Ask Slashdot: What Magazines Do You Still Read?

AmiMoJo writes "Over on Slashdot Japan, there is a discussion about what magazines people still read (Google translation of Japanese original). Japanese people still tend to read a lot of periodicals, while in the west readership seems to be in decline. Do you read magazines regularly, or at all? Are websites a good substitute, or do print publications still offer something worth spending your cash on?"

Comments

None

[gameboyhippo]

None... The Internet has replaced the function of magazines.

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[syntheticmemory]

Not so fast. Some magazines may have a limited shelf life, but they don't need batteries or a charge. .

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[Anonymous Coward]

Cracked.com is a perfect example of how to move from a print publication to an online model.

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[Threni]

Batteries? Oh, those. No, I rarely bother with them other than the internal ones you get with mp3 players, kindles, tablets etc.

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[aoteoroa]

My old routine of reading the newspaper has been completely replaced with eating cerial and reading the news on my tablet...however I like having my lunch outside in the sun (weather permitting) and reading a magazine is much easier on the eyes than a tablet.

So to answer the original question Canadian Biker magazine.

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[mtrachtenberg]

A subscription to The New Yorker is like giving yourself a little treat every week. A subscription to Mother Jones helps pay David Corn's salary. I'm sure there are others worth subscribing to. I've never found a rapid computer multimedia data access mechanism that matches sheets of paper.

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[gvaness]

I tend to not carry my phone around at home, and still like to read something in the bathroom. Maxim and Money atm. Tends to be whatever family subscribes me to as gifts though.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Neither, its books for me.

Too often the internet is full of biased opinions, paid for articles, or "fluff" articles that contain so little real information they are worthless.
The same is true of Magazines which is why I stopped buying them 15 years or so ago. I used to spend good money on Byte, 80-Micro and others.

Books on the other hand to be published are reviewed and are generally of a much higher quality than you will find on the net
or in a magazine. Some books I have bought 2 copies of because I know I will end up writing in 1 copy my own addendum's , diagrams, and
highlighting paragraphs, the other I keep as a more pristine reference for when the other eventually falls apart, but by that stage I no loger
need all the extra note I made while I was learning.

An no, I dont do ebooks, I am of the generation where paper feel better and I own thousands of them

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[ArcadeMan]

... reading a magazine is much easier on the eyes than a tablet with an LCD screen

FTFY.

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[PopeRatzo]

Batteries? Oh, those. No, I rarely bother with them other than the internal ones you get with mp3 players, kindles, tablets etc.

You bother with them all the time, by having to remember to plug them in at night. You bother with them when you have to think about whether you're going to be able to finish the movie you're watching on the plane before the battery dies. You bother with them by having to keep your eye on the little battery symbol because once that goes down, your "mp3 players, kindles, tablets etc." are useless until you find somewhere to plug in.

When people are asked what is the most important feature they wish they had on their electronic devices, "longer battery life" is always #1. So yes, people are clearly bothered with them.

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[RabidReindeer]

Cracked.com is a perfect example of how to move from a print publication to an online model.

Actually, Cracked was a meh, me-too imitation of MAD as a print publication. They got MUCH better in their online incarnation.

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[ArcadeMan]

I also own thousands of sheets of paper and I agree with you.

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[metlin]

Indeed. I couldn't agree more. There are some magazines that I continue to read regularly.

The Economist, National Geographic, Harper's, Paris Review, NY Review of Books, Granta, and Foreign Affairs to name a few.

The content in some of these magazines are unique and not available online. More importantly, it keeps these publishers and writers in business, which to me is a great incentive.

I am happy to pay for these publications because they are well written, well edited, and have content that is not easily available elsewhere. They are not just sensationalism and raw data that's poorly written by a 20 year old (e.g. cnn.com) -- they are well written pieces with commentary, insights, and opinions that I value.

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[Beorytis]

...beautiful magazines...

Best. Euphemism. Ever.

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[damnbunni]

By completely changing your content type?

The website Cracked is pretty much nothing like the long-running magazine Cracked.

Cracked was a fairly successful ripoff of MAD. The problem, and it's the same one MAD faces, is that you can't really parody pop culture any more because it's become self-parodying. MAD stays in business, but just barely. There doesn't seem to be room for more than one mag in that segment now, though.

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[tylikcat]

The Economist and Science are my top two... though I mostly read them both online (and my roommate reads the print versions because it's cheaper to buy the print versions than online only.)

I've let my New Yorker subscription lapse, but will probably resubscribe one of these days. (I'm a doctoral student who lives in a zen center and teaches martial arts. Not a lot of time. Or money, for that matter. But mostly, the back issues were getting ahead of me, and I felt guilty every time I looked at the pile.)

I'm considering picking up The Smithsonian - it'd be a nice change of pace, and it's only a monthly.

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[camperdave]

You bother carrying one on a plane? What's wrong with the dozens of movies, tv shows, and documentaries showing on the screen built into the back of the seat in front of you? (other than the fact that they cut out whenever the flight crew decides to make an announcement.)

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[PopeRatzo]

You bother carrying one on a plane? What's wrong with the dozens of movies, tv shows, and documentaries showing on the screen built into the back of the seat in front of you?

The cheap-ass airline I fly on mostly doesn't have such niceties as a magic picture box on the back of the seat in front of me.

Hell, I'm surprised they still have toilet paper in the bathroom. Last time I flew I swear I saw one of the stewardesses fueling the plane before takeoff. This is the airline that declared bankruptcy and took all the employees' pensions to pay bonuses to management (the same management who took the company into bankruptcy in the first place).

Although they're not really serious about cutting costs, because when I recommended that they jettison the crying baby in the seat behind me in order to save weight (and thus, jet fuel) they acted like they didn't hear me.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Oh just that fact that a lot of airlines / flights don't have them. Or, the ones that do often want to charge you $10 per flight to use them. Now, granted - when I take a business class international flight the screen there is fine and I can watch movies, play games, etc. But most of my flights within the US either don't have them or want extra money to watch them (unless you are in first class which my company will not pay for).

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[Anubis IV]

I am happy to pay for these publications because they are well written, well edited, and have content that is not easily available elsewhere.

Sure, except that they're all available online or in a digital format (e.g. eBook).

The Economist's
National Geographic
Harper's
Paris Review
The New York Review of Books
Granta
Foreign Affairs

Granta and The Paris Review appear to only have digital versions available, but the rest provide logins and a means to access the full content of each article online, from what I can gather. And, honestly, if you're interested in supporting these magazines, shouldn't you be reading them on a screen anyway, since the printing and distribution account for some of their largest costs?

I do believe something is lost in the experience when we switch to screens from paper, but I also believe that it is largely outweighed by the convenience of easier access, the availability of more content at any given moment, and the lower costs for content creators. And for someone like you, who seems to believe that content is king, I'm surprised you wouldn't agree.

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[PolygamousRanchKid]

Sure, except that they're all available online or in a digital format (e.g. eBook).

The print version of The Economist is better for reading in the bathtub. And, no, I'm not joking, I do that.

The danger about doing that is that I get so interested, and forget to get out until I look like E.T.

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[Zeromous]

>Some magazines may have a limited shelf life, but they don't need batteries or a charge. .

Naw, just giant spindles, vegetable inks, nasty glosses and a ton of energy waste.

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[guanxi]

At least The Economist, Foreign Affairs, and the NYRB are available online.

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[Anonymous Coward]

He did say 'other than'.

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[fast turtle]

then you haven't used "DNI" direct neural input. Much faster then paper or even computer. Just turn it on and get what ever news the government wants you to think today.

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[gander666]

Agreed. I am down to the Economist, and Physics Today.

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[Jarik C-Bol]

compared to the manufacturing process for tablets, smartphones, e-readers, Personal computers, batteries, et al? At least paper is easy to recycle.

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[gander666]

I subscribe to The Economist. I read some of it online, but I find that I typically will read the dead tree version cover to cover. On my iPad or on the web I skip a lot of the European and British content. So for me, the paper version is superior.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Really? I told my father that I read Cracked.com everyday. He asked what it was and I said "It's a humor..." Then he interrupted me and asked if it was based on the magazine. Apparently, growing up he was a much bigger fan of Cracked than MAD. But maybe that was just a peer-reinforced preference: everyone read and liked cracked because that is what everyone else read and liked in his town.

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[Zeromous]

I didn't realize Li Ion was bad for the environment. Fact is its highly recyclable!

Also computers need not be toxic waste either.

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[metlin]

I am happy to pay for these publications because they are well written, well edited, and have content that is not easily available elsewhere.

Sure, except that they're all available online or in a digital format (e.g. eBook).

You seem to be equating elsewhere with not online. I made no such distinction. I merely meant that I am happy to pay for the content, immaterial of where it is published (online or in print).

Similar quality publications are not available for, say, free, or easily accessible on someone's blog. Elsewhere includes the realm of both online and print media.

So, it is rather impossible to find the same quality and type of content elsewhere (online or otherwise) consistently, which was my point.

Although I do prefer the print editions because I am less distracted, and more likely to finish my magazines cover-to-cover.

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[stymy]

Never heard of National Geographic, have you?

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[djlowe]

None... The Internet has replaced the function of magazines.

. Your current +5, Insightful moderation notwithstanding, I'm afraid that I must disagree, for one magazine, at least, for me.

That magazine is Maximum PC. Now, before you condemn me for that, let me explain.

I subscribed to boot magazine, from day one.Still have them all, somewhere. When boot was replaced by Maximum PC, I just let it ride: For me, the value was in getting current information delivered to me, in hardcopy, that I could read when I wanted to, WITHOUT needing a computer, Internet access, to do so.

No distractions, while so doing, on my time, spent focusing on things that *I* found cool and interesting.

To generalize this: In my opinion, the very nature of the Internet, it's immediacy, it's never-ending progress, has blunted our ability to reflect, to consider... and, in a very real way, our ability to make good decisions: We are now bombarded by never-ending changing information, from myriad sources of unknown/unverifiable veracity.

Sadly, so many of you, as the parent poster, accept this as the norm. Static sources of information, regardless of truth, usefulness, are discounted, dismissed and disregarded on their face,

And, as I write this, I am reminded of this: "Those that cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". George Santayana, of course.

But, his admonition is even MORE urgent now, in "Internet Time", I think. In "Internet Time, what is current becomes the past, and is forgotten all too quickly, replaced, over and over, until there is NOTHING but a never-ending blur, a never-ending reaction to the present, and no past, no context upon which to rely, after thought, consideration.

But it doesn't have to be that way, you know. You CAN choose. You CAN decide. You can think, reflect and make decisions, and you CAN, each of you, do so with access to the best raw source of knowledge that we, as human beings, have ever created.

What you DO with that is up to you.

Only now, NONE of you have the excuse of ignorance: You have, as I write this, and you read it, access to much of the best knowledge that human beings have EVER learned and recorded, and that grows larger every day.

And it is YOURS, for the taking, for free, at your convenience, should you so desire.

I wrote here, previously, that what saddens me the most is that, having access to an ocean of knowledge, too few of you will even attempt to swim, much less set sail upon it, perhaps beyond its sunset.

But, it is, what it is.

Regards,

dj

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[oldhack]

This is the airline that declared bankruptcy and took all the employees' pensions to pay bonuses to management...

Well, that narrows it down.

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[Beeftopia]

I'll typically read a magazine over a meal, or while waiting for something.

Print is physically flexible and tough, and doesn't require a network connection.

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[Cryacin]

Have you actually *seen* any Arnold Schwarzenegger movies from the 80's? Try Hercules in New York, Conan(s) et al. The only good one was the Terminator, as it required him to act like a meathead robot which he pulled off flawlessly.

The same comparison's can be made for Die Hard, and any movie with Mel Gibson in it (except for Mad Max I and II, where he was still Australian).

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[Anonymous Coward]

It's very bad. But hey, maybe you can snort some to cure your crazy thoughts.

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[doom]

Yes, many publications are available on-line and in print form, and myself I actually think they complement each other fairly well. I read "The New York Review of Books" in print form on the train or in the bath, and occasionaly search their on-line archive to see what they were saying several decades ago.

It was particularly interesting to notice that they published Noam Chomsky regularly in the sixties, and then suddenly stopped, with his last publication in 1970. Your guess is as good as mine why they cut him off, but I've a strong suspicion it has to do with the Israel-Palestine issue...

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[Anonymous Coward]

>> Cracked.com [cracked.com] is a perfect example of how to move from a print publication to an online model.
> By completely changing your content type?

Yep.

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[Anonymous Coward]

National Geographic on the iPad is the sexiest magazine ever - its interactive with movies and pictures you can zoom into, and far higher resolution than the print version.

A subscription to the print version in australia can cost over $120 with postage, a tiny $20 and so worth it on the ipad

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[Stuarticus]

Tell that to the people of Agbogbloshie.

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[unixisc]

None... The Internet has replaced the function of magazines.

Fully agree. I've stopped reading slaughtered trees any more. Everything I read or watch is online, apart from what I see on TV. Once in a while, I may buy PC Magazine, but otherwise, no.

In the 90s, I used to read BYTE, which was my favorite, bar none - I was actually a subscriber. After the magazine shut down, I followed it online for a while, but then lost track. Recently, I know BYTE has been 'resurrected', but it's no longer the same. While Pournelle is there, it's not the same w/o Jon Udell & Tom Halfhill. Anyway, nowadays, I use /.

Outside BYTE, I do follow a few websites for political, sports & entertainment, but not much else.

