up to her eyeballs in writing, Rosa works as an assistant to stylist Aisling Farinella and volunteers at various art galleries. Her musings on life, style and art can also be found over at her blog, Too Gallant.
