Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

The founder of Wallpaper magazine, Tyler Brule, is launching a new publication next year named Monocle. Talking about the magazine, and the wisdom of launching something print-based during these increasingly digital times, he said, “I’m so tired of hearing from all corners of the media that print is dead. Well, it’s not. It’s a time when magazines should be pulling up their socks and turning out more fabulous, more confident, more robust products.”

Of course, the “print is dead” argument is meant more for the basic conveyance of information, and Wallpaper and magazines like it — large, colorful, status-oriented and filled with ads — are meant more to be thumbed-through or put on a coffee table than read. So a magazine like Vogue doesn’t have as much to worry about in terms of print being dead, but magazines like Newsweek and Time —which have very much felt the pinch of rising digital reading — indeed have a lot to fear. So I’d say that Brule is half-right; print is not dead for his kind of magazines, but for all the ones already put out of business by the Internet and online reading (not to mention those ones, like Slate, that have never physically existed in the first place), it’s a much different story.

Wallpaper Founder to Launch New Magazine