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[freedom_india]

OK, what on internet then? I compiled Zite and Flipboard. I also subscribe to Astronomy, Space, Smithsonian, People and a host of Kindle magazines.

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[dwsobw]

Maybe. But I really hate the paper they print on. It always seems like I can read the front and back of it at the same time ...

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[Anonymous Coward]

"Recycling" a Li Ion battery involves roasting it at 1000 oC, and burning the electrolyte produces toxic gasses, including hydrogen fluoride (HF). Li Ion batteries require cobalt and lithium, both of which must be mined, purified, and recombined. Cobalt production produces waste acid, sulfur, arsenic, and mercury. Lithium itself is mostly refined from dried sea salts, and is generally less toxic than other metal mining, but Li and its natural salts are neuroactive and can be neurotoxic. The massive amounts of energy required to produce and recycle Li Ion batteries has to come from somewhere; very often coal. One of the best ways to make the lithium ion uses Li(NO3) and Co(NO3)2, both toxic oxidizers whose production requires lots of nitric acid.

Everything is "bad for the environment." Just because the Li Ion batteries, themselves, are less toxic than lead acid or alkaline, doesn't mean their whole production chain is rainbows and unicorns.

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[squiggleslash]

It's made a lot of magazines obsolete, but not all.

There are two reasons for subscribing to an actual physical paper magazine: one is that certain topics don't always get the type of coverage you're looking for. That is, virtually all topics will get some coverage on the Internet, but it'll generally be "new product news" and "instructions on how to...". Magazines? More likely to include half way decent commentary of the kind that cannot be found in a Disqus thread.

A second reason is that the magazine pushes topics to you which the Internet is only half good at it. The Internet manages to do this quite well for politics and tech news, but the more conservative the industry, the less likely it is you're going to stray into something unusual. (Which is not to say it never happens, anyone who visits Wikipedia and finds they don't have at least ten tabs open of stuff they'll read later by the end of the session isn't doing it properly. But that information is kind of static and limited by the nature of what you'd find in Wikipedia.)

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[tehcyder]

The only times I've been on a plane with movies have been transatlantic flights. Easyjet et al don't bother with frills like that for trips around Europe, and I entirely agree with them. Same as food. Does anyone really miss not having a tiny little microwaved bowl of shit given to them in return for doubling the ticket price?

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[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a doctoral student who lives in a zen center and teaches martial arts.

And bet you give the BEST parties.

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[tehcyder]

And, honestly, if you're interested in supporting these magazines, shouldn't you be reading them on a screen anyway, since the printing and distribution account for some of their largest costs?

That's a pretty odd argument. They don't give the print versions away for free, you know.

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[tehcyder]

I'll typically read a magazine over a meal

Let me guess, you're American and eat with just a fork in your right hand?

Un-fucking-believable.

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[tehcyder]

Speaking of which, who buys printed porn any more anyway? That is definitely one area where video and the internet have transformed things for the better.

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[Anubis IV]

Sure they do. Every magazine that provides an online version without charging extra or breaking it out as a separate charge could be said to be offering a complimentary print copy with each copy of their online edition.

And even for those that do break out the costs appropriately or don't offer an online version, as print subscription counts continue to decrease, fixed costs (e.g. the salaries of the folks working the presses) continue to increase as a percentage of their operating expenses, meaning that the per capita cost for each copy is increasing, yet we don't see magazine prices going up to compensate for that problem very often these days.

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[datavirtue]

I enjoy sitting down with Inc. magazine; they still have a viable dead tree following.

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[V for Vendetta]

Let me guess, you're American and eat with just a fork in your right hand?

Ever heard of that new-fangled invention called "table"?

Lay magazine beside your dish, have two hands for using fork/spoon/knife. Flip pages as needed.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? Mel Gibson? Are you insane? You've never seen "Braveheart" or "The Patriot"? Great movies with great acting (Patriot had René Auberjonois from DS9 as an added nerd treat). The Mad Max series was just popcorn films that were nothing but entertainment, but the acting was excellent there, too. The same could be said of Die Hard, unbelievably over the top, but the acting was excelent and the only thing that made those movies worth watching.

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[bobthecow]

I still read the Economist on paper because the electronic version is more expensive than the print version. Plus, this way I don't have to spend money for a device to read it on every few years.

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[spudnic]

Wait until something happens to the grid and tell me how much my collection of printed magazines I got off of eBay is going to be worth.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Tehcyder: You got served! (cue music)

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[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure that jettisoning you instead would save even more fuel.

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[PopeRatzo]

I'm pretty sure that jettisoning you instead would save even more fuel.

Yeah, but see, I'm paying and that little baby didn't look like it had two nickels to rub together.

It turned out OK in the end because when I took down my carry-on bag from the overhead compartment, I banged one of the wheels against the soft spot on the baby's head. You know, just to show him who's boss.

Push vs. Pull

[dtmos]

Print publications are literally put into my hand, giving me more incentive to read them upon receipt. Web sites require an active effort on my part to go read them, which is often not done due to my habit of procrastination ("I'll take time to check that tomorrow"). Even email links to my monthly periodicals go unused, for similar reasons.

To me, it's the difference between polling- and interrupt-driven systems. The processor has to be constantly (or at least repetitively) awake to poll, while the processor can be asleep and awoken by an interrupt. The interrupt-based system is usually the lower-energy way to go.

Re:Push vs. Pull

[Sir_Eptishous]

Thats the best analogy I've seen yet to print reading versus web. Well done.

Re:Push vs. Pull

[oGMo]

Yes if only there were some sort of Rich Site Summary that could be published by websites that would allow a piece of software ... let's call it an aggregator to be fancy, or maybe just a reader... to pull content for you, much like a mail delivery person. If you found a site you liked, you could just click on a link to subscribe, and your friends could share articles and feeds with you. Google should get on this!

Re:Push vs. Pull

[PRMan]

Yes. But it has to be Really Simple Syndication in order to work...

Re:Push vs. Pull

[dtmos]

to pull content for you . . . and your friends could share articles and feeds with you.

Yeah, thanks for that 21st-Century update -- I'll be sure to check out RSS RSN.

The trouble with such schemes is that they assume that I know a priori what information I either want or need, and that is almost never the case. It's hard to learn new stuff when the information to which you're exposed is pre-filtered to include only the stuff you think you want to hear. (It may harden one's political beliefs, but I wouldn't consider that a good thing.)

One of the benefits of a print journal is that I get exposed to a wide variety of subject matter, including stuff I either didn't know existed, or thought I wouldn't find interesting, giving me a chance to learn new things and change my opinions.

Re:Push vs. Pull

[tylikcat]

And for me it's just the opposite - I sit down at my computer frequently. I not infrequently am sitting at my computer and want a mental break - and oh look, there's the SCOTUS blog tab! (Or Science, or The Economist...)

Re:Push vs. Pull

[oGMo]

Then take 20 seconds and search the web for real sources of information, not Slashdot or Random J Dude's blog about Java and how vaccines are giving us autism or whatever. Subscribe to the ACM or similar for your field and get access to great deals of actual research. Not cheap, but neither are print journals, and the coverage is far better.

Complaining about information not coming to you and that you have to discover it is pretty lazy in a very bad way. Assuming your slim selection of reading is actually giving you a broad picture of what's going on, especially if you're only reading a few sources, is only fooling yourself. However, the technology to actually collate information into an easy-to-read list obviously already exists.

Re:Push vs. Pull

[Baton Rogue]

Yes if only there were some sort of Rich Site Summary that could be published by websites

I have many times subscribed to website newsletters and RSS feeds, but as the parent stated, I usually say "eh, I'll read that later" and often times never get around to it. Since it is digital, and takes up an insignificant space on my computer or gmail account, I don't care if it goes unread. With printed magazines, I see it sitting on the table every time I walk by, and am constantly asked by my wife to read the magazine so she can throw it out, so I tend to read them sooner. I also like to read them while taking my daily #2, and to me, reading a tablet while on the john just seems wrong.

Re:Push vs. Pull

[Anubis IV]

I'm assuming you're familiar with RSS, so I'm surprised you'd make this analogy, given that RSS provides the exact same interrupt that you're talking about. Having to go out and find the articles to read is indeed annoying, tedious, and a disincentive to reading them in general. But RSS brings them to your virtual doorstep just as easily as a mailman brings a magazine to your mailbox (which more likely than not is not at your doorstep, in fact).

Re:Push vs. Pull

[dantotheman]

True, tablets while on the john are definitely better suited for playing angry birds or similar.

Re:Push vs. Pull

[dtmos]

Humph. Don't insult people you don't know. I am a Fellow of the IEEE, and have been an IEEE member for more than thirty years. (In fact, I was a member of the ACM for more than ten years.) I probably have downloaded a thousand articles from IEEExplore since it was created (my books are very well referenced, I like to think), and there's nothing I like better than using the web to research obscure technical topics on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Of course the technology to collate information into an easy-to-read list already exists. That's not the point. The issue is determining which information is collated. By telling the software tool what information you want to see, you are inherently determining what information you will not see. This limits what you can learn. How can you be exposed to new areas of interest if your RSS feeds only present you with news from fields in which you already have an interest?

Searching for something on IEEExplore is qualitatively different from getting an issue of JSSC in the mail. The purpose of the search engine is to exclude everything except what I have requested. The paper copy of JSSC, on the other hand, has its Table of Contents on the cover, and it's harder to find a wider distribution of circuit technologies listed in one spot anywhere else. Suddenly, I find myself reading an article on ferroelectric RAM, or distributed amplification, or biasing of Indium Phosphide mixers -- things I never would have realized that I would find interesting. The effect is even stronger when reading the journals Science and Nature.

When I am on the Web, I prefer to peruse sites with a wide variety of subject matter -- arXiv is fun to browse, as is Eurekalert!, although the latter has a pretty high PR content. The "Random article" link on Wikipedia is also a good source of things one doesn't know. But to stay up-to-date, it's far easier to pick up the latest paper copy of Science News on the coffee table.

Re:Push vs. Pull

[Deekin_Scalesinger]

Seriously??? Vaccines give you autism? Whatever frigging dead trees land in your mailbox, please cancel them. Clearly your facts are out of wack.

Everyone knows that vaccines give you CANCER, not autism. Some people *shakes head sadly*

Re:Push vs. Pull

[Deekin_Scalesinger]

As a fellow member of the IEEE, I can attest to the wealth of articles on IEEExplore. It's possible I am one of the dunces of the IEEE, but man, some of those articles wind up in serious egghead land for me. Some scary smart people belong to this organization...

Re:Push vs. Pull

[justthinkit]

Print publications are literally put into my hand, giving me more incentive to read them upon receipt. Web sites require an active effort on my part to go read them
.

Then you must love telemarketers.

But seriously, print magazines are the worst way to receive information, hence their current dilemma. The only thing keeping tech publications alive is we can be handed them to read on a flight, or grab one to read while we are in the can. They are months behind, have limited material in each issue (compared to the net) and cost money. What chance do they have?

RSS auto-pulling is the way to go. The only thing is how it is implemented. Taking library systems, for example, I find our 3 different county library systems doing RSS 3 different ways: (a) RSS for new DVDs & CDs only, (b) separate RSS feeds for DVDs, and CDs, (c) no RSS feeds at all in the third county.

It is beyond me why more sites haven't gone for a whole range of RSS feeds. Maybe they have but do not promote them -- I rarely even see the RSS icon. Strange.

Re:Push vs. Pull

[tehcyder]

True, tablets while on the john are definitely better suited for playing angry birds or similar.

Is "playing angry birds" some sort of euphemism for wanking?

None.

[Anonymous Coward]

I only read the free mag from The Planetary Society, because it comes free with the membership.

Monthly Review

[Anonymous Coward]

Monthly Review.
Hey, even Einstein liked it (wrote an article for their first edition)!

Active web user, still read periodicals

[shbazjinkens]

There's really no substitute on the web (for free) that replaces quality scientific periodicals. If I want to know about some uncommon subject, often the only way to get that information is by paying a credible source to deliver it regularly. The news-media and blogosphere aren't particularly interested in detailing the latest way to detect carbon nanotubes of a particular chirality, or the latest low-energy method of measuring gas flow. That's why I'm still an IEEE member, among other organizations.

Re:Active web user, still read periodicals

[ad5mqesj]

Absolutely - I read SCIENCE (pub of the AAAS) a bit everyday, learn not only about things in my field but all sorts of interesting things in other fields that I would be very unlikely to encounter elsewhere. I like to format too - a paragraph or two covering the high points for the technically literate non-specialist, a slightly more detailed summary later on, and the full blown paper for those who want all the gory details. Once a month I donate the 4 or 5 issues from the last month to the local library (I live in a very rural area and the library can't afford to subscribe to such things itself). According to the librarian it's quite popular.

Re:Active web user, still read periodicals

[nbauman]

Right. I read Science and the New England Journal of Medicine.

In principle, I could read them on an e-reader, and I'm sure some day there will be an e-reader to match paper, but it's not here yet.

Re:Active web user, still read periodicals

[Anonymous Coward]

Consumer grade: Scientific American, Astronomy, Sky & Telescope, F&SF, Wired
Academic: IEEE Compute, NN, Fuzzy, GA; ACM Comms, TMS; INNS

First group because they are easy to read while away from my computer and they have insightful articles/stories. Second group for my job, even though I loath IEEE's copyright position.

