The Top Ten Magazines in the U.S.: A Geriatric Review

I'm not sure where I found it, but I double-checked its accuracy: The ten most read magazines in the U.S. I guess I shouldn't have been astonished:

• AARP
• AARP Bulletin
• Game Informer
• Better Homes and Gardens
• Reader's Digest
• Good Housekeeping
• Family Circle
• National Geographic
• People
• Woman's Day

Mark Twain, I believe, was the one who said that people who don't read have no advantage over those who can't. Let's go one deeper: People who don't read about anything outside of what directly matters to them personally have no advantage and have largely wasted their talents.

Females reading this might take umbrage. And I don't want to sound hypocritical: I have read many of these publications at one point or another. In fact, I subscribe to three of them, if the top two are to be taken separately, except if you get #1 you also get #2. (The other is National Geographic, the one part of this list that I'd call commendable, and the change in approach in which is something I've recently written about very positively.) Of the rest, with the exception of #3, which I've never seen and have to desire to do so now that I've gained my 26th birthday, I manage to open in various offices of people looking after various parts of my body.

If you think that this list merely scrapes off a certain clientele, consider that #12 is Taste of Home and #13 is Ladies Home Journal. Only Time, at #11, constitutes what would be a decent review of current events in the more serious matters of public affairs. Sports Illustrated, a totally guy-mag, comes in at 14. We don't even get to dating, sex and glamour until 15 with Cosmopolitan. We haven't stopped thinking about sex, but it has to wait until the furniture is rearranged.

What does this say about us? Quite a bit. For instance:

• Males intensely driven about pointless things, read magazines. Most of the rest don't bother. Those that know my background might consider that, once upon a time, I was a sports columnist. But my philosophy about sports and games was, and will always be, that they have achieved an importance to Americans that far outweighs or betrays their true value. After 18 years of writing about them, I gave up. I don't even watch exhibition football anymore.
• Taking care of one's home must be endlessly challenging, since so many women read about it so often. On the other hand, they might be trying not to bore themselves half to death and read about new ideas concerning the same old thing. Good for them, I guess.
• Too many people still don't know the difference between a Reader's Digest version of an article and the real thing, and they still don't care. RD had by far the first leg up on sanitized information, a.k.a. fake news, and still leads the league. We prefer what we read, we read what we prefer, and we prefer to believe it. The alternatives to RD would probably be in the category of elementary school readings.
• With one exception, these are tried-and-true brands that go back at least half a century if not more. Baby boomers, in other words, love magazines. We don't necessarily dig online stuff. We might turn to our androids to read all kinds of things, too, but we love these in the mail on schedule. It might mean that getting something at our doorsteps daily, like newspapers, isn't what we need anymore (contributing to the gradual, sad snuffing out of that medium). But those of us over 50 still like to have something to look at and hold in our hands every so often. We don't have to wait for it to boot up. All we have to do is turn a page. It doesn't take nearly as much thumb manipulation, which is good for those of us with arthritis.
• Television and other media still provide us with the most preferred information on current affairs. Journals all along the political spectrum are still legion, and some are quite good. We don't like taking all that much time to reading them, either. Some, like the New Yorker, have reduced the enormous length of the main stories of their issues. Anything longer than 12 or 14 pages, now, is surprising. 30 years ago, stories sometimes ran 30 or 35 pages. Despite those adjustments, we still lean on TV to deliver news and with the proliferation of cable news, I don't see that doing anything but increasing. It's packaged into repeatable schedules of our days, it has a predictable start and ending, and it's delivered by (mostly) pleasant-looking people who fill our needs for information that's (mostly) accurate and (mostly) very fast. When it's up-to-the-minute, it provides the same kinds of drama that TV drama is supposed to provide--except it's real, it's happening to someone else so we remain detached, and it captivates despite (mostly) the lack of happy endings. All of which means that...
• We still appreciate news, but we don't like to think about it very much. Magazines make you do both. That bothers us because we don't like being bothered, never mind what it is that is actually bothering us. That gets delivered by political entities, which compete to see which phraseology, however briefly stated, gets under our skin and remains. Who needs a magazine for that? Hell, that would take hours to read. Forget it: Reruns of Friends are on. But within that scenario is how we are captured by political consultants even though we are in the most accessible media arena the world has yet seen. They package, we absorb (Does that sound kind of like "We report, you decide?" Packaging of the packaging?). Screw the analysis.

The above-mentioned study didn't mention the numbers that each magazine distributes each month, and whether those numbers are growing or not and at what pace. Demographic information was also lacking, but it wouldn't be a stretch to conclude that these represent mostly white subscribers with a bit of extra money on their hands.

Does this make us well-informed? Well, yes. And no, at least not in terms of the kind of citizenry that Jefferson and others foresaw. The First Amendment is still there. It is ripe for the taking. Maybe the next generation's reading tastes will be more eclectic, and they will utilize their opportunities better.

In the meantime, did you know or recognize that Starbucks doesn't carry newspapers any longer? Makes for an odd and sad kind of place, with nothing but people staring at their iPods. mostly by themselves. If you're up for watching loneliness happen, stop by and order a latte soon.

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark