InDigestible: The decline of a great magazine

There's probably no agreeing on precisely when Reader's Digest took a turn for the worse. There was the move last year to stick a celebrity photograph on the cover of every issue, rather than the picture of an ordinary American whose story of heroism would inspire readers. Two years earlier, there was the magazine's redesign, which elevated graphics and visuals to a place of importance that previously had been reserved for the power of the written word. Around the same time, the magazine dropped its familiar slogan promising "Thirty-one articles each month . . . Each article of enduring value and interest." There aren't 31 articles each month anymore-the February 2002 issue has only 15-and most of those that remain sure aren't of enduring value and interest, either.

It's a saddening transformation, and one that must especially upset conservatives, who seem able to do little more than sit by the bed of a good friend in the throes of a terminal illness. Reader's Digest was not only the greatest and most popular magazine of the 20th century, it was also a steady ally. Monthly celebrations of traditional American values, staunch anti-Communism during the Cold War, and an optimistic philosophy of moral and personal aspiration made it stand out in the lowest-common-denominator world of magazine publishing. In an unwitting tribute to the Digest's success and influence, the Left loathed it. Conservatives of all stripes-and perhaps most importantly, the unpoliticized, small-c conservatives of the heartland-cherished it. The Digest was the quintessential magazine of "red-state" America-those broad swaths of the country colored red for George W. Bush on 2000 Election Night maps, as opposed to blue for Al Gore.

Reader's Digest remained an outstanding magazine well into the 1990s, but much has changed in just the last three or four years. Editorial quality was sacrificed to a mix of poor personnel decisions and cost- cutting maneuvers. The Digest simply isn't what it used to be. There are still occasional flashes of the old excellence, but now these increasingly rare moments double as disturbing reminders of how much has been lost.

Founded in 1922 by DeWitt and Lila Wallace, Reader's Digest became what the Wall Street Journal was to call "the greatest publishing success since the Bible." The Wallaces printed only 5,000 copies of their first issue, but their circulation soon skyrocketed. By the 1930s, they owned the most popular magazine in the United States and were beginning to reach around the globe. Today the Digest claims 12.5 million subscribers in this country-down from an all-time high of 18 million in the 1970s, but still an industry leader-and a grand total of 95 million readers who see one of its 48 editions published in 19 different languages.

The Digest was special for a number of reasons. Just as today's Internet users rely on search engines to mine the best sources of information on the web, subscribers to Reader's Digest could count on the Wallaces and their team to locate the best articles in a sea of periodicals and reproduce them in condensed form. Eventually, about half the magazine consisted of original material. The Digest displayed great variety and range; each issue had something in it for everybody, from a mother seeking health tips to a father interested in tax cuts to a teenager thrilled by real-life adventure stories. Behind the whole enterprise was a typically American belief in self-improvement that managed to find an audience not just in the U.S., but everywhere. Reader's Digest honored individuals and their achievements-usually ordinary people who did extraordinary things.

During the Cold War, the Digest played a vital role in educating the American public about Communism. Friedrich Hayek once said the success of his landmark book The Road to Serfdom came from the fact that DeWitt Wallace decided to publish a condensed version in the magazine. In the 1970s and '80s, intrepid reporter John Barron broke one story after another about Soviet malfeasance around the globe. Defectors often told their tales first in the pages of the Digest. This infuriated the anti- anti-Communists, but even some of them had to acknowledge the Digest's achievement. In 1982, Susan Sontag sparked a bristling controversy on the left with this confession: "Imagine, if you will, someone who read only Reader's Digest between 1950 and 1970, and someone in the same period who read only The Nation or The New Statesman. Which reader would have been better informed about the realities of Communism? The answer, I think, should give us pause. Can it be that our enemies were right?"

The magazine also served more broadly as a platform for conservative ideas. It published articles in favor of small government and missile defense and opposed to union corruption and welfare dependency. Much of its work in these areas was groundbreaking. In 1995, the Digest commissioned a poll showing that majorities of people from all walks of life-even self-identified liberal Democrats-believed nobody's total tax burden should exceed 25 percent of his income. Great magazines often find themselves ahead of the news cycle, and in 1998 Kenneth Timmerman wrote a prescient story called "This Man Wants You Dead." The subject was Osama bin Laden, and it hit the newsstands right before the fatal embassy bombings in Africa.