The Evanescence of Magazines

 

When I was growing up, magazines were a big part of our lives. Each week and/or month a flight of them would arrive, flapping into our house like so many birds. I can’t remember them all, but here are some: TV Guide, Time, Life, The New Yorker, The Saturday Review of Literature—there were others I just can’t remember.

In our high school study hall (which featured the school library at the front of the room) I would check out The Saturday Evening Post, National Geographic, Popular Mechanics, and others

Early in our marriage, Joyce and I were subscribing to quite a few: The New York Review of Books, The Saturday Review of Literature, TV Guide, The New Republic, Newsweek, The National Review, The New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly, People, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s. Again, there were surely others I can’t remember.

We kept most of those subscriptions going for years. Some went out of business; others we just lost interest in. But not all ...

Until a month or so ago.

What happened? I realized I wasn’t really reading them anymore. It’s not that I didn’t have any interest; it’s that I didn’t have the energy—or the keen eyesight—I needed.

And so I cancelled all but one: The New Yorker. It’s always entertained me, and Joyce and I know two writers there—Ian Frazier and Robert Sullivan. And, yeah, I love the cartoons, too.

Of course, the magazine industry has changed dramatically, too. It used to be that huge numbers of American families subscribed to general magazines like Life and Time and Newsweek.

But with the advent of the internet and cable news all those publications began to shrink—or disappear altogether. Who wants to wait for a weekly news magazine when you can flick on the news 24/7/?

Magazines also began to focus and specialize. Look at the magazine rack in your local grocery store. A few general titles remain, but the rest are highly focused. Magazines for golfers, chess players, bakers, bicyclists, etc. Fashion. Style. Etc.

Of course, one thing all this means is that we’ve lost yet another medium that helped to unify us. We saw things we didn’t agree with in magazines—but we often read them anyway, just to see. At least I did.

Now, you can be on media platforms all day and never see or hear a syllable that you disagree with.

Not good.

Anyway, I miss those magazine days, miss the person I was then. Miss seeing in the mail the latest issue of Newsweek. Miss what I would learn from it.

Many today, I fear,  are numbed by news monotony, a condition that, surprisingly (?), can lead to hate. Or worse.