Why Eggers Might Have Saved the Magazine Industry

Note: As I wrote this post, Editor & Publisher announced they were closing down after 108 years. If the magazine that speculates about magazines is closing, well….

I spend a lot of time in my job thinking and talking about ways newspapers will evolve on the internet. But I’m suddenly obsessed by a new question: what about the magazine?

So much of the innovation in new media right now is news-oriented. From hyperlocals to Bay Area News Project to Google Living Stories and beyond, the industry is rightly worried about how to continue news coverage and watchdog journalism when no one will pay for it in print.

But what about those long, lovely magazines that are unlike any other media product out there? We hear a lot about magazines dying: when Gourmet folded, I died a little inside, but it’s been one of dozens in the past year that hasn’t been able to sustain itself.

TV Killed the Radio Star and Nuclear Family

I have a friend who likes to Tweet reasons to “Kill Your TV.” They’re always valid and convincing, and yet my TV remains almost a living, breathing character in any house I’ve ever lived in.

These days, everyone is conscious of the time-sucking, mind-warping power of TV, and often likes to talk about it, too. Few live without one– “oh, you’re one of those people without a TV?”–because it comes off as pretentious. But few also admit to spending more than a few hours a week really watching the boob tube. Everyone floats in between: Oh, I watch a couple of shows here and there.

So, even though most seem to agree, I find it strange that in every single place I’ve lived, whether with friends or parents, the TV has been a huge source of contention–always.

The Shadow People of New Jersey

I’ve just touched down in Newark Airport, and the Californians to my left and right are craning over me to catch sunset views of the city. New York City, that is; not, of course, Newark, New Jersey.

For once, I don’t look out for the lights of either city. I’m actually pretty sure, by this point, I know what those skylines look like at dusk: the surprising reality of Manhattan’s breathtaking skyline (after so many Friends episodes have dulled its beauty); the confusion at all of those little yellow lights for miles in every direction surrounding the airport; the Turnpike.

As I’m giving directions to a well-groomed San Francisco man on how to make it alive to Jersey City, he asks whether I’m headed back home to New York City. I laugh and explain that I’m actually from New Jersey, about an hour south of the airport. It’s the second or third time that weekend that I’ve done a self-defensive laugh prefacing my home state, a sort of ”You’re not going to believe this, and even I don’t, but I live in New Jersey.”