Let's Hide Parade Magazine

[armedmonkey]

@Gfactor

Moved from The BBQ Pit to Cafe Society.

Gfactor
Pit Moderator

Oh, man…Now I can’t make fun of Dan Blather for being the type of guy that could get a beat down from Andy Rooney.

Screw it, I’ll risk it.

“Did you ever notice people complain about the most benign things, nowadays. It makes me wonder how inept a society we are when we have lost the technical knowhow to work a simple newspaper. Is it really that hard? I can sort my mail, but I wonder if Dan doesn’t curl up in the fetal position when he gets too much mail. I know it’s hard to find the copy of Cat Fancy when it’s buried in five pieces of mail, but shouldn’t we as Americans rise to that challenge? I don’t know about you, but I think if I smack him upside the head, he might find his copy of Parade quicker.”

P.S. Dan, I’m just fucking with you for the weak pit thread. Take it for what it is. Also, congrats on your tenth patent.

[Chronos]

But, the comics! Why must they wrap them in ads? Do they think I am actually going to look at the ads?

I know that whenever I get a subscription magazine, the first thing I do, always, is find all of the “stiffies” by feel, and throw them out sight unseen. The unobstrusive ads I’ll end up seeing when I read the articles, but the obnoxious ones I’ll never see at all.

There was a clever ad in the most recent Reader’s Digest, though: The ad was formatted to look exactly like the last half-page of an RD article, right down to the little square to indicate the end of the article. It started in mid-sentence, and only included the name of the company slightly more often than you’d expect in a real article.

[mobo85]

@Qadgop_the_Mercotan

=Here’s a superior Sunday magazine supplement anyway.
Weekender.

Ah, one of my favorite Sunday newspaper inserts. I mean, how can you go wrong with such important cover stories as “Walt Disney World: How Much C4 Would You Need?”, “The Theme Song from Ducktales and Why It is Now Stuck In Your Head,” and “Could Your Children Suddenly Drop Dead For No Reason?”

[Musicat]

What is Parade, now – down to 8 pages? Do you realize it was a thick magazine insert 50 years ago? With the ads inside?

[fiddlesticks]

Craig Ferguson had an Andy Rooney-esque column at the back of this week’s issue. The first time I’ve noticed him there. I read it in a Scots accent.

[Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew]

@Chronos

I know that whenever I get a subscription magazine, the first thing I do, always, is find all of the “stiffies” by feel

What magazine is this that you subscribe to that gets you feeling your stiffies? :dubious:

[Shagnasty]

Parade magazine is the Straight Dope for middle-America. The even have the world’s smartest person stumbling through some of the some of the not so difficult problems of our time in Marilyn Vos Savant (I think her parents knew they had expelled something special when they named her).

I like to categorize the articles in SDMB terms. Up this week:

k.d. lang Belts Out ‘Hallelujah’ - Cafe Society or the BBQ Pit

How Your Brain Affects Your Weight - Lots of possibilities here.

Miley Cyrus: ‘I Know Who I Am Now’ - Cafe Society

Stop the Upgrades! - The BBQ Pit

Does Your Pet Need Annual Shots? - GQ

Modernize Your Money Management - IMHO

Tim Burton Gets Into Character - Cafe Society

How Safe Are Cellphones? - GQ and Great Debates circa 1999

Cornbread-Chili Casserole - Cafe Society or the BBQ Pit

Are School Buses Unsafe? - GD, GQ, IMHO, or the BBQ Pit

Customers Complain of Gold-Buying Scams - MPSIMS

Training Iraqi M.D.s - MPSIMS

Marilyn’s Weekly Quiz: - The Game Room or MPSIMS

You see, they do the same thing there that we do here but the place and material is just a little…slower to appeal to their target demographic. People here get pissed off when someone can’t answer their super-specific, difficult, and detailed question within ten minutes of posting it but other people are content to wait months or years for someone like Marilyn Vos Savant type up 70 words or so and have it delivered to the nation hurled in the general direction of where they usually sleep via personal courier at any given time. People have different wants and needs.

