Notes on going back to print

On reading by curiosity, not by numbers

Do you remember when your favourite magazine became an app?

I do.

As soon as The New Yorker came out as an app, I immediately downloaded it, signed up for the digital subscription (far cheaper, it worked out, than buying the print version), and off I went, saving every piece I promised myself I was going to read.

Suddenly I had the entire back catalogue - essays, thought pieces, even recipes. No more photographing an article I wanted to share with a friend. I could just WhatsApp them the link.

But what started out as efficiency and a wealth of inspirational articles at my fingertips became overwhelming. It wasn’t just The New Yorker I read regularly. Within three months I had over fifteen similar apps on my phone and eventually I stopped opening any of them.

I quickly realised what I loved about these magazines wasn't only what I read. It was how I read them. Saturday morning. With coffee. In bed. Eking out that extra thirty minutes before I get myself into gear, flicking through whatever had arrived through the letterbox, enjoying the imagery as much as the words.

Scrolling through an app just doesn’t feel the same. It became too easy to scroll off the app and onto another - TikTok or Instagram, the usual go-tos. There’s also something about reading pieces online feeling too much like reading work emails - I’d skim for the gist, move on to the next, barely registering what I’d read. The worrying thing was, that habit followed me. I'd pick up a novel and catch myself skimming it the same way.

So this year, in my quest to take back control of my attention span, I returned to print. And in doing so, I've been reminded why I love a print magazine so much.

First, there's the diversity. When I'm reading a magazine online, I don't find myself going near the pieces that don't immediately catch my eye. There are hundreds of other things I could be reading that are right up my street, so why bother with something that, on the face of it, isn't?

But with a print magazine in my handbag, I always end up flicking back through the articles I'd initially skipped past. Part challenge, part I can't be bothered to read my book, so let me read something quick - it's in those second-time-around pieces that I find things I wouldn't have otherwise. Things I didn’t know or things I hadn’t appreciated.

Second, I’m not entirely sure exactly why but reading in print is just different from reading online. Aside from the work-email thing, there's the engagement side of it. When I see a post with a load of likes and comments, there's almost a presupposition that it must be interesting, it must be of value. If over a thousand people have liked it, surely it's worth my time.

But if I’m honest, I find those high-engagement articles to be the easy vacuous reads, the pieces so vague that anyone can find themselves in them. I suppose that's what drives the engagement…but I genuinely feel mildly annoyed at giving into the metrics and reading it. I always feel slightly disappointed in trading my time for not a lot of payoff.

Print doesn't give you that. There's no signal telling me what's popular before I read it. I'm just reading what's in front of me. I’m not saying that everything I read in print is demonstrably of more value - I just find that my own curiosity (rather than a bunch of other people's) is a better guide to what I read.

And finally, as each of my favourite periodicals arrives at a different point in the month, I can spend a couple of days, or a week, with the one that's just landed before the next shows up. So instead of swiping through fifteen apps and saving articles I'd never get back to, I'm reading one magazine at a time, at the pace it was meant to be read.

Five months into the switch back to print, the change feels real. I'm reading more, reading slower, and reading things I wouldn't have chosen.

Next week, I'll share my current rotation - the usual suspects, the ones for book lovers, the slow-burners and the philosophy magazines that help me make sense of my self-study into philosophy.

I’d love to know what your favourite magazines are - let me know in the comments.