The thing about hard-copy is that it's easy to flip through, to surprise yourself with things. Electronic media are great for finding and reading exactly what you want, but it tends to kill exploration. I don't read as many conference papers, now that they're on DVDs.

Re:Active web user, still read periodicals

[yenic]

There's really no substitute on the web (for free) that replaces quality scientific periodicals. If I want to know about some uncommon subject, often the only way to get that information is by paying a credible source to deliver it regularly. The news-media and blogosphere aren't particularly interested in detailing the latest way to detect carbon nanotubes of a particular chirality, or the latest low-energy method of measuring gas flow. That's why I'm still an IEEE member, among other organizations.

There isn't a newsgroup or email list that has that information being discussed? Just curious.

Re:Active web user, still read periodicals

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

For physics, mathematics, and computer science there's the Arxiv.

WIRED

[bigjarom]

I still have a subscription to the physical version of Wired, and the content is top-notch - when I do read it; but I usually don't read it in that format. It's all online, and sitting down with a magazine is just not something I ever think to do anymore. I will very likely not renew.

Re:WIRED

[Anonymous Coward]

Wired used to be a great magazine until they switched their format a couple years back. Dropped it since it seemed to be full of Advertisements only, instead of true tech articles. It just sucks now, and no longer has any content that's worth paying for. (Electronic or Print version)

Re:WIRED

[Anonymous Coward]

Journal of Electronic Defense
National Geographic.

I know, I'm old, I'm 34. However, the print editions don't have push notifications and the comments section is moderated and generally has intelligent comments.

Re:WIRED

[naroom]

Yes, it was exactly when they started the digital version of the magazine. The advertising started to take up increasing space in the magazine. The worst were the not-too-subtle iProducts sentences interspersed into articles apparently at random.

New Yorker

[HighBit]

The New Yorker's commentary is often insightful, and I read it regularly. I also occasionally read The Atlantic.

In general, magazines (either print or online) are still where one goes to get well-researched, long-form articles.

Re:New Yorker

[retchdog]

Tomorrow, the first thing you do is go down to the newsstand and get Harper's.

Re:New Yorker

[bemymonkey]

"In general, magazines (either print or online) are still where one goes to get well-researched, long-form articles."

Unless you know anything at all about the topic at hand, in which case it quickly becomes apparent that "well-researched" is hardly ever the case. This becomes especially apparent when you're reading tech magazines as someone who regularly browses Slashdot. *shudders*

Consumer Reports

[Anonymous Coward]

Consumer Reports was the last magazine I purchased. I purchased an issue when I was shopping for a TV. I don't subscribe to any paper publications. Don't even get the newspaper. Paper is a poor substitute for the web.

They still have magazines?

[dgatwood]

I think the last time I regularly read a magazine was around the turn of the century. Ditto for newspapers. Subject-specific news aggregators like Slashdot have pretty much superseded magazines in every way that matters. Newspapers, on the other hand, are still occasionally useful as packing material.

Re:They still have magazines?

[roc97007]

I bought a newspaper last Sunday. The bird cages needed to be cleaned.

Just for old time's sake, I pulled out the want-ads, intending to look in a couple categories... I couldn't believe that those four skimpy pages were the entire Sunday want-ads. It used to be an entire separate section of the newspaper. One of the categories I was looking for didn't even exist.

I'm a little surprised that newspapers manage to stay in business.

Re:They still have magazines?

[pbasch]

I still think newsPAPERS provide a value proposition not matched by internet news sources, even from the same publisher. In a newspaper will be far more likely to see articles I haven't explicitly hunted for, thereby exposing me to more unexpected material. On the internet I'll generally get only a narrow range of articles that I have searched for. And paper is just easier to read; legible in any light, batteries not needed, light and foldable... lots of reasons.

Re:They still have magazines?

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought a newspaper last Sunday. The bird cages needed to be cleaned.

Just for old time's sake[...]

Just for old times' sake, I took a shit on the front page and wiped my ass with the sports section, because my truly irrational yet unquenchable HATE of paper products drives me to openly remind people at any chance I get how much I don't use and don't care about them, all thanks to my all-or-nothing gadgetwhore nature. Hey, did I mention what I do with my TV — yes, that one that I keep reminding everyone I don't watch — because of how much I HATE HATE HATE it? Well, I... hey, where are you going? I'm a more culturally important human being than yoooooooou!

Re:They still have magazines?

[roc97007]

I bought a newspaper last Sunday. The bird cages needed to be cleaned.

Just for old time's sake[...]

Just for old times' sake, I took a shit on the front page and wiped my ass with the sports section

What a coincidence. So did the birds.

Re:They still have magazines?

[tlhIngan]

I still think newsPAPERS provide a value proposition not matched by internet news sources, even from the same publisher. In a newspaper will be far more likely to see articles I haven't explicitly hunted for, thereby exposing me to more unexpected material. On the internet I'll generally get only a narrow range of articles that I have searched for. And paper is just easier to read; legible in any light, batteries not needed, light and foldable... lots of reasons.

That's the reason I still read newspapers in deadtree. Online is a clickfest and since pulling information is "hard" and incurs latency, I read a lot less articles - only the ones I'm interested in.

But read it in paper format, and my eyes may come across an interest photo or a subtitle or a paragraph and end up reading an article I never would've read otherwise. It's a great way to expand your horizons and become more aware of the world. Or learn something new and unrelated. It's something I've not found replicated reliably online - it's way too easy to specialize and lose focus of the bigger picture. Or just to see a different viewpoint on the world.

I'll miss them when they're gone...

[Anonymous Coward]

Rolling Stone. The New Yorker. Occasionally others.

I read one or two a month, maybe...

[rajanala83]

German magazine "Neon", for young adults, maybe every other month. Then "Laborjournal", a free publication about biology-related stuff. And sometimes a American magazine "Esquire". None of the three really regularly, but sometimes I like to look at something else than the screen, and they're a nice distraction in the garden or or the train.

Linux Format

[FrostedWheat]

It reminds me a lot of the old Amiga magazines, and indeed has more than a few of the same writers. Though the cover disk is not as important these days it still comes in useful now and then.

Re:Linux Format

[westyvw]

I too like linux format. Great monthly magazine. I really enjoy finding out about new software or techniques that I may not have heard about or tried before. Beats the other linux mags hands down too.

doctor's offices

[roc97007]

...the ones with no or spotty wifi... Other than that, none.

a few

[stephencrane]

On paper, I still sometimes read Economist and Foreign Affairs. The Economist is just a great grab as you're walking out. It's light, and so much content that's at minimum vaguely interesting that you're never at risk of running out of something to read for the day.

Re:a few

[Broodje]

The Economist is a great magazine. It's the only one I read cover to cover.

None

[azav]

What I would relish though is a magazine reader like a 17" touch screen iPad, but one with the smoothness of display of the iPad and the ease on the eyes of the liquidInk of the Kindle.

I WANT this.

I want it for reading PDFs of programming manuals, for reading beautiful magazines, for browsing beautiful coffee table books in digital format.

None

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem is all that i used to read ( like Omni, BYTE, etc ) are all gone. What is left isn't worth paying a subscription for, be it paper or digital.

Heh...

[Anonymous Coward]

2600...

iPad only

[Dixie_Flatline]

I read Wired and Cook's Illustrated and some cycling magazines. Both Wired and Cook's Illustrated are better than the print versions. Even small amounts of interactivity really make them fun to flip through. This is how Wired was always meant to be, if you ask me.

It's better than just reading off the website because someone has taken the time to really curate the layout and the videos and package everything just so. It's a step above in terms of polish. And, of course, I can read it off-line. (Though the videos don't work.)

One caveat: when I fly, I buy tonnes of shitty magazines that I'd never normally read. I usually also grab a newspaper. It just doesn't feel like a properly flight without it.

Re:iPad only

[jrumney]

This is how Wired was always meant to be, if you ask me.

Wired was always meant to be how it was in 1993 - 1996 or so. Before every second page became an advertisement and the articles became superficial coverage of fashionable tech news for dotcom hipsters.

Re:iPad only

[Dixie_Flatline]

Well, I'll give it to you on the ad front. I have some nostalgia for the Wired of old--silver print on a magenta background, having to rotate the entire magazine in circles so you could read a story that spiraled from the outside to the centre...but ultimately, that wasn't the best way to get information. I also miss how thick the magazine was. For $5, you had something that would take hours and hours to read. But the new layouts and designs and embedded, moving data...it really is a top-notch magazine experience.

Not since EGM died (the first time)

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't subscribed to a magazine for over a decade. I miss the glossy pages and new-magazine smell, but interactive content and up-to-the-minute information trump a pack-in CD every time.

Plus, you know, I live for the comments now. Back in the day you had to bust your ass to get featured in a magazine as a letter-writer, now your comments show up whether they like it or not!

Playboy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Know it's a long standing joke, but the articles are actually well written across a broad spectrum. My husband doesn't mind the pictures either. ;) Still love the tactile feel of real books too. (Yes I have an e-reader as well). But sometimes I don't want to take one to the beach and risk it getting soaked or stolen.
Unfortunately with electronic media, we lose the ability to loan/share a lot of the content; which I think is the biggest loss of all. Heck, I would consider buying more e-books if they were only $1-$3, but generally you don't see a discount between the two (or maybe a $1 discount). Just not worth the expense at this point...

Re:Playboy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Playboy's got articles?! :D

Anyway for me it's PCWorld, though half the articles in there are more about smartphones than the x86-based stuff.

Re:Playboy!

[Dionysus]

Does Playboy still have any good articles? I know they used to (some of the interviews were really interesting), but last time I picked up one (couple of years now), it had turned into a FHM/Maxim wannabe. Still the playmates pictures, of course, but the articles had become fluff pieces.

Scifi/Technical

[Deltaspectre]

I had a subscription for Analog and Asimov on my Nook, but the terrible quality of the ebook edition (missing paragraphs, no logical separation between chapters, etc) made me drop the subscription months ago. Right now, I just have a couple of IEEE magazines coming in, good for reading when I'm stuck at the airport. I find it hard to get time to read magazine articles lately, because they fall between reading short summaries on Slashdot (preference at work) and reading a good book (preference at home).

Re:Scifi/Technical

[Cap'nPedro]

There was a $12 (ish) surcharge to get IEEE Spectrum as a print edition instead of digital so I opted for that to get an extra tangible benefit out of my membership. I don't value digital media, possibly due to a lifetime of piracy.

These are good

[Sir_Eptishous]

1. MOJO
2. National Geographic
3. New York Times Magazine(some of the best writing out there)

2600!

[Anonymous Coward]

I still pick up a copy of 2600, but mostly just for the artwork.

Re:2600!

[Anonymous Coward]

I second that one! Especially since I can pay cash anonymously and not end up on a "list" somewhere.

Re:2600!

[RabidReindeer]

I second that one! Especially since I can pay cash anonymously and not end up on a "list" somewhere.

Look over there! See that camera? Heh, heh, heh.

Science News

[Anonymous Coward]

I read Science News regularly. They've got a good web presence too, but I keep subscribed to them for their really deep archives and because I like the physical magazine.

None

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't read a magazine since I was a teen. I don't really subscribe to fixed online publishers either, just read whatever takes my fancy from the huge numbers of links flying around irc and twitter.

Scientific American

[The Raven]

Scientific American still has full articles, without interspersed ads, at a high reading level, on usually interesting topics. They are the only physical magazine I don't mind picking up. I am sad they lost the mathematical recreations section.

Re:Scientific American

[Anonymous Coward]

American Scientist. It's about at the same level as Scientific American, but the editors aren't so fascinated with cosmology and black holes - seems they present a lot more science and engineering on a human scale, you know, flora and fauna, buildings and bridges. AND they usually have some neat recreational math and information theory pieces.

Re:Scientific American

[Adam Jorgensen]

Yup, I love my SciAm subscription. Ditched New Scientist a few years back after they started padding with advertising so such an extent it became a waste of paper.

POLICE Magazine

[Anonymous Coward]

I still get the snail mail issues and also the digital edition of POLICE Magazine.

Physics Today

[Anonymous Coward]

Physics Today (comes with APS membership) --- neat articles on a wide range of physics topics, aimed at reasonably well educated readers (anyone with college-level education in a STEM field, and even ambitious high school students, would be able to understand and enjoy the articles). A nice step in-between the terrible trashy "pop physics for people who can't understand algebra" press and reading straight journal articles.

Science News!

[dovf]

As in http://www.sciencenews.org/ (but my dad and I share a print subscription). Been reading it cover-to-cover for the past 17 years at least...

Re:Science News!

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely! Actually in thinking about it this is the only print periodical I read anymore. 36 years for me...

c't

[Anonymous Coward]

C't is the top computer magazine in Germany. Their online newsticker is among the most visited German web sites and they make the tool which is used for testing the integrity of USB thumbdrives all over the world: h2testw. It is available in print and online with the same content.

New versions of old media

[Punchcardz]

I still read magazines but do so on my iPad Wired, Vanity Fair, The Economist, Field and Stream. What? I like fishing. I also read the iPad version of the NYT every morning with my coffee.

Also on Slashdot.jp

[mutube]

Can you sex with robot? 9% say yes!

If you're looking for an answer to the slow decline of Slashdot.org here it is: .jp has the news that matters!

Re:Also on Slashdot.jp

[mutube]

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice won't get sex with robot again.

