Magazine story

Here are a couple of more signs, as if we needed them, about the plight of magazines these days:

* It's getting more and more difficult to subscribe to a magazine for just six months or a year. These days, your first move is practically a lifetime subscription.

Many publishers are sending out notices asking readers to send in their credit cards to pay for the product. (This is more common, and easier, in renewals, but you get the idea.) The fine print says that the subscription will automatically be renewed when expiration time arrives, unless the company hears from you. They obviously are counting on the reader to do nothing. This way, not only does the company get your money, but it's probably more money than you'd pay if you searched the Internet for bargains.

Recently my subscription to ESPN the magazine was getting ready to expire. I noticed that my credit card that was on their file had expired a few months before, and I was interested in renewing and getting the package of goodies they send to new subscribers (long-sleeve t-shirt, cooler bag, mug). So I went by the expiration date and renewed by check.

The goodies indeed came, but here's the catch: they still figured out a way to automatically renew my subscription through the expired credit card. For three years. I noticed the charge on a bill. I called up the company and got it straightened out (after getting passed along to another number). Still, it's a lot of work to avoid paying the full rate.

* I've been a reader of Newsweek forever. My parents started getting it when I was a small boy, and I've been reading it ever since. However, the magazine changed formats some months ago, and I can't say I read too much of it any more. Therefore, I decided to let it expire.

The expiration date was sometime in July. It is now October. I am still getting my weekly copy of the magazine. I even received a letter from Newsweek's circulation department this week, boldly announcing "Your subscription expired seven weeks ago!" Well, I'd never know it based on what's been coming into my mailbox.

We all have problems in publishing these days, but it seems like either making it more difficult to subscribe or sending free issues out won't solve any of them for magazines.

Leisure reading

There are plenty of stories out there about the problems magazines are having. It's interesting to see the warning signs, even when you are just a reader at home.

To wit:

1. I received a piece of direct mail from Sports Illustrated a couple of weeks ago. The subscription offer usually is something along the lines of 80 cents an issue, depending on how long you renew. The number can go up with a premium. This particular offer was for 39 cents an issue or so, so it was about $20 for a year -- and it included a gym bag. I renewed; I even have the gym bag already.

My subscription had quite a while before it ran out. So if it -- one of the big ones in the industry -- is slashing prices like that, it's easy to wonder what exactly is going on with the company.

2. The Sporting News recently switched from a weekly publication to a biweekly. The editorial content is different too, and quite interesting. But -- it already has taken a pair of issues "off", meaning that readers went four weeks between issues a couple of times.

3. Newsweek switched formats drastically earlier this summer, going to more analysis instead of trying to track down an extra fact or two. The publication has lowered its circulation guarantee drastically. I know the editors are working to get the hang of it, but so far I'm not sure I'd renew it right now. And Newsweek has been coming to my house (or my parents' house) for my entire life.

4. Paste magazine is relatively new, a handful of years. It mostly covers new music, but has a few movie and book reviews. I subscribed for a couple of years, mostly to pick up the free sampler CD that once in a while had some good songs on it, but dropped it a while back. There was something annoying about the way Paste sometimes would have an ad for a CD in one part of the magazine, and then an article on that CD and its band in another part.

I read a little while ago that its editors had to ask its subscribers and supporters for donations to keep the magazine alive. The move raised somewhere in the low six figures, and Paste is still publishing. You wonder how much longer it has, though.

Anyone who works at a newspaper shouldn't throw stones at another struggling literary form. I don't like the trendline for either medium.