So yesterday my wife makes an annoucement. Stuffy says she how about getting rid of some of your magazines, you know like before they fall over and crush us. She has a point, I do my part keeping writers at work by subscribing to 6 magazines that I don’t have time to read. And what about those PC Magazines she says, I’ve never even seen you read one of those. I look at the 4th pile, it’s the neatest, precisely because her comment was dead on. I’ve haven’t read one in months.
Well, I say to her you know how I hate being assaulted with ads and subscrition cards, well these are like the worst. I then pick up a random copy and demonstrate, by reading aloud…
AD
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Table of Contents
Ad
Ad
ARTICLE
ARTICLE
AD
AD
CARD
ARTICLE
ARTICLE
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ARTICLE
AD
ARTICLE
AD
CARD
ARTICLE
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ARTICLE
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ARTICLE
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CARD
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ARTICLE
ARTICLE
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ARTICLE
CARD
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ARTICLE
ARTICLE
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ARTICLE
ARTICLE
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CARD
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ARTICLE
ARTICLE
ARTICLE
CARD
ARTICLE
ARTICLE
CARD
ARTICLE
ARTICLE
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ARTICLE
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ARTICLE
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ARTICLE
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CARD
CARD
ARTICLE
ARTICLE
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By this time we were both in stitches laughing. So it got me to wondering, if they are in fact the worse. So anybody got a magazine handy? Come on, it’s a quest for knowledge.
Hold on, I’ve a Baltimore magazine right here. OK, lessee…
ad (inside front cover)
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table of contents
ad/masthead
ad
ad/publisher’s note
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ad/letters
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ad
article
article
article/ad (1/3 of the page is article, the other two-thirds, ads)
article
ad
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article
article
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article
ad
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article
article/ad (another 1/3, 2/3 thingy)
ad/article (yep, you guessed it: the thirds again)
ad/article (again with the thirds!)
ad
ad
article
article/ad (enough with the thirds, already!)
article
article/ad (I’m beginning to see a theme here…)
I wanted to be completely fair, so I just leafed through a trade mag (Aviation Weekly if you must know), I think I’ve got the secret. They add more ads, to make up for those pesky articles. Uh, when they don’t tack an ad on the page with the article.
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Editors note
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TOC
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Letters/ADDS
ARTICLE
ARTICLE
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ARTICLE
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ARTICLE
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ARTICLE
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Dairy Herd Management [sub]I live on a farm and it was on top of the pile, dammit, leave me alone![/sub]:
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card
Table of Contents
Editor’s note
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article
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article/ad
article/ad
article/ad
article/ad
article/ad
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article/ad
article/ad
article
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Big ol’ 16-page advertising insert
article (continued from prior to the insert - I hate those)
article
ad
article/ad
ad
article
article/ad
article/ad (Hm. One ad on this page is for large barn fans
article/ad
article/ad
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article
article/ad
ad/article (just like an article/ad, but more ad than article)
ad/article
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card Ad index!!! WTF?/ad
article
ad
karma - a way of life (central florida lifestyle - free magazine I picked up at lunch)
AD
AD
AD
Table of contents
Table of contents
AD
Staff listing/AD
AD
More staff listings/AD
Photo spread
Photo spread
Photo spread
Photo spre… whoops: the preceding pages were actually an AD
ARTICLE (sky diving)
ARTICLE (Is Kirsten Dunst the girl next door? In your dreams!)
ARTICLE (Sex and the City Beautiful)
AD
RESTAURANT LISTINGS (damn, some places I’ll have to try out!)
AD
ARTICLE (Noel Holmes)
ARTICLE (Feng Shui - jewelry)
PHOTO SPREAD (beautiful people at downtown hangouts)
ARTICLE (Feng Shui - life and career)
RESTAURANT REVIEW (4 pages on one restaurant)
AD
MOVIE REVIEW
AD (condos - pre-contruction sales)
AD
ARTICLE (Hugh Grant)
AD
AD
AD
ARTICLE (Local artists)
ARTICLE (Ballet season)
AD
ARTICLE (Science Center exhibits)
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AD
AD
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contents
contents
ad
masthead
ad
editor’s note
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article
article
article
article
ad
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article
article
article
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article
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article
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column
ad
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preview of next issue
ads
article
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Hmm, I made out pretty well…
Of course, most of the “articles” were short little blurbs, like about how many people use scented deodorant.
**
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table of contents
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table of contents, pt. 2
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ad/staff
editors note/ad
more staff/ad
lead writers note/ad
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letters/ad for several pages…
**
Forget it. Sometimes I wonder why I subscribed… oh yeah, to get ideas for the car… sigh
well, okay, a few spoof ads. but the rest is art and articles.
Alternative Press Magazine
ADs * 4
Table of Contents
AD
More Table of cont
AD
more Table of cont
AD
Letters
AD
more Letters
AD
New Releases (surprising number of which are ahem advertised)
AD
more new releases,etc
AD *2
2 pg article
AD
I once saw a very short Fry and Laurie sketch wherein one of them, forget which one, did a demonstration. “Let’s see…we have here a copy of Woman’s Own…” [shakes it so a half-dozen inserts fall out] “…and Rolling Stone…” [shakes out even more inserts]. Four magazines later, he’s standing in a sea of inserts. “And now we’re going to see the man who first had the idea of putting inserts into magazines…” [cocks rifle]
