Posted by neilio:
That’s funny – my magazine consumption is increasing, not decreasing. I guess it’s all a part of me attempting to separate my computer / Internet time from offline stuff. There’s something very relaxing about sitting down with a hot beverage and a good magazine that cannot be replicated by reading the web site.
I think for me this more applies to newspapers than magazines – we still get the weekend edition of the local newspaper here, but during the week we get all of our news from the web.
Albeit I do read quite a few magazines where the content isn’t available on the magazine’s web site, but I think it’s also part of my reading habits. I like to sit down and read a magazine from cover to cover, where as I would never do this with an online version.
I would be interested to hear if your actual reading habits have changed since you stopped reading physical magazines – do you just dip in and read the occasional article here and there, or do you read through an entire magazine’s articles in one sitting as you might have before?
I also stopped keeping the majority of magazines that I buy – like you, I used to hoard everything, but after moving a half dozen times in the past 6-8 years I quickly learned that this, coupled with my massive book collection, was a one-way ticket to gigantic moving fees. So I now use magazine web sites for archives, and only keep the ones where the experience is vastly different with the print edition (Communication Arts, for example).
Just for fun, here’s some of the magazines I still purchase in print form:
– The Economist (though it’s getting harder and harder to read this cover-to-cover with all of the other distractions)
– Communication Arts
– Before & After magazine
– Macworld (I have a free subscription lasting for another 2 years or so)
– Maisonneuve – awesome Canadian magazine
– Walrus – another excellent Canadian magazine – similar to Harpers, but with a Canadian perspective
I would be interested to hear what others are still buying in print form.
