• by Michael Shields , November 12, 2004

The knock against Reader's Digest is an old one: it's too old, too Middle America, and not too hip.

"I spoke to ad sellers from 20 years ago, and it has always been hard," said Laura McEwen, the magazine's vice president and publisher. "It's our job to work hard to convince that 25-year old media planner."

If that planner has been paying attention to the news lately, he or she is aware of the rather large section of red in the middle of the country that has emerged--one that may not share the sensibilities of those tiny blue corners.

To their possible surprise, if they have been paying attention to Reader's Digest's covers of late, they may have noticed Kate Hudson, Angelina Jolie, and Ashley Judd--decidedly hipper cover subjects than the magazine may be known for.

The famous faces are part of the recent freshening up of the venerable title, driven by the magazine's "Talk Provoking" campaign, which has sold the magazine as a place for intelligent content-- from its service pieces on finance or health to investigative stories, such as "The Killer Nurse," on serial-euthanizer Charles Cullen.

While emphasizing talk, the magazine has also responded to the power of celebrity culture, consistently turning to subjects like Jolie for cover and interviews.

For whatever the reason, those 25-year old media planners are catching on: after a 5 percent slip the previous year, ad pages are up a whopping 13 percent through October 2004.

After all, the magazine still delivers a massive audience. "Bigger than TV," said McEwen. Circulation is at 10.2 million (though down roughly 8 percent through June of this year), and Mediamark Research says the total audience exceeds 40 million readers.

Reader's Digest was founded to serve as a place for reprints of articles from papers and magazines all over the country, to serve the masses, back in the 1920's. Yet in the Internet age, 70 percent of the magazine's content is original. That means Reader's Digest has become much more of a reporter's magazine, particularly in focus during the recent election. "We were really out there talking to John Kerry and President Bush," said McEwen of the recent election coverage.

In addition to its growing prowess as a magazine, Reader's Digest is of course a powerful marketing organization. The company is able to orchestrate monster retail promotions, such as the upcoming "Rock The Country!" event with Wal-Mart, where a special issue will include a unique advertiser-supported CD-Rom. This February, Reader's Digest will host its 18th annual Working Women's Show in St. Louis.

The company also produced some impressive custom publishing pieces, including the advertorial Healthtalk: A Woman's Guide to Feeling Great (coming this March), as well as six issues a year of the widely popular Food Ideas.

If anything is holding Reader's Digest back, it is perhaps its median age of 51. But that is changing, as advertisers gradually accept that boomers are less than old fogies.

"These people have money, and have demonstrated they will spend it," said McEwen.

These people also like to read (it is, after all, Reader's Digest)--a concept that some magazine editors seem to have forgotten, based on the trend toward shorter and shorter blurbs. McEwen believes that magazines may be overcompensating for shorter attention spans. "It's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy," she said.

In the meantime, Reader's Digest continues to evolve, while sticking to the tried and true: real stories of real Americans.