[Beware_of_Doug]

@Musicat

What is Parade, now – down to 8 pages? Do you realize it was a thick magazine insert 50 years ago? With the ads inside?

They used to say, “It wouldn’t be Sunday without a Parade.” That was before you could read the whole thing in 30 seconds. Sometimes I had to do it twice to remember what was in it.

USA Weekend ain’t no better. The Des Moines Register used to have its own magazine - it won awards, for Og’s sake - until the Cowles interests sold out to Gannett. Pffft went the magazine. Now we get USA Weekend. I read that fuck just this morning and I can’t remember a goddamn thing.

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

Perhaps the OP was impatient to see this week’s compelling installment of Howard Huge. This week, the irrepressible canine steals all the meat that was set aside for the big barbecue, and eats it. Mom saves the day by making a souffle.

[Stan_Shmenge]

Actually, the way the Sunday paper is assembled is not to screw around with you, it is done that way for very practical reasons.

The Sunday edition of most papers is actually printed over a period of several days, often in three main sections. First to be printed are features like comics, Parade, Style and Food, and coupons. These are all things that can be locked in early in the week. Next, to give advertisers a somewhat later deadline comes the classifieds, and lastly, on Saturday night/Sunday morning, the time sensitive sections, News, Business and Sports.

The first two are printed during the day over the course of the week, a time when the presses would be idle after printing the daily edition. Even in the old days, when papers printed several editions a day (Chicagoans may remember the Red, Blue and Green streak editions of the Tribune) there was time between the morning edition and the afternoon edition with the stock market updates to do this work.

Otherwise they would have to have the printing capacity to knock out the entire Sunday edition in one day, a waste of capital resources.

I can recall having to assmeble the various sections of the Sunday paper when i worked as a paper boy and later at a newsstand. This process is now automated at the printing plant, but the sections are still printed over a period of days, for the same reasons as always.

So they (mostly) aren’t screwing with you, the paper is put together the way it is because it has to be done that way! Don’t look for this to change.

[FriarTed]

@Astroboy14

Yes. Yes we have.

Paraphrasing some comedian from the 80s: “My father had two full time jobs! If I go to the bank and the post office on the same day, I’m exhausted!”

The great Larry Miller.

[Jackmannii]

@Stan_Shmenge

Actually, the way the Sunday paper is assembled is not to screw around with you, it is done that way for very practical reasons.

Nope. There’s no “practical” reason to secrete Parade in the middle of the ads, or to cover the front of the comics with an ad, or to put ad stickers on the front page, unless by “practical” you mean getting people to look at the ads (in theory) so they can charge more for them and keep ad revenue from dwindling faster than it already is.

I don’t personally care whether Parade is included with the paper or not, but it’s mildly annoying that I have to excise a stupid ad from the comics on Sundays (the only day I read them). Aside from stomping up and down in rage for half an hour on Sundays, I’m not about to give up papers because of the mild annoyance.

What’s also stupid is the attempt to save money by reducing the size of papers. Eventually the damn things will be the size of a postage stamp, if postage stamps have not gone out of existence by then too. And our local paper caught hell when they decided to downsize the sports section by eliminating batting averages in baseball game summaries. It’s goddamn un-American. They recanted.

[salinqmind]

@Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus

Perhaps the OP was impatient to see this week’s compelling installment of Howard Huge. This week, the irrepressible canine steals all the meat that was set aside for the big barbecue, and eats it. Mom saves the day by making a souffle.

I have a perverse urge on a weekly basis to immediately check out “Howard Huge” in Parade. It’s so dated and unfunny, like “Marmaduke”, that I get a kind of tiny, dull thrill from reading it and not being disappointed, again.

[kenobi_65]

@salinqmind

I have a perverse urge on a weekly basis to immediately check out “Howard Huge” in Parade. It’s so dated and unfunny, like “Marmaduke”, that I get a kind of tiny, dull thrill from reading it and not being disappointed, again.

“Howard Huge” is one of a couple of strips produced by Bunny Hoest, the widow of the original creator of the strips, Bill Hoest. The Chicago Tribune still runs “The Lockhorns”, another Hoest strip, which is equally dated and unfunny.

