Ripping Paper

This all started in college when I saw my friend tearing pages from her brand new Martha Stewart Living magazine. She went through, before she even read it and tore out all the pages that were just advertisements. I had never seen anyone do this before, it was a very novel idea to me. Since then I have done it off and on throughout the years. I will say from my personal research that M S Living is one of the worst offenders. It is amazing how much "magazine" you are left with after those pages have been removed. What is worse are those half page ads, so you cannot rip out the recipe for that mouth watering roast beef. Don't get me wrong, I know that magazines make most of their money from advertisements, but come on, how much of that mag is viable content?

The mag atop all of her spoils.

Today, on this Christmas Eve, I'm going to break it down for you. I just today pulled out my never before read December issue of Better Homes and Gardens.

• This issues boasts a whopping 274 pages.
• I pulled out a total of 48 sheets, that is 96 pages of two-sided full page advertisements!
• 23 of those pages were for prescription medications and lots and lots of small print about the side effects. Fortunately, this being a primarily woman read mag, we were save from any 'ED' ads.
• There are 100 one-sided pages of pure content, things that actually have to do with BH&G. That is 36% of the total magazine!

I think that I've made my point. I also think that it would be interesting to get lots of different mags just to compare them. But really, how much longer are printed magazines going to be around in the world of Kindles and iPads?