'Is Print Dead? Discuss!'

Magazines are dead! No, they'll live forever! The Internet is a threat! No wait, an opportunity!

It's a scary time to be working at — or running — a magazine, and the sense of challenge is palpable any time industry executives or editors assemble. "I love this question," quipped Glamour editor in chief Cindi Leive at a recent mediabistro.com dinner she and other top women's magazine editors co-hosted. "'Is print dead? Discuss!'" Peggy Northrop, editor-in-chief of More, added only half-jokingly: "It's what we talk about all day long."

At recent magazine conferences in New York and Phoenix, too, the opulence of awards ceremonies could not mask the seriousness with which the discussions played out among executives, on sometimes grim panels, and in discussions with the likes of New Yorker editor David Remnick and Meredith publishing's editorial director, Mike Lafavore. Print ad dollars and ad pages are growing anemically, if at all, and publications are shuttering even as top executives insist nothing's wrong.

“We should be willing to eliminate unproductive products without fearing that thinning the herd means we are signaling our industry's demise,” a defiant Hachette president and CEO Jack Kliger said at the American Magazine Conference in Phoenix. "Closing a magazine is no more a sign of the death of the industry than the cancellation of a TV series means the shutdown of a network, or a haircut is a sign that you're going bald.”

Meanwhile, ad revenue is booming on the Web, and the people who run magazines seem to have re-awoken to this thing called the Internet, convinced that this time — unlike the late '90s — it's for real. "Let's take full advantage of the power of our brands,” Kliger said. “And let's use technology to go beyond the page." "Beyond the Page" was the conference's theme.

Kliger and others are indeed moving aggressively online. ElleGirl and Teen People have foregone print to move entirely to the Web. US Weekly has seven — seven! — people devoted solely to its Web site to compete with the likes of TMZ.com, Perez Hilton and myriad others. "Why would we let all these other competing Web sites encroach on what we also can do, oftentimes better?" asks editor in chief Janice Min. Web staffs are beefing up at Condé Nast and Hearst, and elsewhere, while hiring managers and executive recruiters complain they're having trouble finding people to fill Web side positions. Lafavore told mediabistro.com at the FOLIO Show in New York that Meredith is planning a new '"parents' portal," with a wealth of information about child-rearing.

No one is saying magazines will fade into complete oblivion even as they restructure and find new legs.

AOL Time-Warner's constant state of change illustrates the unchanging state of flux. For years, the company has fluctuated between an ad-supported and subscription model online, sometimes providing more of its top-flight magazines like People and Fortune, sometimes less. They're reconsidering the print model, too. There have been discussions of whether to sell magazines under a sort of cable TV model in which someone would pay a flat fee to get whatever suite of print publications they want each month. During a panel in Phoenix entitled "Just What Business Are We In?" Time Inc. chief Ann Moore said overseeing the company's magazines is "like having 149 children that need to go to college at the same time." That’s, in part, why Time Inc. decided to sell 18 of its "kids." Bids are due in later this month.

The days when editors at Newsweek could send a limousine to pick up dinner from a swank restaurant (yes, it used to happen) have been gone for decades. But will the days when a Condé Nast or Hearst can no longer afford a slick new building with fancy cafeterias be far behind? Sure, the companies that make the highest-fashion glossies still seem to be riding high enough. "It's a model that's been in place a long time, it's a very efficient model, and works extremely well," notes Samir Arora, CEO of fashion Web site Glam.com. Condé has the temerity to invest a reported $100 million in a new business publication, Portfolio, that will take a year to launch, even as they've shuttered such previously prominent publications as Cargo and Men's Vitals.

Arora claimed earlier this year that his site, which aggregates fashion blogs in every imaginable niche and also provides a fashion shopping portal, surpassed Condé's Style.com over the summer. He also asserted that his business has strong advantages. His company doesn't have any of the freight, the large infrastructure, that a Condé or Hearst has and has to support. "We have no baggage. We have no sacred cows, there's nothing we're trying to protect," he says. "We don't have to drive any other parts of our old business. We're simply focused on servicing this consumer in the way she would like [online]."

No one is saying magazines will fade into complete oblivion even as they restructure and find new legs. Arora is among the many who profess a love of magazines, and he agrees "traditional media" are not going away. There's something special and unique, even luxurious, about reading a big, glossy magazine, he notes. Or, in the words of Marie Claire editor Joanna Coles "As long as people take baths, there will always be a monthly magazine."

Dorian Benkoil is mediabistro.com's editorial director. Dylan Stableford is mb's managing editor, media news.