On Friday, April 10, friends of Chronicles gathered at the historic Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., to celebrate the magazine’s 50th anniversary and launch its new partnership with the Center for Renewing America. Editor-in-Chief Paul Gottfried walked through Chronicles’ remarkable history, noting the roles of figures such as Russell Kirk, Sam Francis, Thomas Fleming, and Pat Buchanan in the life of the magazine.

In my remarks, I made the case for the continued existence in the digital era of a high-brow cultural magazine still printed on paper made from trees and distributed through the physical mail. I drew an analogy to the resurgence of vinyl. 

In 1948, Columbia Records introduced the 33 1/3 RPM long-playing record (soon to be known simply as the “LP”), and by 1978, vinyl records hit their peak. Global record sales reached 530 million, driven by iconic albums like Saturday Night Fever, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. 

The crash came fast. The new technologies of cassette tapes and CDs wiped out the vinyl market, such that by 1993, less than 1 percent of music sales were vinyl. The medium was dead. 

Then something funny happened. Cassettes and CDs were supplanted by the digital music revolution, and people started buying vinyl again. In 2020, vinyl outsold CDs for the first time since the early 1980s. Today, vinyl has twice the sales and three times the revenue of CDs, selling nearly 50 million albums for more than $1 billion.

How do you explain the remarkable resurgence of this outdated technology?

You can touch it. You experience dropping the record out of the album cover and placing it on your stereo. In an increasingly virtual world, vinyl is sensuous.

You can see it. The cover art and liner notes. An album is meant to be experienced as a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Spotify playlists are great for the gym or running errands, but not when you want to put on a record, sit in your favorite chair, and appreciate the thought and care that went into creating a work of art.

You own it. Vinyl can’t be censored. The tech conglomerates can’t update their terms of service or force you to buy a new gadget to access your music.

Last but not least, you value it. People value music as a medium and musicians as artists, and they express their values through what they pay for with their hard-earned money. A monthly subscription to Spotify doesn’t register the same way as spending $20 with the retired Dead Head running a vintage shop on Main. 

Vinyl came back because enough people think it matters. Vinyl didn’t become mainstream again, however. Digital music still accounts for 90 percent of music sales in the United States; vinyl is 8 percent. It’s a niche—but an important niche, occupied by the most discerning listeners.

Today, America is a culture of niches. There is no such thing as shared culture anymore. We don’t watch the same shows or movies, listen to the same music or podcasts, rely on the same news, drive the same cars, read the same books, eat at the same restaurants, or shop at the same stores. Technology has made it possible for each individual to cultivate a unique lived experience—often in odd, esoteric, and sometimes dangerous ways. Our magazine this month makes the case that a partisan media environment wreaks havoc on our Republic. That bias is motivated by political preference to large degree, but the atomization of everything has made it such that media institutions are dominated by those who have never known someone who doesn’t think the way they do.

Industry has responded and adapted to the atomization of everything, including conservative media. For example, the podcast form and its power were on full display in the 2024 election. Still, much work needs to be done to adapt the way we think about communicating with persuadable voters, building electoral coalitions, and exerting influence on elected leaders in the new, atomized reality we live in.

Just as we need to spend more time thinking about how we influence those outside our niche subculture, we need to think about nurturing those within it. 

There exists a cadre of freedom-loving Americans of conservative disposition, largely people of faith, who care deeply about the state of our union, know what America once was and what made it great, and who devote their time and treasure to renew it. As leaders of this movement, we have an opportunity and a responsibility to educate them, inform them about what’s going on, inspire them and offer hope. 

There aren’t many of us—but there are enough. History is the story of God using small groups of unlikely people to accomplish His purposes. He does that still. That’s the group to which I belong and in which I intend to invest.

And we need a magazine.