Conflicted Americans

From yesterday's Financial Times (U.S.) website:

The Latest Shopping Spree, Part II

My latest trip to the bookstore, just a couple hours ago this afternoon, ended with me walking out with two magazines:

Monocle (June 2009): Another giant issue (more than 200 pages, I think, counting the inserts) from Financial Times columnist Tyler Brûlé. We get the only magazine that includes Lebanon's elections, Sarkozy, manga, an aviation survey, a look at Mongolia's capital, Obama's White House designing, and a report on the Karachi, Pakistan, police forces. I have no idea if this magazine is a resounding financial success, but I hope it is. It is a big part of my evolving view that these globally-fucused, hefty hefts are the successful magazines of the future, like my new best friend forever, Winq. I'll write more on this theory in the future.

Smithsonian (June 2009): What made me pick up this issue? I've always been impressed by this fine magazine, and I buy several issues of it every year. My mother used to bring home stacks of them from the publishing company where she worked. But my partner's a Frank Lloyd Wright fan, and they've got an article on Wright, so ... magazine purchased.

And then there are the magazines I almost bought, even carrying them with me until I decided for certain that I didn't want to spend money on them:

Deathray (June/July 2009): In my continuing effort to find a science fiction media magazine to replace the hole in my heart left by the print cessation (er, hiatus) of Starlog, I have been trying to choose between SFX, Deathray, and SciFi Now. Problem is, all three oversized British mags are so bleeping similar that one is left walking away from all of them. I had a Deathray in my hands, but before I went to the checkout counter, I realized I hadn't read the April/May issue (had barely opened it), so why spring for an entirely new issue?

Discover (July/August 2009): A decade or two ago, my sister gave me a copy of an annual Best Science Writing of the Year anthology, and I loved it. I learned in the books' introduction that Discover magazine was one of the founders of a new type of popular science writing -- intelligent, accessible to the non-expert, and high-quality. I've read it off and on over the years, even subscribing once or twice. But I have to admit I hate-hate-hated the redesign instituted a few years ago when Bob Guccione Jr. took over the mag (and that's not a knock on Guccione; I see him as someone who's done a hell of a lot of things I wish I'd had the money to do in the magazine industry; I have a premiere issue of Spin magazine just a foot away from my keyboard as I write this, as a matter of fact, and I thought it was great when I heard a rumor that he was interested in reviving Omni as a quarterly, because it fed my own interest in restarting a late science/SF magazine). Anyway, this magazine just didn't make the final should-I-or-shouldn't-I decision as I was toting up the damage from my magazine grazing (particularly in light of my subscription to the weekly New Scientist), so back to the newsstand it went.

Maybe I should write one of these posts on the mags I'm buying used on eBay???

My previous shopping spree

Portfolio Closed

Just yesterday in a bookstore, I looked at the cover of the current issue of Condé Nast Portfolio, which showed a close-up photo of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and the big headline, "Lead Us. Please." I thought, That looks interesting; I should buy a copy. I knew that inside the magazine would be some good long-form business journalism, some interesting short columns, and some stuff that would be useless. Actually, that's a very good mix for a magazine; if there are two good articles that interest me in a magazine, it's worth buying.

But not enough people thought so, and advertisers have fled the young magazine in droves. So today comes news that Portfolio has been canceled. At just under 450,000 in circulation, the magazine wasn't big enough to get the attention apparently needed in the marketplace, despite Condé Nast sinking a reported $100 milllion into the title. (And do we even need to note that its survival was made even harder by the economic collapse? Can't we just add that sentence to the end of practically every article we write these days?)

I'm sorry to see Portfolio go. In a world in which journalism has gotten dumber and dumber, in which business journalism has tended to be cheerleaders for the businesses with the strongest marketing pitches and the least ethics, in which financial writers have had a long-term memory of about three months, Portfolio was a refreshingly original and high-quality magazine that deserved a bigger audience. It did solid long-form journalism while all the marketing lemmings say that long-form is dead ("nobody reads anymore anyway!"), and it took some healthy whacks at businesses that lied, cheated, or at least deserved more scrutiny.

There are still some financial publications that have not guzzled down the kool-aid (I'll tighten my grip on my thin Financial Times and refuse to let go). But Portfolio is truly a loss of an independent source of news.

Subscribing Like It's Going out of Style

In most ways, I assume I'm behaving in this economic downturn (nice euphemism for a cataclysmic global financial panic, eh?) like everyone else. I've trimmed back expenses, held off on nonessential major purchases (thank goodness I didn't buy a new car last year when I was contemplating it) (but I can still dream), and in general tried to make sure I didn't do stupid things with my money.

But I realized today that I have increased activity in one economic area: subscriptions. Just in the past couple months, I have sent in new subscriptions to Esquire, the Financial Times, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Chicago magazine, and New Scientist. That's in addition to the magazines for which I already have subscriptions, and it brings my total subscriptions to 13.

Some of those are publications I'll read no matter what the cost is, but others have made the math irresistible. Esquire, for example, practically pays me to receive the magazine. I haven't lived in Chicago for a decade, but I still buy an issue now and then of Chicago magazine; I finally realized that a $12 annual subscription is easily paid for if I buy just three copies a year at the $4.99 cover price. Financial Times is a great newspaper that gives me news and views that is usually lacking in U.S. media. I was buying a copy or two a week, then I saw the subscription offer of 52 weeks for $99. Paying nearly $100 for a newspaper sounds like a lot of money, but it comes out to a savings if I bought just one copy a week of the paper (it does have a high cover price). So, another no-brainer decision.

So my subscription count has increased in the midst of this little economic fluster, and the biggest help has been to those publications of which I was an occasional but regular purchaser. Again, the publications I've read for decades and to which I'm particularly attached will always be on my must-buy/subscribe list as long as I'm alive and they're publishing. For the others, though, my financial considerations coincide with their circulation needs (and thus their advertising goals).

I just wanted someone to know I'm doing this for you. For the economy. For the children. Cuz I'm cheap.