Ask Slashdot: What Good Print Media Is Left? 285
guises writes: "A recent story discussing the cover of Byte Magazine reminded me of just how much we've lost with the death of print media. The Internet isn't what took down Byte, but a lot of other really excellent publications have fallen by the wayside as a result of the shift away from the printed page. We're not quite there yet, though. There seem to still be some holdouts, so I'm asking Slashdot: what magazines (or zines, or newsletters, or newspapers) are still hanging around that are worth subscribing to?"
The Economist (Score:5, Insightful)
The Economist. Still worth reading.
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Yup, pretty much that and nothing else really. Long live the new flesh!
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Dono If I believe that.
The Economist has always had a penchant for saying very little with the largest number of words.
If you sit down and try to outline one of their major articles, as I recently did, you will see how few points they actually try to make and the inordinate burden they imposed on the reader while making them. And its not like they provide quality supporting documentation to justify their points. Often they simply trout out half truths and over simplifications in point after point of seemi
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Often they simply trout out half truths and over simplifications in point after point of seemingly endless paragraphs of supporting verbiage which provide little enlightenment.
Well, to be fair, it is economics. Not sure what else they could do.
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Not as much as it once was.
Go surf their site, they cover a wide wide variety of topics.
Re:The Economist (Score:5, Insightful)
The Economist has always had a penchant for saying very little with the largest number of words.
I find that the Economist has a very high information density. Not just in its headline topic but in many other areas of journalism, too.
As for "half-truths and over simplifications", that's not my experience. Maybe you just don't understand a lot of the rather complex concepts and language that their professional and technically proficient writers use?
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The Economist. Still worth reading. (Score:2)
Agreed
Falcon Wolf
Re:The Economist ... and the FT (Score:3)
Any newspaper that doesn NOT carry a horoscope and limits sports coverage to a single page (2, tops) must have a sensible set of priorities. In addition it takes the reaslistic view that pretty much everything of importance has a business or financial driver or consequence (though it does cover natural disasters and upheaval in non-financial terms, usually with a much more level-headed and unsensationalis
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Yes, you can roll up the newspaper or magazine and kill mosquitoes with it.
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I can read a magazine on the toilet, I refuse to take a laptop in there (I don't even own my own, it's a work laptop and it stays at the office). I can't read anything on a smartphone period, the text is too tiny and the interface is awful, smartphones are badly designed nuisances. Similarly, I can read a book or magazine in bed, but not the smartphone and not my desktop computer and I will never own a tablet. I can read the paper or a magazine on a train or plane, but electronic substitutes fail badly t
Re:The Economist (Score:5, Insightful)
Done right digital versions offer some advantages print cannot. Does print offer any advantage over digital beyond not needing a powered device?
One small disadvantage: When I was a kid, I remember a HUGE stack of National Geographic magazines that stat around my grandparents' house. Many of them dated back to IIRC the 1940's and 50's, and some older still... I could sit around as a kid in the 1970's and leaf through them, no problem.
Would we be able to, 30-40 years hence, be able to even open some of these digital mags without paying (again) for the privilege of doing so? What if the website dies off? What if archive.org didn't, well, archive it?
Paper may be inefficient at many things, but even magazine publishers that died off a long-assed time ago likely still have one or two copies of their editions floating around somewhere (even if it's sitting in a flea market or antique store...)
Re:The Economist (Score:5, Insightful)
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Byte is great as a history book of how we got here, until about a year before its demise. It chronicled much, and it served many masters and interests with a lot of personality. It did ok online, but even that folded, and much of what UBM bought is dead, failed in the transition to online.
There are classic issues, but that was yesterday, and tomorrow much is going to be different. There are still new technologies, some advances, and more than enough cults of code and hardware, now bifurcated into traditiona
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Circuit Cellar's still around, and not half bad, actually.
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I read Nuts&Volts. Still fun.... once in a while.
