Ask HN: Do you subscribe to print magazines anymore?

Yes, lots of them. I hate reading on the screen, enough that I own a color laser printer more or less just to print articles that I want to read that are online. But for the most part, I find articles in print magazines to be far superior over what is online: better moderated, more interesting, better written, etc. This probably isn't a complete list, but I pay for: THE NEW YORKER, BUSINESS WEEK, THE ATLANTIC, TIME, WIRED, MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW, HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW. I also take advantage of online content that my subscriptions provide. You'll note that none of those are computer related stuff; that I do get online, but that's in part because all of the print computer magazines I subscribed to went out of business.

Yes, I’ve been a print subscriber to Harper’s and The Atlantic for many years.

I find myself easily distracted reading any long form content on a screen. The temptation to check email or social media is strong.

I also prefer to read print materials when I am alone sitting at a coffee shop or a lunch counter or riding the train.

I feel more aware of my surroundings. People tend to engage me more, ask me what I’m reading etc. than if I have my face buried in my phone. It feels less antisocial.

The experience just feels qualitatively different. When I’m reading print, some part of my mind feels—in a pleasant way—that it is in the physical not digital world.

I enjoy reading the physical magazine without having to be at my desk or the distraction that comes along with staring at a screen. Reading physical media is also a nice break/escape from reading academic papers and other stuff online.

My print subscriptions: Foreign Affairs, New Yorker, New York Review of Books.

I still subscribe to 2600 (The Hacker Quarterly) but that's it. I look forward to each issue and read them front to back several times. I even regularly go back and look at old issues both for specific articles and just to read randomly. They offer a lifetime subscription and I plan on getting that at some point (you can also add on an order for every single back issue they've ever made, which is gonna be hard to resist!).

A couple of decades ago (2000-2005) I used to subscribe to 20+ magazines, from electronics, to games, business, photography and more. Over the years most of them went bankrupt, or I lost interest, or just annoyed by the effort to manage the subscriptions (and the environmental waste).

I still faithfully subscribe to two: Circuit Cellar [1] and Maximum PC [2]. Love reading each edition, and hope they continue to exist for a long time.

[1] https://circuitcellar.com/

[2] https://www.magazinesdirect.com/az-magazines/6936599/maximum...

I'm in the UK, and I subscribe to two weekly publications: Private Eye and MCN.

Private Eye is a hardcore investigative-journalism outlet, arguably unique in the country. It's very info-dense (despite dedicating roughly half the space to humorous content), so reading it online would be too hard for me. Tbh i don't even know if they have an online version (they do have an occasional podcast, "Page 94").

MCN is a weekly tabloid about motorbikes. I just like to read it while I have breakfast, with the brain only half-awake. The "ooh shiny" ogling of new bikes benefits from larger-size pictures. It has a digital equivalent (which I also pay for) but I go there only when I want to keep something for the long run (trip suggestions etc). It is occasionally too full of barely-misguided ads, but that's par for the course in what is effectively a small and expensive hobby niche.

I love magazines. Apart from the New Yorker and Harpers, my current recommendations:

Boardgames - https://senetmagazine.com/ Psychedelics - https://doubleblindmag.com/ Cooking - https://www.americastestkitchen.com/cooksillustrated Puzzles - https://gamesmagazine-online.com/ World transformations - https://www.noemamag.com/

No, but I would if print magazines tried got with the times instead of running on fumes trying to compete with the pace of the internet.

The main issue I have is periodicity: for most magazines, a weekly frequency is way too much in this day and age. It creates clutter in the home, and editorially, it incentivizes the addition of filler and spam content. The New Yorker can do this because they sell a lot of ads and act as a guide to local events.

But I think Businessweek and The Economist could benefit from going twice-monthly. Nobody's going to their websites for instant news and analyses, so a slightly longer gap between issues could allow for their articles to take on a much greater depth and nuance.

As someone whose main career is in editorial and commercial photography, I ask this all the time.

Many of my clients advertise in glossy magazines and many of the stories I shoot go into limited-run luxury fashion magazines that sell in bookshops for >€30.

Though the industry has been changing for a long time, I knew things were different and that the cynicism had become unsustainable when very few people actually read / bought / subscribed to the magazines for which we worked. Few people believed in the product enough to support its ideal form.

Also, 600px-wide jpegs in an endless flow destroyed photography, but whatever.

I try to, but so many have went online only, or are garbage filled with ads and only every two months. My wife gets a cooking magazine that's basically one recipe and tons of ads, and I read something called birds and blooms or something to that effect that keeps coming for whoever owned this house before. I'll probably subscribe when that stops.

