Magazines

[Hawkbit]

Goofy topic, but here goes:  What print magazines do you subscribe to or read frequently?

My free year of Wired is running out but I didn't like it enough to resub.  I was hoping to subscribe to a PC mag and a gaming mag.  Any suggestions?

Also, we've subscribed to Bon Appetit for the past few years and it's fully worth the money spent.  It has decent kitchen gear reviews and we make a recipe out of it at least every other week.  Thumbs up if you like good food.

[JWIV]

The Economist and Fortune.  Also my local newpaper (The Baltimore Sun).   

I had a subscription to CGW (later known as GFW), but well, they died and the sub eventually ended up with PC Gamer, which I'm letting lapse.  Same for my subscription to Wired which I picked up for some fundraiser or another. 

[Strazos]

State Magazine, Foreign Policy, Foreign Service Journal.

Two of those were subbed before I got my job...and then I go into my office, and they already had office subscriptions. 

I did PC Gamer and shit in the past...but then I registered here, so they were rendered obsolete.

[Viin]

The Economist and Fortune.  Also my local newpaper (The Baltimore Sun).  

The Economist is good, but I have a hard time keeping up on a weekly. I usually just pick one up every 3-4 weeks.

Fortune and INC are alright, but I usually only find 1, maybe 2 if I'm lucky, articles that are interesting. I let my office subscription of those lapse, but they still send me one every once in awhile.

We get a few magazines at home: Cooking Light, Real Simple, Scuba, Kitplanes, Sport Aviation, Wired (this is about lapsed, will leave it), plus more I'm spacing on. We get more catalogs (sometimes two copies of the same one!) than anything - what a waste!

I'm interested in a replacement for Wired too, was looking at MAKE but might be too hands-on for me to get anything useful out of (I don't have time to make robots!).

Edit to add: Discover is a good one I like to pick up at the airport while on business trips.

[Selby]

I get an electrical engineering society magazine that I flip through before tossing.  Last magazine I recall we had a subscription to that I actually liked was Jane, but they canceled it and gave us Cosmo instead, which we let lapse =P

[stu]

Architectural Record, is my new favorite mag. Juxtapoz is good too, if you're interested in contemporary art. I stopped buying gaming mags a couple years ago. The best stuff seems to be on the web.

[schild]

I came here to recommend Juxtapoz.

For Stu, have you seen Hi Fructose? http://www.hifructose.com/ (Also great for a magazine)

[Hoax]

I can't imagine reading a gaming mag on top of all the time I spend on f13.  I like Wired and Esquire.

[rattran]

Used to sub to both Fortean Times and Bizarre, but the rates kept going up, now I just pick them both up occasionally. I thinks it's cheaper in the US to buy them retail than to subscribe now. Anything computer or gaming based is easier to read online.

[Murgos]

Also, we've subscribed to Bon Appetit for the past few years and it's fully worth the money spent.  It has decent kitchen gear reviews and we make a recipe out of it at least every other week.  Thumbs up if you like good food.

We get Cooks Illustrated.  Particularly for the excellent website.  Over 15 years of product reviews and excellent recipes (That usually start something like, "We tried 25 store bought soup stocks and this one was favored in testing because x, y, z.") just a search away.  Really haven't ever had a bad suggestion out of it.

[IainC]

I subscribe to White Dwarf and whenever I travel I tend to pick up 3 or 4 from New Scientist, The Economist, Private Eye, Fortean Times and Q.

[Sky]

I've let everything lapse, but as I mentioned in the recipe thread, I have been a subscriber to Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country for a while now. Also to Guitar One, though their subscriptions department is incompetent and now I'm not subscribed again.

I buy PC Gamer and Maximum PC for the library (a few of us sponsor mags for our periodical room, and they're both popular). Really want to dump PC Gamer at this point and maybe pick up the Skeptic, just to be a bit subversive. I buy the recipe mags and the guitar mags, because they're good to have around for reference. Anything else I'd buy for the library to share with the community.

I read a lot of magazines out of our magazine room,  Science, Discover, Architectural Digest, Rolling Stone, Consumer Reports, Family Handyman, Old House Mag, This Old House Mag, and I'm bummed that Workbench just went trendy fucking designer bullshit format. Er...anyway. Fine Homebuilding and Fine Woodworking. That's the normal rotation.

[Evildrider]

Print is dead.

[Sky]

So is PC gaming!