Byte served its purpose well. (Score:3)
Long live Byte. Goodbye, Byte, Circuit Cellar, Pournelle, and so many other characters. Long live Ars Technica, Wired, GigaOm, and dozens of other sites like NetworkWorld, InfoWorld, The Register, and so forth. Print will never come back. You won't feel it in your hands until your foldable smartphone makes this comfy some day in the future-- to do again.
I loved reading Byte! starting from the beginning. Reading what hardware and software hackers, who followed hacker ethics not the criminals called hackers in the press today, were doing was terrific. My two favorite columns were Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar [circuitcellar.com], which is now a compleat magazine of it's own, and Jerry Pournelle's Chaos Manor [jerrypournelle.com].
Falcon Wolf
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. Print will never come back. You won't feel it in your hands until your foldable smartphone makes this comfy some day in the future-- to do again.
What will I read In the Doctors office if print media dies ?
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The same issues of magazines that are currently there. They never change.
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You seem a little over-exaggerating, but I can relate to the GP. In the late '90s when I was in art class we would pick through old National Geographics from the '60s and '70s. Half the fun was looking at the old ads. Especially car ads for some reason. Looking at old car ads in any old media is always a hoot.
Re:The Economist (Score:5, Insightful)
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You can barely find stuff from 5 years ago on the web. Some stuff yes, but most of it vanishes or becomes very difficult to locate using modern search tools which are oriented towards serving up ads and hits for what's popular and current.
Re:The Economist (Score:4, Insightful)
You can barely find stuff from 5 years ago on the web. Some stuff yes, but most of it vanishes or becomes very difficult to locate using modern search tools which are oriented towards serving up ads and hits for what's popular and current.
Google seems to be getting worse as time progresses. Back when Google was just coming around (early '00), and Altavista was dominant, to search for ALL words (Boolean AND) in a query: +you +had +to +put +a +plus +in +front +of +everything or else it assumed a Boolean OR.
Google assumed you wanted Boolean AND.
Now in Google "+you" "+need" "+quotes" "+and" "+plus" for Boolean AND, or else it will search Boolean OR/ALL_SYNONYMS.
I'm also getting kinda sad because useful Usenet discussion is vanishing. My city used to have a reasonably active Usenet group. It is now a wasteland, and there's no good Forum replacements. And of what forums there are (for any and all subjects), Archive.org or otherwise don't archive them as well as old Usenet discussions are on Deja / Google Groups.
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You can wipe your ass with paper copies. Rip the pages out and cover the walls and windows of your house. Make paper mache with it. Cut up the headlines to make an old fashioned ransom note. Plenty of advantages to paper.
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I'm certain there's a rhyme and reason for this behavior, but I find myself unable, as a mere alpha primate, to understand her great feline intellect.
In an attempt to bring her into the electronic age, I placed some transcripts from Reddit beneath and around her beloved evacuation site. It
Re:The Economist (Score:4, Funny)
Try different newspapers and see if she's expressing a political view.
Or tabloid versus traditional fold in the middle, see if it's a class thing.
Let me know how she feels about USA Today.
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Does print offer any advantage over digital beyond not needing a powered device?
It can be physically abused, without risking damage to a potentially expensive electronic device... for myself, namely in the waiting area for patients at my office.
Sure, lots of people just play around/read on their smartphones these days, but for those who are not, I'd rather have a bunch of magazines which they can flip through if they're looking for something different to read, rather than providing an electronic device for them to do the same.
Also preferable for active, destructive, kids. :P
I have 1 subscription (Score:4, Interesting)
funnytimes.com
All I need.
National Geographic (Score:3, Interesting)
Very good photography, good enough writing.
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Who Cares? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Good print media?
Really. Local newspaper provides enough to wrap up stuff to ship, and a few sheets to use to light charcoal.
Other than that, who cares?
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I care some and think there's a solution (Score:2)
Our local Syracuse paper was bought up by the same folks who are running the Times-Picayune into the ground. We used to have two daily papers (certainly don't need that now), but are left with a non-daily paper that is primarily AP wire and NY Times stories.
