For more than 30 years Samir Husni has been a tireless proponent of magazines—as works of art, as user-friendly forms of media, and as an industry. Samir spent 37 years as a professor of journalism at the University of Mississippi. He founded and produced the ACT Conference at the University in Oxford. He’s the founder of the Magazine Innovation Center, founder and director of the Magazine Media Center, and CEO of his own firm, Magazine Consulting & Research.
And oh, yes. He’s amassed what is probably the world’s largest collection of first-edition magazines, more than 100,000 copies, which he donated to the University of Missouri in 2022.
Over the decades, Samir came to be known as Mr. Magazine, the world’s foremost magazine evangelist, and a frequent expert source in media interviews.
For all these reasons and a lot more, we felt a conversation with Samir would be both fun and highly illuminating for the Fox Tales audience. Here’s a transcript.
Fox Tales: Tell us the state of magazine-related media in 2025.
Samir Husni.
Samir Husni: Two trends define the state of magazine media in 2025: The rise of bookazines—more than 1,000 were published in 2024 with the majority coming from A360 Media and Dotdash Meredith—and the relaunch in print of some legacy brands such as Playboy, Heavy Metal, and Life. I should add that new magazine launches with regular frequency have dwindled a lot in 2024 to less than 40 new launches compared with the 535 high in 1995. Well done specialized and city and regional magazines will continue to hold their presence and power in their regions.
Husni: I may have retired from teaching but, as long as I have breath, I will never retire from the magazine world, tracking, analyzing and interviewing the movers and shakers of the magazine industry or whomever is left from them. Also, when I am not collecting and following magazines and magazine trends, I am enjoying taking pictures of birds and wildlife in front and behind my house in Oxford. Here’s a cardinal picture that I took yesterday.