Readers Digest Enters Intensive Care
August 18, 2009
The Readers Digest, according to the Baltimore Sun’s “Reader’s Digest Bankruptcy Report”, did not surprise me. This outfit had a clever business model and some very confident executives. I interacted with the Readers Digest when it bought the Source, one of the early online services. For me, the Readers Digest had a money machine with its “association” model when my grandmother subscribed to the chubby little paperback-book-sized monthly stuffed with recycled content. I liked the “digest” angle. The notion that my busy grandmother could not read the original article amused me. She was indeed really busy when she was in her 70s. What she liked was that the content was sanitized. The jokes were clean and usually not subject to double entendre.The Readers Digest recognized that the Source was a harbinger and made the leap to get into electronic information with the now moribund Control Data Corporation. The step was similar to an uncoordinated person’s jump off the high dive. The Readers Digest knocked its head on the Source deal and dropped off my online radar. Now the Readers Digest is blazing a new trail for magazine publishers: chopping the number of issues published per year, cutting its circulation guarantee, and learning to love bankruptcy attorneys. Which magazine will be next? Oh, I know the leadership of the dominant magazine companies will chase crafts, home decoration, and Future Publishing’s book-a-zine model. New thinking and methods are needed to save the traditional magazine, a group eager to turn back the clock to the glory days of the Saturday Evening Post. Like Babylonian clay tablets morphing into Home Sweet Home on ceramic wall hangings, magazines will survive. The market is moving beyond the old information delivery vehicles, and the 1938 Fords are struggling to keep pace with Twitter “tweets”. Here’s a quote by Charlie added to the Baltimore Sun article: “Still interesting to thumb through, but reprinting articles that were already published – how long ago? – is not a good model for those who make regular use of the Internet.” Well said.
Stephen Arnold, August 18, 2009
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