Goodbye Readers digest

So that bastion of doctors and dentists surgeries is no more.

It had been on the cards for sometime after its parent company announced plans for voluntary winding up last year but now the Reader's digest magazine is no more.

Sadly brought down by its pension fund as it failed to secure backing from the UK pensions regulator to support an agreement to fund its pension deficit,currently at £125m.

As today's Independent reminds us of its past glories

What could be fustier than the Reader's Digest, with its prize draws, free radio alarm clock offers, and its natural habitat of dentists' waiting rooms? And yet what could be more cutting-edge than a magazine which was the first content aggregator when it was founded back in 1922, or that helped to establish the link between smoking and lung cancer in the public mind in the 1950s?

a reign of 72 years comes to an end and the closure threatens 117 jobs at the company’s offices in Canary Wharf, East London, and Swindon, Wiltshire.

Reader's Digest to undergo a makeover

Reader's Digest has been struggling recently with its American enterprise being forced into bankruptcy earlier this year.

On the back of that,it is undergoing an overhaul with the FT reporting that it is going to

attract a younger audience to a brand suffering from its associations with doctors’ waiting rooms and elderly readers.

Its website is leading the way reports the paper

Starting with the Netherlands and China, where a redesigned website goes live this week, the group is planning to replace a patchwork of international sites, each designed separately by local teams and carrying a different selection of content, with a single, coherent platform.

Readers Digest files for chapter 11

A staple of the publishing business indicated the severity of the advertising recession lats night as Reader's Digest announced plans for voluntary bankruptcy in New York.

The FT reports that

Equity investors led by Ripplewood Holdings, who announced the $2.4bn acquisition in November 2006, will lose their entire $600m investment.

adding that

advertising revenue from the flagship magazine fell 18.4 per cent last year, and is down another 7.2 per cent in the first six months of this year, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.

The magazine says that the move will not be noticed by its readers,does not expect to lay off any employees or close any of its publications.

Reader's Digest-an example of the economic future for print

Here is an interesting thought from Steve Borris.

Is the readers digest displaying the business model for news aggregation that will survive through the next few decades.

What does it do.Well quite simply it packages a mixture of stories from numerous sources,it puts them together into an easy to read pacakage and sells most of its copies through subscription.

As Steve adds

It’s old original cover contained a list of stories contained inside, allowing it to be read like a web site, from front page link to story and back again. And it knew its audience, providing a mix of serious, human interest, educational, and humorous stories. It was also upbeat, not providing stories that make readers feel uncomfortable, helpless, or negative

and is read by many people who don't pay for it thus attrcating additional advertising.