[sickrubik]

Gaming wise, it seems the only Gaming mag worth anything anymore is Edge. Though EGM is coming back.

Personally, I now have a subscription to Draft and Beer Advocate mags thanks to generous people over the Holiday season.

I also have randomly picked up scrips to Communication Arts and Print mags, but I always slack on resubbing.

[Raging Turtle]

Nobody gets National Geographic?  It's like a buck an issue when you subscribe and worth it for the pictures alone.

[Draegan]

I have the internet.  I  internet.

[Mosesandstick]

RSS feeds have killed magazines for me. The content available online is free and generally much better for any sort of news or commentary.

Edge was the only gaming magazine I thought was worth the money. They're a bit hit and miss in certain areas though.

[Stormwaltz]

The last time I subscribed to a magazine was sometime in the 90s.

I did buy Newtype USA a couple of times in the aughts.

[sickrubik]

Edge was the only gaming magazine I thought was worth the money. They're a bit hit and miss in certain areas though.

Miss: The Price. D:

Import magazines can be a killer on the pocket.

[Stewie]

I pick up Digital Photo Pro on a somewhat regular basis.
Alot of good PS how tos.
 

[Sky]

Nobody gets National Geographic?  It's like a buck an issue when you subscribe and worth it for the pictures alone.

We have two of their titles (the other is NatGeo adventures or something?).

[Viin]

RSS feeds have killed magazines for me. The content available online is free and generally much better for any sort of news or commentary.

Not really true. Magazines are good at gathering a bunch of things together and presenting them in a useful format. Gadget reviews, news worthy stories, opinion/editorial articles, and advertisements relevant to the target audience come together very nicely.

Sure you can go to Engadget for gadget reviews, but what if you just want to look at gadgets useful to motorcycles? Where do you go for the newest motorcycle clothing and reviews? Certainly not in one place.

I also don't see a lot of bloggers writing editorial pieces on skill proficiency or doing side-by-side comparison reviews on $100k cars.

Edit to add: unless it's an ezine of course, which I find are usually sucky.

[Mosesandstick]

You've got a point. Which is why I said they've killed magazines for me. There's very little that I could find out from a magazine that I wouldn't find out some other way on the internet. I'd still trust an amazon rating more than a magazine review. There are a lot of specialist magazines that content on the web can't replace, but that's just a matter of time 

[RhyssaFireheart]

I only subscribe to Analog and Asimov's magazines.  I've been getting them for over 20 years now and I love the scifi short story variety, tbh.  I also read the Experience Life magazine we get as part of our Lifetime Fitness membership, that one I really like.

The husband gets his Undersea Journal as part of his PADI membership, but again that's really about it.  He used to get a golf magazine (free sub thing) but I think that's ended finally.  Same with the sub to some Vietnam War magazine his dad bought him for Christmas a few years ago (FiL is a vet).

Neither of us are big magazine readers and considering I'm not working atm, we would be dropping any subs even if we did read magazines.  Though I hated having to drop my weekly subscription to the Chicago Tribune as part of cost cutting we did.  It was a nice little ritual to read the newspaper at lunchtime.  I enjoy it for the same reason that I prefer physical books and would never own an e-reader.  There's just something about holding an actual book or turning the pages of a newspaper that I enjoy, but I already know I'm weird.

[Rasix]

I used to get Tennis magazine as part of my USTA membership.  I let my membership expire, however, as I haven't entered a tournament in over a year.

[Grimwell]

I cashed out all my Coca Cola points in 2008 and subscribed to: Wired, Esquire, Smart Money, Cookie, and Good Housekeeping. Three for me, two for my wife.

We did not resub to any of them. Cookie folded (but was doomed to lapse anyway), Wired can be interesting, but the Internet is interesting now, Smart Money was worth less than the pages it was printed on (also, they won't stop billing me no matter what I do. So I ignore them. That's Smart Money), Esquire was waaaaaaaaaay off in terms of useful pages vs. pages of dudes in their underwear triggering my homophobia (it's a joke, deal), and Good Housekeeping... I have no idea why my wife didn't want it any longer, and don't really care.

Print is not dead, but it is growing more and more niche, and if you can't hyper focus and be useful to an audience, you won't be in print for very long.

[Evildrider]

Print is not dead, but it is growing more and more niche, and if you can't hyper focus and be useful to an audience, you won't be in print for very long.

heh, the only reason I even posted "Print is dead." is cuz I had just watched Ghostbusters again the other day. 

