Reader’s Digest files for bankruptcy as iconic magazine falters

One more casualty of media's digitization. Sad to hear that, Reader Digest was one of my favorite magazine during schooling time.

Reader’s Digest files for bankruptcy as iconic magazine falters

NEW YORK — The publisher of the 91-year-old Reader’s Digest magazine, RDA Holding, has filed for bankruptcy to cut US$465 million (S$575 million) in debt and focus on North American operations as consumers shift from print to electronic media.

The company is the latest in a line of iconic businesses to have recently sought court protection from creditors, after Hostess Brands, maker of Twinkies and Wonder Bread, and Eastman Kodak, inventor of Kodachrome and the Instamatic camera.

http://www.todayonline.com/business/read...ne-falters

(18-02-2013, 09:10 PM)CityFarmer Wrote: One more casualty of media's digitization. Sad to hear that, Reader Digest was one of my favorite magazine during schooling time.

Reader’s Digest files for bankruptcy as iconic magazine falters

NEW YORK — The publisher of the 91-year-old Reader’s Digest magazine, RDA Holding, has filed for bankruptcy to cut US$465 million (S$575 million) in debt and focus on North American operations as consumers shift from print to electronic media.

The company is the latest in a line of iconic businesses to have recently sought court protection from creditors, after Hostess Brands, maker of Twinkies and Wonder Bread, and Eastman Kodak, inventor of Kodachrome and the Instamatic camera.

http://www.todayonline.com/business/read...ne-falters

I think Readers' Digest has made a bigger impact on Nigerian scam artists than actual readers. For many years, I was often in the final pool of readers lucky enough to reach the finals of their sweepstakes, but never once won. And I was still in the finals for one particular year, even though I was no longer a subscriber.

(18-02-2013, 09:43 PM)investor101 Wrote: I think Readers' Digest has made a bigger impact on Nigerian scam artists than actual readers. For many years, I was often in the final pool of readers lucky enough to reach the finals of their sweepstakes, but never once won. And I was still in the finals for one particular year, even though I was no longer a subscriber.

Years ago, when i was still a schoolboy who loved reading Readers' Digest (borrowed from the library), i was elated to receive a mail from them saying that my address was chosen by the lucky draw. Faithfully, i mailed back the details in anticipation of collecting the prizes, only to be eventually dismayed when i received their response saying that i had to subscribe to continue onto the 'final stages' of the lucky draw.

That was my first taste of 'there is no free lunch in the world'. I never signed up (or could afford to) and when the same kind of mail came the next year, i throw it into the dustbin without 2nd thoughts.

I still remembered my family had 5 minutes of jubilation when we thought we had won a car

I used to think wow we so close to winning sweepstakes that could make our dreams come true and solve all our problems but my parents always told us those things were some kind of cheating scam and not to believe.

Still RD magazine provided some good reading to us kids as we were growing up. But these days with internet means traditional magazines like these, music stores are slowly fading if they don't manage to reinvent and they can reinvent.

Nobody would have imagined that age old dinosaur companies that churn out comics for kids like spiderman ironman would today produce movies that appeal to with old and new customer following and make their multi-millions again.

My opnion RD is sitting on a goldmine of almost a century worth of publication if only they can manage to convert it into electronic format I'm sure it can find it's way into millions of kindle and ebook reading devices.

I think Reader's Digest should be given credit for managing to survive bankruptcy once and continue for longer than some longer established encyclopedia companies.

I never understand why people want to read RD articles. OK I admit that back in the pre-internet day, they were pretty interesting. Back why would anyone want to pay and read RD when you have better articles out in cyberspace is something that always confound me.

As for the sweepstakes, in recent years, they have been making effort to move it on line to entice you to subscribe to their magazines or buy some CDs or books. I think I get about one such e-mail a week and I just entered my entry even though I never bought anything. And unlike many of the other forumers, I do send back those sweepstake mails I received to the post.

And also unlike many other forumers, I had won a minor prize once from RD before (it was a box of CD). So I think calling the sweepstakes and contests a scam is not accurate. Of cos its not known if any of the grand prize winners (250K) are customers of RD or just entered their entry like me.

Reader's Digest was a good read 10 years back. Nowadays, we have some many options.

I think RD was miss manage financial and from a business direction. They should have move online, attracted younger readers and not focus on gimmicks like sweepstakes.