The breakdown: WIRED magazine, June 2011

This year, I got a subscription to WIRED magazine for Christmas.  It’s been a couple of years since I had a magazine to read every month, and I noticed something this time around that seemed indicative of a wider change in the journalism industry: more ads.  It appeared that every other page in this magazine was advertising content rather than editorial content.  No longer was I the consumer and the magazine the product.  Instead, I was the product and advertisers were the consumers.

By the time the May issue came in the mail, I was annoyed enough that I started ripping the all-ad pages out of the magazine and complaining about it on Facebook: “Curtis Gibby just ripped out 10 of the first 16 pages in my new WIRED magazine because they were useless ads on both sides. Who says print journalism is dying?”  A couple of people took notice of my post, and I thought it would be interesting to expand on the subject when the June issue rolled around.

And now it’s time for a breakdown

The magazine in its wrapper, before I started ripping it apart

The magazine in its wrapper, before I started ripping it apart

It came in a little plastic bag and had a subscription card for the New Yorker behind it.

The back cover, immediately after opening the wrapper

The back cover, immediately after opening the wrapper

I immediately noticed that both sides of the back cover were actually ads. I had decided to tear out any sheet that was advertising on both sides, but I didn’t want to destroy the physical integrity of the magazine by ripping off the cover.  Curse you, Conde Nast editors!

The back cover - an ad

The back cover – an ad

The inside back cover - another ad

The inside back cover – another ad

I started by going through the whole magazine from the front cover, and counting every page as either editorial content or an ad.  I gave the publishers the benefit of the doubt, calling anything that actually had to do with the magazine itself “content,” regardless of whether it was a boring index or a photo illustration without any actual information.  (As long as it wasn’t actively trying to get me to purchase a Best Buy TV, I called it good.)

The inside front cover and first page - both ads.

The inside front cover and first page – both ads.

The first several pages were not promising — after the front cover, there were five ad pages in a row.  In fact, I was surprised to find out that most of the first half of the magazine had an ad on every other page.  It wasn’t until I got to the actual articles section near the back that I got several pages in a row of content without ads.

One page had a vertical ad that took up a column about a third of the page size.

The single split page with both editorial and ad

The single split page with both editorial and ad

I tore out twenty sheets (ones that had ads on both sides) and collected four silly subscription cards.

The twenty ripped-out pages

The twenty ripped-out pages

The complete magazine after the breakdown

The complete magazine after the breakdown

tl;dr

In the end, I found that the magazine was 53.17% editorial content — 94.64 pages were editorial versus 83.36 pages of ads.

I’ve posted a spreadsheet listing every page at Google Docs.  The spreadsheet also lists where I found the insert cards and specifies the cumulative percentage of editorial content.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 3rd, 2011 at 7:31 am and is filed under The Breakdown. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “The breakdown: WIRED magazine, June 2011”

  1. Becca CrookstonNo Gravatar Says:

    Maybe you should start sending the ad pages back to the magazine company.

    I guess they (the ads) make it possible for the magazine subscription to be fairly cheep. If they (the magazine) didn’t have companies paying them to run ads, YOU would be paying for the printing (or you would not subscribe because it cost too much!).

  2. Curtis GibbyNo Gravatar Says:

    Becca, yeah, that’s why I said I was now the product — they’re selling my eyes to the advertisers.

  3. mikeNo Gravatar Says:

    i have been looking for the website in the magazine about the sports figures, can you tell me the website…i saw it in that months issue…

  4. Curtis GibbyNo Gravatar Says:

    Mike, I just looked through the issue and didn’t see anything (article or ad) that looked like it related to sports figures. Sorry.

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