Re:Also on Slashdot.jp

[ArcadeMan]

Given that we're talking about Slashdot Japan, the survey should be a multiple choice question:
- Tentacles
- Android
- Demon
- Virtual idol

Re:Also on Slashdot.jp

[AmiMoJo]

That's actually a pretty interesting debate. Note that the survey is of Americans so there is a lot of speculation as to why people in the US would be less inclined to screw a robot than those from Japan.

The two main theories are that Japanese robots in anime tend to be human like, and that Americans feel human-like robots are encroaching on God's turf (because if we can create something as good or better than a human...)

Bookstores and magazine racks

[braindrainbahrain]

I'd be inclined to buy a magazine or two (Wired, Ham Radio stuff, science fiction and the like, or even Bitch magazine) if there was a bookstore near me where I could browse the rack. Sadly, all the bookstores are gone now.

Premier Guitar

[blackmonday]

Premier Guitar posts all their content online for free, but the paper version is perfect for me. Hey that rhymes I better go write a song...

Private Eye

[Col. Bloodnok]

Private Eye is the last bastion of decent satire and serious investigative journalism "In the Back".

I also read New Scientist, but that's been declining in quality for years. I think they should switch to a bi-monthly edition, and really concentrate on improving the content. I haven't bought it for years, but I do read it at the library from time to time.

Re:Private Eye

[Alain Williams]

I also read both of those, I get them on subscription. There are also a few society/clubs that I am a member of that produce things.

Re:Private Eye

[Col. Bloodnok]

I forgot to mention the Private Eye cryptic crossword. I love it.

http://private-eye.co.uk/sections.php?section_link=crossword

Set by Cyclops (Brummie in the Graun), it usually contains some absolutely hilarious clues, and is often extremely rude.

No Fluff Just Stuff

[Fezzick]

I read No Fluff Just Stuff... lots of advanced developer articles written by people who actually know what they are talking about. Aptly named publication!

A Magazine?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like those things the government is trying to reduce the number of bullets in to violate our second amendment rights? What is there to read on those, the instructions?

The Economist

[imlepid]

I read The Economist (every week) and I am constantly amazed by its quality and informativeness. Although, I must mention, I technically don't read most of it since I consume the Audio Edition during my commute to work. The articles I don't get to during the week (because my commute is slightly shorter than the average audio edition length) I typically try to catch up on with the dead-tree edition that is delivered. If the USPS ever ends Saturday delivery that's one thing I'll miss: getting my delivery of the economist before Monday.

The subscription price is a little steep (about US$120), I feel like I could not go without it.

Re:The Economist

[Hackysack]

I also read the Economist. It's a very informative magazine, packed with information on any given week. I do still read the dead-tree edition of it too. One of it's strengths is the near complete lack of advertising. Well worth killing a few trees over.

Re:The Economist

[desertfool]

Down thread I list The Economist as well. I discovered early on that I can't get through it cover to cover in a week. I wish I had the time to read all of it every week. But, damn, it is the best of all the ones I read. It may be expensive but it is worth every cent. It is one that I and Mrs. Fool will not give up.

Re:The Economist

[imlepid]

I found it hard to complete every issue every week until I discovered the aforementioned audio edition. Now my drive to work is much more bearable (bordering on a pleasure!). If you have a short (or no) commute, YMMV of course. :)

Re:The Economist

[desertfool]

Short commute (I live in a small city/metro area) so I listen to WPR/NPR when I drive to and from work.

Re:The economist

[Anonymous Coward]

The articles are too long to read online, and too short to put on a book reader

Really? Calibre will pull down the latest articles from The Economist (and lots of other news sites) and compile them into an epub (or mobi if you prefer) ready to load on your ereader with minimum effort. Works nicely on my Kobo Mini (or it did before I broke the screen).

Re:The Economist

[Anonymous Coward]

I too would find it hard to give up my Economist subscription; it is simply the best in it's class by miles.

No sensationalism, huge in scope, (from politics to headline news to science to art and yes, even economics), and articles with so much depth that when you finish each one you feel enriched in some small way. All with a standard of English so good it makes you want to cry.

Re:The Economist

[doom]

I went through an Economist phase, but gave up on it during the run-up to the Iraq war. I was getting enough stupid war propaganda from home-grown sources, I didn't need to pay for an import on top of that.

Since the Iraq war thing, there have been other things that turned me off... e.g. a cover photo of a demonstration in Indonesia-- as I remember it-- carefully selected to make it look dramatic and violent, when the actual event was fairly peaceful.

I sometimes wonder if the Economist has ever done any market research... the people I know who read it-- admittedly a selected set-- are all relatively liberal types who like the fact that it writes about places outside the US as though they really exist. They read it in spite of the silly conservative "leaders" up front, not because of them...

pay for rather than read

[genericmk]

I think a more relevant question is which do you pay for? I still read Esquire and some cycling magazines and whatever I come across in waiting rooms. I still like reading Time and the Economist. BUT which do I pay for? None. Internet has killed the business model, first and foremost.

Analog

[wjcofkc]

and Asimov's

I used to take Linux Magazine

[Anonymous Coward]

They went digital. I won't be renewing my subscription. I haven't even downloaded the digital copies.
I LOVED this mag. The problem is I don't read magazine style content over tablets and such.
Tablets need electricity. Magazines don't
Tablets are under the control of big faceless corps, mags aren't (well not so much) (I mean they can't take an article away from you once you bought it. Amazon proved they could, and they did.)

Meh,
Maybe i am a dinosaur.

Re:I used to take Linux Magazine

[WillAffleckUW]

I did the same thing. People keep trying to push me to download their digital magazines, but I never do.

Mental Floss

[SJF_BHM]

I'm a fan of Mental Floss and read it regularly. Always something interesting, informative and entertaining.

Whatever's at the doctor's office

[hduff]

Which is mostly "People" and golf magazines.

But I just put a Kindle app on my phone, so probably none from now on.

BTW, traditional magazines suck being read on a smart phone or Kindle.

Re:Whatever's at the doctor's office

[tmjva]

My doctor told me that during very intense weeks of cold and flu season, he has to pull the magazines from the waiting room because patients cough into the magazines and they get passed around.

My Magazines

[turp182]

I like to read when tent camping, and I camp a lot (30+ nights a year). While I do often bring a laptop (and a 30 amp-hour 12 volt battery with some set of 12 volt accessories, including: computer PSU, lights, air pump, electric blanket, bug zapper, fans, etc.). I never have internet access.

Yes, I car camp, usually at my favorite spot where everybody knows my name (it's my Cheers).

We subscribe to:
1. Smithsonian
2. National Geographic
3. Arizona Highways (used to live in AZ, beautiful magazine)
4. Cook's Illustrated
5. Scientific American

I prefer all of those in their physical periodical form.

Re:My Magazines

[starfishsystems]

Likewise!

When I head off to the island or to go sailing, I'm deliberately unplugging. Lying in the hammock, listening to the ambient sounds and feeling the dappled warmth of sunlight, if I'm going to immerse myself in writing, it's going to be a paper novel or a magazine I picked up on the ferry as a treat to myself, something like "Wooden Boat". It's better for the soul.

Re:My Magazines

[turp182]

I'm also a hopelessly addicted Steven King addict. Each novel lasts a while as I usually only read while camping. It took a year to read the Gunslinger series, well worth it.

I also read Thoreau's Walden only while camping. Very satisfying.

And, selfishly, I read Darwin's On the Origin of Species while on a Galapagos trip (along with Ernst Mayr's What Evolution Is, a better book, but only because it was vastly more recent).

Hammocks rock, I always have one setup when the weather is favorable. The best place to read, and to doze off.

Re:My Magazines

[KingRobot]

Another "me too" here (for the first three)! The online medium just can't do those publications justice.

Catalogs

[Anonymous Coward]

I usually have a couple music store catalogs laying around.

the wire (not wired)

[Boigaz]

the wire is the only magazine that ever had staying power for me (it's a music magazine). i still read the printed edition, which for me is my favourite way to read it.

Paper still has its place, alas.

[hendrikboom]

Print publications still have a place, and in a number of stituations (such as reading in the bathtub) they're superior. But I'm going as fully e-reader as I can, because (a) my bookshelves are overflowing, (b) there's no reoom in my house for more shelves, and (c) I'm probably going to have to move to a smaller place in a few years.

Buying more paper books will not solve this problem.

But I miss having recent magazines lying around the house, which I would randomly pick up and read. It's not the same with books hidden away on a tablet.

Print publications that are only of transient value are another matter. I throw them away.

-- hendrik

Re:Paper still has its place, alas.

[kuhnto]

Im reading this right now in the bathtub on an ipad in a ziplock bag. But i read books there too.

Circuit Cellar

[MetalliQaZ]

I still read this fine magazine: Circuit Cellar
It's worth it.

Read but not pay so much

[fermion]

I still get and read some magazines, even in the physical form. The difference is I don't pay nearly as much as I used to. Last year I got a whole slew of subscriptions for $5-10. Mostly I leaf through these looking at ads, samples, reading one or two articles. Recently I subscribed to two magazines, but these were essentially free.

This is the interesting trend. How many actually pay real money for magazines. There was a time when I would pay 20 bucks for a year. But now 30 bucks for architectural digest just seems insane, especially since over half of it is ads.

One magazine I still pay for when I can in Granta. Another is Nature, since they have the iPad version for $40. Big savings over the $200 it used to cost.

"Association" periodicals like AAA magazines.

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of membership-driven organizations do periodicals as a membership benefit. AAA is the most immediate example in my personal life. These mags tend to be of lower "quality" in terms of writing and production values but tend to be pretty useful. I imagine many AAA members never read their magazine, but I happen to prefer road trips for vacations and while I'm not normally a fan of travel writing, the articles in my AAA mag are focused on places I can reach by car.

So in a way, what I get out of my AAA magazine is what a lot of people get out of blogs. The content is less "professional" but is more naturally oriented to things that I'm directly involved or interested in. It would probably be cheaper for AAA to push me to some sort of website that hosts this content instead, I don't expect them to develop true competency with digital publishing anytime soon. They'll get around to it eventually and my habits will change at that point.

It's worth noting that the Japanese have a different relationship with periodicals than we do anyway. With a higher dependency on mass transit than we do, there is a lot more time in the day that can be filled with reading periodicals. They're propensity to stuff everything you can imagine into vending machines means that you can choose from an assortment of titles with the loose change in your pocket. As forward-thinking as they are on consumer electronics, I can see how they might have a stronger, more visceral attachment to periodicals similar to what we see with the anti-ebook crowd here in the states.

Cheap ones

[es79]

ESPN The Magazine b/c they gave it to me for $1/year. If not for that that, none.

Ditto

[DaveAtFraud]

I find the treeware version of Scientific American to work better for the way I read it. Deep articles outside of my area of expertise don't work for me on the computer but seem to work really well on paper. I also get "Air & Space" as treeware. Lots of eye-candy for a "plane nut" like me.

Cheers,
Dave

Read? I do look at the pictures though!

[Anonymous Coward]

The magazines I look at mostly have pictures...

Probably too many.

[desertfool]

1) The Economist. Gotta read that each week because the news in the US is too US focused.
2) Playboy. Had a subscription since '89. Don't judge me.
3) Wired. It's a good read.
4) Fast Company. It was insanely cheap. Now I know why.

Mrs. Fool gets "Good Housekeeping" and "Midwest Living".
The little Fool gets "American Girl" and "National Geographic Kids".

Sure, lots of dead trees, but you can't spend 100% in front of a screen.

Re:Probably too many.

[ArcadeMan]

2) Playboy. Had a subscription since '89. Don't judge me.

High-resolution scans of all the photos or it didn't happen.

Re:Probably too many.

[relyimah]

Sure, lots of dead trees, but you can't spend 100% in front of a screen.

This. I find I am increasingly spending more and more time in front of a PC/phone... I don't even 'find the time' to read a book any more because I seem to spend a greater amount of time on mindless websites (e.g. 9GAG / Facebook)... Need to find a way to break free!! :D

Re:Probably too many.

[desertfool]

It's easy. Put it down. Then do some else. /He says when replying to comments on /.

Re:Probably too many.

[desertfool]

You know, about 2 years ago I got rid of all the old copies I had. I didn't go back and 'reference' them. I just kept them. I figure they guys that pick up the recyclables thought they got a jackpot. Only have 1 or 2 on hand at a time. Anyway, this isn't Usenet in '95. You can get much more in 5 minutes of searching if you try.

Re: Probably too many.

[relyimah]

Hahaha yep. Sometimes easier said than done. I've kicked a smoking habit and that was easier than my tech habit. (:

Re:Probably too many.

[ArcadeMan]

You can get much more, but only if we're talking about quantity and not quality. There's a difference between a nice photo of a woman in a nurse outfit taken in a studio and a photo of a naked drunken slut on a hotel bed.

Re:Probably too many.

[SteveFoerster]

Playboy. Had a subscription since '89. Don't judge me.

In other words, many of the girls in there now were born after your subscription began?

Re:Probably too many.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, both are readily available in both print and internet form. The market for the latter is probably higher - a lot of people like to fantasize about something that they see as almost possible, a scenario they might actually be a part of if they're lucky. Hence the ordinary looking drunken slut rather than the perfectly made up and presented beautiful model.

Re:Probably too many.

[tehcyder]

You can get much more, but only if we're talking about quantity and not quality. There's a difference between a nice photo of a woman in a nurse outfit taken in a studio and a photo of a naked drunken slut on a hotel bed.

Yeah, the latter is infinitely more erotic.

