Magazines and Periodicals

[ShadowHM]

Some comments in another thread got me wondering about this. Quite a number of magazines enter this household and get read cover to cover.

As previously mentioned, Playboy is on the subscription list here. :rolleyes:

Additionally, the following magazines are also subscribed to:

Time Magazine
Macleans Magazine (the Canadian equivalent of Time)
National Geographic
Canadian Geographic
Canadian Wildlife
Seasons (Federation of Ontario Naturalists publication)
Rotunda (Royal Ontario Museum publication)
The Beaver (Canadian History periodical)
Canadian Home Workshop (y'all know I live with a Tim-the-Tool-Man wannabe, right?)
Prevention (Health issues magazine)
Cottage Life

So, I am curious. What magazines or periodicals do you subscribe to/purchase? Why? Or, if you don't subscribe at all, why not? (Students with cash flow concerns need not answer that directly. In those cases, if you could subscribe, what would you subscribe to?)

[goldfish]

Over here, it's:

U.S. News

New Republic
Weekly Standard
The Nation
(all three of those are political mags)

Atlantic Monthly (politics / culture)


People

Sports Illustrated

Readers Digest

The Ensign (church magazine)

The New York Times, if you count that.

Edit: Heh, I made the list and then hit "Post" without explaining. I like the political magazines (I regularly read Slate online as well) because I like political discussion. US News out of habit, though I often think about switching to Time. (No need for more than one of the three (incl. Newsweek) in my view since they're 80% redundant. )

I also keep thinking about subscribing to the New Yorker, and National Geographic or Scientific American, though those would be strictly for fun. I like the Science section of the Times every Tuesday, but I know as much about science as, well, an average scientist knows about law. :)

[--Pete]

Hi,

At present all that comes in is Computer Games, Science, and Readers Digest. The third was a gift and I don't much care for it.

In the past, I subscribed to many more periodicals. However, the availability of vast quantities of information on the Internet has made the expense unnecessary and the time unavailable ;)

--Pete

[ShadowHM]

In my not so humble opinion, it has a place.

And that place is in the office of my dentist/physician, to leaf through while I wait, and be easy to toss aside when my turn is up. :P

Also, I always enjoy the ego boost I get from going through their "Word Power" section and getting all the answers right. B)

[WarLocke]

The Daily Show?
The Tonight Show?
The Screen Savers?

Honestly, I don't subscribe to any periodicals. And television "news" is just bunk. The Man Show gives better news than some news shows, for crying out loud.

If I lived in any one place long enough to warrant getting a periodical subscription, I honestly don't know what I would subscribe to. I must be out of date, lol. The Wall Street Journal, maybe? :lol:

[Bun-Bun]

Air & Space
InfoWorld
EWeek
Electrical Engineering Times

I don't pay for the last three - they'll bury you in trade mags if you let them. Air & Space has a lot of material on warbird restoration, and most of the other articles I find worthwhile as well.

I really need to subscribe to some SF mags, but I've lost touch with which ones carry the harder SF that I like. A guy two offices down got published in Analog, so I suppose I'll try that one.

As Pete said, the 'Net has so much easily accessible info that my need for periodicals has dropped to nearly nothing.

[--Pete]

Hi,

We also get Asimov's SF magazine (the only survivor of all the SF/fantasy zines we once took). But I never really see this one. I don't particularly like short stories and I don't much care for what's been going on in the SF/fantasy world in the last twenty or so years. So this one gets grabbed, read, and filed by Magi without really intruding on my consciousness ;0

-Pete

[Elric of Grans]

Hail Shadow,

Not sure if it counts, but I get the annual Bulletin of The Australian Center for Egyptology: it's full of articles put together by leading Egyptologists over the past year, and many of which I saw the author present as they visited Melbourne. This years volume has everything from Morphological Characteristics of Hair of Egyptian Mummies, to Queen Nefertari and the Frog (the latter was presented in a very entertaining lecture by Doctor Kaper, which was also his farewell night before he went back to Germany). I used to collect a couple of other Archaeological journals - more regular ones - but found them drifting off a little, so discontinued. Like Pete, I get just about everything I want off the Interenet: people complain about the ammount of garbage online, but if you know where to look...

