Magazine rack

Some brief thoughts on magazines I've read, not read, and thrown at the wall in anger lately:

*I saw the new issue of "Golf Magazine" at the store and saw the headline over the title: "The NFL Issue." Huh? I don't follow golf, but I'd be pretty ticked off I got a "Pro Football Weekly" that proclaimed itself "The PGA issue." Is this a tacit admission that golf isn't interesting enough to sustain its own periodical?

*Receiving the new "Rolling Stone" in the mail and enjoying the Katy Perry cover and photos almost makes up for that abominable Lady Gaga cover several issues back. Almost. [SHUDDER]

*I was stunned to see two copies of "The Ring" at the supermarket the other day--pleased the mag is still around and that it has distribution in mainstream outlets, but still surprised. Back in my youth, a trip to the supermarket was not complete without good ol' Mom buying me a wrestling magazine. Every now and then, I'd slip in a boxing mag when I got a little older. But I don't expect to see anything apart from the official WWE publications anymore.

*My nearest library branch quit carrying "The Atlantic Monthly" as part of the budget cuts it has endured in the last couple years. Other branches in the area still stock it, but, jeez, that's a pretty big one. Or it used to be. Come on, people, read magazines!

*"Comics Buyer's Guide" is a shell of its former self--I mean, it's literally like a third of the size of what it was when it first went to monthly from weekly several years back--and I let my subscription expire. But guess what? They talked me back into the game with a super-cheapo deal. This really was a great magazine that was gutted to excess as a response to current market factors, but it's still worth what they're charging me now. It's probably too much to ask that it somehow rises from the ashes, Phoenix-style, and beefs up that page count again, but I'll probably continue to pine for that outcome.

*Speaking of unreasonable expectations, do I have any reason--any at all--to believe "Entertainment Weekly" will improve if I renew my sub? It might stay about where it is, but I don't think it's gonna bounce back at this point, and after some 15 years, many of them pretty good ones for the publication, I'm probably gonna let it go. If "EW" is gonna continue to dumb down the contents, it's gonna have to "dumb down" the price a bit more. Maybe a super-cheapo last-minute deal will sway me.

*My final point is that magazines (and newspapers) are charging more and more for less and less, and they wonder why we don't buy them as often anymore. Yeah, some of the big periodicals are running striking spreads telling us how much we still love magazines, but the mags themselves are making it a lot harder.