Magazines die in the attention economy by being forgotten, not by ceasing publication.

Evidence

In 1972, the magazine publisher Time-Life Inc. was facing serious trouble. Its legendary founder, Henry Luce, was dead, and one of its two flagships, Life magazine, was in terminal decline, having hemorrhaged some $47 million since 1969. Like nearly anything mainstream or conventional, it had suffered during the 1960s, becoming “irrelevant” to youth; it was now on course toward that form of extinction peculiar to the attention economy, not dying but being forgotten. Life’s essential levity, its tendency to gloss over unpleasant details, fit the 1950s perfectly, but by the 1970s it read like propaganda to the furrowed brows concerned with civil rights, the Vietnam War, and the remaking of American culture. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 752

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly extends the ‘Grafting & Growth’ piece’s theme of media/institutions as living organisms — here the organic metaphor is literalized: Life magazine ‘read like propaganda’ and was forgotten, not killed. Also connects to how platforms die when they lose youth relevance.