Will there be any print titles left to read in 10 years?

Another one bites the dust. Last week it was reported that technology and science title Wired has axed its print edition in the UK. Instead, “a sustainable and growing subscription business is the future of Wired” – which it obviously felt did not involve print. 

Maybe it’s showing my age but every time another title announces it will stop its print title, a little part of me dies inside. I bloody love print. I grew up inhaling every newspaper I could get my hands on. At home it was The Telegraph (even though I'm from a working-class family, my dad loved its reporting and the supplements), over at my nana’s on a Saturday I’d pore over The Sun and The Daily Star and then at my gran and granddad’s on a Sunday, my head would be stuck in the Daily Mail and the local newspapers. 

When it was time for me to leave to university, it was the Guardian that would be folded under my arms as I wandered around campus. These days I have a subscription to The Big Issue, buy the Guardian or Observer and The Sunday Times every weekend, buy Red magazine every month, and then the odd copy of the Economist, Positive News, CN Traveller, and so on. When I’m in Amsterdam, where I visit every year for a month or so, I buy the Guardian Weekly and the Financial Times. When it comes to online I have a Times, Telegraph, Independent, i Paper and New York Times subscription. I guess I’m in the right job, eh? 

So, as you can tell, I LOVE print. I even squeezed copies of The Big Issue, the Guardian, The Sunday Times and Red magazine into my hefty backpack. But I do wonder in the future if I’ll no longer be able to spend my weekends drinking my green tea and leafing through the papers. I know the way we consume media is drastically changing. I always ask people when I’m travelling where they get their news from and to be honest, it’s revealing – it’s podcasts (if you can call getting your news from there, though podcasts such as The News Agents can be a great source of what’s happening politically in the world) and social media. Sometimes someone mentions the Economist. 

I’ve seen trade titles I’ve worked for drop print editions over the years and it’s worked for them. With dwindling print circulation figures (official figures make for dismal reading as we see it significantly fall every year) and hefty print costs, it makes financial sense for some publishers to get rid of print. More of our favourite print titles will likely follow the same route in the future. But for those passionate about print, who like to actually feel and grasp the product and linger over the words more than one does online, the future of print feels gloomy right now.