While I Have Been Away

While I Have Been Away

A couple of things that have caught my attention since I’ve been away from my blog:

1. From Folio magazine: “Fifty-four percent or 348 of the 654 consumer magazines that report their total paid, verified and analyzed non-paid circulation numbers to the Audit Bureau of Circulation, reported decreases for the first six months of this year … Time and Newsweek saw unit sales decline 19 percent. Time recently announced it would try to stop newsstand declines (the magazine averaged 119,466 in newsstand sales in the first half of the year, compared to 157,215 in the same period a year earlier) by moving its on-sale date from Monday to Friday in hopes of appealing to Friday grocery shoppers.”

2. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Book Editor Bob Hoover has a good editorial about literacy that starts, “Americans are both fat and illiterate. He questions the logic of more literacy programs and Starbucks recent announcement that they would contribute to such programs. Interesting take on the subject. “Perhaps what’s needed is the acknowledgment that reading and the writing of good books needs to be encouraged after the literacy program ends. Great literature and nonfiction demand a sophisticated, educated audience.”

3. I learned about an interesting new magazine last week called Good. Right idea (which sounds much like my final project presentation for my graduate degree). Jury is still out on this one. I will have to read it some more.