Once again I’ve ended up with a free subscription to a magazine that I would not have picked for myself. When I was a teenager, my parents subscribed to Reader’s Digest and I read every issue. In the intervening years since I left home, I’ve not had many occasions to pick up this magazine until recently.
Content
Reader’s Digest operates on the principle that the editors cull the best articles from other media and consolidate them for their readers in one volume. I like this concept rather well, however, my tastes are wildly divergent from those of the editorial staff of Reader’s Digest. Most of the “serious” articles fall into one of two categories: either purposely inflammatory or syrupy sad/sweet. Both types of articles, in my opinion, fall just this side of the supermarket tabloid genre and both are emotionally manipulative. A great portion of journalism tends to be persuasive, but I think I notice it more with Reader’s Digest because it’s supposed to be “real news,” instead of the drivel in fashion magazines, yet it’s not nearly as hard-hitting as Newsweek or US News & World Report.
Most issues contain an interview with a celebrity, an excerpt from a book, a few health articles, a science and/or technology article, a financial article, a profile of an unknown hero, and some sweet feel-good stories. The slant of most of these articles is decidedly conservative and while I’m a registered Republican, I don’t necessarily hold conservative views.
The content that I like best are the regularly occurring departments such as the joke columns, the word power quiz, and RD Living. I could do without the “That’s Outrageous!” items because they also tend to have an ultra-conservative slant and the blurbs do not tell the entire story. For the couples featured in “The Love Lab” section, most of the time I find myself screaming, “Go see Dr. Phil and Get Real!” The section seems too short, with too pat answers for couples with real problems and a couple of the solutions have struck me as paternalistic rather than fair to the wife.
Design
I do like Reader’s Digest’s layout. While they won’t win any awards for innovativeness, the magazine does not have stray doglegs, and continued stories usually are continued two pages away with an ad in between. The advertising, especially compared to other magazines, seems less prolific. Instead of ads on every page, Reader’s Digest confines their advertising to a couple pages in between articles or clumps them together toward the end of the magazine, with a few exceptions.
I am glad to see Reader’s Digest has quit using the front cover as the table of contents—much better; however I am sorry to see the loss of the art work normally featured on the back cover (replaced by a photo related to one of that month’s articles).
Odds and Ends I won’t call this “nit picks” because I’ve been nit-picking the entire review.
The inclusion of small blurbs at the end of certain articles, especially those not culled from other sources, urging readers to go to rd.com on the internet, annoys me. Most of these tacked on blurbs are for readers to take surveys or get more information. Really, I think one box should be designated, somewhere in the magazine, to tout their website, but not seven times an issue. The articles taken from books usually have a small blurb at the end with information about buying the book or getting reprints, which annoys me as well. It’s a way of sneaking in more advertising.
On the positive side, the subscription is delivered in a plastic wrapper that keeps the pages from getting dog-eared before one receives it. My address is printed on a label and affixed to the wrapper as well so if I want to leave my copies at a doctor’s office, I can do so without having to mark out or cut off my address. This is a nice touch.
Overall
When my yearlong free subscription runs out, I will not be renewing. This magazine seems more suited to arch conservatives or older people, like my parents (who still subscribe or I’d be sending my issues to them). I have better things to read.
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