Barton Swaim welcomes Portico, a new 84-page literary quarterly from the Institute on Religion and Public Life, as evidence that print culture is quietly resurging.
Key Takeaways
Print book demand has grown over 20 years and still outsells ebooks, defying repeated predictions of print’s death.
Several outlets that went digital-only have returned to print: Saveur, Field & Stream, the New York Sun, and now the California Post tabloid.
County Highway (edited by Walter Kirn and David Samuels) offers only digital facsimiles online, reinforcing print as the primary product.
Portico is published under the Institute on Religion and Public Life (First Things parent), edited by Micah Mattix of the Substack newsletter Prufrock.
Issue one includes Mark Helprin fiction, formalist poetry, and essays by Dana Gioia, Dominic Green, and Alan Jacobs.
