What Magazine do you miss the most?

[Azrael]

There was a time in my life where I loved everything about print magazines. Some thought it was in an unhealthy way. In the late 1980s, 1990s, early 2000s, I'd spend hours of my life parked in various newsstands -- there was a Hudson News on Broadway near Astor Place that was a little bigger than the others and had magazines you wouldn't see anywhere else, and I could combine it with a short walk over to the B&N.

It wasn't just the editorial, or to read stories without buying, I actually bought a ton of magazines, still have boxes and boxes of favorites. I loved everything about magazines. I learned about the newsstand game, direct mail for subscriptons, how it all related to their audits and how those worked, and how that all related to advertising. I helped start two magazines, one in Chicago, one in NY (both long stories, but both that lasted for quite a while, and broke even, but financially ended up being supported in ways I never thought either would).

So I love magazines too. Except what I loved doesn't really exist anymore. Which was why I largely moved on. For my sanity, because I saw the handwriting on the wall fairly early and I try to be adaptable, and because I decided I liked earning money, building security, not just clinging to a pashion that wasn't acting as pashionately about me.

Just to give an idea about how nutso I was about loving magazines. In my early to late 20s, I lived in Chicago for close to 5 years (went to grad school there, started my disjointed career there). I loved magazines so much, just everything about it, that I became good at getting comped to magazines. On top of it, I figured out how to get myself qualified for all kinds of trade magazines that they would send for free to people in the related discipline or industry. They'd send a questionaire to qualify you and I was pretty good at answering the questions right. And every day, my mailbox would be filled with 20 magazines, which I'd pour over trying to evaluate how good they were, if they had the right voice for their audience (as I guessed their audience, at least), looking at their ads, comparing it to whatever media kids I could get my hands on and their rate cards (and guesses about how they had to negotiate rates), and trying to figure out how financially successful they might be. At one point, I had 3 different magazines for pig farmers coming to me. My friends thought I was nuts.

Brother, I know exactly what you mean.

 

[BYH 2: Electric Boogaloo]

As far as other mags that I miss, journalism-wise, I miss Editor and Publisher and American Journalism Review. E and P was helpful for a college grad trying to find his first job, and AJR was helpful in learning about the journalism world.

My bosses at my first two papers had an AJR subscription, and when they were done reading them, they left the copies for anyone who wanted them to take home. I always took a copy home.

Couldn't get enough of E&P when I discovered it in college. I felt like I was a real journalist for reading it. Got a sub when I graduated, but working for a JRC shop sorta jaded me (no! not me!) and I got tired of so many of their stories being rooted in theory that no one was practicing. Or at least that's what I thought when I was 23. I might have just been young and dumb. As opposed to now!

 

[BYH 2: Electric Boogaloo]

Brother, I know exactly what you mean.

View attachment 12864

Dorks. You and @The Big Ragu look like a couple of dorks. [/Quentin in Pulp Fiction voice]

 

[Liut]

Radio & Records, like E&P, was a must-read when I was in the industry, because not only did it offer great tips for moving up, the music charts for various formats and interviews with radio bigwigs, but the help needed section in the clashifieds was better than blind-boxing stations and getting rejection letters.

I landed at least two jobs through R&R, both cross-country where I'd have never had a chance otherwise.

Loved R & R!
Sports? The one I miss most is the original Inside Sports.

 

[The Big Ragu]

Dorks. You and @The Big Ragu look like a couple of dorks. [/Quentin in Pulp Fiction voice]

The worst thing about it. ... At one point, I was getting hundreds of magazines. I'd get qualified as an architect and get those trade magazines. I was getting construction and tool magazines. I got all manner of specialized medical magazines, ones for pharma, ones for doctors. I got engineering magazines, farming magazines, you name it. I was really good at getting qualified for trade magazines, it didn't matter what the profession or qualifications were.

But by the time I was starting to outgrow the obsession, I had gotten in too deep. It took at least 2 or 3 changes of address and I don't know how many years before I stopped getting the vat of mail that was coming in every day because I had gotten myself comped or qualified for an insane number of magazines.

What makes it funnier in hindsight, is that we have been living between two different homes in two different cities for the last few years, and for a while I was obsessing about my mailbox overflowing in the city we are spending less time in if I didn't get back there every few weeks. But I noticed that a trend that had already been in place really taking off with the pandemic, which is less people using direct / junk mail. Combine that with paperless billing, and if I don't get back to our apartment for a month, sometimes there is still very little mail in the box. I can't imagine what a mess it would be if I still had a couple of hundred magazines a month coming in, and I wasn't checking mail except every few weeks.

 

[August West]

Stereo Review, Audio and High Fidelity, although I found the motherlode online; each of them in their entireties.

https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/HiFI-Stereo-Review.htm
https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/High-Fidelity-Magazine.htm
https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/Audio-Magazine.htm

 

[Jake from State Farm]

Couldn't get enough of E&P when I discovered it in college. I felt like I was a real journalist for reading it. Got a sub when I graduated, but working for a JRC shop sorta jaded me (no! not me!) and I got tired of so many of their stories being rooted in theory that no one was practicing. Or at least that's what I thought when I was 23. I might have just been young and dumb. As opposed to now!

Got my job in Marquette when the Mining Journal answered my ad in E&P

 

[maumann]

Stereo Review, Audio and High Fidelity, although I found the motherlode online; each of them in their entireties.

https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/HiFI-Stereo-Review.htm
https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/High-Fidelity-Magazine.htm
https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/Audio-Magazine.htm

Wow! They've got a pretty good number of original Radio & Records scanned in as well. Just wasted 30 minutes on Sept. 17, 1976 (dang, Fresno had TWO openings that week). I can see that becoming a large Internet rabbit hole.

 

[goalmouth]

Brother, I know exactly what you mean.

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I once interviewed the National Pork Queen. You can look it up.

 

[NNDman]

The original Inside Sports. I still have some of those early issues. I remember one had a great story on Pete Maravich and his career coming to an end with the Celtics. I believe one cover was of Ali in his corner between rounds during his match with Holmes. And who can forget Nolan Ryan tossing a baseball? That was a pretty iconic cover and the story was written by Tony Kornheiser.

 

[Azrael]

I miss The National.

 

[Patchen]

The days when the cover of SI was the most important media real estate were awesome. Like many of you, I regarded Thursday as a special day - hustling to the mailbox to see the pictures and read the stories about people and places that then were not widely seen on TV and YouTube highlights. Every Thursday was a window into a bigger world.