The Future of Reader’s Digest

Reader’s Digest will celebrate its 1,000th issue this week with a party that its public relations agency promises will be “star-studded, futuristic and interactive.” That’s because the 1,000th issue, on sale July 26, is not looking back at the magazine’s impressive 83-year history but is looking ahead. Its cover story predicts “14 Trends That Will Change Your Life.” The trends will be brought to life in displays at the party.What are they? Many concern technology – from new life-saving medical techniques to the effect violent video games have on children. There are also some mass-magazine staples included in the trend report such as “Meals That Heal,” as well as a look at the increase in adventure travel, the marketing of religion, and the way new forms of communications make us all want to be plugged in all the time.Meg Grant, the Digest’s West Coast editor, who oversaw the section, told me, “A group of editors got together with lots and lots of clippings and discussed, debated, and discarded to come up with the trends. We started working on the issue in November. I think the issue is jam-packed with information about things that will really be influential in the next five to 10 years.”The magazine is also publishing an “outsert” called Future, which forecasts the innovative products of the next two decades. These include a gas-free “intelligent” car and, best of all, food without calories. Future will also include an advertorial section in which advertisers share their vision of the future. It will be sent to selected subscribers.Recently, the Digest has been trying to update its overall image. The magazine cut its circulation to 10 million in 2004 but remains, after AARP’s magazine, the second largest in the country, with a total readership of 41 million. Even though it has a reputation of being old-fashioned, the magazine still has influence. Last year, an article about St. Jude’s Children Hospital resulted in a $1 million donation in stock from a reader. And “Laughter Is the Best Medicine,” the magazine’s best-read humor column, receives an astonishing 10,000 pieces of mail each month.The magazine was up in ad pages almost 10% last year. “In the last three years, editor in chief Jackie Leo has really revitalized the magazine, redesigning the magazine and its logo and adding new sections,” Laura McEwen, the magazine’s vice president and publishing director, told me. In a move that perhaps reflects another future trend, the 1,000th issue of the Digest will be online after July 26 and can be viewed free of charge at http://www.rd-digital.com.***Want to know what the world thinks of America? Or do you think you already know, and it’s not so good? Well, you can have that opinion confirmed by logging onto www.WatchingAmerica.com, a Web site that prints translations of commentaries about America from newspapers and magazines published all over the world.Some of the recent headlines on the site included: “One Day, America Will Learn That Fighting Terrorism Is Not a War,” from France’s Bastille Day edition of Liberation and “Rove a ‘Heavy Burden’ for the President,” from Guatemala’s Siglo Vientiuno. The Tehran Times declares: “U.S. Promotes Drug Addiction To Promote Its Hegemony. “Still, you might be surprised by these two headlines from Lebanon’s Dar Al-Hayat. One on July 14 declared, “Arab and Muslims Must Stand With the United States”; another, on July 17, was headlined “Terrorists Do Not Deserve Life!”The Web site’s co-founder is Robin Koerner, an English journalist who lives in Los Angeles. He teamed up with an American, Will Kern, a former copy editor of the International Herald Tribune who financed the site, which launched earlier this year, out of his own pocket. Friends created the software that translates foreign articles automatically; these are “smoothed out” by Mr. Koerner and volunteers familiar with the article’s original language.Mr. Koerner has said that the view of America from abroad is about 45% negative, 50% neutral, and only 5% positive. Still, he believes it’s good for Americans to see themselves as others see us, quoting economist and philosopher John Stuart Mill: “He who only knows one side of the case, knows little of that.” Currently, the site gets about 6,000 hits a day, and Mr. Koerner said it would need 100,000 to be self-supporting through advertising.Right now, frequent visitors include what Mr. Koerner calls “the intellectual elite” from think tanks, as well as analysts from the State Department and the CIA. Mr. Koerner believes Watching America may be doing some of their work for them.***IWantMedia.com, another favorite site of journalists and editors, is celebrating its fifth anniversary this week with a redesign and some new features. The Web site’s founder, Patrick Phillips, came up with the idea while working in the public relations department at Hearst. Part of his job was writing speeches for Frank Bennack, Hearst’s former CEO.“I used the Web all the time to get information about the press so I knew a site that aggregated all the free information about media would be a good idea,” he said. He started it in his home and remains the site’s only employee. “As soon as I launched, I got an offer for advertising from the Onion – and I turned it down!” he told me ruefully. Current advertisers include the Wall Street Journal and the merchant bank Veronis, Suhler, and Stevenson, which specializes in buying and selling publications. Mr. Phillips said the site is in the black.Besides a new design, the Web site will now feature a column by Michael Wolf, who is director of the global media and entertainment practice at McKinsey & Company. But what might interest visitors the most is the site’s new relationship with CraigsList.com. There are listings of positions for writers, designers, and publicists at publications, television stations, film companies, and Web sites throughout the country. Soon the site will include free listings for jobs from around the world.

The Future of Reader’s Digest

The Future of Reader’s Digest

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