A few years ago, when the Tribune was going through re-evaluations of which comics it’d carry, I wrote a letter to the editor, in which I pointed out how dated and unfunny “The Lockhorns” was, especially compared to such departed strips as “Calvin and Hobbes” and “The Far Side”. Apparently, the letter got printed (though I didn’t see it), because, a few days later, I received a letter in the mail, clearly written by an older woman, who wanted to tell me that (a) she loved “The Lockhorns”, and (b) she thought that I had no sense of humor at all, given what I did find to be funny.

[Freddy_the_Pig]

@kenobi_65

A few years ago, when the Tribune was going through re-evaluations of which comics it’d carry, I wrote a letter to the editor, in which I pointed out how dated and unfunny “The Lockhorns” was.

Oh, come on. Seeing Leroy flirt with some miniskirted bimbo at a 1960’s-style cocktail party, with a lampshade on his head, never goes out of style!

Miley Cyrus was on the cover of this week’s Parade. I only wish my newspaper had hidden it better.

[Baal_Houtham]

@Chronos

There was a clever ad in the most recent Reader’s Digest, though: The ad was formatted to look exactly like the last half-page of an RD article, right down to the little square to indicate the end of the article. It started in mid-sentence, and only included the name of the company slightly more often than you’d expect in a real article.

Traditionally newspapers and magazines require advertising to be easily distinguished from editorial content. If it isn’t apparent that something is advertising, the publication will insert the word “advertisement” in small letters near the top.

Designing ads to look like editorial is an effective technique and used frequently. (“Toenail Fungus Was Driving Me Crazy”) It was highly recommended by famous adman/writer David Ogilvy who used Gallup to research advertising effectiveness, but generally graphic designers won’t willingly choose to that approach.

I’m surprised to hear that Reader’s Digest let the ad you mention go through without marking it as advertising, but print media is clutching for every ad dollar it can find.

[kenobi_65]

@Freddy_the_Pig

Oh, come on. Seeing Leroy flirt with some miniskirted bimbo at a 1960’s-style cocktail party, with a lampshade on his head, never goes out of style!

Part of my letter to the Tribune noted that there are six so-called jokes which account for 90% of “The Lockhorns”:

• Leroy gets drunk
• Leroy likes to flirt with pretty girls (who are all apparently 2 feet taller than he is)
• Leroy is lazy
• Loretta cannot sing (and is a poor piano player, as well)
• Loretta is a poor cook
• Loretta shops too much

[Voyager]

@kenobi_65

Part of my letter to the Tribune noted that there are six so-called jokes which account for 90% of “The Lockhorns”:

• Leroy gets drunk
• Leroy likes to flirt with pretty girls (who are all apparently 2 feet taller than he is)
• Leroy is lazy
• Loretta cannot sing (and is a poor piano player, as well)
• Loretta is a poor cook
• Loretta shops too much

You forgot

• Loretta crashes the car and come in with the steering wheel
• Leroy is a loser who makes almost no money

There, that brings it up to 98% of the strips

As to the OP, consider yourself lucky. Parade is the New Yorker compared to USA Weekend, which is what I’m stuck with. I’ve got to mine the pile of ads for the coupons as well as the comics and magazine, and in any case considering the state of newspapers today I’m happy to see some ads.

[kaylasdad99]

@elmwood

They could start by getting rid of Parade Magazine.

But how are people supposed to get their minimum weekly requirement of The Lockhorns? And Howard Huge?

Won’t somebody think of Howard Hu-u-u-uge?

[kaylasdad99]

@Lynn_Bodoni

I can give you a couple of partially reasonable but totally unsatisfactory reasons for why they do this. The first reason is indeed because they want you to handle each and every one of those ads. The second reason is so that when the newspaper is available for sale at a retail outlet (drugstore, grocery store, convenience store) it’s so lowlifes don’t swipe the funnies and/or coupon sections out of the papers and walk out with them. A paper without the funnies is not a paper that can be sold.

Yeah, yeah. Tell it to The New York Times.