Tuesday, September 18, 2018

Time Magazine Sold Yet Again

Not long ago Meredith Corp. bought Time Magazine and now sold it to a California entrepreneur.

Even if I were filthy rich, that's something I would avoid.

I've said this before, and will say it again: The reason for Time Magazine's existence is no longer valid.  It was founded 95 years ago with the purpose of summarizing the week's news.  The target audiences were (1) big-city people who were too busy to follow the news on a daily basis and, more importantly, (2) people not in New York, Boston, Philadelphia or Chicago where newspapers did not cover news as completely as in the cities mentioned.

When I was a lad in Seattle -- way over there in the upper left-hand corner of the country -- Time was my main source of information about big-city (especially New York) arts and culture, not to mention foreign affairs.  I recall eagerly waiting for the Thursday mail delivery so that I could get my weekly fix.

Then came 24-hour radio news stations and, a decade or so later, national editions of The New York Times.  Now we have cable news and the Internet.  So I have no reason whatsoever to wait around for a weekly news magazine.

I haven't regularly read Time since some point in the 1980s and thumb through one in waiting rooms maybe once very few years.  Which means I have no idea what Time contains nowadays.  Probably features and commentary, and not the sorts of news it carried years ago.

But I can find features and masses of commentary on the Internet.  Again, no real reason to buy a copy of Time unless its content is utterly unique and valuable -- something I doubt will happen, no matter who owns it.

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