[Roland]

...who actually bothers to read the articles in Playboy. It USED to be why I held a subscription. I don't think I'll be renewing next time. I haven't read anything out of that magazine in over 6 months, at least. I get it, rip the plastic off it, and drop it in its storage box with the rest of 'em. Don't even look at it anymore.

It used to be I could get a good 3 or 4 stories / articles to read out of them. Sometimes the short stories were iffy, sometimes they were actually pretty good. Somewhere, I stopped reading them, and that left little of the articles that appealed to me. So... Meh. I don't read it, I don't look at it, so it's essentially a waste of $20 a year. Oh, and I don't do ANY gaming / computer magazines since they all decided to sign me up for an extra year, WITHOUT MY PERMISSION, and then demanded I pay them. Yeah, no thanks. So that was the end of the rest of my magazine days.

So, I guess you can say I don't read any magazines. Pity. Mayhap one of these days I'll grab a subscription to a nice scientific magazine or something. Maybe I'll grab a computer one. We'll see. For now, I don't particularly care to read magazines. Nor newspapers, for that matter.

[Striker]

Well, with me it's Time, Sports Illustrated, and up until a few months ago, Chemical Engineering Progress.

Why? I use Time to catch up on current events, although I'm falling behind a few issues. I'm leaning towards letting the subscription end on its own. I've found I get most of my news online now, so this is similar to Roland and his shelved Playboys.

SI just because I'm a bit of a sports junkie. That, and the swimsuit issue, of course :D

CEP was a free subscription when I joined AIChE (American Institute of Chemical Engineers). Lots of good articles on processes and stuff like that, but a lot of it went over my head so I let it end. I'll probably renew it in a few years when I get out of grad school and get some more experience under my belt.

But I'm starting to think it should be "if I get out", and not "when" :lol:

[Dani]

Well I don't subscribe to any, because I mostly get sick with any given magazine's biases after dozen or so issues and need to take a break from it. This was the most evident in 97 when I had a year long subcription to Newsweek.

However, I buy alot of magazines from the newsstands. Many of them would be unfamiliar with anyone here, so I won't list them, but the more known are or in some cases were: (note that in many cases these are the "international editions")

News:
Time - my prime US newssource
Newsweek - frankly getting sick of them again
The Guardian - blame my parents and their tales of readin it in London in the sixties ;)
The European - haven't seen this one in a long while though

Leisure:
Empire - IMO the best mainstream movie magazine, though the past two years have seen a steady drop in quality...but still as long as Kim Newman has any presence in it, I'll buy it religiously.
Cahiers de Cinema - The other side of movies
CGW - they stopped importing it
CGS+ - same here

Add couple in both categories from where I live, and where I'm from.

[Baylan]

Personally I only get two magazines, but my family... I'm not sure how many it reads (probably in the 20s or 30s).

I'm an extempter at my school (it is a catagory in forensics - aka speech). The catagory is to write a 4-6 minute speech in 30 minutes. In order to perform at the top level it needs to be memorized as well. The topics are always on political discussion, and as such I need my two, Time and Newsweek, in order to generate a very high quality speech with lots of information and facts.

Anyone else enjoy the "Why America Scares the World" article in the March 24th edition of Newsweek? I personally found it very well written and very true in some cases. It definately changed my point of view in various ways.

Baylan

[Tal]

A disclaimer: My wife and I are librarians so we subscribe to very few magazines. Its just easier to read the latest issues when they get put out on the shelf. That being said here are the magazines and newspapers we do subscribe to.

Newspapers
The Local paper and the Washington Post. The latter is for me. I prefer indepth coverage and my wife wants the basics.

Magazines
Computer Gaming
PC Magazine
Sporting News
Entertainment Weekly
Family Handyman
Justice League of America and Robin - I used to work for DC Comics so sue me. ;)

I read Newsweek, Time, and US News and World Report at work plus all the various Library trade magazines.

