EDITOR'S LETTER

I can't remember why I was so sad to see the Sixties come to an end, but I can clearly remember that December night. My parents had gone out for New Year's Eve, and our neighbor, Lynn, who was just a few years older than me, was babysitting my brother and me. She'd brought over a copy of the new Beatles album, which we listened to over and over while eating Jay's potato chips and French onion dip.

Like the colorful Westinghouse lights radiating from our homegrown Christmas tree, I should have been glowing. An older woman, junk food, Abbey Road ... I'd hit the adolescent trifecta of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Still, I was feeling a ripple of melancholy. Saying goodbye to the only decade I'd ever known felt like walking away from elementary school for the last time. It made me sad.

Fifty-six years later, I roll my eyes, embarrassed by the emotion. It was just a flip of the calendar. Another year. Another decade. It was unremarkable compared to the transition into another century. Another century. That's noteworthy. And that's where this magazine is headed. After 99 years and 11 months, this is our last issue in the double digits. In April, we turn 100, joining an exclusive club that includes Harper's, The Atlantic, National Geographic, Vogue and The New Yorker, which hit a hundred in February. We're proud of where we're at, especially considering how many great magazines aren't in the club: Life, Look, Newsweek, McCall's, Collier's, The Saturday Evening Post ... none of them lasted that long.

It's hard to say for sure why some make it and some don't. We've all faced the same challenges: television, color television, the internet, iPhones, e-readers, streaming services, social media. For a long time now at least 40 years the doomsayers have insisted that print is dead. But most studies suggest otherwise. According to Psychology Today, people have an “undeniably strong preference” for print over digital. And it's not just the Boomers. In one study, 92 percent of students preferred print. That's not to say that our industry hasn't suffered. It has, but it's not dead. And the trend seems to be shifting in the other direction.

Saveur, Spin, Ebony and Creem are back in print. And so is Field & Stream, which was purchased last year by country music artists Eric Church and Morgan Wallen. “I can remember my grandfather kept a few of his favorite Field & Stream magazines on the dash of his truck,” Church says. “That truck took us on hundreds of outdoor adventures... it's the honor of my life to make sure that legacy carries on.”

The same thing could be happening with Life. Last year, Karlie Kloss, the CEO of Bedford Media, announced a deal to buy the publication rights to Life from Dotdash Meredith. Like Like John Hammond with his cloned dinosaurs, she's hoping to use that DNA to resurrect one of the greatest magazines of all time. With ink and paper.

We're all rooting for her. Meantime, as John Branch writes in The New York Times, high-end niche magazines are rolling off the presses, too. The trend is most evident, he says, “in a burst of small-batch, independent outdoors magazines like Adventure Journal, Mountain Gazette, Summit Journal and Ori. They are crowding into quiet spaces of narrow lanes climbing, surfing, skiing, running where quality is key, advertising is minimal and subscribers are faithful.”

I'm among the faithful subscribers to Mountain Gazette, a 1960s-era magazine that Mike Rogge rousted out of hibernation and transformed into one of the most compelling print publications on the market. “I love nostalgia and the history of mountain culture,” he says. He likes a challenge, too, and he's proving that print isn't dead. He's sold out every single issue since the rebirth, in part because Mountain Gazette is a magazine created for mountain town people by mountain town people.

“Write what you know,” Mark Twain said.

We know Arizona. That's our narrow lane. But there's more ground to cover, more stories to tell. “The Arizona Story has no beginning or end,” Editor Raymond Carlson wrote on this page in 1963. “It is the story of a breathtakingly beautiful land, a land full of sun and distance, so complex in personality that no person will ever know all of it.”

Mr. Carlson is a big reason we're still here today. He was the visionary who conceptualized a magazine that would endure for so many decades. Without him, Arizona Highways wouldn't have been. And wouldn't be. Like anything, though, turning a vision into something tangible a groundbreaking magazine with subscribers around the globe requires intention and execution. And people. That includes the gifted artists, photographers, poets and writers who get the bylines. And those who don't. Since 1925, there have been thousands of typesetters, color separators, customer service reps, designers, copy editors, proofreaders, printing press operators, bookkeepers, delivery truck drivers ... who have played a key role in moving our magazines into your mailbox. All of those men and women have helped us get to this point.

More than anything, though, we're here because of you. And your belief in our ability to tell the Arizona Story. “A magazine, what is it but a trust?” Harold Ross, the founding editor of The New Yorker, said. “A corporation is just a bunch of men working together to make money. A magazine is a trust.”

On behalf of everyone at Arizona Highways, thank you for trusting us for so many years ... so many decades. Thanks, too, for your commitment to ink and paper. Print isn't dead. And we'd like to keep it that way.

— ROBERT STIEVE, EDITOR