Port x The Golden Age

The idea that this is a Golden Age for magazines seems counter-intuitive to many. We’re so conditioned to websites, devices and apps being hailed as the only possible future. Yet there is great creative work being done (as I hope this site regularly demonstrates) right under our noses in the traditional medium of print.

My friend and magCulture contributor Andrew Losowsky can lay claim to identifying today as a Golden Age, writing in the 2010 book Turning Pages, ‘This is truly a time of transition. It is a time of strong design and imaginative thinking, of creative technology and low barriers to entry. It means less print, and better print, a reduction in mediocrity and a greater appreciation of physical objects and what they can be. The true golden age of print? It’s right now.’ It’s something I have often repeated, and underlies my upcoming book The Modern Magazine.

So it’s great to see others running with the message, and the latest baton-carrier is the new edition of Port. The magazine has pulled off a real coup, not only interviewing six of the leading New York magazine editors about the state of the industry but also getting them together for a cover shoot by Stefan Ruiz (above, below).

From left to right: Jim Nelson, also shown above in his office (GQ), Scott Dadich (Wired), Adam Moss (New York), Graydon Carter (Vanity Fair), Hugo Lindgren (New York Times Magazine) and Josh Tyrangiel (Bloomberg Businessweek).

Perhaps the best quote in the feature comes from another editor, David Remnick of The New Yorker, in response to a statement about how good things used to be in the industry.

‘Tough shit’, he says of the lost era. ‘That’s not what is. This is what is.’

Read Port editor Dan Crowe’s introduction to the new issue.

Issue 10 of Port is published June 13.
Cover art direction and design by Matt Willey.