Anyone who prefers airbrushed women in pretty costumes to naked and available is probably a repressed homosexual.

Re:Probably too many.

[tehcyder]

Only have 1 or 2 on hand at a time.

I see what you did there.

Lapham's Quarterly

[Verloc]

It only comes out 4 times a year, no ads whatsoever; each issue is filled with super interesting excepts from history alongside artwork regarding one subject. Lewis Lapham is a former editor for Harpers, which I would read on occasion. It's the only magazine that I buy regularly, and have for several years.

Metal \m/

[punkrockguy318]

I've been a decibel subscriber for a few years now (http://www.decibelmagazine.com/). If you're into metal, you should really check this zine out. Every issue even comes with a "flexidisk"of a featured arist that you can play on your turntable. Rock the fuck on!

Nuts & Volts, primarily

[evil_aaronm]

I started out with an on-line account, but switched to hardcopy because a) I can hang on to them, indefinitely, and refer back to a particular article or circuit diagram, whereas with electronic-only, I lose access to them after my subscription runs out; and b) I can read them in the bathroom and not feel grossed out about hygiene.

Lots!

[rbanzai]

I still read lots of magazines. National Geographic, Smithsonian, several history magazines, Car and Driver, Outdoors, Discover, FlyPast, and so on. I prefer the print format for being easy on the eyes as well as lighter and easier to manipulate than any tablet. At this point I don't have even the slightest interest in digital subscriptions to magazines.

The list

[SampleFish]

1. Vice
2. Popular Science
3. Complex
4. Wired

While on holiday

[Spudley]

While on holiday recently (translation: that's "vacation" for all you Americans), my brother-in-law lent me his copy of T3 magazine.

T3 is a consumer-level technology magazine. A gadget mag for people who think they're a bit techie but are really just tech consumers.

I've not read T3 in years, and I wouldn't have actually bought a copy even then. But I actually found myself reading a lot of it. Not because it was talking about anything I didn't know about, but because it was presenting a significantly different perspective on things to the kind of web sites I normally visit. I was quite interesting to get a different perspective and see how the consumer market thinks about some of the devices on offer at the moment.

The reasons all this is relevant to this discussion are:

1. Asking about paper magazines to the Slashdot crowd is going to get a predictable response. But you'd be a fool if you think for a second that the Slashdot crowd is in any way representative of the wider public. Slashdot users do not read magazines any more, but other people do.

2. If my brother-in-law had been reading a T3 website instead of the magazine, it's virtually certain that I wouldn't have borrowed his copy; I'd have stuck with my own preferred sites. The internet is great at making all things available to all men... but most of us cocoon ourselves in our own little parts of the internet and very rarely venture out. We don't get that alternative perspective, and it leads to narrow mindedness and blinkered thinking.

not in years

[WillgasM]

I haven't had a subscription to a magazine since I was a kid. I've picked one up at a newstand on very rare occasion (like stuck in an airport). Usually if something interests me, I'll seek it out. I don't need it handed to me. I rely on several aggregator sites to keep me abreast of any exciting developments in fields of interest. I probably have more catalogs than magazines around the house, but that's because they just show up at my door. I do keep a stack of 90s era playboys in the bathroom, just in case I need to make one of those cut and paste ransom notes.

Re:not in years

[tehcyder]

I do keep a stack of 90s era playboys in the bathroom, just in case I need to make one of those cut and paste ransom notes.

That is the most pathetic excuse for collecting wank mags I've ever heard.

Still a few Discover and Make magazine

[rleibman]

Discover because I find it hard to quit after nearly 30 years of reading it every month. Make because it's beautiful and inspires me, I also get Fine Cooking and occasionally buy at the newstand Dwell.

Magazines I Still Read

[Anonymous Coward]

MagPul, Thermold, ...

Physics World

[Lawrence_Bird]

sadly many others I used to read are gone or just craptervising now.

pages

[PopeRatzo]

While I do read magazines on my Nexus 7 or my wife's iPad, I much prefer an actual physical copy. None of the magazine reader apps are as good as they need to be before I'll give up paper. For some reason, I find the ads much more obtrusive when reading a magazine on a tablet.

I still read (at least) the paper issues of the New Yorker (cover to cover, no exceptions), National Geographic (though not cover to cover) and half a dozen assorted journals. New York Review of Books. Um, there are probably lots more that I can't think of at the moment. I'll have to go see what's on the shelf in the bathroom. But yeah, I like magazines.

Atlantic, New Yorker and Harpers

[Anonymous Coward]

In our house we have subscriptions to the Atlantic, the New Yorker and Harper's Magazine. Typically they end up in the bathroom, for those undisturbed reading breaks.

Expensive when you're not in the USA...

[Dzimas]

I still receive the paper version of IEEE Spectrum. As a kid, I used to love reading Popular Science and Omni in the school library. My parents subscribed to a variety of magazines, but I didn't follow in their footsteps primarily because I lived in Canada, and subscriptions to American magazines cost more than twice as much as in the US. The discrepancy still exists today. Pop Sci costs $12/year in the US and $26 in Canada. The logical part of me understands that Canada doesn't have a heavily subsidized magazine postage rate, but the emotional side just gets angry when asked to pay twice as much for exactly the same product. That said, if prices were the same, I suspect I'd have let my subscription lapse years ago, anyway. Even though a well researched paper article is fun to read, nothing beats the immediacy of the web.

Bathroom Reading

[dmatos]

I get two magazines regularly:

National Geographic
Alert Diver

Alert Diver is the magazine that is included in my membership with Divers Alert Network, which I joined for their travel insurance for my scuba trips.

National Geographic is awesome. I don't care how much you paid for your monitor, the photos in that magazine will always look better on paper than they do online.

Throne Room

[Anonymous Coward]

Popular Mechanics & Popular Science are the best bathroom reading material.

Popular Woodworking

[Chirs]

Something to do with my hands after working with my brain all day.

The Week

[brunnock]

I still subscribe to The Week. The print edition has translations of articles and editorials from around the world.

Re:The Week

[kehren77]

Me too.

Not only that but they don't pander to one side of the political spectrum, you get articles with view points from both sides (since apparently no one does any impartial journalism anymore).

No print magazines

[DougOtto]

I don't subscribe to any print magazines but I have several I read on my tablet.

I do still get the local newspaper every day. There's something very grounding about having my first coffee and reading the paper every morning. Even though the paper gets smaller every year, I've been doing it for a very long time and it's just part of my day.

Ironically

[Beorytis]

Ironically, considering their role in electronic communications, I still receive IEEE spectrum and Industry Applications in print.

Ironically, considering their role in the early WWW, I still receive my University of Illinois Alumni magazines (the general one, the college of engineering one and the Electrical and Computer Engineering one) in print.

Not so ironically, I still receive National geographic in print.

Sunbeams

[Anonymous Coward]

The Sun Magazine is a special experience for a man of your stature. Except no subtitutes.

Short list

[paiute]

Smithsonian is the best, one I am willing to pay for. National Geographic, though their gee whiz coverage of the world is annoying sometimes. Make, got that as a gift and really enjoyed it for a couple of years. I would pay for NewScientist if I could afford it.

Re:Short list

[javakah]

You should also check out Archaeology (http://www.archaeology.org/issues). Only 6 issues a year, but it's a good magazine. It's a periodical put out by the Archaeological Institute of America that is aimed at the wider public. It reminds me of National Geographic, but without the modern stuff.

Re:Short list

[dkf]

I would pay for NewScientist if I could afford it.

It's worth it; it's the only magazine I subscribe to and I've been getting it for over 20 years. If I was going to get anything else, I'd be seriously torn between Scientific American (more depth than NewSci, but not as current) and the Economist (very smart, even if not always in agreement with me). The only reason I don't is that I'd have a lot of trouble finding time to read them in as much depth as they deserve: I usually only pick up copies when on a business trip...

I even still subscribe to magazine

[section321a]

Popular Mechanics (subscribe)
Esquire (subscribe)
Armchair General (on random flights)
Scientific American (on other random flights)

No many

[Urban Nightmare]

I currently subscribe to QST (it comes with membership), TCA (membership), CQ, Pop Comm, Shortwave Listener (do you see a trend here). I used to get PC Mag but since they don't have paper any more... Linux Journal... My wife has a couple also. The only problem I have with all of them is the number of ads but I guess they have to pay the bill some way. So yes we still read many magazines. The tech and radio mags are always good for how-to's and such and for the most part are good to have as reference for many years. Just need a better way of indexing the articles.

Re:No many

[Grishnakh]

I used to subscribe to Linux Journal when it still had a paper version, and then they went paperless. When my subscription expired, I didn't bother to renew it. Now I'm getting advertisements to resubscribe for half-price; it looks like they're getting desperate.

I didn't fail to resubscribe because of the new paperless nature, however; the magazine itself has gone downhill over the years, and that was the final nail in the coffin. Of course, it doesn't help that Linux-land has been going downhill too, thanks to Unity and Gnome3. Linux was a lot more fun back in the mid-2000s.

Re:No many

[Urban Nightmare]

So many mags have gone paperless now days. All of my current subs are also pushing their paperless offerings for cheaper rates. I think the problem they all have is that most people still don't like reading mags/newspapers on a screen (of any sort). Yes having a tablet with tons of content is nice but they haven't really changed the format to make it readable on them. There is no smart way to have a 10" tablet display a page one way and a 7" another and a 4.5" phone another. They need to make it readable on any device. And before you say it PDF is not the way to go. Usually the text is way to small and zooming/pan/scan is way to annoying unless you have a 10" table.

Re:No many

[Grishnakh]

And before you say it PDF is not the way to go

I wasn't going to say it; you're absolutely right, PDF isn't the way to go, and wasn't even meant for that. PDF is meant to be a portable way of saving content at a particular size; if your PDF is a booklet with all the pages at 8.5x11, then it's only going to look right printed at 8.5x11 (or shown on a screen of that size), otherwise the text will be too small. PDFs can be made in other sizes too, but if you make a PDF magazine with the pages set for a 7" screen, it's only going to look right on a 7" screen, and on larger screens it'll look blown-up, and on smaller screens it'll look too small again.

This is exactly what HTML and similar markup languages were designed for. Even so, however, when you combine text with photos, you're usually going to have problems of some kind, depending on how large or small you scale it, and you can't make a page look a certain way if you're really picky about what the page should look like.

Honestly, I don't think there's a way to solve this problem. Either you give up on having total control of formatting, and let it be handled more-or-less automatically, and design your pages so that they can be scaled between a wide array of sizes, or you retain total control of the smallest detail of formatting, but restrict yourself to a single size. Web designers have already encountered this problem, which is why a lot of web pages are restricted to a certain horizontal size so that they look right, even though on high-res wide-screen monitors with a maximized browser window, you wind up with big empty spaces on the sides.

White Dwarf

[Anonymous Coward]

News for nerds and all that...

bathroom reading

[pelirojatica]

Wired and Smithsonian

I do get my information from the web, but it's nice to have something for time spent on the shitter. Short articles and nice pictures are good for that.

It depends on the publication

[whizbang77045]

It depends on the publication. Things like newsletters get read once, and would be thrown away immediately if they were in print form. But some things, like my airplane magazines, get read in detail now and again in the future. I really want print copies of these: computers are always crashing, and losing material.

Besides, it's hard to read a computer in bed.

A lot

[Anonymous Coward]

When I can afford it I get subscriptions to periodicals known for having good articles - like Time and Rolling Stone - as well as non-news periodicals like Asimov's and Analog. I find that reporting on the internet tends to be of worse quality than print media - as if the stories get rushed onto the web without full editing and fact-checking because articles can be changed later. If companies would hold the reporters to high standards across the board (TV, Web and Print) there would be no need for me to use every available source of news to get a complete and mostly unbiased view of events. And if fiction freely available on the internet that was easy to find was as high quality as the average piece in Asimov's or Analog, I wouldn't need those, either.

Rolling Stone

[aggles]

The only magazine I read (and pay for) is Rolling Stone. Its only rock and roll, but I like it.

I am purchasing few print magazines

[aklinux]

I simply got fed up w/ all the paper lying around. I already have too much paper lying around wo/ adding magazines to the piles.I don't like having to keep the magazine w/ me for when an opportunity comes along to read a few pages, my tablet is always w/ me. I only subscribe to digital anymore and read them on my 7" tablet

None

[neminem]

I do -get- a couple magazines, that were touted as added bonuses for joining things that I joined for other reasons, but I don't really read the associated magazines.

That said, I keep meaning to look into resubscribing to Technology Review. I had at one point gotten it for free, and quite liked it. I haven't yet, though.

2600 & 3D World

[theArtificial]

I subscribe to 3DWorld. I do not have a subscription to 2600, but I pick up copies from the store and have since the late 90s. I do read a lot of "news" stuff my tablet but I prefer learning stuff (think references) with physical books. I prefer Pulse News for the tablet. Apparently USAToday has a pretty good app for their content, and I dig their website. I don't say that often, especially about newspaper websites. It spurred my interest in Backbone.js.

iX

[gravity]

german magazine: iX, http://www.ix.de/

Print - New Yorker, Money, Computer/Network World

[WillAffleckUW]

In print, I still read The New Yorker, Money, ComputerWorld, and NetworkWorld.

I also read the print edition of the weekly free newspaper The Stranger, and occasionally buy the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal (the editorial page I use for rose beds), and the suburban paper The Seattle Times.