[the Langolier]

Popular Mechanics
Popular Science
Wall Street Journal
Parachutist Magazine
Mechanical Engineering

I don't get around to reading them all the time, but they are there.

[TaMeOlta]

Dungeon Magazine , and Realms of Fanatasy ..... I fell of of Playboys mailing list a while ago ;)

[Occhidiangela]

National Geographic
Time/Newsleak/US News and World Distort
Sports Illustrated
Atlantic Monthly
Anything I find in a doctor's office: that is an eclectic list
Naval War College Review
Foreign Affaris when I can get my hands on it
Occasional Playboy/FHM/Maxim
Cosmo while I am standing in line at the Grocery (Soft core porn and the deliberate attempts at the slutiffication of the American female holds a morbid fascination for me)
Fortune
The Economist
Defense News (Now and again)
The Marine Corps Gazette (Now and again)
Aviation Leak and Space Technocracy :D

No longer on the list:

Forbes :P I subscribed to it for a year, but other than the occasional PJ ORourke piece, I found it rather pointless.

Naval Institute Proceedings and Military Review: they turned into into propaganda rags, they were once actually professional journals

[MonTy]

Hail Shadow,

I turned 18 last year, so I went out and got Playboy, FHM, and Maxim. Although, I am no longer subscribed to those. Mainly because of the lack of good articles. Sorry, it's not worth paying 50+ bucks a year just for pictures.

... And now as a full time college student who works part time, I budget carefully. So I went and talked my parents into getting a few magazine subscriptions (for visitors of course) =P. National Geographic and Time is what the family gets now. Oh, they also get People, but I hate it with passion. I do get Chess Life, but it's hard to keep up with school and work.

[Artega]

Currently, I purchase/subscribe to PC Gamer (THE definitive PC gaming magazine, bar none - they've been around longer than any other mainstream magazine, and I trust their judgement), and National Geographic (it's always fascinated me for some odd reason - I tend to like the wildlife articles more than the other kinds, but I read it cover to cover anyway.)

Before I got disgusted with FuncoLand, I got their silly little Game Informer magazine, but like all multi-platform magazines, it knew a little about everything, but nothing about something. All of their PC data (my preferred gaming platform, despite my PC's many shortcomings) was significantly off, highly biased (they quite obviously prefer consoles to PCs), and generally moronic. The same went for their GCN coverage. They seem to be PS2/Xbox junkies like the rest of the world. Speaking of which, I think Xbox Magazine should be burned. To the ground. What makes it worse is that Mike Salmon is the E-I-C there, when he was formerly the E-I-C of PC Accelerator, which I still consider to be the funniest gaming magazine ever created. Their information wasn't nearly as good as PCG's, but it sure was funnier. Too bad Imagine forced them out of syndication.

[Copadope]

I currently don't subscribe to any magazines or newspapers. There are several places on campus where I can pick up The New York Times or USA Today as well as a couple of local papers for free. Although I generally don't take advantage of them for no reason in particular. When I'm at home I'll occassionally leaf through the local paper to see what's goin on. I think the only subscription we have at home is to Biography, although we used to get Readers' Digest which I enjoy reading. One of my all-time favorite magazines to read is Popular Mechanics and I've been known to pick up a copy of Electronic Gaming Monthly from time to time.

I tend to get my current events news by word of mouth. Not the best strategy, I know, but I get by. B)

[Dani]

Currently, I purchase/subscribe to PC Gamer (THE definitive PC gaming magazine, bar none - they've been around longer than any other mainstream magazine, and I trust their judgement)

Umm, you're joking, right? It's actually quite rare to hear it called PC Gamer, and not PC Lamer nowadays. Maybe it's a usenet thing, dunno, though I didn't like it whenever I read it. It's the Gamespot of Computer Gaming magazines.
If you haven't tried it, Computer Games Strategy Plus used to be very good. Computer Gaming World was quite ok as well.