The Contraction Begins — The End of Digital Media Growth

Heat Treat Today publishes twelve print magazines annually and included in each is a letter from the publisher, Doug Glenn. This letter from the May 2026 Sustainable Heat Treat Technologies print edition challenges the assumption that digital-only communication is the future, citing Heat Treat Today’s own subscription data and industry research to argue that print and tactile media are making a meaningful comeback.

Feel free to contact Doug at doug@heattreattoday.com if you have a question or comment. 

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46% of Gen Z say that they are taking steps to limit their screen time according to an extremely interesting article by Rocco Nugent in a recent print edition of The Epoch Times national weekly newspaper. In the same article, Nugent states that somewhere between 180,000 and 750,000 U.S. households are now living off the grid to some degree. Digital minimalism is officially “a thing.”

As you can imagine, the way Heat Treat Today’s audience consumes information is of immense interest to us. And, as you may not imagine, this curtailing and even abandonment of digital media is no surprise to our team. For many of you reading this column by holding a hardcopy in your hand, you also might not be surprised. But for those of you who are fighting with your upper management about whether to go all digital or do the more moderate approach of combining digital and “old-fashioned” tactile forms of communication, here are some facts that should help the cause.

70% of all subscriptions received by Heat Treat Today — and other trade journal publishers based on informal research — are for hardcopy print magazines. This is true across all age categories. We offer subscriptions to digital editions of the magazine and industry e-newsletters. Seven out of ten of these subscriptions include a request to receive the hardcopy magazine. They typically ask for at least one other digital subscription, but a full 70% request a hardcopy magazine. This is counter intuitive in what many wrongly believe is a digital-only age.

According to a study published by The Harris Poll in partnership with Quad, there has been a marked move back to tactile marketing efforts like hardcopy mailers, postcards, letters, and magazines because of the substantially better results (Quad 2025). They dub this effect “return of touch” — as opposed to return on investment (ROI). Most digital marketing campaigns brag about their ROI, but this study asserts that return of touch is now winning the day. People, including those Gen Zers mentioned above, are hungering for something more tangible, something they can touch and hold. Apparently, when you spend your entire day in front of a screen, it’s enjoyable to get away and grab something physical.

Heat Treat Today digital magazine subscriptions peaked at roughly 25% of our circulation 10 years ago; since then, it has steadily declined. Today, it is at or below 20%. That is to say, if you look at only magazine subscriptions, 20% or below are asking for digital-only subscriptions. In fact, we know that of the people who request digital editions, the number who look at their digital edition is not substantial. After decades of interacting with trade publishers and magazines, I can state that this is true across nearly all industrial trade magazine brands, not just Heat Treat Today.

All of this leads us to a simple conclusion: those who believe that we are in a digital age and that digital-only communication and marketing practices are the future, are mistaken. A small percentage of the companies we do business with have digital marketing firms. By default, these marketing companies, as their names indicate, have focused on digital marketing because they believed it was the future… back in the early 2000s. Unsurprisingly, these digital marketing companies would badmouth hard copy magazines and mailers, but that’s because their whole company existence is predicated on digital marketing assets. They were biased from the start.

Heat Treat Today has a horse in both races, so we are somewhat agnostic about whether a company goes all digital or maintains a more balanced approach. We just hate to see companies hurt themselves by believing that digital-only is the way to go when it is demonstrably not. You need to have digital. We are not in favor of throwing the baby out with the bath water, but a digital-only world is one where you will be missing up to 70–80% of your target audience.

References

Nugent, Rocco. 2026. “Silent Revolution.” The Epoch Times. March 11–17, 2026. p. A15.

Quad. 2025. “Return of Touch: Consumer Engagement Has an Omnichannel Revival.” May 13, 2025. https://www.quad.com/resources/research-and-tools/return-of-touch-consumer-engagement-has-an-omnichannel-revival.