Goodbye, Wired! And other publishing stories in freefall

It happened three days ago, on 16 April 2026. Whilst Italian journalists were on strike for the third time in a few months, demanding the renewal of a contract that had expired ten years ago, Condé Nast published a statement signed by CEO Roger Lynch announcing the closure of the Italian edition of Wired. According to internal sources cited by Il Post, the editorial team found out ten minutes before the statement went online. No warning, no negotiations. Just a company memo.

This is not news like any other, even if it risks being swept up in the usual stale social media grind. A few articles, a few posts of condolence, and then everything is forgotten. But this closure deserves closer scrutiny, because it is not an isolated incident.

What Wired Italia represents (or represented)

Wired Italia was launched in March 2009, with Rita Levi-Montalcini on the cover of its first issue. This was a deliberately strategic editorial choice. Not technology for industry insiders, but innovation explored from a cultural perspective, with a focus on its social and political implications, capable of speaking to a broad and educated audience. Over almost seventeen years, it has built a comprehensive ecosystem through its print magazine, website, newsletters and live events such as the Wired Next Fest, bringing international voices from the worlds of technology, science and digital culture to Italy.

Founded by the then editor Riccardo Luna and subsequently led for years by Luca Zorloni, the publication managed to maintain a recognisable voice even through the digital transition – the very transition which, ironically, rendered it economically unsustainable in the eyes of the group that published it.

The official reasons and the real ones

In his statement, Lynch was clear. Wired Italia, along with Self magazine and certain local editions of Glamour, accounts for little more than 1% of Condé Nast’s total turnover. These are businesses that ‘continue to be unprofitable’ and whose management ‘limits our ability to invest in the ideas and areas that will drive future growth’. There was no mention of a general financial crisis, given that the company ended 2025 with growth. So, it’s not that Wired was doing badly… let’s just say it wasn’t doing well enough by the required profitability standards. It must be said that there had already been some warning signs by the end of 2025, when the print edition of Wired UK was suspended, with seven editorial staff redundancies.

The Wired brand will, however, continue to exist in its US, Japanese, Czech and Middle Eastern editions. European events will come under the management of the British team. Italy, on Condé Nast’s global map, is clearly not a market that ‘has kept pace with the growth of others’, as Lynch wrote. Which raises a legitimate question: is this a problem with Wired, or is it a problem with the Italian publishing market as a whole?

The figures don’t lie

2025 was the worst year for the Italian general interest publishing sector in a long time. 99.5 million copies sold, falling below the psychological threshold of 100 million for the first time, with a 3% decline compared to 2024. In terms of value, the market stood at €1,483.9 million, a fall of 2.1%.

But it would be wrong to view 2025 as an anomaly. Rather, it is the intensification of a structural trend. Revenues from Italian daily newspapers, which stood at €1.47 billion in 2019, had already fallen to €1.17 billion by 2024: a fifth of the value lost in five years. Circulation figures for print newspapers fell from 3.07 million copies per day in 2000 to fewer than 881,000 by the end of 2024. Readers of the print press have halved in ten years, falling from 18.4 million to fewer than 9.5 million.

Newsagents, which are the last physical outposts of this system, are disappearing at an alarming rate. In twenty years, 42.8% have closed. The number has fallen from 35,000 to around 20,000 outlets, only half of which are ‘pure’, i.e. dedicated exclusively to publishing products. In two-thirds of Italian municipalities – almost 5,000 out of around 7,900 – there is no longer anywhere to buy a newspaper.

Hoepli, digital platforms and the strike

Wired isn’t the only major name to have fallen by the wayside recently. Just over a month ago, we reported on the crisis at Hoepli, one of Italy’s leading bookshops and publishing houses. It is a story that is particularly painful precisely because of the contrast with the company’s history. Hoepli had weathered two world wars, rebuilt itself after the destruction of the Second World War, and remained in business for almost 160 years… only to run aground in the market of 2026.

What is actually happening? The answer is not simple, but certain trends are clear. The traditional advertising market – the one that for decades supported print media and then online media – has shifted massively towards digital platforms, which do not need editorial teams to function. Advertisers prefer creators with 100,000 followers to a journalist with twenty years’ experience. TikTok, Instagram and YouTube capture attention and budgets in a more measurable and granular way than any publication.

Nor can we dismiss as mere coincidence the fact that the announcement of Wired Italia’s closure came on the day of the third national strike by Italian journalists. Over the last decade, newsrooms have transformed into multi-platform structures, often with reduced staff numbers, an increasing reliance on precarious freelancers and accelerated work rhythms, all in the face of starvation wages.

What lies ahead?

Here at La Novella Orchidea, we are well aware of the challenges facing independent digital publishing. The imbalances in the app stores, the concentration of power in the hands of a few giants, the struggle to remain visible in a crowded market dominated by algorithms; the closures we have been witnessing in recent months affect us deeply, because when the common ground shrinks, it becomes harder for everyone.

Losing Wired Italia means losing a bastion of specialist journalism for which there is, at present, no natural replacement. In a country where technology already shapes every aspect of daily life, the (lack of) a publication capable of covering it is an issue that deserves far more than a lukewarm press release.