Magazine Subscriptions

I sense a meme developing. The Literary Saloon looks at which magazines it’s going to re-up and which are headed to the chopping block. Unsurprisingly, TNR is one of the latter:

Next up was the decision whether or not to renew The New Republic. We’ve been complaining for months now about how they’ve turned away from fiction coverage and, alas, the most recent copy to make it here, the 22 October issue (complete with special cover warning that our subscription is running out and here’s our chance to renew, ‘One Year (24 issues) for only $79.97′), again has three lengthy reviews, none of which are devoted to works of fiction. Yes, the previous issue — of 8 October — actually devoted one of its five reviews to a work of fiction (Ruth Franklin reviewing … Exit Ghost by Philip Roth …), but honestly, we’ve seen enough. It’s not that the non-fiction coverage — or the other material in the magazine — is of no interest, but at the very least it would have taken more dedicated fiction coverage to keep us on board; as is, fiction reviews are so rare that if we check on back issues every couple of months at the library we should be covered. The silly new schedule — TNR comes out every other week — has also proved to be highly irritating: somehow it’s just much easier to schedule reading time on a predictable weekly or monthly basis (quarterlies also throw us for a loop, as do those annoying twice-or-so-a-year double issues of the TLS and The New Yorker). Finally, 24 issues for $80.00 is hard to justify, and even at the introductory rate of $39.97 which we assume we could back our way into seems a bit steep for the bang for the buck.

For my own part, I’ll renew my two current subscriptions (Harper’s and NYRB) when they come due. Harper’s because I like the quirky articles and I can depend on at least one good fiction essay per issue. NYRB because they do strong political coverage and because there’s tons of great fiction coverage in the archives (fully accessible online with a subscription). Note however, that I’m not subscribing to NYRB for its current fiction coverage, which in my opinion is pretty mediocre.