What I would like is to see Syracuse University buy the paper, use the press to print a daily for both the university and the city (keeping with the Town & Gown movement). The paper could be the Journalism department and also be an outlet for the bus
TP (Score:3)
They haven't started making digital toilet paper yet.
Your local newspaper (Score:2, Interesting)
Nowhere else will you find detailed reporting regarding events and issues that may actually impact your life. Some have said that social media will kill local newspapers but I find that real news is still better covered by a reporter than by hearsay on my Facebook wall. Local reporters work hard to produce a paper every day (or every week, depending on your community), the least we can do is subscribe to their publication to help foot the bill of good reporting.
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Here in Australia, my experience is that the genuinely local newspapers (limited to specific suburbs or council areas and usually available for free every week) are great as a way of finding out whats going on in the local area. The normal daily newspapers are full of crap and not worth reading.
Whatever you're interested in (Score:2)
I like my tech magazines and news digital. I like my Muscle & Fitness and Popular Science in print. It's personal preference really.
Make Magazine (Score:5, Insightful)
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The thing is, Byte, Datamation, and a few others quit being really must read for techs long before the Internet really hit.
In the IT field back in the late 80's through about 2000, the scariest thing to see would be an executive with a glossy magazine..
Paecon (Score:2, Interesting)
You won't get the US centric perspective that you get from the economist.
http://www.paecon.net/ [paecon.net]
The Economist is British . . . (Score:4, Informative)
. . . the last time I checked, the Economist was not a US publication. Does the BBC World News have a, "US centric perspective," too?
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The Economist is a *lot* more US-normative than most UK publications, yes. For one thing, a lot of their market is US; for another, they're generally proponents of the US and UK becoming more similar -- mostly by the UK changing.
Having bought the Economist in various places around the world, you should be aware that the apparent focus of the magazine is different in different places. The content is formally the same, the articles are identical, but the ordering is not; this changes surprisingly strongly how one feels it is centric towards one place or another. Always buy in the US? It will be US centric. It's quite different in France.
The Economist (Score:2)
You won't get the US centric perspective that you get from the economist.
I am an American and only 2 American print magazines come as close as The Economist does to my pov. Those are Reason magazine [reason.com] and Liberty magazine [libertyunbound.com].
Falcon Wolf
"print" vs "digital" is pointless distinction (Score:5, Insightful)
TFA has it all wrong from the start.
The problem is, from a cybernetic perspective, the internet is just words, pictures and video at the presentation layer...
**its not inherently different** The **channel** for the information is different, but it's the same type of information
both a print & digital news requires a *reporter* and *editor*
a blog can never be the "paper of record"...it has to be an institutional entity with accountability
yes, of course the transition to digital formats was **mismanaged** by the non-journalism side of most news operations, but that is because the businesspeople made the same mistake TFA makes...thinking a digital news story is somehow inherently different b/c the channel is different
Re:"print" vs "digital" is pointless distinction (Score:4, Insightful)
blame businesspeople (Score:2)
Right effect wrong cause...blame the business side. I saw this happen firsthand as a web editor in Colorado, but it's not "the internet" that broke...it was narrow-minded business people in the administration that refused to adapt their concept of ad revenue
It's a narrow, non-tech MBA-style business approach that did this
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The channel can make all the difference. Remember when software distribution and patching was done with floppy disks? When bugs were hard to patch you're damn right there were fewer bugs. Now software distribution is fast and patching is easy. This didn't make software more reliable, it just made it more buggy. It's just like Jevons Paradox.
With print media you have lots of eyes looking at the quality of the final printed page because, let's face it, once it goes out of the door the only thing that can foll
channel differences (Score:2)
right, there are "differences" because, inherently, the channel is different, but it doesn't affect the content...journalism is still journalism
there are myriad benefits to using the internet in the newsroom...the CMS's they have are great...very streamlined.
digital media, as you point out, is different by scale...the resources it takes to print 100,000 newspapers is much different than the resources to make an internet article that 100,000 people see
there are other obvious differences, and they matter to t
Your local newspaper. (Score:5, Interesting)
Disclaimer: I've worked for 2 newspapers, and currently work for a media company (in the online division).
