Reader's Digest plans to file for bankruptcy | Hacker News Reader

Reader's Digest plans to file for bankruptcy

reuters.com

19 pointsjacquesm14 comments

if only there was a summary of this article edited for brevity and targeted at a 7th grade reading level, for a mostly retired middle class audience.

Okay, fair enough, but I have a soft spot for Reader's Digest. When I was growing up in a small country a long time ago on a continent far away, Reader's Digest was a window into american life in easy-to-understand English. The coupons were for unimaginably weird stuff like Jello (I had no idea what it was, but the colours looked neat) and a zillion different kinds of painkiller (we just had aspirin). The stories were full of bizzare-to-me pre-occupations, like how to chose the right dentist.

And I still remember some of the funny stories. Here's one for any of you doing user support:

Two older folk are traveling and end up in this bar. It's packed, the music is so loud the poor waitress has trouble getting the orders right and the clientele is a bit rowdy. When the waitress comes to take their order, the old lady sympathetically says "My, you have a lot patience!" The waitress drops her voice and hisses "Shhh! We're supposed to call them customers!".

It's too much debt out there.

The comment is a joke on how Readers Digest edits stories.

Off the top of my head, a few mainstay items of Americana that have fallen victim to technological advances:

Western Union (oh, the days of the telegram) / Polaroid (miss that Instamatic) / TV Guide (can't wait for my weekly issue to know what's on TV) / Reader's Digest (popularized reading fare)

These seemed like "forever" companies when I was growing up and are now either dead or are ghosts of their old selves hanging around with just enough presence to haunt us with their reminders of what used to be.

Good for all grandmas, like mine, being constantly spammed by them.

i am jack's complete lack of surprise

What's a Reader's Digest?

It's a specialty publishing company. Every month they do small book-sized magazine on topics of general interest (rather than news in particular); most of the articles are weak and shallow but are good conversation pieces. Each issue also includes a condensed version of a recently popular book.

They use the magazine subscription to advertise other things, particularly lotteries, but also to sell books, ranging from dictionaries to wildlife photography to DIY guides etc. The books are sometimes extremely good - of course for every book you like/are interested in, they offer you another 9 that you probably couldn't care less about.

Like another poster, I am nostalgic about them - I grew up outside the US, and found the magazine/books fascinating. By the age of about 15 or so I'd already grown out of them, but they were great for the 10-15 reading level, unless you like communism of course (in joke).

They were pretty big in their time, the fact that they're going belly up is a good indication that the writing is really on the wall for publishers.

Not going belly-up. They are just re-structuring debt using the bankruptcy process.

Still, not a good-thing.

It looks like the lenders are going to be the new owners, that's as much as going belly up and selling the assets to the debt holders. 'restructuring' is just to put a pretty face on it.

They seem to be losing money hand over fist, and I wonder if they're going to 'restructure' what it is that they plan to do to stop the drain and become profitable post-restructuring. Without a really good plan it is just a postponement of the inevitable.

It is similar to a small intestine.

Clearly dentists and doctors offices aren't a viable market.

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