This is getting to be old news now. But a major media announcement last week was like a punch in the gut. Sports Illustrated was laying off all staff writers and potentially all staff. I suppose that means that unless all staff is laid off, it will continue in some fashion. But what that is, remains to be seen. I didn’t realize that it has been a monthly magazine for several years, I guess that is how irrelevant they have become.

Last week I thought also saw some mention of National Geographic shutting down. As I was researching specifics for this article, I could not substantiate that. I did run across an announcement from June 2023 that all staff writers were laid off and news stand issues were no longer to be found.

In a third, related story I have the Fine Woodworking and Fine Homebuilding podcast on my subscription role. In December, they announced that Taunton Press was acquired by Active Interest Media. They do share some similar markets with Popular Woodworking and Woodsmith magazine. The difference here is that I do believe that Fine Woodworking and Fine Homebuilding will continue for now.

All three of these things happening share a very similar root cause that print media is dying. We have all heard this and we intuitively know this to be true. I think the difference between Taunton Press’s potential survival and National Geographic and Sport’s Illustrated likely demise is journalistic integrity.

Taunton Press titles are detailed, on good paper and serve a niche. They have also made a good effort to integrate additional features on the digital side and provide a complimentary service. All past articles are available digitally and indexed. Supplementary content to the print articles can be found online as well.

When you look at something like what Sports Illustrated used to be, a current swath of what is happening in sports, that is old news. Up to the minute scores and standings are all found on the internet these days, even daily newspapers are too late to the game. There are thousands of blogs covering every team and every sport offering opinions and analysis. Do any of them hold a candle to Sports Illustrated circa 1990, probably not. But those are not the days we live in anymore.

I cannot speak to National Geographic these days. This was one of those magazines that I subscribed to when I was a college student. You know, those kids that don’t even have money for food. I turned my back on them in the mid-2000s. There were many fascinating articles but then there was definitely social justice propaganda in there. I got so fed up with it that I cancelled it and never looked back.

My favorite stories were the Americana stories. They were something like County Fairs in the Midwest. I could taste the fried food and smell the livestock dust. I also remember reading a story about alcoholics and how they would drink hairspray when they got hard up. I looked forward to reading it cover to cover every month.

I remember one story about the hole in the ozone layer in the early 1990s. At that time, it was predicted that there would be mass global cooling since all of the buffering compounds were going to escape out of the hole while simultaneously we were going to fry from UV radiation. What I think that the writer (and National Geographic in general) got right was identifying a problem. They did a pretty good job of figuring out the factions and getting access to knowledgeable people. Despite the highly detailed writing, what was actually missing was the data. These became articles that supported the magazine’s bias without proving why, with data.

Scientific journals offer method information plus data so that anyone with the right tools and gumption could replicate the experiment because almost every scientific experiment is opinion. Most scientists never do because it is such niche work. People use published work to design experiments as a take off or go another direction and then they find out it cant be replicated. Published scientific work is a technical persuasion piece. “I came to this conclusion because of this data and this is how I got it.”

Actual scientific method is not “I hold this opinion because so and so did the work.” Unless the writer is repeating the experiment and is knowledgeable in the field, he has no right to state anything as fact. To have scientific integrity, it could be written third person or biographically, but not as scientific fact. And just like in English class, all non-first person information should be cited.

The last straw with me was when they found a piece of a bone in Africa that claimed that artifact was the definitive key to evolution trumps all other theories of life. They built a whole skeleton and back story based on this leg bone fragment. I am not anti-evolution, I just don’t see the data to make that leap. There is a reason why anthropology is a social science. It is not governed by strict scientific laws. Yes, there are lot of generalities and trends but absolutes, no.

I am already off the rails. My point is that these magazines created their own demise. I get that print is dying. Who reads anymore? School kids, old people and recluses like me (I am also getting old). Heck, even people in my culinary book club don’t read the books. Sometimes they don’t even know what the book is. But when you compound that with AI written articles (SI) and pseudo science (NG) you get expensive and wasteful clutter.

End Your Programming Routine: I will always value print. I despise having to be connected to what I am reading and charged to be able to do it. Despite that, print isn’t always the best way for contemporary information. Articles or stories need to be evergreen to the point that when it shows up, it is not already out of date and is well done enough to get value or perspective. Everything that is labelled periodical has shrunk over the last 10 years. That means newspapers, magazine titles and the page count within. When the quality of what is there goes down too, so does the publication.