New Delhi, April 5 -- At a dinner hosted by a family that owns a newspaper business, the conversation naturally drifted towards artificial intelligence, then doom. I said something I believe in, even though I knew it was not very persuasive. That the time has come for a triumphant return of a general interest print magazine, as long as it was brilliant, entertaining and not overrun with activists. Someone said, "But young people, they don't read, definitely not print."

Not for the first time, the thought occurred to me: spare me the young, why should they matter for everything? They have no money, no clout. Even if it was true that they won't read a magazine, which I don't believe is true, why should that decide the survival of a product...