Why? Because a local newspaper is going to cover more relevant info, with more details, than numerous other mediums. It's an at-your-leisure consumption device, too.
I get the Sat. & Sun. local papers here. The Sat. for general weekend news, and the Sun. for big feature stories. Our paper frequently has some amazing local content; I recall a great 2 page spread on a local barbershop, and when one of the historic buildings burned down, they had almost daily coverage on the progress.
Plus, it's great for information on important city council stuff. Our city has been having the Great Trash Debate for some time, and now it's finally coming to a close (trying to figure out if trash pickup should be privatized, or if they should increase the cost of trash stickers to cover rising costs of maintenance for the trucks).
If you live in a major metro area, seek out the smaller hyper-local publications for your area.
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> when one of the historic buildings burned down,
> they had almost daily coverage on the progress.
Wow. Must've taken a long time to burn down. :-)
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Magazines (Score:2)
For .Net developers:
Code Magazine [codemag.com]
MSDN Magazine [microsoft.com]
DNC Magazine [dotnetcurry.com](Not a print magazine, but it is a PDF that you can print out.)
General Computing:
CPU Magazine (not as good as it used to be, but still not bad)
Maximum PC
My local bookstore carries quite a few Linux magazines imported from Great Britain.
The Atlantic Monthly (Score:2)
Niche publications... (Score:3)
I write for and read a niche publication related to an obscure hobby of mine (related to model trains) and it actually sells very well and they still pay well for contributions. Mostly because the target audience is retirees who are of a generation that are used to and comfortable reading the printed page, and are happy to pay for it. Many of these people also supplement their subscription with online forum discussions, which has changed the nature of the magazine. The primary focus is on lengthy how-to articles that people would not normally compile for free and post online due to the time and effort involved, but are happy to put into print because they (and I) are being paid for it. Club announcements and updates and stuff are less needed thanks to online forums.
The one thing the magazine has not done is embraced a digital version and made their archives available digitally. One magazine that has done this to great effect is Model Railroader. Rather than collect stacks of back issues, you can now get the whole set online or on discs. One of the main issues depends on what the original contract with the writers looked like. If it did not have a 'and all future media' type clause, you would have to seek individual permission from each contributor to make the back issues available digitally. That has been one of the things holding back the particular magazine I write for. I myself am all in favor of making back issues available digitally. At the very least they could sell a digital edition beginning with new issues, with a new contract for the writers that includes it.
As far as mainstream periodicals, I occasionally like to pick up a Wall Street Journal or a New York Times when at an Airport, but 99.9% of my current news intake happens online these days. Financial Times of London is a good one, but again can be had online.
what I do read exclusively in printed form is books. I just like them, and I like to keep the best ones for re-reading later. Mine will be among the last generation to prefer this most likely.
Make and W.I.R.E.D. (Score:2)
Short news is dead, long analysis lives. (Score:2)
"Long read" periodicals, which rely on research or expertise are still worth reading. The Economist and Foreign Policy are tow that stick out in my mind.
Local news may or may not be good. When national coverage dominates, you're basically getting a watered down version of last week's CNN. When local coverage dominates, at least you know there was was probably no other source for that information.
Industry Journals probably cover esoteric topic no one else will, so those count if your are actually interested
Better question (Score:2)
What good media exists at all.
I say none.
Science Magazine (Score:2, Interesting)
I would classify New Scientist (http://www.newscientist.com) as an excellent subscription magazine. The quality of the printed pictures and graphs is a great addition to nice science articles.
NYTimes is left I believe. (Score:5, Funny)
At least according to Rush.
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Do people REALLY still cling to the myth that the New York Times is not a left-wing newspaper? Puh-leez. We're adults here, people. In this day and age, we're still denying basic facts like this? You don't believe me, do you?
Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper? Of course it is. [nytimes.com]
--Source: The New York Times.
