Guessing it’s not an ad (the tools).. a round-up of some sort?

I must admit sometimes I buy these sorts of magazines partly because of the ads. There’s a lot to be said for the creativity of advertisers and in certain areas the quality has been rising. I quite like Wallpaper* for this reason.

This sort of willing take-up of society’s rampant demand for consumerism does, however, help out smaller, boutique publishers, like yourself. Like how the now ubiquitous and dulling presence of Starbucks is pushing coffee connoisseurs to use more mom-and-pop cafés again, I imagine discerning readers are being pushed into the boutique market segments, whereas previously Wired would “do.”

Posted by Peter Cooper on 4 January 2008 @ 8pm

I do this surgery to almost any magazine I get. I call it “deboning” (I think maybe Jason Kottke invented that term?).

I subscribed to Wired the first 5 years. It was new and amazingly unique back then but once the ads and more and more pages were devoted to products, I lost interest and let it drop. I’ve picked up an issue or two over the years but have never wanted to renew my sub since then.

Posted by Dean on 5 January 2008 @ 6am

There’s also the Wired movie constant: Whenever a movie is featured on the cover of Wired, it will suck, bomb, or both.

Posted by matt on 5 January 2008 @ 2pm

Maybe I’m in the minority, but I honestly don’t mind the ads in WIRED. Sure, the first half of the magazine is “oh, wow, I wish I could afford that” but their design isn’t half bad and it makes for decent reading during lunch breaks, etc.

I might one of the few that’s more likely to read their long form articles in the magazine than online.

Posted by Kiyoshi Martinez on 5 January 2008 @ 2pm

…the Wired movie constant: Whenever a movie is featured on the cover of Wired, it will suck, bomb, or both.

That’s hardly a constant, if only because it’s completely subjective whether a movie “sucks” or not. Sure, you could argue that ‘King Kong’ bombed (13.10) or that ‘Matrix Reloaded’ (11.05) really did suck, but what about Pixar’s ‘The Incredibles’ (12.06)? It was a blockbuster hit but also a critic’s favorite. Was ‘Lord of the Rings’ (9.10) a suck-bomb? That makes no sense.

Posted by Jesse on 5 January 2008 @ 8pm

not to really defend wired, but that issue, including the picture with the tools, was part of a gift giving/product guide feature so using it as an example is somewhat unfair. and a subscription only costs 5 bucks from PCH so who really cares if its a bunch of ads.

Posted by ron on 6 January 2008 @ 9am

You want to see a magazine where that deboning process has jawdropping results? Tackle an issue of Vanity Fair, which often packs dozens of pages of ads between two pages of its *table of contents*, for crying out loud. Talk about commercialism slitting the throat of usability!

One of the downsides of resolving to spend less and save more in 2008: it sort of sands down the top couple of layers of one’s advertising shield. When you’re not thinking about it, you can flip through magazines without paying much attention to these product-centric fluff pieces like Wish List, but when you *are*, then all of sudden it’s hard not to drop to your knees screaming “PLEASE STOP TRYING TO SELL ME SOMETHING!” Seriously. It’s enough to drive a man back to novels!

Posted by Geoffrey Long on 6 January 2008 @ 10am

I also chop out all of the double-sided ad pages, with glee. I do this for each new issue of FORTUNE, BusinessWeek, WIRED, The Economist, The New Yorker, and Portfolio.
I tear out “Special Advertising Section”s with particular glee.

Then I remove all of the business reply cards stuffed among the pages.

THEN I read the magazine.

Posted by Brian Dear on 7 January 2008 @ 8am

Full disclosure: I worked at Wired for many years, in the design department.

To expand on what Ron said above, choosing the December issue is hardly a proper comparison, since December issues of many magazines are crammed with gift guides. But also, magazine ad pages are cyclical from year to year: November and December are usually flush with ads, while August and February are sparse. So the most accurate comparison would be to compare the September 1995 issue with the September 2007 issue. That’s how ad pages are compared when determining whether a magazine is doing better or worse.

Also, Dean, I don’t know whether Jason Kottke came up with the phrase “deboning,” but I first read it in 1996 in Wired’s Jargon Watch, attributed to someone else:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.07/jargon_watch.html

–Eric

Posted by Eric Siry on 7 January 2008 @ 5pm

What we really need is an article titled “How to read Suck Magazine cover to cover. What a nice world that would be to live in.

Posted by Chris on 8 January 2008 @ 3am

I’ve been a subscriber for about 5 or 6 years now. For 10 bucks a year, its a steal and so much cheaper than buying issues off the newstands. I have to agree with most comments and say that wired back in the late 90s/early 2000s was a pretty awesome read. Unique content, great features, really wrote about the stuff I wanted to read about. However, I’ve noticed that recently a new wired takes me about a day or two to read through when a wired from back then took me a week or two to devour and I would constantly revisit and reread the articles. still worth 10 bucks a year though, no doubt.

Posted by Dave on 9 January 2008 @ 10am

Vanity fair has sadly gone the same way as wired, the high profile issues might be bigger every year. But the amount of content has dropped :/
and i am the girl whose has a collection of every issue dating back to 97

Posted by sue on 10 January 2008 @ 2am

While I don’t love tons of ads, polybags, or blow-ins myself, I do understand that their presence allows me to continue receiving my favorite publications at a fairly cheap cost. With the cost of paper and postal rates increasing coupled with lower readership, magazines have to depend heavily on their advertising pages to sustain them and keep their stand prices low enough so you’ll still purchase. Worst case scenario: Your favorite magazine without all that ad revenue, could go defunct.

Posted by Jessica S. on 25 January 2008 @ 9am