However, you are right.  I think newspapers will die before magazines, however there isn't much you can't find on the Internet nowadays.

[Signe]

Ha!  We just watched Ghostbusters again the other day, too.  It was awesome.  I have Men in Black queued up now, too. 

[Selby]

and Good Housekeeping... I have no idea why my wife didn't want it any longer, and don't really care.

Because other than the occasional product reviews, the stories got sappier and sappier and you can only take so much "here's how to raise your kids and keep the house financially together!" articles.  Especially if you are already doing that successfully on your own.  My grandmother gave my mom a subscription since they were married and after 2-3 years you get the feeling that they are recycling the content a good bit.

[JWIV]

I subscribe to White Dwarf and whenever I travel I tend to pick up 3 or 4 from New Scientist, The Economist, Private Eye, Fortean Times and Q.

That reminds me.  I do pick up Tales of Battle - which is the Indy GT mag that got started here in the States.

[Righ]

Shutterbug (US photography magazine with a decent balance of features)
Classic Rock (UK music magazine featuring all the journalists that used to write for Sounds & Kerrang when I was a teenager)
Classic Rock Presents Prog (quarterly offshoot of the above, a news stand progressive rock magazine with a bias towards prog-metal)
Progression (US progressive rock magazine)

If I lived in Britain I would get the weekly magazine Autosport, but to get it to the US fast enough to be current would cost a fortune.

[Khaldun]

Up until recently, I got Discover, The Economist, the Atlantic Monthly and Cook's Illustrated.

The Economist I gave up because they're just too fucking predictable. I started to feel like I could write the whole issue in advance myself. If I'm going to bother reading a news magazine, I either need to feel I'm seeing details and information I don't get elsewhere--which isn't often the case with the Economist--or I need to feel I'm reading smart people who are reacting to events as they happen and thinking their way through it. The Economist has so many fixed positions on things that it frequently keeps their writers from that kind of fresh let's-look-at-all-the-angles here. At least they're semi-reasonable in their idee fixes, but it still annoyed me too much. Down it goes.

The Atlantic Monthly is schizo: a typical issue will be one really interesting article, one kind of dumb, boring one, and two articles written by massive shitface assholes selling some bit of assholery. Like, Robert Kaplan getting all homo on Marines and wanting to rub their muscles with oil and tell them how it will be so great when they can rule an American Empire properly with their manly, manly wonderfulness. So gone. I'll pick it up off the stands if there happens to be a piece I really want to see.

Cook's, I dunno, some of their recipes don't actually work out and they're too obsessed with the idea that everything has to be the perfect version of something, like all other ways of doing it suck. But ok, there's still stuff to like there. What drove me off recently was 1) they're pushing their online version hard AND you have to pay a separate fee for it--they've started sequestering some of their product reviews from the magazine behind the online pay-wall. I won't endorse that kind of bullshit. and 2) The editor's frontspiece in every issue is so fucking bad and self-indulgent and stupid and he's apparently been told that something like 80% of the readers absolutely hate it when they do market surveys and said, in interviews, that he doesn't care, it's his magazine and he'll spray his jism all over your face if he feels like doing that. So gone.

I'm down to Discover. Which is still a pretty decent read, but they've been perceptibly dumbing down some of the articles in the last two years. That keeps up, I'm out of that room too.

Print isn't being killed off. It's committing suicide.

[Sky]

The editor's frontspiece in every issue is so fucking bad and self-indulgent and stupid and he's apparently been told that something like 80% of the readers absolutely hate it when they do market surveys and said, in interviews, that he doesn't care, it's his magazine and he'll spray his jism all over your face if he feels like doing that.

Are you familiar with New Englanders?

The online site is $15/yr and well worth it. Almost want to resub just because it's so nice to have. "What do you want for dinner?" "Oh, that chicken broccoli parm penne thing" Hit the website, go to favorites, select that recipe, a side dish, hit print shopping list and go to the store after work. That's fucking awesome.

[Khaldun]

Epicurious is a good site--and it's free.

What I object to with Cook's is that I am was a subscriber to the magazine: that should get me inside the paywall automatically. But ok, if not, don't show me a taster of content in the print edition and then tell me that the rest is online somewhere. That's pretty much saying, "We want to kill this magazine, and we only print it for the ancient geezers who insist on reading shit in physical form".