Boston—March 17, 2023—This week, the independent producers at Hub & Spoke proudly welcome a new show into the collective. It’s a podcast about magazines called Print Is Dead. (Long Live Print!), created and hosted by Rockport, MA-based producer Patrick Mitchell and colleagues.
Launched in 2022 and currently in its second season, Print Is Dead. (Long Live Print!) features wide-ranging interviews with luminaries from the magazine world who share intimate stories of the medium’s ascent and descent. Guests have included famed art director Roger Black; Spy co-founder, novelist, and radio host Kurt Andersen; Gather creator Michele Outland; illustrator Brad Holland; photographer Dan Winters; Martha Stewart Living founding creative director Gael Towey; designers Janet Froelich, Robert Newman, Hans Teensma, and Adam Duplessis; former Esquire editor Adam Moss, and longtime Inc. Magazine editor George Gendron (who is also editor-at-large and occasional co-host of the podcast).
The unspoken yet central premise of Print Is Dead. (Long Live Print!) is one that would be hard for any literate person to refute: Over the course of the 20th century, magazines emerged as the nation’s leading beacons of culture and creativity. They were the original influencers. The best magazines combined vivid storytelling, provocative ideas, striking visuals, and distinctive voices and values—ultimately casting a long and powerful shadow on American public discourse.
That this shadow has receded, in a time of rising digital platforms and declining advertising revenue, is an inevitable sidebar to that main story. As Kurt Andersen told the New York Times in 2017, “The 1920s to the 2020s was kind of the century of the magazine. Today, the industry is in more of a dusk, a slow dusk, and we’re closer to the sunset.”
“I’ve spent my entire career in magazine publishing and have witnessed this decline of our industry over the last decade and a half,” says Mitchell, who runs the design consultancy Modus Operandi Design and formerly worked as creative director for Fast Company, Inc., Nylon, and O, The Oprah Magazine. “As I thought about the incredible talent that has influenced our culture over this period, and how it’s beginning to fade away, it struck me: somebody needs to preserve this rich history. Turns out that somebody is me.”
Regular Print Is Dead. (Long Live Print!) listeners hear stories from inside some of their favorite magazines, shared by some of the smartest and most creative people in the media business. “I fell in love with mid-century magazines as a college kid burrowing through the stacks of Widener Library,” says Wade Roush, a co-founder of Hub & Spoke and host of the tech-and-culture podcast Soonish. “And print magazines gave me my start in journalism. So I had an automatic soft spot for Patrick’s show and the parade of magazine legends he brings on. I also love a good example of ekphrasis—art about art. It’s so fitting that there should be a podcast about magazines, offering a loving-but-critical look back at this golden age of media so many of us lived through and learned from.”
“I am thrilled to welcome Patrick and Print Is Dead. (Long Live Print!) into Hub & Spoke,” says Tamar Avishai, host of The Lonely Palette and co-founder of the collective. “The media landscape is dying and blooming in equal measure, and these interviews are a fascinating glimpse into how and why from the people who’ve lived it. Hub & Spoke is lucky to have the opportunity to diversify both our content and our style with this curious and probing show.”
The addition of Print Is Dead. (Long Live Print!) brings Hub & Spoke’s current roster of podcasts to an even dozen. The collective has had 15 members since its founding in 2017, including alumni shows The Constant, Culture Hustlers, and Hi-Phi Nation.
“Independent podcasting is a lonely pursuit,” Mitchell says. “Being part of the collective instantly gives us the community we’ve so badly needed. And with a roster of shows of this caliber and access to their talented creators, we expect to learn a lot.”
That “we” includes Mitchell and Gendron as well as contributing cohost Debra Bishop, cofounding art director of The New York Times for Kids; editor at large Steven Heller, cochair of the design department at the MFA School of Visual Arts; editor at large Nicole Dyer, director of publications at NYU Langone Health; and editor at large Sean Plottner, editor of Dartmouth Alumni Magazine since 1999.
Listeners can find new episodes and the entire archive of Print Is Dead. (Long Live Print!) at https://www.longliveprint.co/