save the magazines!

Yesterday my friend broke some bad news to me: One of my favorite magazines, Domino, was closing its doors and halting production, following suit after other shelter magazines, House & Garden, Blueprint, Home Companion and Cottage Living.

Design bloggers and home décor fanatics alike are mourning this most recent media loss. At this rate, pretty soon, the only home magazine that young, modern, stylish females will have to kick up their heels with is Better Homes & Gardens (ugh). But that’s doesn’t seem to be the most depressing part. As we see lifestyle magazines, particularly newer, trendier ones, fail left and right (due to falling ad sales), it feels like the inevitable end of an era. It seems like printed magazines will cease to exist as anything more than an archaic form of media. Afterall, the internet is popular, accessible, free, and environmentally friendly. But the thing is, it’s just not as relaxing and fun to curl up on the sofa with a glass of wine and the humming laptop as it is to do it with beautiful, glossy images sliding through your fingertips.

(I should note that all this is particularly disconcerting considering I work for a publishing company. But I digress, really. This topic is distressing to me a consumer of a medium very much in trouble.)

To play my part in fighting the demise of the magazine industry, today I bought two magazine subscriptions and plan to purchase additional publications on the newsstand. And I urge you to do the same. Save the magazines!

I’m holding out hope that Country Living, House Beautiful, Living and even the redundant Real Simple will outlast the crashing economy. Because once those fall by the wayside, the shelter magazine industry is DOA.