Why? I enjoy breaks from screens. I'd love to find something like the old NatGeo, TVGuide, or Reader's Digest. If anyone has recs, please let me know.

My last (and only long-lasting) subscription was the German c't magazine and I'm not sure when I cancelled it, probably more than 10 years ago.

I kinda miss computer games magazines of the 90s, because they were... nice, in a way that has been lost. The print magazines now have many drawbacks versus online publications but the online publications are also not like the magazines.

I eat breakfast and sip my coffee with The Economist in print. I think it's a good balance between timeliness and thoughtfulness, I'm interested in most of the articles I can get through until the next one comes, I have a longer attention span for the same content in print (reading on tablet I get distracted), and it's nice to start the day with a screen-free ritual.

Yes, only one and it’s because it doesn’t “work” electronically. I re-subscribed to Games World of Puzzles a couple of years ago. It’s a high quality print magazine of clever puzzles that require writing the answers in the magazine. It has everything from many variations of crossword type puzzles to completely new genres they seem to invent every month. I was introduced to it my my elementary school gifted and talented teacher in the early 80’s. Back then I couldn’t wait for it to come in the mail, but stopped subscribing for about 30 years until a few months into the pandemic.

It’s not like the puzzle “magazines” that are in the magazine section of most stores now, it’s way more than that. It used to occasionally show up at my local Barnes and Noble, but I haven’t seen it there for a while.

https://gamesmagazine-online.com/

I enjoy having something tangibly physical that isn't on a screen with a coffee and no distractions. I would suggest the Atlantic, slow journalism. Books I'm ok with using a small eInk device due to the convenience but no nice form factor for magazines.

For professional reading its probably a different use case than most here but I subscribe to NEJM, a nature reviews journal and another medical journal in my specialty and find it much easier selectively and focus on browsing through abstracts and articles this way. If am taking notes I prefer digital to take screenshots.

I stayed at a German guest house where I was the youngest person there at dinner time by at least 30 years once. Interesting experience. One thing I really liked was they slipped a sheet with headlines, local weather under your door every morning. I've contemplated recreating that and having my printer it every morning...

The last physical subscription I had was to The Word[1] magazine, which folded (!) in 2012. I struggle to think of a physical magazine I've even read since then, let alone bought. Now I only read short form digitally. I do have digital subscriptions however, to The Atlantic and The Guardian.

In contrast I read only physical books, no e-books.

I'm a bit of an edge case though, I'm a native English speaker but have lived in non-English speaking countries since 2004. Access to digital English content is just more convenient, and cheaper. Plus, although this has never been a conscious reason, ecologically a print subscription would be worse.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Word_(UK_magazine)

Just one at the moment, Waveform Magazine. It’s a quarterly publication focusing on modular synthesizers. I love getting them in the mail and disappearing into interviews for the next few afternoons.

https://waveformmagazine.com/

I subscribe to The Wire[0]. I want to encourage the review and curation of the sort of off-mainstream music that it highlights.

[0] https://www.thewire.co.uk/home/

There are a worthy few publications if they can be afforded (high end design, architecture, chronology, etc.)

A worth while mention out of print (truly inspirational and excellent quality production)

Modern Farmer

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Farmer_(magazine)

And if you have obtainium, there’s Jane’s Defense https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane's_Defence_Weekly

Yes. If I was to really think about it and summarise my reasons:

Curation - yes, I could probably find similar stories on the web and read them, but a print magazine does the discovery and brings them all together for me in a way that a search engine or news aggregator doesn't/chooses not to. When browsing news sites, I find myself only selecting/reading articles based on their title and slug-line (which is the entire purpose of click-bait titles) whereas with a magazine/print publication, I'll read it cover-to-cover, exposing me to stories and points of view that I would otherwise miss. I've also found that good long-form journalism appears to be a dying art in the online world, but maybe that's on me for the sites I visit.

Focus - A magazine doesn't try and grab my attention with animation, video and other distractions. Yes they run ads, but (in the periodicals I read) they are generally full page and not halfway through the sentence you are reading. Print ads are expensive, so in my experience generally only promote high-end or luxury products targeting a perception of the magazine reader, rather than the last thing the reader searched for/emailed/said out aloud in front of their home speaker. I can also read through an article end-to-end without being pulled down a rabbit hole of links and references. Reading once again becomes a purposeful activity, without sitting in front of a machine that could easily switch from a book to a TV, to a video game in seconds.

