Does it circle clockwise or counterclockwise?
This is Chapter 11, which means Reader’s Digest intends to continue operations while restructuring their debt. They ain’t circling anything, in any direction.
They are indeed quite stagnant.
Sounds like Drama in Real Life material.
Ah well. Life’s Like That.
My Mom used to set me down with the new issue, & quiz me on the meanings of the terms in Increase Your Word Power.
If I got them all right, she bought me a comic book.
Good times.
Back in the 1960’s, Reader’s Digest briefly offered subscriptions for life for some fee. The father of one of my childhood friends bought one. He died last year at 83 years old. I wonder how many of those lifetime subscription holders are still around.
“I am Joe’s Bankruptcy”
They have gone down hill in recent years. My folks always had a subscription and for some reason Dad felt the need to get one for me every Christmas. (Now Mom does.)
I skim it, but it does not have the feel of the digest I grew up with. I’m not sure if it has changed, or I have. (OK, likely a lot of both.)
I have told Mom not to renew my subscription this year. I keep the new copies in the car as an emergency read and often don’t get to them for months.
Mom had a guy from them call and try to strong-arm her into renewing early. He was aggressive enough about it that my 70 year old mother used swear words on the phone - something she never does. She told him in no uncertain terms to cancel both subscriptions now and he hung up on her.
I assume that this Jeff Jarvis is the one he’s talking about, but what’s UGM?
I had to ask them three times to take me off their junk mailing lists. I wrote to them and said, “In this age of technology, is it really necessary to use up trees to send me 10 pages of crap that says I may have won? You have my address, my phone number, and now you have my email address. Feel free to enter my name into your draws, and if I win, please just email me.”
After I started getting the junk mail yet again I called them back and blasted the CSR (sorry, I know it wasn’t you doing it personally) and told them to cancel my subscription. I don’t really miss it. They have their jokes and stories on their website anyways.
If Reader’s Digest folds, what will my Dad read on the can?
User-generated media. Also known by several other names/acronyms, as noted in this Wikipedia article. A good example is … well, Wikipedia. 
Hey, if Cracked can come back, I’m sure Reader’s Digest can.
They’ll restructure as a right-wing blog centered on their current “That’s Outrageous” feature and called Reader’s Indigestion.
What, is Playboy folding, too? 
I remember reading it as a kid just for the funny stories and jokes.
Then, when I got older, I saw the article “Thank You, Ronald Reagan.” That was a big, rude wake-up call as to the general bent of the editorial staff (or else its target readership).
OTOH, they DID print and reply to that woman who said she knew J.K. Rowling was a Satanist because of an article from The Onion, so they’re definitely not insane…
I like Reader’s Digest! It’s one of the two magazine subscriptions that I always carry, over twenty years for both.
With its short articles, Reader’s Digest is perfect bathroom reading.
Yes, unlikely to fold, but if it did, it would be undigested poetic justice.
http://www.salon.com/sneaks/sneakpeeks961113.html
Like **Leaper **I read it as a kid for the funny stories and jokes, then one day I read a harrowing tale of a US fighter pilot that almost died of his burns in Korea. He recuperated miraculously and he thanked god repeatedly for the recuperation.
And then later he bombed the infidels in Vietnam, and therefore god was in favor of the war there.
Of course, those were not the words in the tale, but that was the clear implication. The nauseating feeling I got was one element of my journey of becoming an agnostic.
So, thank you(?) for the memories.
But I will have to say that after the original owners passed away the magazine became less offensive and more harmless nowadays.
Years ago I picked up some Reader’s Digests from 1939 or so. No advertisements, no jokes or cartoons, just serious articles.* There is not much market for that nowadays.
*Well there was the article entitled “Shakespeare in Chocolate” about a theatre for Negroes doing the Bard in Harlem.