Re:NYTimes is left I believe. (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course it is Liberal, anything having to do with facts or science is Liberal these days.
Re:NYTimes is left I believe. (Score:4, Funny)
So they say! Although it is unclear why Geddy, Alex and Neil would be weighing in on this issue in the first place.
here's one I really like (Score:3)
Saveur [saveur.com]
Lucky Peach and Archaeology (Score:2)
Two magazines I still read in print are Lucky Peach and Archaeology.
Lucky Peach is a bit of insanity: Food travel, recipes, and steam of consciousness weirdness. Not cheap, and so far as I can tell, not all of it is available online.
Archaeology is great because you get to see real science actually in use -- unlike the pap most newspapers post, where the big words are all left out. It does have digital subscriptions, but because most of its articles are short, I'm happy to take this into the (ahem) powder r
The Library Still Has Books (Score:2)
our local Sunday newspaper has coupons (Score:4, Insightful)
The Jamaica Gleaner print edition (Score:3)
New Yorker (Score:3)
National Geographic (Score:2)
Here are a few (Score:3)
Harper's Magazine
The Atlantic
Lapham's Quarterly
Foreign Affairs
Funny Times (Score:2)
http://www.funnytimes.com/ [funnytimes.com]
They're sometimes too far radically left leaning but still lots of good stuff. At least they're funny (most of the) times. :)
Here is my current list: (Score:2)
Here is my current list:
Analog
The New Yorker
American Rifleman
Shotgun News
Practical Sailor
Cruising World
Good Old Boat
Shortest of these subscriptions ? 7 years
Longest ? 25 years (Analog)
Do they have websites ? Sure, but the print media is what I seriously read.
Ever switched to the other NRA mags? (Score:2)
American Rifleman is fairly entertaining for a bathroom read. I know you can (or at least as a life member, I can..) get one of other NRA mags instead of AR. I keep thinking the women's version might be interesting, at least as a sociological amusement, and perhaps something to leave at the Pediatrician's office to keep 'em guessing.
The New Yorker? (Score:3)
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Yeah, I would find it hard to give up the print edition. A physical subscription includes access to the digital archive, which is nice.
Fortean Times (Score:2)
Download the pdf of any magazine instantly (Score:2)
Vanity Fair (Score:2)
They have good, in depth coverage of current topics. For example, they were one of the first mainstream publications to give accurate, factual coverage of the financial crisis while it was unfolding. Their contributors write well and their editors are top notch. There are usually one to two articles worth reading every month, each about five pages.
QST and QEX (Score:2)
IEEE Spectrum, much more than electronics (Score:2)
It covers a wide variety of technical topics with quite a bit of depth. I get it by default by being an IEEE member. However, it seems that you can subscribe directly too [sunbeltfs.com].
Mad Magazine (Score:2)
I loved the ads (Score:4, Interesting)
Why is it that the ads in mags like Byte were a key part of the reason I bought the magazine -- but banners and online ads have become little more than annoyance and irritation?
The old print-media ads were informative and didn't slow down my reading in anyway so I guess they were excellent "secondary" content.
There's no way I'll patronize any site that uses full-page interstitial advertising -- yet the full-page ads in Byte and other printed mags were things I often read from start to finish.
Is it just me or have others had the same experience?
The Guardian Weekly (Score:4, Informative)
You know, the organisation that worked with Snowden to reveal government overreach to the world? The one whose journalists just won a Pulitzer?
The weekly edition [myguardianweekly.co.uk] is delivered worldwide. The condensed format is great for catching up on what's happening beyond the boundaries of Murdouche's empire..
This kinda sounds like an advertisement, but it's really not. It's just that print news media here in Australia ranges from mediocre to outright political propaganda. The Guardian is my lifeline on sanity in this environment.
The Atlantic Monthly (Score:5, Interesting)
Heavy Metal and others (Score:2)
And any other graphic novel/ comic book like thing out there. There's some flow to graphic novels that I've never really seen done well on a computer.
I think Photography magazines are still better in print that digital. What the picture looks like printed out is always different than what it looks like in a digital format.
