Print’s Aluminum Age

Benign self-delusion isn’t the worst characteristic of a grown man or woman; grotesque narcissism, bigotry and misanthropy are far more unattractive. I bring this up after reading a self-delusional essay in The Wall Street Journal by the middle-aged writer Barton Swaim, who claims that a “bronze age” for print publications might be around the corner. The story is headlined “Little Magazines Are Back: A warm welcome to ‘Portico,’ a literary quarterly edited by Micha Mattix,” and Swaim claims (with little evidence but not bad intentions) that the launch of Portico—to which he contributes—is an example of a print revival. I come across the-sun’s-always-shining stories like this every three or four months, and though I wish it were true, there’s scant reason to believe them. It could be that print will have a “niche” presence more than today, but it reminds me of people saying 20 years ago that a renewed interest in vinyl records would help rescue the music industry.

The following paragraph inadvertently rips apart Swaim’s reasoning: “Many magazines and newspapers disappeared or went entirely online, but many didn’t. Print subscribers at surviving newspapers have dramatically diminished, but a dedicated society of print readers remains. I’m told that some notable percentage of the Gen Z population likes to read print mags, and even, shockingly to me, print newspapers.”

I’m told that an overwhelming majority of the “Gen Z population” doesn’t smudge their hands with the ink of print newspapers, and just as anecdotally as Swaim, I haven’t seen anyone under 30 reading a print magazine, whether in a coffee shop, on an outdoor stoop or walking around with, say, a copy of The New York Times tucked under his or her arm. As for literary magazines, you can’t go a week on Twitter without a writer justly complaining that some surviving titles now charge a “reading fee” for submissions and often don’t even get around to reading them for over a year. If any minimal return of print occurs, it’d more accurately called the “Aluminum Age.”

Swaim says that a “dedicated society of print newspaper remains” but doesn’t include the obvious demographic for that throwaway phrase. There are people who read, or skim, print dailies, like me, but they’re senior citizens, or verging on AARP status and it’s just a habit. As I wrote 25 years ago in my MUGGER column for the print weekly New York Press, “Every day a print newspaper reader dies and won’t be replaced by a person born on the same day.” It’s 2026, and I doubt many would dispute that prediction.

Like Swaim, I’m a fan of County Highway, the bimonthly broadsheet run by Walter Kirn and David Samuels (one of a handful of always-fascinating working journalists), but after its launch two years ago, with lots of Swaim-like hoopla, I don’t hear much about it today. In Baltimore, County Highway is available at Atomic Books in Hampden, a pile sitting in the corner. Too bad, for it’s always a great read, a 1980s-like magazine disguised as a newspaper, and I hope it survives, but the odds aren’t in its favor. Swaim cites The New York Sun (a small but intelligent and conservative daily launched in 2002 by Seth Lipsky and his backers—I contributed more than 50 essays to the paper—which ceased print publication in 2008), restoring a weekly print edition in 2025, but cites no circulation numbers. Last time I was in the city, I never saw a copy of the paper.

Today, the Times, Journal and New York Post are still breathing (and in NYT’s case, prospering), but that’s about it. As for magazines, my subs are limited to the UK Spectator and The New Criterion. Other titles, like The Economist, Rolling Stone, Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, for example, are on life support and the content, at least digitally, is promiscuously dumbed-down. I’ve joked that Time is run by four twentysomethings at a 100 sq. foot “office” in an anonymous Manhattan warehouse; so on-the-nose, that that joke isn’t funny anymore.

I’ve no beef with Swaim plumping his friend Michah Mattix’s new Portico—let’s stick together!—but won’t subscribe. It’s $60 for four issues a year and I could buy a lot of Granny Smith apples instead. I’ve let my subscriptions to Granta, n+1 and The New York Review of Books lapse, and don’t miss them much.

—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023