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== Automotive ==
* ''Car and Driver'' used to be famous for abusing their position as one of the two biggest automotive magazines in existence to get away with insane and sometimes illegal stunts for the magazine — [http://www.tdiclub.com/articles/Coast2Coast/ locking two writers in a diesel VW Jetta modified for long range driving and driving across the country non-stop without getting out of the car]; [https://web.archive.org/web/20090321115727/http://www.caranddriver.com/features/columns/c_d_staff/csaba_csere_the_steering_column/fear_and_loathing_in_a_100_year_el_nino_in_baja_column taking eight sedans to test in Baja California and returning with six after multiple encounters with the Federales, a devastating El Niño season and an errant cow]; and covering [[wikipedia:Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash|the original Cannonball Run cross-country rally]], created by staff editor Brock Yates in protest of the national 55 mph speed limit. The writing at the time was fresh and honest, and could sometimes be properly described as [[Hunter S. Thompson|"gonzo"]].
: Now, though, the pressure to appeal to the advertisers by not condemning anything and giving every car at least a somewhat positive review, not to mention significant tightening of editorial control has neutered the magazine and made it into a shallow, milquetoast version of itself. In 2009, it took a turn for the worse with the replacement of longtime editor-in-chief Csaba Csere with Eddie Alterman, leading to even blander writing and more sophomoric humor (which is really saying something, as the humor was already pretty crude by the end of Csere's tenure). ''Car and Driver'' is still arguably the best '''American''' car magazine, but with major chain bookstores carrying ''Car'' and ''[[Top Gear]] Magazine'' from the United Kingdom, you can really see [[What Could Have Been]].
** Ironically, C&D once ran a small article decrying rival mag ''MPH'''s infatuation with excessive references to one's posterior. ''MPH'' originally had Alterman as editor-in-chief.
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== [[Film]] ==
* ''SET'' was the most popular movie magazine in Brazil. It was common to see articles done with set visits and exclusive interviews. The magazine was accused of decaying in the last few years for various reasons—adding not-film-related music, questionable cover choices (''[[Van Helsing]]'' and ''[[Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow]]'' were covers instead of both ''[[Kill Bill]]'' parts, which were released around the same time), and excessive comic-book-movie covers. But the real decay came after problems led to a change of publisher and staff. In a month containing the second ''[[Transformers (film)|Transformers]]'',
* ''[[Star Wars]] Insider'' used to have interesting articles that really were considered to be "insider"—concept art, exclusive features on the [[Star Wars Expanded Universe|expanded universe]], behind-the-scenes features on the "Lost Cut" of ''[[A New Hope]]'' and the marketing of the films, etc. Now, it's only good for retreading the movies and advertising ''Star Wars'' merchandise. Once in a while, the magazine will have a genuinely great issue (as they did with their issue-wide tribute to ''[[The Empire Strikes Back]]''), but most of the time it's just promotion for another property associated with the franchise.
* Less well-known is ''Star Wars Galaxy Magazine'', which hit this trope with record speed. When it premiered in 1995, the magazine focused on a variety of aspects of the ''Star Wars'' universe—toys, radio dramas, comic books, novel excerpts, and the evolution of the series over the years plus exclusive features and columns. The magazine also included rare collector cards, one-shot comics, and posters. After three years, the magazine changed to ''Star Wars Galaxy Collector'' and most of the content was jettisoned in favor of appealing to toy collectors. The "new" magazine was canned after eight issues.
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* ''Newsweek'', once situated just behind ''Time'' as one of America's most respected newsmagazines, has fallen far from its once-lofty perch, causing detractors to nickname it "News''weak''". The decay began once the Washington Post Company (which owned ''Newsweek'' from 1961 until 2010) bought ''[http://www.slate.com/ Slate]'' from Microsoft in 2004, with staff writers like Daniel Gross and Dahlia Lithwick brought over from the site and the magazine starting to take on its style. Coverage drastically shifted away from firsthand and secondhand information gathering and towards opinion pieces, prompting one letter in the Feedback column to ask, "Where's the news?"
: After a few years of rapidly shrinking circulation, combined with growing indifference for news magazines in general, ''Newsweek'' was sold to the 90-year-old founder of a speaker company, who paid a pittance of $1 plus debt for the title. Soon after, it merged with ''The Daily Beast'', the current pet project of bouncer-around and failed CNBC talk show host Tina Brown, which is considered [[Poor Man's Substitute|a highly inferior competitor]] to ''The Huffington Post''. Not surprisingly, every name writer with the magazine fled anywhere else upon seeing the blood on the wall and facing Brown's diva reputation.
: Since then, it's devoted covers to stuff like the trashy erotica novel ''[[Fifty Shades of Grey]]'', [[Fan Service]]-y pictures of [[Sarah Palin]] in [http://www.yenra.com/wiki/images/Sarah-palin-newsweek-cover.jpg form-fitting workout gear], and sensationalistic headlines asking [https://web.archive.org/web/20120525105458/http://www.akawilliam.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/newsweek_racist_baby-226x300.jpg "is your baby racist?"] They've also run [https://web.archive.org/web/20100430084711/http://www.newsweek.com/id/236999 an inflammatory article] claiming that openly gay actors like [[Will and Grace|Sean Hayes]] and [[Glee|Jonathan Groff]] come off as self-hating, artificial and too gay in straight roles, which sparked massive backlash from Ryan Murphy, [[Kristin Chenoweth]] and other supporters of the LGBT community.