Because I had a 5 year subscription to US News & World Report, which I got when I moved back to the US and missed getting foreign news, I get Money, since they cancelled their print edition.

Online, I used to read the right-wing Seattle Times, but no longer do, and much more of the Washington Post and The Stranger (still read those two online).

Private Eye

[aembleton]

I've taken out a subscription to Private Eye http://www.private-eye.co.uk/. I find it funny and insightful and get much more depth of what's going on than I get out of the internet. In additional it feels good to be able to just flick through dead trees and spot something interesting. At £28/year it's not noticably expensive either.

The Planetary Report, and ...

[Kittenman]

Surprised no-ones mentioned this one: it comes with the Planetary Society membership.

Also I get a bi-monthly local from the NZ Skeptics society. Surprisingly good.

Occasionally an 'Astronomy' or a 'Southern Skies'. Maybe a 'History today', depends what they're covering.

'Private Eye' I used to get posted out here - but unless you know who's who in British bureaucracy, you can't follow it.

Re:The Planetary Report, and ...

[j-beda]

We get the Skeptical Inquirer - http://www.csicop.org/si/ - "the official journal of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Six times per year Skeptical Inquirer publishes critical scientific evaluations of all manner of controversial and extraordinary claims, including but not limited to paranormal and fringe-science matters, and informed discussion of all relevant issues..."

Also, Cook's Illustrated - http://www.cooksillustrated.com/ - which has some nice "evidence based" cookery with a bit of "Consumer Reports" thrown in. We ignore the note from the publisher each issue which is just crazy talk....

And Consumer Reports - http://www.consumerreports.org/ - their technology reviews are not always as well informed as I would like them to be, but they try to maintain a level of unbiasedness that is quite admirable.

Radio Control Car Action.

[damnbunni]

I still read RCCA and some of the other AirAge hobby mags.

I don't really have the time to race my toy cars any more, but I still like reading the race coverage and reviews of new toys.

Japanese Magazines are cooler

[p00kiethebear]

I dated a Japanese girl for a year. She loved Japanese magazines because they always came with free crap. When was the last time you got a magazine wrapped up with a free pair of pantyhose? A free USB flash drive? Hats? The novelty doesn't wear off easy because the magazines are always outdoing themselves on the quality of stuff they are giving away (it's also why paying full retail is usually in the 10 - 14 dollar range when you buy them in America.) I know not all magazines do this but the popular ones among women do.

None since 1996

[Anonymous Coward]

I stopped reading magazines in 1996, when I realized that the content in GamePro was more than 50% blatant advertisements (as opposed to advertisement disguised as a review). Why would I want to pay money to be fed advertising? This is why I don't have a Hulu+ subscription, either.

Wired and 2600

[Anonymous Coward]

Wired and 2600 are a nice break from these screens.

No shortage of magazines available.

[Anonymous Coward]

"World War II" magazine published by The Weider History Group.

The shelves in the magazine section of every branch of our local library are stocked with several dozen different magazine publications.

For that matter people still listen to AM and FM radio, vinyl records, reel to reel tape decks, read books, hand craft car fenders, draw pictures with pen and ink, practice caligraphy, paint masterpieces with paint and brushes, play musical instruments.

Computers are just a tool, nothing more. And when computer intelligence approcaches that of a human remember that humans can be used at tools too.

Panorama and Heavy Metal

[KPexEA]

Panorama - The monthly magazine for the Porsche Club of America
Heavy Metal - The science fiction and fantasy graphic novel magazine

my wife's magazines

[turkeydance]

she gets those celebrity mags and i read them while waiting to add that crap.

Re:my wife's magazines

[Anonymous Coward]

Playgirl is a celebrity mag?

when there's adblock for magazines

[Anonymous Coward]

i'll start reading them again.

LWN

[smittyoneeach]

Linux Weekly News--best signal-to-noise ratio on the whole flipping internet.

Pretty much just

[Grimbleton]

American Rifleman

Only three

[smoot123]

Smithsonian, National Geographic, Technology Review.

I wonder which magazines correlate with which others. I be there's tons of Smithsonian/NG readers. And I think those two are a secret cabal: they seem to do stories on identical subjects way too often for it to be pure chance.

Re:Only three

[javakah]

Take a look at Archaeology magazine as well (http://www.archaeology.org/issues).

Well I definitely have a dominant subject

[Intropy]

Scientific American
American Scientist
Nature

My odd choices

[tipo159]

An odd collection, but ...

Wired
Vanity Fair
Rolling Stone
Sports & Exotic Cars
Thoroughbred & Classic Cars (and other UK collector car magazines)

Re:My odd choices

[tipo159]

... and National Geographic

a couple good ones

[greatgreygreengreasy]

I still subscribe to Save The Forests and give subs as gifts to close friends as well. ~

I do still receive and read usually cover to cover Cycle World, Motor Cyclist, and Sport Rider.

Expensive and archaic - and not great value

[rueger]

Aside from stuff like alumni magazines that show up unsolicited, we've pretty much quit magazines entirely.

The first obstacle is costs - the last time I bought a magazine it was pretty near ten bucks for one copy at the news stand. Wow - that's a psychological barrier for me.

The second obstacle is the amount and timeliness of content. Although the Economist, New Yorker, or Harpers feels like a fair deal, most magazines are thinner than I remember, and too often have articles that were outdated by a web site somewhere weeks earlier.

The third reason is that I just can't see the reason why I would choose dead tree versions of most things over something delivered electronically by e-mail or RSS (of for the Economist, via Google+). I'm not a died in the wool environmentalist, but it seems that print as medium is becoming a pointless exercise for probably 60% of information. Especially for news.

Re:Expensive and archaic - and not great value

[Anonymous Coward]

When electronic rendering matches the weight and power requirement of a typical print magazine, allows me to write on it with a pen or pencil, tear out a page, and literally "flip" through the content, it will be archaic.

Until then, online "equivalent" content is generally inferior and unwanted by this reader, even if it is cheaper.

I'm down to 3

[Snotnose]

I still get Analog, Cooking Light, and Scientific American. Analog cuz I like the stories, Cooking Light because it's more convenient and SA because it's a 30 year habit. 3 years ago I had about 10 subscriptions.

I'm coming very close to dropping my newspaper subscription as well. Not because I prefer getting my news off the 'net, but because the local paper (U-T San Diego) is a ghost of a shell of it's former self. I spend more time reading the comics than the rest of the paper combined.
 

National Geographic

[Nimey]

and my kid gets Highlights. My wife has a few subs that mainly seem to be for toilet reading.

Inc. and Popular Mechanics

[Trailer Trash]

I like Inc. - they've definitely done a good job of keeping the magazine fresh and unique. Popular Mechanics is also just wonderful. They cover not only automotive stuff but pretty much all kinds of DIY issues. They even pushed Linux as a good OS for a home entertainment system a few years ago. Lots of different topics in there, it's an interesting magazine.

Kiplinger's

[Turmoyl]

I still read Kiplinger's personal finance magazine, but I do so through Google's Play Magazines on a tablet.

Went to a library today

[Blaskowicz]

I've read some magazine and monthly newspaper stuff today, for a grand total of zero euro.
Among it, Guardian Weekly, looking at pictures in a Chinese magazine I can't even read the title of, and French stuff : Science&Vie, Science&Avenir, La Décroissance. Poster above me mentions Scientific American, there's a French version of it (Pour la science) that I remember reading at the university's library.

If I had a bit more money I'd certainly buy some printed press. I buy about an item once a month.
Apart from convenience (no need to sit in front of my desk at home and bleed my eyes, nor to get a tablet computer I don't need or want) and the high res, high area of the medium I can get to read stuff I didn't know I wanted to read. That can happen on the web too, but not so much, you get tied to two or three websites and some "global news" crap that goes on on radio and TV but you don't get to flip through dozens of focused articles published the same month and so on.

Re:Went to a library today

[j-beda]

I also like the library for "The Economist" which is quite pricy, but has a high density of informative and in depth articles and if I ever had a subscription there is no way I would keep up with their weekly publication.

http://www.economist.com/

nt

[toudaimori]

Sky & Telescope

I read...

[antdude]

Hardcopies: Wired and Entertainment Weekly

Digital: Better Software

All are free due to coupons and work.

Hmm...

[DerekLyons]

What magazines do I still regularly buy and read?

Cook's Illustrated, Saveur, Neo,Otaku USA, Shop Notes, Wood, Fine Woodworking, Popular Woodworking, Mother Earth News, Reader's Digest, National Geographic... These are just ones off of the top of my head, and in any given month somewhere between a third and half of them find their way into my shopping cart.

The 'net certainly provides a firehose from which to choose, but for the most part it serves up cold, stale Chicken McNuggets... while magazines still (for the most part) serve perfectly cooked Coq a Vin. Quantity isn't quality.

Re:Hmm...

[j-beda]

If you are buying these so regularly off the newsstand wouldn't a subscription be more economical? Usually a subscription is less than half of the cover price.

Re:Hmm...

[doom]

As good a place to attach my list as any, since I'm another "Otaku USA" reader:

• Otaku USA
• The Nation
• New York Review of Books
• Science (from the AAAS)
• The San Francisco Bay Guardian
• The East Bay Express

Plus some common newstand buys:

• Juxtapos
• High Fructose
• Giant Robot
• N+1

Manga:

• A Devil and Her Love Song
• A Certain Scientific Railgun
• The Black Butler
• Skip Beat
• One-piece
• Flowers of Evil

Printed media has advantages over on-line, of course... both durable and portable, with displays that are large, high-resolution and low-power. Each issue is relatively low value, so you don't need to worry about losing them on the train, or water damage from reading in the bath

Re:Hmm...

[AmiMoJo]

OP here, when I spotted this question those were the types of magazines that leapt to my mind too. In Japan there are a huge number of in-depth hobbyist magazines covering every imaginable subject (even how to dress your cat or shop at Ikea). I read some of the rail modelling and electronics ones and there is just nothing like them available in the UK.

Web sites are fine but they rarely offer the level of depth and number of professional photos you get in magazines. The web is good for short articles but tends to be lacking in longer tutorial style stuff which needs a lot more work to prepare.

what me worry?

[Anonymous Coward]

mad magazine, my kid now has the subscription i wished for as a kid, and we both enjoy it, new issue should be here any day now.

Mostly to pass time...

[alancronin]

Time, New Scientist, occasionally Linux Journal (or whichever Linux magazine looks most appealling while in a newsagents) but the one that take up most of my time is Slashdot itself.

still subscribing

[bertomatic]

to: MSDN Magazine, Racer, and Readers Digest. Gotta have something for the potty. Tablets just feel weird while pooping.

MaximumPC and Consumer Reports

[RubberDogBone]

Only two now: MaximumPC and Consumer Reports. MaxPC makes their back issues available for free and I also pay for access to CR's website, but I find the dead tree version works better on the throne, quite honestly. And I don't have time to sit and read anywhere else.

Why pay for these? Both mags offer content that I like and which is more or less difficult to obtain elsewhere, and it's in a format I like. For MaxPC, I am a long-time reader going back to when it launched as boot magazine, and I prepay for years in advance because I want the mag to stick around. CR I simply use as an info source and comparison tool when I need to buy something out of my usual areas of expertise. I pay them to offer advise on which paint or vacuum cleaner or laundry detergent to buy, because I have no idea myself and no time or money to just guess. It works well. Don't have to agree with their choices. As with MaxPC's reviews, having their opinion is useful even if I may not blindly follow it.

And I have tried the digital magazines. The tablet PDF version does not tolerate moisture well and requires things like a charged battery, some pre-planning to take the device along, etc. and you are stuck holding it and usually can't also use it for something else. The paper mags simply sit there waiting for someone to read. Doesn't care if I take a shower -there are no moisture sensors to trip. Does not matter if I drop it on the floor. It won't shatter into hundreds of dollars worth of parts or get flushed.

Total cost for the two mags is about $30 a year plus another $60 for the CR website. ... bleah actually that's a lot of money. Maybe I need to rethink CR.

Re:MaximumPC and Consumer Reports

[RubberDogBone]

OK OK, I forgot Playboy. But that one is running out. There's a joke there. I used to be a stockholder in that company but I've stopped caring as much since they went, er, private. Hef's gotten on my nerves lately. So not going to renew that. The Playboy Bunny Harlem Shake video is amazing but completely a-typical for that brand. Not enough to keep me.

I would also get QST from the ARRL except I figured out you could get a "blind persons" membership for cheap and the only difference was that they won't send the magazine, which I don't want. They provide it for free online anyway.

Re:MaximumPC and Consumer Reports

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

Ditto for MPC, and I'm not a fan of the PDF at least w/ Google Magazines, because the links aren't clickable. Who the F doesn't have Clickable links in a magazine? Hell, I can click the links in the paper magazine and have the web page come up. *

Mostly, I love MPC because they're writing style is often tongue in cheek and no holds barred. Their podcast is hillarious, though I only listiend to the first 120 or so. (GO GORdon's Rant of the week, they still do that?)

*Hypothetically if I was using google glass...

Re:MaximumPC and Consumer Reports

[ProfessorKaos64]

Maximum PC continues to be a great magazine. I feel better picking that up in the "royal throne" room , then carting an iPad/Nexus 7/phone and putting my germs all over the screen. There is just something old fahsioned and natural about reading a mag on "the john," vs a phone/tablet. It's built into our guy code DNA. Turning that page and seeing the quality media print in front of you is more satisfying to me than swiping a screen.

