Talk:Reader's Digest

Bias

Anyone think this article is a bit biased?

==

For those who would object to the Univeristy of Guelph entry, I saw that statement with my own eyes in a public posting of a written query asking if the university library carried the title and the response recorded was that they would only carry the title as a propaganda example.

User:Kchishol1970

• I believe you but I am not sure if this fits Wikipedia's verifiability policy. Andris 22:27, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

• I am also not sure why one policy, by one particular university, is especially relevant to an article about such a historic publication. Do any other academic institutions descibe it as "propaganda"? Moreover, two paragraphs down the article makes the point that RD edits itself to be consistent with local culture globally. How can it be "American propaganda" if it is changed based on the local culture? These two viewpoints would seem to be alternate, and perhaps both legitimate, views but not entirely consistent.

--Xinoph 01:10, May 2, 2005 (UTC)

• • I have doubts about these "local culture". The brazilian version (Seleções do Reader's Digest) sounds pretty "gringa". The only thing that is more local is the sections of jokes. (Marc Sena, WP:PT)

The Venezuelan edition ("Selecciones del Reader's Digest") features some hispano-centric articles, alongside some that are clearly direct translations from the American edition. But while there's certainly a "soft conservative" feel to the magazine, it doesn't come across as "pro-America" any more than "Good Housekeeping" ("Buenhogar") does. I think the article is fine as is.--RicardoC 00:37, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

• Note: The August 2005 Canadian edition of Reader's Digest contains an article about Wikipedia.

--User:nikkimaria

Unbalanced rather than biased

I think this article looks like someone at RD wrote it. A more interesting article might have been to contrast the varying views about the magazine. ED does seem to have a very particular 'take' on the world,something even its foreign editions do not hide.I do not dislike the magazine,just I am suspicious of it all the time when reading it. I had heard that the magazine was run as a propaganda tool for the USA and the 'private company' status was a little misleading.This may or may not have any truth in it. I wonder if there are any authenticated critiques out there of RD? Certainly I would like to read rather less bland accounts than this on Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Frglee (talk • contribs) 16:55, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

No mention of the cold war 'myth' (?) that the publication was CIA funded? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.39.66.106 (talk) 01:19, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

From Douglas Rushkoff: I was extremely surprised by this as well. I sent some students to the net to work on documenting Readers Digest CIA funding and Cold War propaganda, and the Wikipedia article contained nothing about this. It's quite well documented, even in other areas of Wikipedia such as "CIA Influence on Public Opinion" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.114.107.7 (talk) 15:53, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Condensed books

Should the article mention RD's "condensed books" ? In the Italian edition, one of the features of each issue is one condensed book (sometimes two). Condensed books are usually recent novels, rarely non-fiction. RD also sells reprints of its condensed books, with 3-5 of them in each bounded volume. StefanoC 12:26, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

• I think so. For a long time in the US, they've produced annual volumes of condensed books. However, having an available subscription, in the US they don't include a novel in the book.--Mtnerd 02:45, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
• Me too! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 223.223.142.2 (talk) 13:50, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

biased

I think this article is biased towards RD. After reading it, one must have strong urge to subscribe RD :) (In fact, I have RD subscribed for 1 year). I do not know if it is same in US, but here in slovakia, RD sends advertisements by postal service. This would be OK, but they send ads to people even though they haven't requested them. Of course many companies sends lot of spam (I'm talking about regular mail, not e-mail), but RDs ads are targeted to specific person, eg. your name is inside the letter ...

They offer several nay products : books, CDs, music (also this is not mentioned in this article) The worst thing is that they make people think they won some big money. They constructed letters in very cuning way. If you read them carefully, you'll find that you haven't won anything, you only have chance to win. But everything is written in way that on first look it seems you have won something, or you are very close to winning. They "mark" you as their best customer, offer bigger chance for quick response, you must send this and that to have chance to have something and so on.

I think you all know what I am talking about, this style of spam is quite common these days. I'm not telling that they are doing something very bad. However they are bothering people with spam, raising false hope in simple people (of course all they do is legal, they are very aware of what they can and can't do in terms of law), and looks like some cheap tricks company in eyes of most people I know.

I have also bought several things from RD. Some thing were very good (books), some not (music). They are not lying in what they are offering, quality and informations are at level they claimed.

To sum things, this article should mention that RD offers other things than magazine. Also it should mention RDs way of making new customers, questionable ads ...

I would have add those thing to this article myself, but imo I'm not good at writing unbiased articles and in english

193.58.197.218 15:02, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• This is the Reader's Digest sweepstakes, very familiar to most US readers; I don't think the fact that they run a sweepstakes with a heavy come-on has much to do with the magazine's editorial policy. Hm; I think I see a missing entry here. --Dhartung 08:26, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

their quite spamming "sweepstakes" isn't US-only either, they operate it in the UK & Ireland, and I'd guess other territories either. And it probably damages the magazines reputation more than they expect it does, but thats not really encyclopaedic... --Kiand 08:47, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't find the article much biased. Should perhaps mention that RD also sells books and music, and uses aggressive mail marketing (that is uncommon in some countries: here in Italy there are no companies that do sweepstakes as RD). StefanoC 12:18, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I think RD have just been successfully prosecuted in New Zealand for overstepping the mark with some of their sales material. Check the latest issue of New Zealand Consumers Institute magazine (http://http://www.consumer.org.nz) for details.

anti-comme propaganda

yeah, you know what im talking about. read any reader's digest from the 70s, there was always at least 1 anti-comme story, wich usually was of the berlin wall, the gulags, the suffering, etc, etc (and surprisingly none anti-american story, well, its not suprising, but indeed it is highly non consequent, if indeed most of those things, like gulags, were indeed happenning, America was also spreading their imperialism all over the world too at that very same time, yet.. america was never the bad guy in any of the reader's digest issues).