** The Magazine Decay of both ''[[Time Magazine|Time]]'' and ''[[Newsweek]]'' is made all the more ironic with the success in the past two decades of ''[[The Economist]]'', which so far [[Averted Trope|averts]] this trope pretty hard.
* ''[http://www.listener.co.nz The New Zealand Listener]'', since Pamela Stirling took over as editor in 2004. Its focus on serious current affairs was diluted in favour of an increased consumerist-lifestyle approach.
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* [[Time Magazine|''Time'' magazine]]. As recently as the 1980s it was primarily politics and current events (with one section covering entertainment in a similarly thoughtful manner) -- and arguably superior to ''[[The Economist]]'' in its heyday. While politics is still a big focus, celebrity gossip with sensationalist headlines is also featured now, along with fluffy media reviews and whatnot. ''[[The Onion]]'' skewered the dumbing-down of ''Time'' in their video feature [https://web.archive.org/web/20161122032309/http://www.theonion.com/video/time-announces-new-version-of-magazine-aimed-at-ad-17950 "Time Announces New Version Of Magazine Aimed At Adults"].
** ''Time'''s annual Person of the Year award could be said to have undergone its own form of decay. The award was not originally meant as an honor, but was given to the person whom the magazine deemed to have had the most influence on that year's events, for good or for ill—it was given to [[Adolf Hitler]] in 1938, for example, and [[Josef Stalin]] in 1939 and [[World War II|1942]]. The choices were often [[Creator Provincialism|Americentric]] (every US President since [[Franklin D. Roosevelt|FDR]], [[Butt Monkey|apart from]] [[Gerald Ford]], has won the award at least once), but that's a given for an American news magazine.
** However, the choice of [[Iran|Ayatollah Khomeini]] in 1979 proved to be ''hugely'' controversial, as many readers were disgusted with the magazine for "honoring" an enemy of the United States (even though Person of the Year was never meant as an honor). Decay set in as ''Time'' stuck with safer choices from then on, such as giving it to Rudy Giuliani instead of [[Osama Bin Laden]] in [[The War on Terror|2001]] in order to avoid a similar backlash, which only reinforced the false perception that Person of the Year was meant as an honor. From there, recent years have brought such strange choices as "You" (representing the rise of the online community) in 2006, as well as the creation of a hype machine around the award -- the cover is now unveiled either on [[CNN]] or ''[[Today]]'', as if they're naming the nominees for the [[Academy
** ''Time'' '''artificially darkened''' the mugshot photo of OJ Simpson to make him seems scarier and were called out on it. [[The Daily Show|Jon Stewart]] declared it the day Print Media "[[Jumped the Shark]]".
** They also lost credibility after they published their (in)famous cover story "51%" (% of American women who aren't married), claiming it was the death of marriage now that the majority of women are choosing to remain single. Except {{spoiler|they started counting women as single ''at 15 years old'', '''and''' they included widows}}.
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* ''[[Dragon (magazine)|Dragon]]'' magazine, the official mag of ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'', started as a general RPG culture magazine with ads for many systems, but went to a just-''D&D'' mag during the 1980s. They then slowly added more and more features relating to non-''D&D'' [[Tabletop Games]], but later "''re''cayed" by dropping all non-''D&D'' content in what many considered a golden age.
: After [[Wizards of the Coast]] bought out TSR, they contracted the writing of ''Dragon'' and its sister ''Dungeon'' to another company, Paizo. Around the time the new edition of ''D&D'' was announced, Wizards ended their contract with Paizo and relaunched the two magazines as online-only, as it exists right now. Paizo launched their own magazine, ''Pathfinder'', which has everything they used to put in the other two magazines.
* ''White Dwarf'', the magazine dedicated to the tabletop battle games ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]'' and ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'', used to include such things as original stories, comic strips, pages on modeling ideas, strategies, and other original content with an appendix at the end that dealt with listing the new releases. It still has those things ''now'', but in a much reduced quantity as most of the magazine is dedicated to simply advertising that month's new releases up the ying-yang. They also ran articles with material for ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'' and other tabletop games (indeed, a lot of ''White Dwarf'' articles were adapted into ''D&D'' sourcebooks), but along the line cut down to ''Warhammer'', ''Warhammer40000'', and their ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' game, with an emphasis on the latter two.
: Even then, the decay proper didn't set in until Guy Haley left as editor. Soon after that, ''White Dwarf'' became a glorified catalog with even the editorial pieces previously used for a bit of humorous commentary given over to telling you what the new releases this month were (in case you missed the ten solid pages of them). Not only has the magazine become increasingly content-free, but it's actually been getting much slimmer, so the number of pages given over to advertising the latest shinies increases even while the total number of pages decreases. It's like magazine decay ''squared''. Oh, and the price has been going up all the while.
: In its defense, though, the cover does read "[[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Games Workshop's Monthly Hobby Supplement and Miniatures Catalogue]]". It also seems to be improving with the recent ''[[Tank Goodness|Spearhead]]'' expansion.
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