I had to go buy two pristine copies of the magazine this morning for something I’m working on, and at the newsstand around the corner (on Madison and 30th, should you be stalking me), there were two copies left. “You’re lucky I have two!” said the proprietor of the small magazine shop. (Not to be confused with the little-magazine shop, Niko’s on Sixth Ave. at Eleventh St., where, years ago, a young Russian employee responded to the news that I was leaving The Nation for Newsday with the booming review, “From the socialists to the technocrats!”)
Are people buying magazines and newspapers these days? Yes, he said, but not as many, and definitely fewer newspapers. “Even the porn magazines, the foreign magazines, the tattoo magazines?” I asked, looking around the inventory. Yep, he’s selling fewer of all of the above. “But The New Yorker sells out?” “Every week, every copy.” So, you see, the news isn’t all bleak.