Is the internet really killing print publishing – or could it prove to be its unlikely saviour, with niche magazines thriving in the digital era?

Despite what you may have heard, reports of the "death of print" have been greatly exaggerated. A survey in April by Deloitte found that 88% of magazine readers in the UK still prefer to consume articles via print. While half of respondents to its state-of-the-media survey (2,276 UK consumers, aged 14 to 75) owned a smartphone, 35% subscribed to at least one printed magazine in 2011. Of course, with the adoption of tablet devices on the rise, this figure could well be out of date already – particularly given the rapid improvement in the quality of digital publications, and the demand for them to do more than merely replicate the content of print titles online. But, regardless of some high-profile print closures in recent years, the stories of doom and gloom in the publishing industry have been tempered by a mini renaissance in independent titles. And old-fashioned paper and ink has an unlikely saviour.

"Ironically, I attribute it to the internet," says Jeremy Leslie, the man behind magculture.com, a site any self-respecting magazine junkie has bookmarked. "A lot of people have discovered their opinions and voices writing blogs and sharing in social networks. A natural next step is to create something permanent … I think the mainstream publishers have let down the industry and individuals are trying to create better publications."

But it's not just amateurs who are responsible. Some of the internet's big players – fashion sites such as style.com, asos.com and netaporter.com, online kids' game Moshi Monsters and yes, even Google itself – are now publishing print magazines, using traditional media to refresh the parts of their business model that other solutions can't reach.

"For online brands, print is a neat way of gaining extra marketing attention and boosting their community, even if there's no money in it," says David Rowan, editor of UK Wired. "I like the Vice magazine model – the print publication that started the empire still exists to anchor the brand and define the voice, but the money comes from the TV channels, the brand partnerships, the events, the record label." Rowan himself has been busy extending the Wired brand, both by producing multimedia content and also through a series of live conferences and events.

One of the best examples of a truly integrated multimedia success story has a very different target audience. Moshi Magazine, the spin-off print title for the online kids' game Moshi Monsters, posted an ABC figure of 162,838 in February, putting it ahead of men's magazines such as Nuts (114,116) and FHM (140,716). And it's clear that these kids are still in love with paper.

"You might be able to look at a digital game or magazine on an iPad, but you can't cut things out, colour-in, take pen to paper or stick it on your wall," says Emma Munro Smith, editor of Moshi magazine. Despite hugely popular online elements to the Moshi world, for Munro Smith's readers, "having their work, letters or username immortalised in print will always be incredibly exciting".

This idea of the permanence of print, particularly among younger generations supposedly reared in the digital age, is something dear to the heart of Gerald Richards, CEO of 826 National, the literacy project set up by novelist and publisher Dave Eggers. "When we watch students with books, there's a very different experience – there's that power of having something physical that they own, particularly when they write and see their name in print: it's always there. With computers, it's gone at the touch of a button."

Marcus Webb and Rob Orchard, editorial directors of the UK's Slow Journalism Company, echo this sentiment. "For all the wily charms of the digital world and its tweets, feeds, blogs and apps, there is nothing like the pleasure created by ink and paper," they insist. While admitting that "live-blogging and the pounding waves of the 24-hour news cycle have their appeal", their quarterly magazine – Delayed Gratification – instead takes a leisurely (and contrary) look backwards over the previous three months before publication. "We have no interest in creating throwaway media," they say. "We want to make something which is treasured, which ends its days making the bookshelf, coffee table or toilet just that little bit prettier and more civilised."

But 826's Richards, a charismatic, affable character, is keen to stress that the two worlds can co-exist and support one another. "It's not an either/or situation," he says. "It works in tandem. One is a resource for the other: you read something in a book, then you look it up on a computer." Let's not forget that McSweeney's, the highly influential, postmodern literary journal that Dave Eggers founded, now has a hugely successful app that delivers short stories and lengthy book extracts direct to your smartphone, belying the "short online attention span" myth.

"Students are often writing blogs anyway," adds Richards. "The beauty of online is that it allows them to instantaneously share with a larger audience. But the relationship with books is different. Kids take books home and they can keep them." To Richards, whose students often come from underprivileged backgrounds, that's an important factor: as he explains, these children "often only have religious books at home".

