Now more than ever, we’re seeing technological advancements on the rise. Like others before it, 2025 will be the year of “more, more, more.” With this, print media has been on the decline for some time now. Magazines saw their “golden era” in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s and they no longer have the dazzling glitz and glamour reputation that they used to. Print is an important piece of media, whether people acknowledge it or not. Print allows for the words of writers to be immortalized. When I think about my future as a writer, I want readers to be able to hold it physically and feel the weight of it in their hands. Maybe then, it would mean a bit more than a web page you can skim through before absent-mindedly clicking off of.
How Print Media Has Struggled to Rival Convenience
Now more than ever people value convenience, but at what point is it too much? An overabundance of information is at our fingertips at any moment of any day; you no longer have to wait for the paper to thump against your door to read about world news. Instead, updates can appear in real time. While this is incredibly convenient, and many would argue that it allows for people to be more knowledgeable about events, I argue otherwise. While breaking news is important to know about, thoughtful journalism is a scarce find nowadays. Publications prioritize quantity over quality, and while articles won’t be blatantly pumped out with misinformation for the sake of numbers, thoughts can’t be fully fleshed out and delved into because there isn’t the time for it. How can print magazines, a raw and beautiful art form, exist in a world of now, now, now?
Physical media isn’t just about the stories inside of it. Magazines and newspapers are about the craftsmanship taken to create such a thing. When you read a magazine or a newspaper, you’re reading stories that were brought to life from a person’s mind. You’re reading and holding the passion of hundreds of people who collaborated together to create such a thing. You’re seeing straight through a photographer’s lens and witnessing the outcome of a writer’s pen.
The Shift
I’ve experienced this loss of passion in my own school. At Old Dominion University, we have our own newspaper. Years ago, this paper used to print physical newspapers every single week. Now, we print a magazine issue once a semester, and even that is a struggle to get stories for. I understand just as well as the next college student that we get busy. Due dates line up, work schedules get hectic, and in the middle of it all you’re supposed to find time to write an article that no one will read? Yeah, right. In order to get people to write, people need to be reading, but in order to get people to read, things need to be written. It’s a constant loop that’s going to require writers to not care who reads their work, and simply write because it’s what brings them joy.
Unfortunately, joy just isn’t enough anymore. Beyond a college newspaper, people need to find a job that will put money in their pockets so they can put food on the table. Journalism, real journalism, is a dying art with the ease of today’s digital world. Readers won’t be getting their hands dirty with ink after pouring over paper after paper, page after page, when they can pull out their phone and have it all explained in a quick summary.
Google’s Gemini: You Don’t Have to Read Anymore
On December 6, 2023, Google announced the release of Gemini, their AI model. On December 6, 2023, critical thinking died like it never had before. In today’s world, you no longer have to comb through articles online to find the answer to your question. Gemini appears at the top of almost every Google search posed as a question. AI will summarize and package together enough information to answer your question, including links to the articles and websites it found it from.
What’s the problem with this? It’s just so convenient to get my answer at a glance. I don’t have time to read through a bunch of sources!
By relying on an AI generated summary to feed you information, your critical thinking skills dwindle. Reading an article allows you to flex your judgement-making skills and come to your own conclusions about the material and its subject. You may feel informed after reading the summary, except it’s nothing but an echo chamber filled with the most popularly expressed opinion. By reading multiple articles on the same topic, you broaden your horizons. Reading through an article allows you to fully and deeply understand the information, as well as actually retain it. You actually know what you’re talking about!
The Environmental Impact: There’s Always a Downside
Unfortunately, there will always be a reason not to do something. In printing magazines, you obviously need a lot of paper, and with that comes the worry for deforestation. Advocates for the new “underconsumption trend” probably wouldn’t agree with my stance in this article. Newspapers, more so than magazines, are seen as single-use items that ultimately lead to waste.
Who needs old news? Magazines may be kept for their nostalgia or for looking back on every so often, but they ultimately take up space and collect dust. Is the need for creativity, craftsmanship, and appreciation for writing really so important that we put the environment on a potential decline?
Unfortunately, my findings weren’t in favor of my passion. According to this article by Kent Anderson, print media takes “65 times as much energy as online.” That being said, AI isn’t in the clear yet. In order to power AI, data centers must be doubled, causing an “80% increase in planet heating emissions.”
Why Does it Matter?
If I’m not a writer, I am nothing. Print media is art; it’s heart and soul. It’s self expression and passion grabbing your face and staring into you. Magazines are the work of visionaries putting hours of their work, sleepless nights and revising and writing and revising again, and putting it in your hands. Do you even care? Newspapers are the work of journalists chasing and curating the story for you, so that you can be informed and well-read. No, print media isn’t dead, but the decline is present and it’s rolling fast. The Pew Research Center found that “In 2024, 26% of adults say they often or sometimes get news in print.”
I’m a journalism major, but sometimes I fear for the future of my dream job. I had my fair share of choosing a new “dream job” every week as a kid. When I found journalism, I saw it in a truly new light and I knew that it had to be what I did with my life. Since then, I’ve felt excitement for my future career, but it’s never been without the twinge of worry that I won’t be able to experience the beautiful rush of being a journalist. I want to jump head-first into a bustling office that’s rushing around to get the next print out for the waiting public. I want to come home at night, exhausted but so happy with my life. Will journalism still rely on paper and passion by the time it’s my turn?