I'd also suggest Mad Magazine. You just can't fold a tablet the same way you can the back page.
Harpers, New Yorker, Sunset. Not the Economist (Score:4, Insightful)
All of those are a pleasure to read.
I knew some people would call out the Economist, and I used to subscribe to it some years back - but unfortunately they dumbed it down quite a bit several years ago in a push to increase their subscription base... and it looks like they succeeded.
Le Monde Diplomatique (Score:2)
Scientific American (Score:4, Insightful)
Harper’s, The Baffler, The Believer (Score:3)
Harper’s [harpers.org] (not to be confused with Harper’s Bazaar, which is an especially boring fashion magazine,) The Believer, [believermag.com] and The Baffler [thebaffler.com] all have good literary and art coverage as well as long-form lefty political journalism. The New Yorker [newyorker.com] is good too, and not as New York City centric as you might think, aside from the theater/music/event listings, but it’s weekly, so kinda expensive and easy to fall behind on. There’s some good stuff in Rolling Stone and Playboy from time to time but I wouldn’t keep either one on the coffee table where people could see them.
The economist, New scientist (Score:2)
I once loved Scientific American but then they became as crappy and unrealistic as Popular Mechanics for a number of years, then they became more serious but way too much psychology 101 crap about the brain. It is S
The Week (Score:2)
I love The Week [theweek.com]. It's a reasonably objective collection of the best news articles/opinions each week. Each Sunday, I sit down with a cup of coffee for a half hour and get a broad overview of what happened in the world that week, and what people said about it.
It's basically a printed new aggregator, showing only the most insightful and informative opinions (from all sides) each week -- the exact opposite of the Internet news I consume daily.
Few Asian magazines... (Score:3)
Caravan - http://www.caravanmagazine.in/ [caravanmagazine.in]
Open - http://www.openthemagazine.com... [openthemagazine.com]
The above two are new ventures, here are some older ones...
India Today - http://indiatoday.intoday.in/ [intoday.in]
Frontline - http://www.frontline.in/ [frontline.in]
And no one has mentioned New Yorker - probably the best over the years.
Magazines calculated to drive you MAD (Score:3)
I still read Mad Magazine.
It's changed some since I first discovered it (and guffawed at it) decades ago, but it still has some pretty good writing and I get enough chuckles out of it to justify the sub.
The problem with Mad is that Mad will never be as funny as it was when you first discovered it - and it doesn't matter when that was. To me the funniest Mad articles are from the '80s. My Dad read it in the '60s, and thinks those are the best years. I have the whole run on DVD, and the '60s stuff doesn't strike me as funny as the '80s stuff.
The other problem with Mad is that pop culture has become self-parodying, which makes the parodist's job much more difficult.
(Mad isn't a news publication. But the question didn't specify that the periodicals be USEFUL, just worth reading!)
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+1 for WIRED in paper format. The layout is beautiful and ever-changing.
Infoporn [google.com] anyone?
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Did you guilt them into a discount? I got a renewal for some stupid amount, $24/yr or so, and I called and told them it was over. The phone rep caved and I got an $11/yr renewal.
So I have now only missed Vol1 No1. The streak continues. And it is still worth reading, since they appear to have stamped out may of the gratuitous optical gimmicks that rendered it virtually unreadable in the early 00s. Migraine effects, which now only show up once or twice an issue. I'm still convinced they design around wh
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Science News is available online, though.
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"I like Archaeology, it's pretty old school,..."
It usually is.
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If you read this everyday, you'll be amazed at how informed you will be.
For various definitions of 'informed'.
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I've been trying to maintain an e-subscription to to Analog for some time now, mostly because I've run out of room for books in my hose and I've reached the point where, for every paper book that comes into the house, I need to find a book to throw out. It has been an exercise in frustration. e-subscriptions are handled by independent businesses, not by the publisher (as paper ones seem to be). And they've been closing one after another. First fictionwise closed, apparently subsumed by Barnes & Nob