Every semester, I guest lecture in one of the big magazine core classes about the state of the magazine industry and what it takes to be a magazine editor.

And every semester I am confronted with two challenges:

1) Most students in the room want to be Writers, not editors. That capital W is no typo. These students chose magazine journalism because they like long-form writing and want to write Important Things for Important Publications. Which is great, it really and truly is, but there is So. Much. Competition for such work. Most of which doesn’t go to 20-something writers without deep experience.

It’s better, I tell these students, to learn how to be a magazine editor and join an editorial staff. Because magazine editors write. Usually a lot, especially at the junior levels. (Conveniently enough, the class I teach is about how to become a magazine editor.) When I told a friend that I feel a tad guilty pushing wanna-be writers toward editing, he shared an anecdote about writer Flannery O’Connor. When she was asked if universities were stifling writers, she responded that they’re not stifling enough of them. Ouch.

2) These students also are convinced print is going away. Largely because everyone — including many journalists — say it is. And it might. Someday. But for now, there still is tremendous value in the printed magazine package. There is no one future for “print journalism,” a term that is second on my list of pet peeve phrases, right behind the assumed hive mind of “the media.” A magazine is not just the sum of its parts. It’s about those components working together.

Part of what the audience pays for is this purposeful, visual package that contains targeted content created for said audience. Magazines remain a powerful and profitable way of delivering content, enough so that a number of digital brands have launched print magazines, including c-net, net-a-porter and WebMD. And the big one, Allrecipes, launched a magazine in 2013 and has over 1 million subscribers. Meanwhile, magazines are striding boldly into digital forums, where they are finding and creating entirely new audiences.

Samir Husni, aka Mr. Magazine, started publishing a project earlier this year called The Power and Future of Print. It is a collection of quotes from magazine makers that he has gathered over the years that speak to the value of the magazine package. One of my favorites is this one, from Donna Kalajian Lagani, an SVP at Cosmopolitan: “(Helen Gurley Brown) used to say that she wanted to have a one-to-one conversation with millions of women at the same time. So that whole idea of community, which is now what everyone is talking about, that’s something that Cosmo has always had. We’ve always said that we were the first interactive medium. Before there was an internet, there was Cosmo.”

And that, to me, is how I hope magazines can succeed. As these print-and-digital communities that gather around recognized brands with an expected purpose. Husni told a writer for IPDA Daily Publishing & Retail News (and I recognize the pro-magazine bias of both parties here) that “the question is not print versus digital media. Media now are not either/or, but rather all,” he said. “And at the end of the day, it is audience first, not digital or print first.”

Ultimately, standing in front of that lecture hall, I’m met with many blank stares — something I’m now accustomed to after two and a half years of teaching. But I do hope that I get through to some of these students. Even if it’s just convincing them to stop and think more about what making a magazine really means.