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Reading
The Dying Magazine Blues
Are Magazines Doomed?
I love magazines, which is why I am sad that they’re doomed. How do I know they’re doomed?
I’ve read about it, of course. In magazines.
Not only that, but for years I processed the incoming periodicals at the library where I work, which means I could actually see them dwindling before my eyes. What once were fat monthly issues became alarmingly thin. Monthlies increasingly resorted to publishing double issues. New York, always my favorite weekly, now comes out every other week.
And once-loved titles are folding like crazy. Gourmet! Ladies Home Journal! Spin! All gone.
Growing up in the ’60s, who could have imagined a world without magazines? No Life? No Look? Unthinkable! Magazines helped teach us to read. And explained the world to us. The Kennedy assassination? The first moon walk? We watched them on TV. But magazines helped us understand.
My first Highlights for Kids subscription meant that finally, I was a real reader.
How on earth could I have filled my “Man From Uncle” scrapbook without Tiger Beat?
And who can forget being old enough to subscribe to Mad Magazine? Now there was a milestone!
