Solemnly proclaiming that “digital is dead,” editors at Wired magazine have announced that in 2015, the magazine will revert to being a print-only publication.
“They said that the Internet was going to improve the way we consumed news and information,” said editor-in-chief Scott Dadich. “They said that people no longer have the patience to wait three-to-five business days to get the latest issue via the postal service. They said a wired world was an egalitarian, compassionate world. They were wrong.”
“People are fed up with digital media, of the way articles are partially digested or totally unread, even as they are shared at lightening speeds on social media,” Dadich said. “Even the most attention-deficit among us have trouble keeping up, and it’s high time we do something about it.”
“The worst is that the internet is littered with fake news stories, so nobody can even be sure what’s true and what’s not,” he added. “We’re out.”
Just before midnight on New Year’s Eve, Dadich and other employees will pull the plug on the influential technology and culture website’s online presence by cancelling the hosting, effectively killing it. The domain name www.wired.com will be sold for $59.29 to Marty Goode, a Detroit-area electrician who runs his own business called Get Wired.
Other news publications, including the Huffington Post and CNN, are expected to follow suit and essentially become print dailies, leading to a spike in the cost of newsprint and ink. Even social media websites are said to be mulling over similar changes. One source from inside Facebook said the company is planning on launching a beta print version that will allow users to send friends paper copies of updates, photos and memes, with digital “likes” being replaced by recorded telephone messages saying how much the post was appreciated.