PC Magazine is dead, long live PC Magazine!

Davey Winder
Thursday, 20 November 2008 16:22

IT Industry - Market

PC Magazine is something of an institution in the US, as well it should be with a history stretching back 27 years in print. Now that is all coming to an end as the Editor-in-Chief announces the last edition of the printed magazine.

A few months back, iTWire covered the story of how one Linux magazine has abandoned print in favour of a web-only publication. We asked back then if print was dead.

While the answer is still no, the announcement that a stalwart of US computer publishing, PC Magazine, is going out of print is sure to shake the industry a little.

"The January 2009 issue... of PC Magazine will mark a monumental transition for the publication. It is the last printed edition of this venerable publication" says Lance Ulanoff, Editor-in-Chief of the PCMag Digital Network.

Of course, PC Magazine itself is not disappearing altogether, just being morphed into a new online format. A "100 percent digital publication" as Ulanoff puts it, with PC Magazine Digital Edition being added to the existing PCMag website for existing print subscribers.

It is a little confusing, all this being wrapped up as something new and exciting rather than sombre and depressing. After all, the PC Magazine Digital Edition and been around since 2002.

What is really going on, no matter how you spin it, is that PC Magazine as most people in the US know and love it, as a printed entity, something they can touch and feel, is being killed off. Pure and simple, no spin, murdered by a harsh economic climate.

Ulanoff is still not having the murder charge though, insisting not only that he knows why readers have stuck with the magazine all these years so the new version will look like the magazine they are "familiar and comfortable with."

He even adds that "Yes, you can print it. You can print as many pages of the magazine as you want" and argues "You can actually feel good about the amount of paper, ink, and gas we'll all be saving by not producing and consuming a physical magazine."

It is not until the very end of his missive that we get to the real truth, the real reason why print is being abandoned here. Ulanoff concedes that "the ever-growing expense of print and delivery was turning the creation of a physical product into an untenable business proposition."

So there we have it, printed magazines are, for one highly successful title with a glorious track record in the industry, an "untenable business proposition." So print is not dead, but it sure as heck isn't looking too healthy from where I am sitting.