Texture - there is something about picking up a book or magazine (especially higher end publications that print on quality paper stock) that I don't think will ever be emulated by a tablet or an e-reader. I'm sure I read somewhere that the touch and even smell of paper in your subconscious helps your brain store information longer term. Also, I love great typesetting and layout, things that online ads pretty much ruin for most sites.

Monocle Magazine - https://monocle.com/magazine/

Hey Gents (Now Softer Volumes) - https://softervolumes.com

The Smith Journal - (sadly now out of print)

On and off, but yes. I do this namely because I: enjoy collecting them, prefer reading them physically, and like to appreciate the design elements found in a good magazine layout. IMO the "reading experience delta" for physical vs digital is significantly greater for magazines than books.

Though, the only one I actively subscribe to right now is a famous Russian magazine[1] that's analogous to NatGeo

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vokrug_sveta

The reading experience is better & there’s no distraction, so I do except that I cancelled The New Yorker because I got tired of Condé Nast sending scammy “final notice” offers in the mail.

I went for over a decade without any magazine subscriptions, then I kinda binged one night in 2021 and subscribed to a dozen or so that caught my interest. The majority I won't resubscribe to, but over the year or so I built up some good topical knowledge, and enjoyed checking out a lot of the small business/product ads.

I've ended up renewing: High Country News (monthly), Overland Journal (quarterly), and Backwoods Home (quarterly)

I don't subscribe to print magazines. It's just physical waste of material that will end up in a landfill.

I find my iPad to be sufficient if I want to kick back on the couch and read. I'd love to grab a large form e-Ink tablet but they're neither fast enough, nor cheap. ($600 for a Boox, what? I can get an iPad for $400 that is faster and more versatile and has more application support). But it's getting there.

I end up going to the library to read them once in a while, and for a change of scenery. (Fortunately, there is a beautiful library in my area.)

There's a few short story magazines that I wish I could subscribe to in print. Clarkesworld[1] for one example. Unfortunately, I doubt it would be profitable for them.

[1]: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/

Actual paper in hand print magazines, no.

traditional "print magazines" in digital form, yes. I love the magazines in Apple News. I still read Macworld, Wired and others. I think I read more magazines now because of Apple News. I don't have the room at home for dead tree media.

I would love to but the texts to ad ratio is horrendous when you are used to adblockers. Last time I read a magazine I actually ended up counting and more than 40% of the content was ads. Felt like a waste of time and money. I'd rather just buy a book.

Still subscribing to the physical Scientific American magazine. A physical magazine actually gets me to pick it up and read it, without distractions. There's something rewarding about seeing a coffee mug stain and pen scribbles on a profound article.

I had a Private Eye subscription last year, but I live outside the UK and by the time it arrived it was a bit stale. Would totally sub again if back home.

Fantastic publication. Great journalism that doesn't get bogged down in its own politics.

I do, a few history ones in my country. I like them, price of PDF are like 9/10 of price in print and they are convenient when I want to read something but don't have willpower to do something bigger

Ralph Nader is starting a new print only one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34605482

I used to subscribe to Wired for decades until the magazine became 80% advertisements. I switched to Texture but got bored with all of it. I cannot remember the last time I purchased a magazine.

I hate reading text on a screen. I begrudgingly put up with it. Paper is just so much easier on the eyes. The magazines I subscribe to are all literature and poetry though.

I have been a New Scientist subscriber for most of my life. I like the fact that my family can pick it up when it's left on the coffee table.

Yes, just one monthly because the website is subscription based and the digital only price wasn't much different. Originally it was a print magazine. It takes about 3 weeks for me to read it, I like this pace and the magazine's sit on my coffee table.

I was tempted by another which was behind a paywall recently. Maybe the Economist.

I've a couple of quarterly magazines too, these are literary or niche publications which have been going from well before the internet.

In the past I subscribed to New Scientist but it doesn't interest me now.

for decor, for tactile fee. at ~$10/yr for 12 issues, not a bad deal.

AD, Vogue, The New Yorker as of now for me.

read via physical library membership.

Buy individual print from time to time based on pictorial content

New Yorker but also digital

yes, New York Review of Books broadsheet (online as well)

Yes, one of the pleasures of my childhood was finding new things in the adult’s magazines laying around.

I have a kid now, so if I’m paying for the New Yorker I want it to be available to them too if they come across it.

Subscribe?! I can’t even remember the last time I read a print magazine!

There’s simply no reason to be wasting trees and energy like that.