I am a pretty heavy consumer of print media but even as a fan I know that ultimately that is not how people are going to read the majority of their news, analysis and reviews in future. The interesting thing is that as a "loyal" subscriber I am getting all kinds of interesting and weird offers.
PC Gamer UK for example offered me the chance to subscribe for three years while paying just two. On the face of that its not a bad deal given that I've been a subscriber for years. However ironically the offer made me wonder how well the magazine is doing financially and whether the upfront money would just disappear if it folded.
While I dithered I got a reminder about the offer and a coupon to further reduce the price. The cost was high but something that I could shrug off after a couple of months and the magazine isn't going to fold in that time. I've gone for it.
My father in law is a subscriber to the London Review of Books and their offer to him was even crazier. Essentially I am get a two year free subscription to the LRB just because he is a subscriber. I can only assume that this is some crazy subscriber number deal to increase the value of the advertising they are carrying.
Two political journals Le Monde Diplomatique and Foreign Affairs are struggling to make the transition from print. Foreign Affairs has a relatively no-nonsense electronic subscription (which makes financial sense for an international sub). However the electronic copy is distributed as a PDF of the print edition, one that includes screen unfriendly two column layout and the print adverts as massive image files. Collectively the result is such a disaster that you would be better off picking up a paper copy from the newsagent.
LMD is even stranger, subscribing to the website or an electronic edition is such a pain that I just went for the paper edition and then got given access to the website for free as part of the paper sub.
Virtually none of this makes sense to me except that all these publications are desperately trying to find some way to survive in a rapidly changing environment.