Last night, I published an article criticising Faith fanzine for running an interview with Carl Cox whilst at the same time, one of their founders is criticising his appearance at a Saudi government backed festival. And it hasn’t gone down entirely well – much to the surprise of no one.

Let’s get to Faith fanzine’s defence first. They haven’t said anything directly to me, but they did like a comment pointing out the interview with Cox and everything associated with it would have been done before the MDL Beast Soundstorm revelations. And on Instagram, they responded to a user by pointing out “the interview was done in the summer and went to print early last week”.

They seem to be arguing they’ve been backed into a corner and had no other choice. Which I sympathise with – but only to an extent. You see, this is a classic case of the print media showing itself to be an irrelevance.

By Faith’s own admission, this interview was recorded during the summer. I would take that to mean July or August. It’s now late November. That interview could be over four months old. With each passing day, the risk of that interview being superseded by events increased. And that’s exactly what’s happened here.

I sympathise a little with Faith fanzine – but the blunt truth is that print magazines in dance music are a throwback to a long gone era. Yes, some of the print magazines of the 1990s were brilliant – but they existed in a time with a slower news cycle and no alternative to print. Nowadays, this kind of content belongs online.

And don’t take my word for it. Look over at Mixmag. They last published a printed edition in April 2020. They said they’d be back in 2021. It’s now nearing December and the print magazine has now been resting as long as the money in Father Ted’s bank account. The online operation has had money spent on it – although sadly not on staffing it with proper journalists.

Whilst I feel a little bit sorry for Faith fanzine and Terry Farley – who comes out of this looking especially foolish – I think they’ve just proven their magazine is a relic of a bygone era…