Readers Digest this: It’s going

Lo & behold! Generational favourite Reader’s Digest has decided to declare itself bankrupt at New York. The “family book” which was started in 1922 by Lila Bell Wallace and DeWitt Wallace who wanted the best of all articles in one magazine, was an instant hit.

Today, they say it has failed to move with the times, has been battling mounting debts and is generally ready to be liquidated.

I remember way back in my school days, my father, as also the parents of almost all my friends, used to gently persuade us to get friendly with the Digest. We wanted Enid Blyton, Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys. They wanted us to take a break from this staple — and the break was to be engineered by the Reader’s Digest.

My parents did the Digest round by reading out stories, the real life ones, or by merely talking about them at the dinner table trying to boost my brother’s and my curiosity levels.

I remember when I first picked up the Reader’s Digest, it held my attention through the Humour in Uniform nuggets that kept appearing — they are still the hot favourites with the Digest brigade — at the end of several stories.

My young mind was more attuned to small, uncomplicated fun stuff. Laughter is the Best Medicine used to be usually funny. So were the one liners in Life’s Like That, All In A Day’s Work.

Tales Out of School was sadly added much after I was finished even with college but today’s Virtual Hilarity has kept up the trend of giving counterfoil to extraordinary struggle and achievement sagas of very ordinary people.

The Digest brigade can take hope from the thought that Reader’s Digest has fallen not to bad content but to the general fading of interest that the printed word has felt all over the globe. Very few people want to buy books and even fewer parents insist that their children should. More comfortable with buying a computer which is after all a one-time investment.

Downloading has elbowed out bookmarks and today’s children would much rather go to the X-box than to a book of any genre.

In such a scenario, the fact that an oldie like Reader’s Digest has held on to its own for so, so long speaks of its quality control and its innate staying power.

Wikipedia quotes the Audit Bureau of Circulation to say that the Digest is the best-selling consumer magazine in the US, with a circulation of over 5.5 million copies, and a readership of 38 million as measured by Mediamark Research (MRI).

According to MRI, Reader’s Digest reaches more readers with household incomes of $100,000+ than Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week and Inc. combined.

Global editions of Reader’s Digest reach an additional 40 million people in more than 70 countries, with 50 editions in 21 languages. It is also published in braille, digital, audio and a version in large type called Reader’s Digest Large Print.

It has been an 87-year-old journey which saw several expansions, scares, makeovers, taglines and what not. One thing remained constant though — the reader interest — it never waned. Though the new owners of Reader’s Digest have assured all who want to know, that the bankruptcy arrangement is actually meant to save this “America in your pocket” magazine, it is alarming to know that this one would vanish from many bathrooms across India where obscene amount of potty time has been spent going through the pages of the Digest.

America, however, has been a little more circumspect, talking about the popularity of the Reader’s Digest by telling the world how much of a must it has been at almost all dentists’ clinics all across the US.

PublishedAugust 23, 2009; http://www.dailypioneer.com/197440/Readers-Digest-this-It’s-going.html