magazines,
opinion,
development
My Goal
My goal for this experiment was to determine whether re-adding magazines to my regular reading would add to my life. I’m a naturally curious guy. I read alot and am generally well-informed. But I had virtually given up on magazines as a part of my regular update cycle. Instead, I read the sites I want to read, the rss feeds that interest me, and very subject-filtered information that has been prescreened to bbe of interest to me. I wonder if I lack a broader level of knowledge and information these days as a result of living with a keyboard attached to my eyeballs (editors note: insert better metaphor that one sucks dirty gym socks).
My Method
I chose more than a dozen magazines and subscribed to them. They included a few general interest magazines, some more focused titles in areas of interest to me, and a few titles in an area that really holds no great place in my heart. I’ll spend the next year reading these, if I can, and talk here about what I’ve been missing since going all digital. Part of my thinking in preparing this Great Experiment was that I tend to read ONLY about what interests me through my bookmarks and rss feeds. So in all rights, I should have made all the mags on my list outside my scope of interest. So sue me.
The Magazines
Road & Track–I am by no means a gear head. I drive a 10+ year old Nissan Maxima with 2 car seats in the back. Outside of its obvious chick magnetness (?), it serves its purpose by getting me there and usually back. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t love to have that new BMW 7xx, but hey, its not going to happen this week.
Forbes–I used to be a regular reader back in my Wall Street days, but it fell off the list years ago. I just got my first issue and it certainly has a different look than I remember.
Motor Trend–as part of my car package, with Road & Track and
Car & Driver
Sound & Vision–I have a great TV, a 14 year old Panasonic 36″ or so heavy box. I lust after all these new HDTVs–the plasma’s, the LCDs, the DLPs. Hell, even the new much thinner CRT boxes look good to me. I would love a small 26-32″ LCD TV for the bedroom that could also serve as a big monitor for my PowerBook when I feel the need for a big screen. Can I do that? I’m not sure. And replacing the behemoth in the living roon would be great. I have a nice Denon receiver and speakers. Maybe 2006 is the year. I’m reading all about it.
U.S. News & World Report–one of the big three of the weekly news magazines with Time and Newsweek. I decided on USN&WR because I remember it as being more news focused and less feature oriented than the other two. A quick look at the current issue and glance through the other two while standing in the Safeway line seemed to confirm that memory. Its not that I don’t keep up on the news, but I’m not sure that my Google and Yahoo personal home pages and a daily scan of the Drudge Report really do all that they should to keep me up to date. As I said, I gave up on all the newspapers and only watch the evening or late news by mistake or default. You know, while waiting for the NBA game to come on.
Entrepreneur–part of my business package, with Forbes and
Inc–and
Fast Company–I might still add Business 2.0 to this mix, but their new owner has made all its content available free on the web, and well, why waste the paper.
Stuff–which is not a naked magazine of stuffing boys or girls, but a gadget magazine.
Cargo–which is a less suggestively named similar mag of tech and gadgets aimed at men.
MacHome Journal–yes, I’m a mac user for 20+ years (counting my first Apple II and Apple III) and this isn’t a stretch. But can a magazine on a fast-moving computer subject be relevant? We’ll see.
MacAddict–is another of the same, but seemingly aimed at kids more than MHJ is.
ESPN Magazine–this one kind of started me on all of this. Yes, I subscribed as a ploy to get cheap access to ESPN’s website’s InSider sections. But I haven’t read sports in magazine form in years. So we’ll see. If it wasn’t for the online hack I was aiming at, I probably would have chosen Sports Illustrated instead.
Sporting News–the venerable old sports newsweekly from St. Louis (is it still there?). It used to be my weekly dose back before the net. How’s it doing? We’ll see. I may still add Baseball America to this sports mix.
National Geographic Adventure — which I don’t remember ordering, but has started showing up in my box (perhaps a gift from a thoughtful friend).
That’s the list. It is not menat to be a sampling of fine American literate magazines. Its my Experiment and I will run it how I want. Can a magazine still be relevant? Can it add to my life and my knowledge? Feed my curiosity?
[Ed note: I considered that this Experiment would be the ideal excuse to get that subscription to Playboy I always wanted in my youth, but didn’t do it. Mainly because I couldn’t find a really cheap deal on it, not because I’ve gotten more moral with age.
The $ Cost
The Great Magazine Experiment includes two big costs–the monetary cost to subscribe to all these mags and the time cost devoted to reading them. The latter will be explored along the way as I report back on the results. But the Monetary cost can be laid out fairly completely right now. The list today includes 16 magazines (pending decision to renew New Yorker and Esquire, not currently included in the list here. There are 12 monthly titles, 2 that are biweekly, and 2 weeklies. Some of these were bought in package deals, most as annual subscriptions, but a couple as multi-year subscriptions. The discounter that I purchased most of these from (and affiliate with) is MagsforLess. They offer some free magazines for points you earn by buying other titles from them. So, I have a couple of freebies coming from them for the purchases made for this experiment thus far.
I’m not going to link each of these issues to the MagsforLess site. But you can find the deals (or similar deals, as they change periodically) on that site through the link here or in our Sidebar to the left. Here’s the cost details.
The Great Magazine Experiment List:
Road & Track with
Motor Trend and
Car & Driver were bought together as a package of 3 annual subscriptions for $7.99 total.
Entrepreneur with
Inc and
Fast Company were bought as a package of 3 annual subscriptions for $9.99 total.
