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How to keep a great magazine going

texasmonthly.com

64 pointsconanxin9 comments

This article reminds me of all those trips to the barber shop, the dentist's office, or the doctor's office where in spite of the fact that you had an appointment, you knew you were gonna have to wait. One thing you could count on was that those places would have a great election of magazines. Current or old issues didn't matter since you just needed a way to pass the time. The long form journalism in Texas Monthly was captivating to the point where when the duckter finally quacked that it was my turn, I would find myself cursing under my breath wishing for another 10 minutes so I could finish that article. I usually came back out of the appointment and finished reading so I could know how the story ended. You never knew whether you would see that issue again back then since those offices rotated things regularly.

We had a subscription back in the days when magazines in the mail was a big thing. You could always look forward to things like the Bum Steer awards where writers took shots at all the stupidity of politicians, celebrities, etc. Their coverage of Texas events, good, bad, or notorious was excellent and still is to this day. The writer isn't joking about all the ads in the print version. It was almost like thumbing through a catalog sometimes to find hidden jewels in story form.

I still read the online version because there really isn't anything quite like it for tales from Texas. Food, events, history, government, etc. They cover it all in a manner that appears to just lay it all out and leave it to the reader to decide how to take it.

Thanks for this article.

My previous dentist had a sense of humor and stocked the waiting room with absurdly old magazines. Stuff from like the 60 and whatnot.

Still perfectly cromulent material to read whilst waiting, but also playing into the trope of waiting rooms having outdated magazines.

That is pretty awesome. Like stepping into a time machine, especially if one of them was TIME.

This reminds me of a really stressful period in college during a semester that was almost entirely upper-level geoscience, physics, and math courses. For one of the geoscience courses I needed to write a paper and so I found myself in the university library looking for source materials. It had been a long time since I had been in a library. The journals that I needed were filed with all the other periodicals and as I wandered the aisles I discovered old magazines from the 60's and 70's available for reading.

As a youth I had spent a great deal of time reading and my parents subscribed to various magazines that were popular like TIME, Life, Newsweek, Better Homes and Gardens, National Geographic and it was a great way for a kid to learn about events in the world far from their home, like the Vietnam War protests, Watergate, the growth of the environmental movement.

I found myself pausing in my studies as I searched the shelves for old familiar issues that I had thought were forever lost. I searched the time period and pulled issues looking for specific magazine covers to make sure that I hadn't imagined any of it. It was a real trip back in time and the rest of my time at college I used the library as a stress busting tool. I would think up old books I had read and then go check the card catalog to see whether they were on the shelves and if so I would check them out and revisit those old familiar stories.

Thanks for this reminder.

The thing about Texas Monthly is that they have become a trusted brand over the years because they are so high quality and they've continued to innovate, which has buttressed against things like reducing page count or print quality. They've got the right mix of human interest, branding, and political stories. Politically, they are definitely to Texas' left of center, but not in an "in your face" sort of way. And their web team is top notch. When I was tasked with redesigning a website a decade ago, my South Carolina based internet publisher chose Texas Monthly's site as one of our sources of inspiration.

Wow. I find TM insufferably conservative, and entirely focused on the wrong things most of the time (e.g., Dallas society).

They're still publishing, which is something, but I quit reading them regularly a long, long time ago for want of anything interesting between the covers. OTOH, if I want to see full-page ads for $500 belt buckles, I know where to look.

I said left of Texas' center.

For example, the biggest ticket article today is titled "The Campaign to Sabotage Texas’s Public Schools." That's not a conservative article by any means.

Texas Monthly is in no way a conservative magazine. Are we reading the same thing?

>Wow. I find TM insufferably conservative

You're probably insufferably liberal to most people.

Left of liberal here and definitely disagree with this statement. While I don't read it that frequently, or get the print edition, I find many of their articles are highly informative and worth sharing. Magazines often have to print ads for ridiculous stuff, that's just how they keep the lights on. Judge them by the content of their articles.

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