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Magazine Decay: Difference between revisions
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* ''Maclean's'' is roughly the Canadian equivalent of ''Time'', and while it's always had a fairly prominent editorial board, it was seldom overt in its politics. Accompanied with a questionable aesthetic makeover (very quickly dropped after many reader complaints) were fairly sensationalist headlines and some genuinely controversial articles from a source that simply wasn't known for it. Its treatment of Stockwell Day practically finished any respect a lot of Western Canadians had for it.
* ''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 [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 newsmagazine.
: 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 Awards]].
** ''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]]".
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* ''[[Dragon (magazine)|Dragon]]'' magazine, the official mag of ''[[Dungeons and 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 40000]]'', 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 and 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 ''[[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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* Some argue that [[IGN]] has seen a certain amount of website decay — what used to be a purely games website is now a general entertainment site aimed at men, covering gadgets, film, music, and so forth. However, the front page is almost entirely about games, and given how departmental the site's overall navigation is, coupled with the fact that being online means they can expand with their focus, rather than having to cram it into the same number of pages/[[Network Decay|hours of airtime]] it's not immediately obvious that this has come at the detriment of the (quantity of) games coverage, if it has at all.
* ''[[Daily Radar]]'', however, is a different story- beginning as an ''IGN'' lookalike for the US market, the site closed, but not before extending the brand to the UK, which remained open. Eventually, the UK site rebranded to ''Games Radar'', and reduced its original content in favour of reprinting content from [[Future Publishing]]'s print portfolio. After Future acquired ''[[Computer and Video Games]]'', it took on the "all reprints" mantle, and GR re-focused to light-hearted features with the odd review to give Future three games sites — CVG in the comprehensive coverage IGN space, jokey Games Radar, and Edge doing industry news. Daily Radar soon re-emerged as an aggregator site for Future's male-oriented online content.
* ''Official Playstation Magazine'' dipped into this briefly, when it started giving increasing coverage to other products. A couple pages of DVD reviews made sense (as the [[
* Online magazines count! ''The Escapist'', best known as the home of ''[[Zero Punctuation]]'' and ''[[Unskippable]]'', has gone wildly off-topic lately. The News page (already known to some readers as the "why-is-this-news page") now features many stories about movies and TV shows considered to have geek appeal. They also have two video series by [[Moviebob]], and neither of them is "The Game Overthinker" (which is a Screwattack exclusive for several reasons, [[Mis Blamed|all of which are beyond the Escapist's power]]).
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