I’ve gotten down to a very small number of magazines that I attempt to keep up with. Over the years, I had made a habit of signing up for free magazines. Getting something in the mail other than a bill is always enjoyable. Never mind that many of the magazines just piled up unread, for that day when I promised I’d get around to reading them.
Finally, about a year ago, I decided that I wanted to start reducing clutter for that distant future pipe dream of moving into a sailboat. I got the nerve to chuck all of my magazines. Actually, I gave them away to a local company… except for my Software Development magazine copies. Everything else went out the door.
Nowadays, I read a magazine and toss it… except for Software Development (SD). If I don’t read the magazine, I don’t renew it. Unfortunately, many of those free magazines keep telling me that my last issue is coming if I don’t sign up again. I must have received a dozen final issues already from InfoWorld. I scan each InfoWorld issue for headlines only, and probably read less than one in twenty of its articles. About the only other trade print magazine I regularly read is SD Times, which I immediately toss.
Today I read that SD will stop publication as of its May 2006 issue. A shame. It would explain why they didn’t return emails about an article of mine that they had initially expressed interested in. I’m proud to have authored five articles in the magazine. I’m disappointed in the decision, given that I’ve been a very long time reader, and that I’ve generally been very happy with the magazine’s content.
CMP will be merging SD with Dr. Dobbs, keeping the name of the latter. I dropped my subscription to that magazine years ago, even before my slick-paper purge, after realizing that I wasn’t interested in the vast majority of its articles. Every other article seemed to be a my-geekiness-is-bigger-than-yours discussion of some esoteric algorithm. Maybe CMP will take it back to having articles I might actually read (or maybe it’s already like that today). I’ll give it a chance. The decision to keep subscribing will be based on whether or not I feel like I need to hold onto it.
