Reader question:

Please explain “dead wood” in the following: “Are magazines just dead wood? The ease of digital publishing has led many to predict the imminent demise of the printed magazine.” Does it mean magazines are dead?

My comments:

Yes, it tries to argue that magazines as we know them have no future in the age of the Internet and digital publishing.

Traditional magazines, that is, the book-like newspapers you read by actually holding them in front of your eyes.

Nowadays, their digital relative, what’s known as the e-zine or e-magazine is threatening to take their place and, in consequence, drive the physical books out of the market place.

Some even say that physical books as a whole are dead and buried, now that kids have their collective eye glued fixedly to the tablet screen.

But, don’t worry. Books will survive. The best books at any rate. They’ll survive because many older people I know prefer the physical book. They like the substantial feel of it, its texture and everything. Kids may not like them for now, but you know what, kids grow. Perhaps, they’ll know better when they’re older.

Traditional magazines will survive likewise, the best of them anyways. The Economist magazine for example will survive. Can you imagine otherwise? I can’t. If ever that day comes, I mean would come, a lot of people will, I mean would go into mourning, for sure.

Anyways, in our example, traditional magazines are likened to dead trees in the forest.

In the forest, all dead trees, however various they are in type, shape and size, are lumped together and called dead wood because, because that’s what they are: just dead wood.

Managers of a forest makes it a point of clearing them off the plant because as dead wood, or deadwood, those dead trees or branches are no longer useful but are still there to compete with live trees and branches for air and space.

Hence, you see, when office people are sometimes referred to as dead wood, you understand that they’re usually a member of the old generation who have been there for a long time. They are no longer useful, one way or another, but are still there to compete with the young and coming for pay and space.

Not all older members of an office are dead wood, though. Like The Economist, which has been around for a long time, since 1843 as a matter of fact, some people get better as they get older.

Be like those people.

Be like those people and you need not give a care whether it makes sense for an office, especially if it be a bureaucratic one, to cut deadwood and lay you off.