Latest print media victim: Blender

They're just too expensive. $6 for a magazine (or more)? When I can get the exact same thing (or a better alternative) online for free so long as I am willing to lend my eyeballs to some advertisers, I am not going to cough up my hard-earned cash just so I can get that joyous tactile feedback of a magazine.

If these magazines want to differentiate themselves from their online counterparts they're going to need to show us, their consumers, that they can do a better job than the bloggers. That is a huge task when you're competing against bloggers who are living the life that they're writing about (I'm looking at you, Bruce Schneier).

Look, a magazine is a delivery mechanism. If you want to start a magazine you have to create your content, then find a publisher to publish it and distribute it, you (or your publisher) have to eat the cost of magazines that don't sell. You need to fill a whole however many pages long your magazine is.

The internet is also a delivery mechanism, the difference is that if you build the content and put it on the digital newstands like reddit,digg, or gibsonandlily.com costs you absolutely nothing, infinitely less than it would cost to put it on its real-world counterpart.

Print media is dying, or is already dead.

Things like Communication Arts, or Print (these are both graphic design magazines) can, I think, remain in business, but the bubble-gum poppy trip such as 17 magazine, or Cosmo are going to disappear shortly (if they haven't already).

Note...me mentioning 17 and Cosmo isn't because I'm a male chauvinist bastard, it's because I grew up in a house with 5 sisters...the house was littered with these magazines.