Thursday, March 28, 2013

I remember as a child, looking forward to the 2 or 3 magazines my parents subscribed to.  Good Housekeeping, Popular Mechanics, and as a young child, the Saturday Evening Post.  I looked forward to them because they sometimes contained coupons I could turn into cash, as one of my income streams.  Today, magazines have proliferated to the point that they have become ubiquitous. Many, maybe most, are chiefly advertising vehicles with a few articles thrown in to keep the readers interest.  Reader’s Digest was one of my favorites, and I remember seeing vast shelves sagging under the weight of decades past in others homes.  Any issue could be pulled out at random and capture attention for an hour.  Today’s RD is a frustration to read between the comparative paucity of articles and the abundance of advertising.  My office receives subscriptions of little-known magazines for free without having requested them in hopes that the idle parents will succumb to the ads.  I have a weakness for woodworking and construction magazines, but find I seldom have the time to read them, preferring instead electronic fare in the same subject line.  Magazines have never been easier to produce with computer graphics and digital photography and photo-quality printing.  And apparently eager advertisers.  This explains the glut.  There are literally thousands of magazines to choose from with what appears to be a dwindling readership.  Newsweek gave up on it’s print edition several months ago, and I suspect that the trend among “serious” magazines will continue in that direction, while the coffee table supply will become even more like advertising circulars.