Commentary

Oh, What a Tangled Web We Weave...

In a trade magazine column slugged as "opinion," my old pal Nina Link, president and CEO of the Magazine Publishers of America, published an 836-word, long-form advertisement for magazines in which she dusted off "analysis from Northwestern University's Media Management Center"(without disclosing that the MPA paid for it), saying it "demonstrated how powerfully magazines connect with readers."

She goes on to prove her point with carefully selected quotes from readers who were surveyed, including this music to the magazine industry's ears:

"When I read this magazine, I lose myself in the pleasure of reading it."

"I trust it to tell the truth."

"The magazine stimulates my thinking about things."

"I like the ads as much as the articles."

Warning: SatireAhead!

As chance would have it, I was discussing this same issue with my multiple personalities, and we came up with some entirely different quotes about our relationships to magazines:

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"I hate the heavy stock ad units, and rip them out as soon as my issue arrives so I can hold the magazine in one hand. And it really pisses me off when the glue that holds them in rips editorial pages in the process."

"I can't stand the fact that magazines aren't interactive, so that when I see a story I want to share, I can't just e-mail it from my bed to my mom in Virginia. Or that I can't click on an ad to find out more than the copy tells me."

"Magazines make me feel guilty because they pile up unread (those school sub drives don't help by forcing me to buy a magazine I really don't want). I hate having paid for them and then never reading most issues. Or only skimming a story or two."

"It is so damned annoying to subscribe to a magazine--then, within a few weeks, get the first of an endless string of renewal offers. Like most people, I hold out until the very last, thinking the more desperate the publisher gets, the better the final offer. It also pisses me off royally that new subscribers get a lower sub rate than a loyal guy like me who has subscribed for years!"

"One blow-in sub card per issue is enough. If I am going to toss out one, I don't need to toss out four."

"I know there is a table of contents in here somewhere, but if I have to look for another three minutes, I'll just pitch the issue."

"More often than you might think, my issue arrives torn and otherwise mangled by our crack national postal service. I don't like a big crease running down the middle of Elisha Cuthbert's photo."

"Sometimes I get my weekly magazine on Monday. Some weeks it's Tuesday. Some weeks it's Wednesday. And once in a while it comes after the next issue. It is bad enough that most of what appears in the magazine has already been worked over by TV and the Internet."

"I get the feeling that you could take all the magazines in any given genre, pull off the covers, and not be able to tell one from another. Especially gossip/celebrity magazines... oh, but that's now ALL magazines!"

Full disclosure: I paid for this research by taking myself out to lunch before, during, and after the psychotic break that enabled all of my personalities to participate.

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