MacHome Journal with
Mac Addict with
ESPN Magazine with
The Sporting News and
U.S. News & World Report were bought from a different discounter as a package for $49.99 less a 20% discount by coupon for a total of $40 (give or take a few pennies). This was the first of the subscriptions I bought and I could have done a bit better on price with a bit of work.
Forbes was advertised on the page for $4.94 for an annual subscription. But when I pushed to the detail page I saw that I could get two years instead of one for no extra cost. So, I got two years of Forbes for $4.94…wow.
Stuff and Cargo look like they are pretty much the same thing to me (no issues received yet) so I thought they made a nice pair for the Experiment. They cost me $2.84 and $3.91 respectively.
Sound & Vision was a renewal of one of the few subscriptions I had previously. I paid $8.90 to renew it for another 2 years.
and lastly, National Geographic Adventure seems to have come to me free or as a bonus in my other purchases. Cost: $0
So, if you are keeping track at home, that comes to $71.67 for the 16 magazines for this year (adjusting the multi-year sub prices to just a single year). That is 300 separate issues, or less than 24 cents per issue.
As I said, you will be surprised how little the Experiment costs monetarily. I expect the cost in time to be a much bigger factor.
World News with USN&WR: First Impressions
If the whole idea of The Great Magazine Experiment were to compare similar magazines in order to offer up some insight, I would be looking at Time, Newsweek and USN&WR at least in the category of weekly news/feature magazines. But that’s not what this is about. I just want to know whether print magazines have entirely lost their relevance in an online world. I chose U.S. News & World Report as my entry in this category because my memory of it was that it was more news-centric than the other two that seemed to be more about the feature stories.
I’ve received two issues of USN&WR so far, the last one being a “Special Double Issue”. That evidently means that it will be on the newstand for two weeks instead of one so everybody at the magazine can get their vacation in early this year. Certainly it doesn’t mean that the issue is twice as long or twice as interesting.
The Stats
1/23/06 issue, 40 minutes reading time, 68 pages.
1/30/06 issue, 35 minutes reading time, 76 pages
What I Learned
In 1/23 issue…
Senator John Thune likes Seinfeld reruns, and arranges his day around them (p.10).
A 6.5-magnitude quake in the East Bay hills drowns 13 delta islands, breaks 30 levees, costs the state $40 billion and 30,000 jobs. This according to the California Dept. of Water Resources. The pushed solution is $5 billion in infrastructure bonds (p.19).
Haiti will try for the fifth time to hold an election on Feb. 7 to replace the transitional administration in power since Feb. 2004’s ouster of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Continuing violence has caused the delays. There are 35 candidates for president (p.21).
Paul Bremer, America’s viceroy in Iraq until June 2004, wore combat suits with his suits because they didn’t show the dust. I always wondered about that(p.24).
Iran can have The Bomb in 2 years….or 5…or 10. Why does our intelligence suck so badly? (p.29)
The push for re-upping The Patriot Act has Bush and republicans calling for continued big government and democrats and the more libertarian calling for throttling down government’s intrusion into the lives of ordinary americans. Uh huh. Not that there will be much intelligent debate about it all with the Senate focused on Alito. Doesn’t all the talk over the evil’s of the domestic spying program translate into big changes in the Patriot Act? (p.31)
Special Report: Dick Cheney–I don’t know. I think the point was to explain why Cheney is such a…umm….dick. I guess it is fair to point out the weights that made Cheney Dick, but it seemed like so much fluff to me (p.40)
Some of the Indian firms that are the beneficiaries of the offshoring move, say they will hire some Americans this year. Sounds more like PR than news (p.50)
Stem cell research got the PR hell kicked out it as the fraudulent studies in South Korea came to light. Shouldn’t stop the research (p. 56).
Best piece in the book: most cough medicines don’t work according to the American College of Chest Physicians. Best line: “About the only thing that will truly stop a cough is general anesthesia.” Check out www.chestnet.org for all this info (p.58).
Making dummies for the medical market is BIG business (p.62).
And the Jan. 30 issue…
Virginia Governor Mark Warner is an early dark-horse candidate for the Democrat party Presidential run in 2008 (p.16)
Venezuelan President Chavez might not be as strong at home as general wisdom says. Interesting input on the polarization happening there that makes the U.S. split seem trivial (p.26).
SPACs (special purpose acquisition companies) are all the rage and USN&WR does a nice overview in 2 pages (p.33).
Many small companies that are not required to, are in fact implementing much of Sarbanes-Oxley, and at a high cost (p.38).
Special Report: Presidents at War — A long piece discussing how we and our leaders go to war. I read a lot of history books. This piece couldn’t hold my interest. I liked one of the pieces that came some perspective to the imperialistic powers of the presidency over time. Also, the War! article gives a “Don’t Know Much About History” overview of the American wars (p.41).
…and there was lots of what I would call “the obvious.” Do you need three pages on Bush wanting to put 2005 behind him and regain momentum in 2006? Or a story on the CIA controlling what research papers get put on its Study of Intelligence website?
First Impressions
Its too early to have an informed opinion. I certainly picked up some facts that I had not gleaned from my daily web readings. In particular, I’m glad I red the pieces on President Chavez and cough medicines. The first had me googling more info to try to see if this story was an outlier or a more mainstream view (I came down on the side of outlier) and the latter had me scanning labels of the kids cough medicines in the medicine cabinet. Was it worth more than an hour of my time? I’ll give it 3 stars out of 5 so far…
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