What Magazine do you miss the most?

Seeing this thread reminded me of the newsstand that was in my hometown. They had a whole wall of magazines (Playboy, etc., were in the back room, and the owner watched like a hawk any time the kids got near the door), books, greeting cards, and newspapers from all over the Midwest. When I was in high school, I'd stop there in the morning and get a Chicago Tribune (the Midwest Edition that printed at 6 p.m. was what we got for a while, but by my senior year we started getting a late edition), and read it during my free period. Then late morning, another distributor would drop off USA Today and the Chicago Sun-Times at the newsstand, and I'd grab copies of those on my way home from school. I knew I wanted to get into newspapers, and reading those sports sections became a daily routine. My mom and dad would complain about all of the money I was spending on papers — and then spend the evening reading all of them after I was done.

The owner of the newsstand wouldn't be open on holidays, but she would go down early in the morning and put the papers that had been delivered onto a metal rack outside the front door. You paid on the honor system. I always paid — I figured if she was taking the time to do it, I could leave the money.

There was a grocery store in town that would have Sunday newspapers piled in shopping carts. You could go there and get both Chicago papers, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and some others from our side of the state. My dad, who was a big Cubs and Bears fan, would get both Chicago papers on the way home from church.

 

In Tallahassee, there used to be some intersection near the Capitol that had boxes for Jacksonville, St. Pete, Miami and I think Orlando and Panama City too, in addition to the hometown Democrat. Don’t know if the AJC was on that corner, but it wasn’t hard to find in town.

 

Field & Stream.

Seriously, how do you fuck that up?

 

They, and Outdoor Life along with their sister publications, remained hidebound for too long. Bonnier Corp didn't make enough changes in time, the changes they made were the wrong ones, they continued to play the "we're the best, you MUST advertise with us" and then it all caught up with them.

They sold to a company, Recurrent, that is digital-only. They made significant investment into staff, along with changes in revenue-generation. The latter included more (a lot more) emphasis on affiliate links (mostly to Amazon) with the "reviews" of everything from camp chairs to ammo to lures. They also increased digital revenue.

They're amid a bit of a staff-corporate shakeup right now, too. Changes afoot.

 

On Our Backs, the first woman-run erotica magazine, founded 1984.

Or maybe I just miss that era.

Oh, and Grit.

 

I grabbed about 6 months worth of Bassmaster today from our school library to get me through the summer.
The masthead was all the contributors’ social media handles.
That makes me sad on many levels.

 

One year, six issues, $18.95.

Grit