Another one bites the dust: industry stalwart PC Magazine will print its last paper issue this coming January, according to an announcement from Editor-in-Chief Lance Ulanoff. Increased print and delivery expenses contributed to the decision to move away from the print edition of the magazine, which has been around for 27 years.

Ulanoff paints the changes as “exciting and new” with the PC Magazine Digital Edition. “There are many technology innovations on the horizon,” he enthuses. The subscriber-only digital edition of PC Magazine (a more in-depth version of the content available at PCMag.com) has enhancements like searchability, portability (were paper magazines not portable?), interactive multimedia options (like slideshows) within articles, and even gimmicky magazine “pages” that you can “turn” virtually.

In addition, and we are not making this up, the magazine will now be printable, but is also “green” and environmentally friendly if you do not print it.

Read Write Web raises an excellent point, too: the long lag time between the news event and its magazine coverage frustrates readers who are used to seeing the same news online almost immediately as it happens. The experience of reading a tangible, portable, paper publication is hard to duplicate with a glowing screen. But reading a tree-based magazine with six-week-old news is not very rewarding.

Changes in the economic climate influence purchasing decisions, which drives changes in where advertisers are putting their money. And as more consumers of media turn their attention to online options, look for more venerable old-school publishing brands to shut down their paper editions.