The reports of magazines’ demise have been greatly...

Exaggerated, according to this recent spread ad I saw In Esquire. (Enlarge to read.) With all the news over the failure of newspapers, magazines want you to know they’re not going anywhere. While the piece by Jim Fiscus of ESPN The Magazine (irony!), makes a lot of good points, pointedly, doesn’t it feel a lot like what horse and buggy owners must have felt about cars around the turn of the 20th century? Jim, and the consortium he’s writing for—check out that logo sign-off including Esquire’s “Es”—does a nice job talking about the magic that magazines bring your world. And the Magazine Publishers of America do support their contention that readership is actually up (somewhat) in the “coveted” 18-34 demo. But it also goes on a little too much about this “fad” called the net and what it can’t provide. Hmm, well, I guess I’d neg something that threatened my pay model too. Where so much of the net is expected to be free, magazines have to charge for content that likely ends up online, where those Luddite “surfers” lay in wait because they didn’t feel like paying.

The net, she is a bitch, huh.