QST and Nuts and Volts

[CQDX]

and a few others I look into occasionally like QEX, Circuit Cellar, and Make which I might subscribe too after the refund comes. I don't like reading articles on a computer or tablet. I code all day so when I have time to read for my hobbies, I don't want to have my head buried in another screen.

Rolling Stone

[gmagill]

It's the onliest one I still read paper copy, for some reason.

The economist

[EmperorOfCanada]

The articles are too long to read online, and too short to put on a book reader. Plus flipping through a magazine is way better than looking at a list of headlines. The art in the Economist denotes the nature of the article. Plus the Economist is fairly low on ads.

Don't you go to the dentist?

[billstewart]

Of course there are still magazines around - if you haven't seen the usual collections of Golf Digest, People, Ladies' Home Journal, Men's Health, etc., in your dentist's office, then either you need to get regular dental checkups or else your dentist has few enough patients that you haven't had to wait when you get there. That doesn't mean you actually want to read any of the magazines there, but they're a standard feature.

I started going to my dentist 30 years ago when he was the young junior partner stuck working Saturdays, and his office reading material was Zippy the Pinhead and Zap Comix, and the music was the loud rock station. Since then he's moved his office from the city out to the suburbs, had kids who are now grown up, replaced the sports car with a minivan and then replaced that with a sports car again, and the office has canonical dentist's office muzak and the Golf/People/etc. magazines, and he's now got a young junior partner stuck working Saturdays...

any size

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks to the US Congress and the NRA, I can read whatever size magazine I want!

Lods of periodicals get read by me

[Khyber]

Cooks Magazine, Nat'l Geographic, Game Informer, etc.

Farm Show

[Anonymous Coward]

Farm Show magazine. It's like Make magazine for farmers.
http://www.farmshow.com/

Communications of the ACM

[Ingolfke]

Here too, but I like dead trees.

National Geographic, Sky & Telescope.

[Anonymous Coward]

A few other astronomy magazines, although they seem to get thinner yet more expensive by the month.

I like using things such as the Kindle -- seriously, they are great devices -- but there's nothing quite like the feel and smell of paper.

No doubt the day of the printed magazine is all but done, a la film vs digital, and I'll be sad when it passes.

Life is change.

Just One

[Gamer_2k4]

I still get a copy of Popular Science in the mail every month. There's some good stuff in there.

Comics.

[Anonymous Coward]

I enjoyed "Amazing Stories". I think they're sort of publishing now, somewhat resurrected. I've not checked.

I also like the "Utne Reader" when I come across it.

The last magazine I bought was filled with Doctor Who stuff back when Tennant was still in the Tardis. I think that was a one-off publication.

I've bought lots of comics since then.

Regular magazines dealing with news and current events in the real world are so often heavily geared towards supporting American propaganda efforts, or edited by such imbeciles and ignorant writers that I find it nearly impossible to get through a copy of anything without feeling frustrated.

Internet news aggregators coupled with solid discussion forums are, I find, a far better way to learn what is going on in the world. You can't debate with paper, or benefit from the insights of other readers. You can't ask questions -or receive answers- from paper.

Paper is still a very good medium; it's easier to remember what you read because you're not being blasted by the ADD screen. Books are great, where somebody has spent a year or more consolidating research and thinking into a form which can be read by many and then discussed in forum elsewhere. Magazine articles have their place, but I've found them less useful as time goes on. Even National Geographic publishes dumbed down articles laced with propaganda these days.

Dr Dodds of course

[jimmydevice]

Oh, Wait....

None anymore

[xQuarkDS9x]

I haven't read any magazines in print for a few years now. If only because even once good magazines such as Popular Science, Scientific American, and Popular Science are now pretty much 80% ad pages and 20% content. I do not want to read a 15 page article in the magazine from a company trying to showcase the latest car, product, or god knows what else.

You look back oh lets say 10-15 years ago in the three mags I mentioned above and you seemed to see a lot more content and a heck of a lot less ads.

Re:None anymore

[xQuarkDS9x]

Bah meant to say Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, and Scientific American.. :)

only high capacity ones

[Anonymous Coward]

... since I am an 'merican, and need to exercise my second amendment rights, as well as my first ...

National Geographic

[flimflammer]

When I was a kid, I loved looking through them and seeing all the pictures of exotic places. I've got editions twenty or more years older than I am, and it's interesting to see how exotic some things were back then that are absolutely standard or normal today. It is probably the only magazine that has retained my interest over the years.

Two Kinds

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

I read two kinds of magazine. One group I subscribe to for the content, Vanity Fair, Cooks Illustrated, Backpacker. The other group comes because of my membership in professional organizations.

Adbusters

[randomuser2]

Once a year, the "Big Ideas" issue. I was a little proud when they organized those 99% protests, even though I didn't 100% agree with them.. I never even thought to check for it online... I guess I prefer it as a stocking stuffer. Kinda hypocritical of me when one of the first ads is for "Buy Nothing Day"....

The Atlantic, Harper's

[akeeneye]

I really should get a Mother Jones subscription soon. I like getting a couple of thought-provoking mags a month. But I also buy hardback books (used, the older the better). I sometimes wonder if a good tablet would turn me into an online reader, but I don't think so. I like the feel of paper magazines and they're disposable - if I spew food or beer on one while I'm eating+reading, no matter. If I drop a magazine and step on it, it's still good. If I drop a phone or a tablet and step on it, the results are worse. I have data.

Hard cover vs. electronic format

[woboyle]

I read a lot of tech magazines. Some I still get in hardcopy form, such as my IEEE publications. Most others I get in electronic (PDF) format. I read at least 10-20 magazines in both formats each month.

National Geographic

[Anonymous Coward]

Something almost completely non-tech related with excellent imagery and a lot of impartial, neutral journalistic integrity.

I'm an extremely technical person and I spend a considerable majority of at a screen. Even I'll admit a paper magazine or book makes fit better reading for any single work that will take more than five minutes.

A Kindle is OK, but the resolution isn't there for me.

Only a few

[cjs75]

A couple of motorcycle mags I still pay for. Good source for gear n parts adverts.

Several

[Sir Holo]

Harper's
The Atlantic
Lapham's Quarterly
Foreign Affairs (used to)
A few trade magazines

I read them in the hot tub, on travel, in bed.

No worries if they get wet, or lost, or if you fall asleep while reading them.

Most also come with full access to their web site, which often includes access to their entire back-catalog!

Time and Asimov's SF

[canadian_right]

I live in Canada, but Time's coverage of our big neighbour and the rest of the world is pretty good. Not much fluff, and generally well written.

I just like SF.

Communications of the ACM

[Anonymous Coward]

With my membership to the Association for Computing Machinery I get their monthly 'Communications of the ACM' that always contains interesting articles. They have an online version but I like getting the physical copy to read when I like. All their special interest groups also publish.
Check it out! http://www.acm.org/

IEEE Spectrum

[SydShamino]

IEEE Spectrum and Popular Science are my remaining paper magazines. I liked the IEEE Technology and Society magazine but they went digital only this year.

APC

[brindafella]

APC (used to be called "Australian Personal Computer) is cutting-edge and is good to have in printed form, even though it has an online presence at www.apcmag.com, too. The editor recently floated the idea that its cover DVD might end soon, with all the good stuff being as downloads.

Before going into the chair at the Blood Bank, I select to read:
National Geographic
Australian Geographic

2600

[101percent]

I'm still subscribed to the print edition of 2600 magazine. I moreso collect them than read the new editions. I get the DRM-free PDFs to read.

My list

[Beeftopia]

Print:
1) The Economist. Very informative. Their politics are not hidden, and socially, they're definitely left of center. Financially, they're the "Voice of the Plutonomy." But, it works. The articles are typically quite informative.

Online magazines:
1) IEEE Spectrum
2) Communications of the ACM
3) Dr. Dobbs
4) Infoworld
5) Linux Journal
6) Machine Design

And a variety of online information sources for current events. Typically, Google and Google News are good starting points.

Re:My list

[tehcyder]

The Economist. [economist.com] Very informative. Their politics are not hidden, and socially, they're definitely left of center. Financially, they're the "Voice of the Plutonomy."

You must be American. In the rest of the world "left of center" does not mean "a believer in rabid capitalism, but in an ironic t-shirt instead of a suit".

Re:My list

[Anonymous Coward]

He said socially. I think Capitalism would fall under economic. I would equate socially more to things like gun control, abortion, gay marriage, etc.

First Things

[leandrod]

First Things.

Lots!

[BLKMGK]

Car magazines, home improvement magazines, even some computer magazines. I still get paper copies of Wired for kripes sakes. Sure, I love to read on my tablet but i subscribe to at least 5 paper magazines and read those too. the internet is nice and all but it doesn't always give me the same information and I'm okay with both...

The local newspaper

[dark_glaive]

I'm 27 and I subscribe to my local news paper. It's the only place to get State Government political coverage, especially since they paywalled a lot of their content. I don't begrudge them the money though because they provide a good service that no bloggers have really stepped in to fill. Local government news isn't sexy, but it's the stuff that effects our lives more than anything else. While those idiots in Washington are arguing over gun control and doing nothing, my State Government is restricting Planned Parenthood funding. This makes it harder for my girlfriend, who relies on Planned Parenthood for OBGYN services, to get the proper checkups she needs. This bullshit effects her (and me) directly. Local papers deserve your support!

Overland Journal

[aclarke]

I subscribe to Overland Journal. I'm not sure if it's up your alley, but you might be interested. It's the only magazine, oh sorry, journal, to which I subscribe.

I don't want to bring the internet to the toilet..

[Anonymous Coward]

On and off the toilet I will read Zymurgy, Pioneer Living, Outdoor, and Brew Your Own magazine. Occasionally a random bicycle 'zine will makes it's way in there. But, those are harder to flush.

Grassroots Motorsports

[hraefn]

As car magazines go, GRM has for years been among the best, and they seem to have thrived where (many) others have folded.

Favorite Magazines

[Anonymous Coward]

I like print for my favorite mags because I can leave them in a pile and read them when convenient, anywhere. I usually don't read older issues of digital mags. Out of sight, out of mind.

My favorites:
IEEE Spectrum
Wired
Circuit Cellar Ink
Discover

none

[bob_jenkins]

In college, I stopped by the fraternity storeroom whenever I wanted to hear people ranting about things. After college I subscribed to The Economist and Science News instead. Then I did just Science News, since I never got through The Economist, especially all the wars in Africa. Then I switched to Slashdot.org instead of Science News, which had more on computers and less on microbes. Then I switched from Slashdot.org to ScienceDaily.com, which has better and more timely coverage of science.

I still occasionally look at Slashdot.org when I want to see people ranting about things.

IEEE is the dark side

[Strange Attractor]

I find that IEEE locks up research results that I pay for as a tax payer. It is a minor inconvience for me to use the library at work, but it would be prohibitive if I were a middle income indpendent scientist or engineer.

The IEEE also has policy statements that oppose policies that advance the public interest. Take a look at: http://www.ieeeusa.org/volunteers/committees/ipc/index.html and http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20090922030639824

After 30 years, I dropped my membership. The IEEE no longer advocates or implements policy for the public interest.

Popular Science

[Anonymous Coward]

Popular Science.

Published Dead Tree Magazines still have aplace

[Anonymous Coward]

I personally read Discovery, Popular Science in paper print once in a while. I enjoy it better than reading on content limited websites. No batteries, plug in wires to worry about, images are vivid as ever.

My significate other buys her magazines still, alot of them. I guess what generation your grow up in. I don't know if people younger than 30 actually bother other than looking at in a store while their bored.

My monthly pile

[boogahboogah]

New Yorker
Analog
Blue Water Sailing
Good Old Boat
Cruising World
Practical Sailor

Daily Newspapers:
Philadelphia Inquirer
WSJ

I'm behind on reading the New Yorker, but that doesn't bother me.

Wanna hear about the book pile ?

Compute! Magazine, PC Zone, Life Magazine, etc.

[urbanriot]

I look forward to my monthly Compute! Magazine as I often spend the weekend punching in the code for the latest games on my Atari 800 XL. Mind you, there's often a few weeks involving in tracking down all the errors in the code or optimizing the code, which tides me over until next months magazine.

subscriptions....

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're buying them that frequently, you should look into subscriptions. Popular Woodworking is available (via google search) at a very significant discount for a 2yr subscription.

magazines

[beowulf405]

I read a few magazines - why, because I don't like to read on small screens and like to read in bed, bathroom and other places. With the current cost of subscriptions you are missing a lot if you only read the free material on the Internet.
I read: Wired, Time, Discover and Popular Science

Astounding Stories of Super-Science!

[The Master Control P]

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=astounding+stories+of+super+science

Yep, sometimes oldies are goodies.

Read is such a loose term

[Frontier Owner]

I read Mechanical Engineering magazine from ASME. By read I mean I flip thru it, read the headlines and maybe the first few lines of text. if it hasn't gotten my attention by then, I move on then toss it. I get a couple other engineering magazines that I read one regular section out of and toss it.

LOTS

[Anonymous Coward]

I do all my reading of magazines on the john. Make (lol), The Economist, Nature, Science, some others. That's what magazines are for: reading on the john. Also on flights. And on flights on the john.

For Work

[Anonymous Coward]

For work, the only magazine I read is Automotive Fleet.

La Recherche

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Recherche

Subscriptions

[Shadyman]

I've got Make Magazine and Circuit Cellar on subscription right now.

