I USED TO work for a publication printed on “newsprint” paper, a newspaper, and I still subscribe to a few. Last week I received this notice from one of them:
The publisher of Parade magazine is ending the print version of the supplement with today’s edition. Beginning next Sunday, November 20, a new digital version of the magazine will be available with your subscription in the Sunday e-Edition.
The Parade insert was—until last week—a sorta nationwide-coverage general interest magazine, heavy on plugs for celebrities and products, inside the Sunday paper along with coupons, flyers for various companies (hearing-aids, replacement windows), “circulars” for retail stores and pharmacies, and a subscription card for the host paper, the Baltimore Sun.
A buncha stuff nobody asked for in their newspaper, but there it was, every week, along with the various sections of the newspaper, and the best part, the comics section. Parade maybe had one or two comics buried in the back, for example, the inoffensive one-panel “Howard Huge” strip, featuring a gigantic St. Bernard.
I woulda bet cash money until I cracked the final Parade open the other day that there’d be a crappy “Howard Huge” in the back of the magazine, but it wasn’t there, and Wikipedia informs me it ain’t been there since 2007. Wow!
So anyway, everybody’s talking #RIPTwitter, but since the online version of Parade currently does not contain any of the print stuff, I’m gonna observe a #RIPParade:
RIP Walter Scott’s Personality Parade!
RIP “Ask Marilyn!”
RIP Quickie-listy book page (and mass-market jewelry ads)!
RIP some puzzle or crossword I never did!
RIP ads for old-people products to scoff at (but also wonder about)!
At some point all this stuff will coalesce into AARP The Magazine or something (the way Rolling Stone did), until nobody knows how to read ink shaped into letters printed on paper.
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