Microsoft recently launched a print-only magazine called Signal. At 120 pages, and written for "business leaders," focusing on ai, leadership insights, corporate strategy, and essays by business leaders like bill Gates himself.

The choice to be print-only is interesting. Microsoft obviously don't have particular concerns about budget, and launching a print-only publication shows you have confidence in your content, your target audience's attention span, and the ability of print media to cut through the noise of social media's constant barrage of nonsense.

Steve Clayton, VP of Microsoft Communications, said he was inspired by the success of CostCo Connection, a magazine that was launched in 1987 by the retail chain of the same name, and is now the third largest in the US, with a circulation of over 15 million copies per month.

“We’re in this world where everything seems so ephemeral … it was time to do something that was almost the opposite of that.”

Clayton also said the choice to not publish any of Signal's content online was deliberate.

“We want this to be something people sit with, read, and cherish."

If the magazine is successful, they'll continue on a quarterly release schedule, although with only 1500 copies being printed and mailed directly to the CEOs and other C-suite execs of companies that Microsoft works with, I am not sure how you'd measure success in terms of a normal magazine that relies on ad sales to stay afloat.