This. A thousand times THIS! n/t

[sgtrock]

n/t

None but...

[Anonymous Coward]

If I could afford it I'd read Wired and Make. I had a sub to Wired a few years back and enjoyed each issue. My father gets Popular Science and it's always fun browsing through that.

Where no connection has gone before

[SolarStorm]

I still read some magazines. But only where I am disconnected. I have two that I like, "Dirt Rider". I read while out at our lake lot where I have made a conscious effort to NOT connect the cabin to phone and internet (no TV either). I like to sit around the campfire and read a Dirt Rider. The other I read is Alert Diver, typically while on a Dive vacation where again an internet connection is not always guaranteed. I do read books online, but still find it hard to replace the magazine at some locations. I can be sitting on the beach, throw the magazine on the towel, go for a swim, come back and the magazine is still there. I am not really interested in trying that with my iPad.

Of course...

[Anonymous Coward]

I read tons of magazines and books...and they don't tell big sister that I've been reading them either.

I read...

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the New York Times Magazine every week, that is great.. the Wall Street Journal competitor one is pretty good too. Men's Fitness, GQ, etc also because they're fun and interesting.. Not everything you read and enjoy has to be high class and Very Important to be enjoyable. In fact, the Very Important ones can get a bit dry sometimes, like the New Yorker. Magazines have their place though, because there's something to be said for holding a paper in your hands and being able to sit back with it somewhere in an easy chair. Sure, the tablets can 'kind of' do that these days, but it's just not quite the same.

Parachutist

[Greyfox]

It seems like becoming a USPA member has got someone sending Parachutist magazine to me. It looks like a largely ad-supported magazine but some of the articles have been interesting. I'll keep reading it as long as they keep sending it to me heh heh heh.

They have opened the door

[bradley13]

They have opened the door. From TFA: Notably, however, lawmakers dropped from the legislation the phrase “free from government control,”

Which is to say: They have deliberately opened the door for further regulation by the FCC and whatever other federal agencies care to stick their noses in.

Darn, wrong article, sorry...

[bradley13]

Darn, wrong article, sorry...

c't (German language)

[bradley13]

The German magazine c't is the equivalent of the old Byte, as it existed 30 years ago in the US: Coverage of every techie hardware and software topic, written by people who actually know what they're talking about. Details, not just marketing fluff. For the the big company IT types, there's the sister publication i'X - not to my personal taste, but an equally good read for its target audience.

I don't know of any equally good magazines in the English-speaking world.

Porn?

[BenEnglishAtHome]

Yes, granted, the internet is for porn. It does a great job.

This submission, though, comes from Japan where variations of porn magazines, often of very high quality, are still produced.

That reminded me that I miss the porn magazines of my youth, especially the ones that pretended to be legit by including articles. Some did a good job of showing great porn (or at least nude art that was a bit more on the raunchy side) while also printing fun, informative prose.

Playboy could be quite literate but wasn't porn-y enough.

I'm thinking more like Puritan. I really miss Puritan.

If it were in the right content cycle, Zoom was also good. That magazine didn't know what it wanted to be. Some years it was a photo enthusiast magazine that used lots of racy content to illustrate camera and lens tests. Other years it was a softcore porn mag where they told you what cameras they used to shoot the stuff and occasionally printed new product news releases from photo equipment manufacturers. Over years-long cycles, the pendulum would swing back and forth. I really miss certain iterations of Zoom, generally the French editions.

Are any of my fellow oldsters willing to share any fond memories? Or has printed porn become entirely superfluous?

Re:Porn?

[tehcyder]

As a first guess I'd suggest checking out Usenet.

Re:Porn?

[BenEnglishAtHome]

Perfectly willing to check out Usenet and use it regularly. However, I know of no groups that regularly publish binaries of old porn mags. Any suggestions?

Would have said Game Developer Magazine

[richtaur]

If you had asked me a week ago! But it was just announced it's ceasing publication :(

http://gamasutra.com/view/news/190148/Game_Developer_magazine_closing_in_July_2013.php

none due to the quality of content in magazines

[crispytwo]

I used to read all sorts of magazines and it was a great way to learn about things that I wouldn't normally find depth in elsewhere. However, the content began to be simplified, and eventually dumbed down so much that reading them became pointless. The internet now carries everything, but to be fair, it usually is poorly written, or for attention spans of 2 minutes or less. And there's the assumption that you will dig around for clarity or depth.

My biggest disappointment is Scientific American. I remember looking forward to it coming to my door - but since the early 90s, it slowly became toilet paper. I remember first learning about fractals from it, for example, and could build my own algorithms from the article alone. Now, if you get anything from it, it would merely be a mention of something interesting and a broken paragraph on what it might be.

All the magazines have fallen victim to this same kind of editing. I'm not really sure who the target audience is either. I suppose people who want to pretend to read words, but not really have any connection between them. It's sad when the 6 o'clock news has more depth in their 'reporting' than is afforded in magazines. I hope there are some that are good out there, but I've lost interest in trying to find them.

C'T from Heise

[headqtrs]

Still the best after all those years......

Dear Slashdot Readers:

[Anonymous Coward]

Which print magazine advertisers should our sales team target?

Thank you.

The Management

The wrong ones for this crowd

[Anonymous Coward]

London Review of Books; NYRB.

Three

[Anonymous Coward]

Garfield, Piranha Club, and Technology Review.

The comics are since they are great "15minutes offline reading".

However, Technology Review... Despite them having most of their articles online and me reading them there the printed publication has a few major advantages:
  * Reflective surface (easier on the eyes)
  * Easier to read page by page (very few websites lends itself to this kind of reading) and therefore encourages one to read even articles outside of ones interest.
  * Lower weight when laying in bed reading (less strain on arms holding it)
  * Roughly knowing where an article was in the future for reference (ironically enough, techreview recently had a great article (this is your brain on e-books) on this recently).
  * Can be read outside in full daylight
  * Doesn't wake you up if it falls to the floor when you drop it when you used it as going-to-sleep-reading.
  * Worked wonderfully to read during the last power outage, also when my main computer was down for system checks right afterwards.
  * No moving ads nor javascript.

However it also has a major drawback:
  * Several pages with a single image.

Maybe only in decline in the US?

[Anonymous Coward]

The UK has the largest and widest range of magazines in the world and they are still being sold in print form in various newsagents and shops in the UK. They do have digital versions. When I lived in the US, it only had a tiny range of ad filled mags compared to other countries. The best magazines in the US were the imported ones.

Just one.

[Anonymous Coward]

Communications of the ACM.

I would read the C++ Users Journal, but it died a long time ago.

The only one I buy and read is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Scientific American. Pure meat for the mind. Pure joy.

NI magazine

[Anonymous Coward]

New Internationalist Magazine

AFK

[Anonymous Coward]

I like reading AFK, though, since I work at a screen and keyboard all day. It's nice to have something a different depth away from my eyes when I read. Unfortunately, I don't see any good magazines like Dr Dobbs, MSDN, and so on any longer. I read Civil War history magazines, which is a good break too since they didn't have computers back then. I just don't like everything being on an LCD screen. I like to have something different to look at.

tracks magazine

[bigtreeman]

I've read Tracks since I was a grommet. ( the surfers bible )
There's one in the work ute, one here on my desk and one in the dunny.
If you don't surf you won't understand.

Photo magazines

[Geeky]

I still buy physical copies of photographic magazines. The better ones, such as Black and White Photography here in the UK, have concentrated on pretty decent quality reproductions, and I'd rather have a print magazine to flip through over breakfast before I inflict a day in front of a computer screen on my eyes.

Cigar Aficionado

[techstar25]

Cigar Aficionado. It's like if "GQ" was mature and sophisticated. I like that the articles are actually the size of articles and require an adult attention span to read. They aren't tiny blurbs and blog posts which most magazines have resorted to (as the web has decreased everyone's attention span).

Time and the Sunday Paper

[krisyan]

I still read Time because a friend gives me a gift subscription every time she renews hers. I also still read the Sunday paper.

Mindless periodicals when at certain locations

[Andover Chick]

I read mindless periodicals such as People, Shape or the NY Post when at certain locations. If I'm getting my hair done I don't want want to be carrying around electronics so I read People. If I'm in the subway then digital devices can be stolen or damaged so I read the NY Post. For more intelligent periodicals, sometimes it just feels good at the diner in the morning to spread the Boston Globe out on the table. When on an airplane I'll read Wired or the Economist (since there is no WiFi).

The Economist

[tehcyder]

Seems a very popular choice here.

As a test, I checked out the online version. Number one most popular article is a leader saying how great Margaret Thatcher was

Says it all for me. Yet more rightwing bullshit, no surprise slashdotters like it so much.

A few.

[Anonymous Coward]

QRZ is a good read. Handgunners is decent.

All bought with airline miles

[Anonymous Coward]

The Economist
Wine Spectator
Garden & Gun

Seriously, how could you not subscribe to a periodical called "Garden & Gun".

The Economist takes its time

[coldsalmon]

I read the Economist in part because it's a weekly publication, which gives the writers time to write something interesting. I think Chesterton said it best, in 1922:

The tendency of all that is printed and much that is spoken to-day is to be, in the only true sense, behind the times. It is because it is always in a hurry that it is always too late. Give an ordinary man a day to write an article, and he will remember the things he has really heard latest; and may even, in the last glory of the sunset, begin to think of what he thinks himself. Give him an hour to write it, and he will think of the nearest text-book on the topic, and make the best mosaic he may out of classical quotations and old authorities. Give him ten minutes to write it and he will run screaming for refuge to the old nursery where he learnt his stalest proverbs, or the old school where he learnt his stalest politics. The quicker goes the journalist the slower go his thoughts. The result is the newspaper of our time, which every day can be delivered earlier and earlier, and which, every day, is less worth delivering at all.

A few regular reads

[Pope]

I have a subscription to Cycle World thanks to my aunt, and I pick up Octane, Top Gear, and Classic Motorcycle Mechanics every month or 2, and the occasional Classic Bike. Those Brits know how to make a print mag!

I read less because there are less

[peter303]

The USA is down to one newsweekly- Time. Newsweek, US News Look Life are all gone in print. Their online versions are a joke.
There is one business weekly- BusinessWeek. Others have cut their publishing in half- Forbes, Fortune, etc.
Science/Tech is still doign nicely. i like Scientific American and Wired. Most academic journal have retreated behind online paywalls. So I dont read as many of those.

Playboy

[Anonymous Coward]

No wait, that's not reading

Magazines

[Anonymous Coward]

Popular Science
Popular Mechanics
Air & Space
Wired

My reading list

[byteherder]

I read about 30 magazines a month. My top picks are:

Scientific American
New Scientist
IEEE Spectrum
Circuit Cellar
Elektor
Nuts and Volts
Servo
Runner's World
Running Times
Inc.
Entrepreneur
Wired
Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities
Linux Format
Linux User and Developer
Racecar Engineering
RaceTech
Some Trade magazines
Some Fitness magazines
Some History magazines

Print is Dead!

[billstewart]

I'll occasionally read the freebie weekly newspaper, and there are airline magazines that I'll read on a plane at the times you're not allowed to use electronics, but that's about it. Lots of magazines online, though - The Atlantic in particular.

Zendo Orgy!

[tylikcat]

Those wild dance party weekends at the zendo!

Yeah, well. In a former life I did give pretty great parties - but then I was an overpaid software professional in a big house on a private acre with a hot tub and wood burning brick oven. I like my life, overall, a lot better now... but I'll admit the parties have taken a serious turn for the sedate. (Well, that and that I'm usually in bed by nine.)

Still reading it

[Winkkin]

Chess Life (and Review in an earlier version). Been reading them every month for 40 years. Still have most of them. Donation to some college chess club.

Re:Still reading it

[Winkkin]

They still send you a 25 page full color merchandise brochure 3 times a year.

Strategy & Tactics, Proceedings

[tmjva]

I still get Strategy & Tactics because there is still a paper wargame in every issue. (And will the word 'wargame' ever get promoted into canon and pass the spell checker?)

I get Proceedings because I have a navy interest.

Small Craft Advisor

[ClamBoy]

I think I've been subscribed to Small Craft Advisor for close to 4 years now. Content rich and reasonable advertising. It was reading before I started sailing just because I appreciated the magazine as a magazine, not just because of the subject matter.

My Favorite Magazine

[kc8hr]

QST http://www.arrl.org/qst The original geek favorite.

Trade Magzines

[Anonymous Coward]

I know there are electrical engineers on /. - and yet no one seems to have mentioned EE trade magazines? I subscribe to and read as many as possible, and they're all free! It's the main way that I keep up with developments in Electrical and RF engineering.

EGM, Famitsu, Nintendo Power

[Anonymous Coward]

Subscribed to Nintendo Power from beginning to end, I love EGM (mostly around the time of 1up but still renewed when it came back), and Famitsu is interesting too.

Retro Gamer

[NorthWay]

I'm stuck in the past so Retro Gamer is the perfect magazine for me then. Check out their site at http://www.retrogamer.net/.

The magazine has the most researched content I have seen in ages, and not just run of the mill reviews that you will find similar copies of in your avarage gaming magazine.

It is also a magazine which is strongly interacting with its readership through the forum. Well worth checking out.

The Wire (was Re:Hmm...)

[doom]

I forgot to mention "The Wire" (which has nothing to do with "Wired", or the television show, for that matter). It's an excellent British magazine for anyone interested in the grand old tradition of cutting-edge, avant-garde music.