Eggers himself agrees that it's often counterproductive to create divisions and make comparisons between the worlds of online and print. "It's our admittedly unorthodox opinion that the two can co-exist, and in fact should co-exist," he announced via a rare public foray into email. "But they need to do different things. To survive, the newspaper, and the physical book, needs to set itself apart from the web. Physical forms of the written word need to offer a clear and different experience. And if they do, we believe, they will survive."

"It's simply a matter of defining the different role and purpose of print and online," says Sara Cremer, MD at customer communications agency Redwood. "Print does certain things very well. There's a sense of reward – almost luxury – of devoting time to the printed page that you can't put a price on. But at the same time, there's an immediacy and 'shareability' to the online world that's just as valuable in its own unique way."

Crucially, for Cremer, whose job it is to oversee integrated communication strategies for major clients ranging from M&S and Boots to Land Rover and Barclays, the two often work best when created and used in conjunction with each other. "It's about consistency," she says. "However many channels you've got [ie in print or online], if you haven't got quality content, you're wasting your money."

If print really can anchor the brand and define the voice, often it is far more successful than intended. For instance, Joerg Koch produced a print phenomenon by chance when co-founding the influential Berlin magazine 032c: "Quite absurdly, when we launched 032c as a biannual limited edition newspaper around 2000, it was supposed to be the advertisement for our website, to promote the URL," he explains. "However, we found out that the print magazine is so much more efficient in terms of budget and recognition than doing a streaming media website, which we aspired to back then. So the magazine got a life of its own and grew into a big glossy mag celebrating print's qualities." Ironically, the website now serves primarily as an archive for the magazine. The magazine's accidental success has certainly done Koch no harm – he is now editor-in-chief of the recently launched Interview Magazine Germany – and it's given him an interesting perspective on print's future role. "You don't need print for news any more," he says. "But for long, visual-driven stories, it can offer a business model and an immersive focused quality that digital cannot offer yet."

But he also agrees that creating boundaries between the two can prove unhelpful. "It is only helpful to make the distinction if you can then emphasise and radicalise the inherent qualities and advantages of both media. I just don't get why people always see it in either/or dichotomies; it's more about the 'AND'."

Which brings us neatly to Google. The very same organisation that was once accused of looking to kill off print with its digitised Google Books Library Project now has its own print journal, Think Quarterly, created by The Church of London creative agency. Like Cremer, Danny Miller, the company's founder/MD, points out that, "magazines are simply very effective ways of engaging with people. To the greatest extent, it just seems like common sense to us that any company would want to communicate with people through print."

Vince Medeiros, the company's publishing director, is an unashamed "sucker" for the idiosyncrasy and physicality of print. Think Quarterly's Speed issue used a barrier-grid animation on its cover to convey movement, while the Innovation issue came with magnets on a metallic cover. "Only in print," Medeiros enthuses.

Furthermore, he identifies a growing number of what he calls "post-web" independent magazines that "have come into being as a reaction to the internet" – but also online entities that have made a successful transition to print such as It's Nice That and Blanket. With little or no advertising revenue, such titles often find their voice and readership online – usually out of necessity.

Innovations such as the Newspaper Club take advantage of the unique qualities of the web – community spirit and accessibility – to give would-be publishers the rare chance to create their own print product. How? By co-ordinating downtime at printers so that independent publications with small print-runs can be produced at affordable prices. Everyone's a winner.

How do you track down these tiny-circulation inspirations? A good place to start is Stack, a subscription service that delivers a different indie mag every month. "So is this the dawn of a new model, and can this model transcend the niche of specific communities?" Medieros ponders. "Who knows. But it's an interesting development."

More than that: it's proof that creativity and ideas will always find new ways to inspire younger generations. Just ask Moshi Monsters' Munro Smith: "Computers and video games haven't killed physical toys and games, so there's no reason why the digital world should kill print. Lack of innovation or providing a poor product is far more likely to do that. The amazing range of technological opportunities that can be used to support and interact with print are definitely a bonus, not a threat."

The kids, in other words, appear to be all right. As 826's Richards neatly surmises: "Really, as long as they're reading and wanting and interested in the written word, we've achieved success".

• The Guardian is running a Masterclass on independent magazine publishing with Danny Miller (The Church of London) and Steve Watson (Stack) on 8-9 September. For information go here.