The debt-ridden publisher of 'Reader's Digest' is trying to buy time to save its once mighty magazine – but the process of decay may now be irreversible, writes KEVIN COURTNEY
IT WAS THE jokes that got you first. A polar bear walks into a bar and says: “Give me a scotch and . . . Coke.” The barman says: “Why the long pause?” The bear says: “I dunno, I’ve always had them.”
You may laugh, but it's on such inane jokes that a billion-dollar publishing empire was built. Generations have grown up with Reader's Digest, the family magazine that has graced doctors' waiting rooms and grandparents' sitting rooms since 1922, and many of us remember flicking through its pages in search of another side-splitting joke, another wise anecdote about domestic life, or another tale of a brave dog that landed the plane himself.
We looked forward to the regular sections: "Life's Like That"; "It Pays to Increase Your Word Power"; and, of course, "Laughter, the Best Medicine". But now Reader's Digestwill need something a bit stronger than laughter to keep it in rude health. This week, the magazine's US publisher, Reader's Digest Association Inc, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, seeking court protection while it tries to reduce debts from €1.55 billion to €387 million.
Lovers of cutting-edge humour and handy how-to tips needn't fret, however, as Reader's Digestis not about to be swallowed up by recession yet, and will continue to publish. The Chapter 11 bankruptcy, says the magazine's directors, will simply buy time while they get their finances in order.
“It doesn’t affect our employees, it doesn’t affect the vast majority of vendors, it doesn’t mean we’ll do mass layoffs, it doesn’t mean we’re going to be selling off assets. It’s business as usual,” said the US publisher’s chief executive, Mary Berner.
With 50 editions printed in 21 languages around the globe, Reader's Digestcan lay claim to being the biggest-selling magazine in the world. In the US alone it prints eight million copies of each issue, but this week's events are a reminder that readers may be starting to lose their appetite for the once mighty title.
It has been a long, slow process of decay, but the Digest's demise could now be accelerated by changing media habits, the mass exodus to the internet and the vicissitudes of the current downturn. The magazine's biggest problem, though, may be its safe, old-fashioned image. Pitched at an older, more conservative readership, the Digesthas become the publishing equivalent of an old pair of slippers, and younger readers, as soon as they've grown out of the corny jokes, tend to view it as a stodgy relic from their grandparents' time.
THE MAGAZINE WAS the brainchild of DeWitt Wallace, a young agricultural publisher from St Paul, Minnesota, who reckoned that a digest of general-interest articles condensed from top American magazines would prove a hit with the public. He fought in the first World War and was wounded, but on his return to the US, he spent six months visiting the Minneapolis public library, trawling through magazines, picking out articles and condensing them for busy readers.
Not everyone, least of all the leading publishers, thought it would be a winner; but one person who believed in him was Lila Bell Acheson, a sister of a college friend. Wallace and Acheson were married in 1921, and the next year they published their first edition of Reader's Digest, opting to market it themselves by direct mail. The new magazine was pocket-sized, with 62 pages of print, no illustrations or advertising, and a simple cover (a drawing of a woman writing on a scroll with a pen). The articles on offer included "How to Keep Young Mentally", "Whatever is New for Women is Wrong", and "Is the Stage too Vulgar?"
Since then, throughout the Great Depression, the second World War and the baby boom, Reader's Digesthas kept its subscribers entertained with boy's-own stories of bravery and derring-do, or girl-guide tales of Florence Nightingale and Amelia Earhart types. Anything with a human or family interest was eagerly served up, along with essays and homilies on the little things in life.
Jokes and anecdotes added flashes of light humour, while scientific pieces such as “I Am John’s Pancreas” tossed out fascinating facts – and provided plenty of fodder for the satirists.
Wallace was right about Reader's Digest– it proved a worldwide hit, and the compact format made it ideal for a world on the move. But its greatest strength – its family-friendly content – soon became its weakness, and it increasingly became seen as little more than a rehash of right-wing views, Republican politics and religious dogma. Democrats were turned off by this identity, while young people in general were bored by the magazine's emphasis on aw-shucks, all-American values. It began to exist in an alternative universe of doctors' waiting rooms, supermarket checkouts and church jumble sales.
In 1996, Gregory C Coleman, the magazine's then publisher, spotted a young man hiding his Reader's Digestin the fold of his newspaper as if it was Penthouse. He resolved to realign the magazine for a younger readership, but the stodgy image has proven hard to shift. The publishing company also has a massive direct-marketing arm, selling books, CDs and DVDs via its website.
Earlier this year, the UK edition was relaunched with a brighter, zingier style that looks not unlike the handbag edition of Cosmopolitan. The current issue features interviews with several alternative comedians, and Boris Johnson writes about Dr Johnson. There are tips on cutting costs at the chemist, a heartwarming piece about an English nun restoring a cemetery in Florence, and a ripping yarn called “I Survived a Tiger Attack”. And there’s a joke or two. For example:
A man goes into an electrical repair shop with his TV and says, “This telly only shows soil, grass and trees”. “That’s funny,” replies the assistant, “It’s supposed to pick up sky.” Oh dear.