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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2931 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 6, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Is the magazine business viable in 2026? On one hand, obviously no. Subscriptions to magazines have been falling continuously since like 1980 or something.

But on the other hand, maybe yes? Magazines used to be insanely profitable. There is an anecdote about Conde Nast employees in the 1990s getting mad because they were forced to fly first class to their Christmas party in London instead of taking the Concorde that they were used to. There's still some magazines like Architectural Digest which must be absolute cash cows if they can keep their costs under control.

In the modern era, it would be trivially easy to produce a decent magazine with a couple of full time staff. Get a few thousand subscribers and it might be viable. Would people buy a non-shitty version of Wired?

I would probably buy (as in, subscribe to) a non-shitty magazine about any of my interest areas, given a reasonable cost. Having something to read on the can is great. I am only partly joking here - since I spend most of my waking working hours behind the screen, a change of scenery when I am resting really feels nice to me. It's not about efficiency now but about the feel. However, I would not pay for a crap magazine that has 60% ads, 30% AI slop and the rest maybe interesting to me once in a blue moon. It must be consistently good. I don't know whether there are enough people like me to sustain a publication - maybe not. But I personally would.

Yeah, any AI content would have to be heavily suppressed. But it can be really useful as a research assistant. It's getting shockingly good at that. And research is most of the work anyway, so AI would majorly speed up the process. I bet it could do some decent layout work too, although this is far, far removed from anything I've ever worked on.

I don't mind if the writer uses AI as much as they want in the research. But if they just work as a meat proxy between LLM and myself, then the added value is close to zero. I can talk to an LLM directly when I want to. If I pay for something - and increasingly, that includes paying attention - I want to have added value that is not available in LLM prompts. If somebody does not want or is not capable of providing it, surely I am not going to pay for it.

Yes. The writer must have a voice and they must have taste. But good enough research is much easier nowadays. (I’ll define good enough as better than 90% of mainstream news articles)

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