Hearst recently introduced The Pioneer Woman Magazine, a partnership with the Food Network host Ree Drummond that was initially sold only at Walmart. Its new travel publication, Airbnbmag, is geared toward customers of the do-it-yourself online rental site, with distribution at newsstands, airports and supermarkets. Meredith has started a magazine called The Magnolia Journal with the HGTV stars Chip and Joanna Gaines.

Even Condé Nast, the glitzy purveyor of luxury titles, has recognized the advantages of outside partnerships. In recent weeks, the company debuted a quarterly print title for Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle brand, with a cover featuring a topless Ms. Paltrow submerged in mud from France.

At Vanity Fair, Mr. Carter resisted efforts by Condé Nast executives to shift his design, photo, research and copy teams out of the magazine’s purview, a move required of nearly every other title as part of a companywide cost-cutting effort, according to two people who spoke anonymously to describe private discussions. Mr. Carter was reluctant to make additional cuts that may be forced upon his magazine in the future, the people said.

Some veteran editors rue the trend toward corporate metrics in the industry.

Terry McDonell, a former top editor at Sports Illustrated and Rolling Stone, said that celebrity editors of the past embodied and defined the magazines they ran. “Now that is being replaced by people who believe that you can, in fact, engineer creativity and quality journalism,” he said.

Mr. Andersen, who now writes books and hosts a public radio show, said that magazines might eventually gain a cult following akin to the interest around other obsolete media, like vinyl records.

“Eventually, they’ll become like sailboats,” he said. “They don’t need to exist anymore. But people will still love them, and make them and buy them.”