A subscription to the New Yorker

werehippy

My younger brother is working towards becoming a writer in some capacity, so for his birthday I was thinking about getting him a subscription to the New Yorker. It's a decent price for a almost weekly magazine with some top notch writing in it, so it seems like a good idea.

Except, I just saw an article about how much trouble the magazine is in, with only 12 pages of ads in the entire last issue and 5 of those being "in house" ad for other brands under the same publisher. I wouldn't have thought an institution like the New Yorker could go under, but publishing in general is in a death spiral at the moment and if things are that bad you have to wonder.

Am I letting hype get to me, or might it be a better idea to not commit to something with a troubled product? And are there other, currently more stable magazines along the same lines I'm just not thinking of?

supabeast

I would go with The Economist and/or New York. They’re both better written and far less pretentious than the New Yorker, and not likely to go anywhere.

kaliyama

Yeah, but the New Yorker has well-written and interesting articles in it - I don't care if they happen to be pretentious. FWIW, The Economist is pretentious, too, but as a newsmagazine, it's pretentiousness happens to express itself differently. I mean, USA Today is unpretentious.

Heartlash

Pretty much all print publications are in trouble ATM. My girlfriend has an active 2 year subscription to the New Yorker and has enjoyed it immensely thus far. I say go for it; it's pretty much as risky as getting any major subscription atm.

werehippy

As long as people haven't heard the New Yorker is especially troubled, I'll go ahead with it and write off that article to general Chicken Little syndrome.

And as long as it's well written, I'm pretty sure the fact it's pretentious is half the fun

EggyToast

Well, a subscription is fun. If you're worried, though, there's that "Complete New Yorker" that came out a short while ago. Would keep him busy for a while.

RUNN1NGMAN

Esquire has some extremely well-written long-form journalism and also publishes some fiction every so often. It also has hot chicks and costs about $15 a year.

illig

dude, it's $40/year

you're not exactly laying out your life savings for this subscription

werehippy

I'm not worried about the cost, I'd just feel like a dick if my birthday present ended up being something like two issues of a magazine.

I'm pretty sure I just bought into some overhyped sensationalism, so I'll go ahead and place the subscription. And if worst comes to worst, I'll come up with something else in a few months

Thanks everyone.