Oh, it’s not the content that upsets me. I’m usually very pleased with them, particularly this latest cartoon issue, and the previously unpublished B. Kliban work. I hope the New Yorker continues to release its special editions.
What I don’t like is all the special advertising that comes with each special edition. They have all these extra-stiff pieces of pseudocardboard filling the magazine, making it thick and heavy, which is murder to hold if you’re reading it while commuting. And all those special ads won’t allow you to easily fold the magazine back, much less lie open on a flat surface. Sponsors no doubt get excited about the special editions and save their most hard-to-miss ads for those issues, but dammit, a little consideration would be nice, making the medium a little less unwieldy. Or they could just give the special issues away for free, pocketing the increased ad revenue they no doubt get from these abominations.
The problem is is that the New Yorker is quite possibly the very best magazine in the history of the printed word, so I can’t cancel my subscription in protest. And no one’s going to notice if I refrain in protest from buying the SUVs or perfumes or Caribbean resort vacation packages that are advertised in these awful ads. I guess I’m just going to have to cope with it for the rest of my life. But I swear in the name of Eustace Tilley and all else that’s holy: this needs to stop.
The first thing I do with one of those issues–I call them the Vanity Fair issues–is spend about three minutes going through it and ripping out all of those special pages: any page with nothing but advertizing on both sides gets yanked. It reduces the issue to normal size, and normal pageability. Just do it first thing and avoid the frustration.
I do the same thing, although the inserts come out more cleanly when the magazine is saddle stitched. When it’s perfect bound, there’s usually some of the ad left in the magazine.
These issues are almost always perfect bound; that’s the nature of the beast (single pages of non-standard material, etc.). And I find they come out more cleanly than when you do the same thing with saddle stapled issues: sometimes you end up just pulling the whole tabloid sheet across the staple, and screwing up the signature.
Me, too! I seat myself at the dining table, set my jaw with grim determination, and get to rippin.’
First to go are the subscription cards, first the loose ones and then the perforated bound-in ones.
Then any stiff cardboardy pages.
Then the annoying half-pages, which generally advertise the New Yorker cartoon sales (“Own your own naughty Peter Arno!”), after which I search out their Siamese Twins in the front half of the book.
Finally a quick skim to locate any and all pages and blocks of pages with ADVERTISEMENT printed at the top. Goodbye, Resorts of Hawaii! Arrividerci, restaurants of Rome!
But you DO have to be careful not to tear out anything which might have actual content on the other side. They can be sneaky that way.
Does anybody else miss Tina? I think it was the dominatrix and the cockroach that did her in, but I quit reading for a while there out of protest & then lost the habit.
I live in Massachusetts, too, which proves to Bill O’Reilly and friends that I’m even more out of touch. But I’m a subversive: I’m getting married, but to a woman! They just hate it when we liberals try to coöpt conservative institutions like marriage and nutrition and Christmas (which we’re celebrating this year! Together!)
I think it would be cool to live in an ivory tower. When I lived in New York I had friends who lived in a sixth-floor walkup. That wasn’t exactly ivory, but I’d call it a tower, and they were liberals, so what do I know?
I’m originally from somewhere near Pittsburgh, myself, so I guess I’ve got latent non-coastalness in me that I could snap back to life, if I worked at it. I know Sean Hannity wants me to, but what can I do? There’s just something about living next to salt water that makes you liberal. Unless you live in the South, I guess.
I hate them, too-but thought it was just me who weeded TNY out before reading. Nice to know I’m not alone.
And I will admit to having trouble with some of the captions for the cartoons that people had trouble with the captions with! (if that’s a sentence).
I also do the ceremonial ripping-out of the ads. It also actually lightens the mag by an ounce or two, which is nice when you have a long subway ride.
One problem with the perfect-bound issues is that I like to read TNY at the gym on treadmills and such and it won’t lay flat. The solution is to dismember the mag as you go along, ripping off the page and laying it flat on top of its comrades, then hobbling over to the trash with a random handful of pages to toss.
I also tear out any physical-training or gym cartoons and stick them on the gym’s bulletin board on the way out. They’re gone soon as they’re non-official but they give some people yuks before that.
I’d pay extra for magazines that don’t allow perfume ads.
My SI and my New Yorker both do have them. I don’t know who the genius who came up with that idea was, but I’d like to go back in time and kill him. I don’t think it has any place outside of fashion magazines.
First thing I do when my magazine stinks is rip that out, and throw it as far away as I can.
Then, I rip out all the stiff ads, rip out all of the “fold out” ads, shake out all of the loose subscription cards, and then start reading.
Count me in as another “automatic ad ripper” - the first thing I do when I get the magazine. If the magazine isn’t floppy and can’t fall open randomly, I ain’t interested…
However, I do use the insert subscription mailers, folded in half, as my supply of book marks.
[Cartoon Issue]
Oh man, didja love that Dr. Phil cartoon, or what?
The recent cartoon issue was the first one in which I actually noticed the perfume samples, except maybe in the fashion issues but I don’t really remember. I was pretty surprised to see them in the New Yorker, does it happen often and I just haven’t noticed?
I have some excellent news for those who hate the perfume ads. I called the New Yorker to complain about the ones in the Cartoon issue and to cancel my subscription, since even tearing the ads out doesn’t remove the stink from a magazine enough for me to enjoy or sometimes even tolerate reading it. The nice lady in the subscriptions department immediately put me on a list to receive non-stinky magazines and she also told me that putting the issue I already had into the freezer overnight might get rid of the smell (it didn’t, but I appreciate her trying).
The toll-free number for subscriptions is (800) 825-2510.
They’re gone soon as they’re non-official but they give some people yuks before that.