I’m an old-line print fanatic so I continue to subscribe to a bunch of magazines doing my part to keep them in print for at least a few more days.
Today I got this email.
Dear Friend of Scientific American,
We are writing to let you know the exciting news that Scientific American has been acquired by Scientific American, Inc., a newly formed company that works with LabX Media Group on or about June 24, 2026. A press release detailing the acquisition can be read here.
Just to further make my day, LabX Media Group is not mentioned a second time anywhere in the email. AIO to worry about a company that takes over America’s premiere popular science magazine and sends its subscribers a email that illiterate to announce it?
(The link does make the transaction more understandable, but it shouldn’t have to. Nor does it say that the LabX Media Group already owns the picture-replaces-a-thousand-words Discover magazine.)
I think it was at least 20 years ago that I gave up on Scientific American. What tipped me over the edge was when they had a blurb about a device that promised to convert between electromagnetic and gravitational waves and back with 50% efficiency. Because what’s a factor of 10^-40 between friends?
A darned shame, though, because up through the 1980s, it was amazing. Amateur Scientist and Mathematical Recreations were, either one of them, worth the subscription price by themselves.
I started reading it when Martin Gardner was doing Mathematical Games. I eventually got a complete collection of all the book compilations.
How incredibly much I had aged really hit me when I realized that their 50/100/150 years ago page included findings that I had read in the original issues. And that was a decade ago.
Staff at Scientific American had just voted to unionize so they could help improve the publication’s sustainable and improved operation for the future. We should call this action what it is – blatant union-busting.
An acquiring company has only profits in mind. They don’t only purchase the materials, equipment, employees, and intellectual property…they largely purchase the established and valuable “brand.”
Then the goal is to cut costs and increase revenue as much as they can using the brand as the means for keeping people purchasing. Eventually, with the push solely for profits, quality will start to suffer and over several years time the brand will become less valuable as their customers start noticing. This enshitification can take a couple of years, but the loss of their customers will take much longer. This is the power of buying the brand. The good reputation of the brand is strong and it takes a while for quality to suffer enough to be noticeable, then longer for customers to sour on a brand.
Meanwhile the acquiring company is make money on their purchase. When the brand suffers enough, they sell it to another company who is left holding the bag of an enshitified brand.
The Graphic Science column would sometimes lose me…they really seemed to go out of their way sometimes to create a multi-page spread out of information best conveyed in a few paragraphs.
We will see, but I think the pessimism is justified. One advantage of a sub is you also can get their online blog that includes mathematical content from the German edition by Manon Bischoff along with other science postings.
Once you admit your audience can’t / won’t read words and would rather watch a vid or at worst a slideshow, well, your days as a print magazine are definitely numbered. With small numbers.
