At some point around 2003, I was sitting there and attempting to read a Reader’s Digest...and here was a global warming story treated as absolute truth. Later in the same copy....a story over people with lack of health care.
The thing is....people that generally read Reader’s Digest are fairly naive and never question the stories in it. I put down the magazine. I think around 2008, at some Dentist office....I picked up a copy and saw the same type of material.
It’s basically drafted over in the past ten years to some trash document. The same issue came up with National Geographic. I think it’s mostly all bogus science and has little to do with geography. Both magazines are suffering from lack of readers and it doesn’t surprise me over their financial problems.
I gave up on the National Geographic three years ago. I had been a subscriber since 1975, and have a complete collection that goes back to about 1950. The old ones are still worth reading and browsing.
For decades it was a family tradition to give subscriptions of RD and NatGeo for Christmas presents. That ended at least 10 or more years ago by request of all the recipients. All at about the same time agreed that both had turned into nothing more than trite rags of liberalism.
It was a shame. The condensed books were good reads back in the day. You could settle in for an evening by the fire and read a couple of good stories in one setting.
The RD reporting got worse and worse and more slanted all the time. Then it just got repetitive.
Popular Mechanics did about the same and started trying to be some kind of social reform media instead of a handy man’s how to. It got cancelled as well. Popular Science got axed by us way before that for the same reason.
Pretty accurate summation.
You did omit the mention of half a dozen hard card advertisement inserts which make it impossible to thumb through the magazine.
Also, the article layouts, graphics and fonts are indistinguishable from the ads.
Then there is the obligatory four page, micro print legal announcement/disclaimer for some new medical product which someone hopes will prevent a shakedown by tort lawyers.
This month’s issue (March 2013) had three, count em’ three, items in Humor in Uniform.
Lastly, the moral values of their editors seem to have been formed by watching MTV & reading “Self” or “US” magazine.