A wild niche
Columns: Of Mouths & Monies
A wild niche
The demise of print is widely assumed, but smaller, quality mags like Wild are still flourishing. A little help from readers, however, can go a long way.
Mmm, can you smell that? Can you? It's there alright, that whiff of bibliosmia, a heady melange of ink, bleaching chemicals, adhesive and solvents. Go on, inhale it. Sure, it doesn't sound all that healthy, but if you love the printed word, it should hit your pleasure centre like a brick to the cortex. (Or if you're lucky enough to have synaesthesia, like a red to the pungent.) And hell, we don't know how long it'll be before that smell goes extinct.
It's no secret that print media is in decline, but how bad is it exactly? Give it to me straight, doc. Well, according to Press Gazette, an online UK media trade journal, global magazine print circulation is decreasing by 2% to 3% annually. Australian figures are harder to come by as magazines are classed with newspapers, but the trend is the same—downward—with a 13% drop in sales overall in 2025.