In a way, to understand the thinking of at least 50% of americans, you just have to look at some of their publications, among those, Reader's Digest is probably the Fox New's of magazines.

Why would Reader's Digest be worried about the French word for "like"? Oh, wait ... Commie!

-- 18:03, 15 December 2005 (UTC)Hmmm, which is worse, spreading imperialism or putting people in gulags, dividing family members with a concrete wall, generally trodding upon the heads of the peasantry? Think I'll take the imperialism, thanks.

Oddly enough, the UK (and very short-lived Irish) version of the magazine didn't go into that much, and I have very few 1970's US versions to go by compared to UK versions. 1970 + 1980s Readers Digest over here was more concerned with smoking and scientology than communism. --Kiand 08:40, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

We used to subscribe to Readers Digest, but we haven't now for a number of years. I think some of the attitudes just wore pretty thin on us after a while.
JesseG 18:35, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

In the words of Susan Sontag in 1982: Imagine the preposterous case of somebody who read only the Reader's Digest between 1950 and 1970, and somebody else who read only The Nation between 1950 and 1970. Who would be getting more truth about the nature of Communism? There's no doubt it would have been the Reader's Digest reader, and for a specific reason ... It's because the Reader's Digest was open to a lot of immigrant writers and their testimony about life in the Soviet Union. [1] --Metropolitan90 20:08, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

non-neutral?

The article currently has an NPOV tag ("The neutrality of this article is disputed..."). I don't see any coherent discussion here on the discussion page about whether that tag is warranted, and personally, I don't think it is.

Comments, anyone? KarlBunker 22:16, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

---

I agree. It doesn't belong. It's friggin' Readers' Digest, people!! I hardly consider "All in a Day's Work" or "Campus Comedy" to be subversive or controversial.

Stupid people. --210.64.134.90 08:13, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for that enlightening and valuable comment. - DavidWBrooks 11:14, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Pro-American?

To be honest, I'm not overly sure the UK version is "Pro-American". I've found nothing to suggest that this would be the case, and I feel that the article header stating that RD is pro-american is not representative of the regional versions. Mouse Nightshirt 22:20, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

NPOV

I think this article is NPOV - it constantly points out how conservative the magazine is, in a manner I think is condescending. I could be wrong - I am a liberal so maybe that is my own bias shining through.

Regardless, I'd like to see a source for this:

"Reader's Digest has, in certain cases, "planted" articles: it commissions articles it would like to print, donates them for free to other magazines for publication, and then reprints a condensed version. This practice of commissioning reprintable articles lends credence to certain political messages by attributing them to another source while allowing the Digest to claim political neutrality." Rm999 08:18, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree. It is a very controversial claim, and I have been unable to find a source that confirm this. I believe it would be the best thing to actually remove it for now. -- Karl Meier 16:54, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Junk mail scams

I seem to get scam lottery entries from them every now and then, in fake Australia Post "same day priority service" envelopes. I'm surprised there isn't any mention of this in the article, surely it's documented well enough... 124.176.58.145 22:32, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Same, dam scammers

I'm not sure what you two are referring to but as far as I'm aware they are not involved in any scams. There may be some scams which use their name but I'm pretty sure all of their lotteries are real. They aren't some sort of advanced payment scam. What they do this is use deceptive marketing techniques to make it sound like you've nearly won when in reality your chances of winning are very low and everyone who they have on their list has 'nearly won'. This may or may not be illegal in various jurisdictions, if you are in South Australia check out [2]. But even then it's still probably best not described as a scam Nil Einne (talk) 12:29, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

In the UK they send letters saying your prize is 'confirmed', with fake cheques made out to you: all very clearly intended to convince you that you have already won a prize. This is disgustingly immoral, preying on the desperate in a recession. There really needs to be a 'CRITICISMS' section because this page does not give a balanced image of this corporation. I might add one. 78.86.82.70 (talk) 08:47, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Two points. The first is that junk mailing is legal in both the US and UK. But this "bulk mailing" can be described as "marketing" someplace. It is a legitimate business practice.

Second, well-documented WP:RELY criticism of junk mailing can be added under criticism. Not to exceed the material about the commercial part. Shouldn't look WP:COATRACK. Annoying practices are often legal in society. The sweepstakes practices were very effective for promoting circulation in the US until the government put a stop to it! They determined that part of it was illegal, of course. Student7 (talk) 12:59, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

In "Criticism", some indication of dating of these events would be helpful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.99.252.162 (talk) 21:59, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

I was receiving phone calls and they stated I won but wanted me to pay $2000 to change currency and also to pay IRS is this a scam or what? 2001:569:FFE3:5000:8820:C2B2:C689:E842 (talk) 07:23, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Localisation

As a current event in New Zealand: The Readers Digest is unable to address many of the subscriptions to the current/new (Jun 2006 actually) postcode. The operations staff in Sydney say that the change will take up to 12 month to take place. Apparently the problem is related to a software system called PasLink-Rapid. I cannot find anything about this software on the internet, and their IT department is in the US somewhere. I am trying to get further information from Andrew Grace in Sydney about the problem. One source suggested that it will be done before June 2008.

There are 1800 codes for NZ.

Sumburgh 04:36, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Other direction

I don't really understand what the line is talking about as I mentioned here [3]. What does it mean Reader's Digest is in the other direction? Other direction from what? From the sea? From China? From Washington D.C.? And why is Mount Kisco even there? Is anything relating to Reader's Digest actually in Mount Kisco? Nil Einne (talk) 12:13, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

After looking a bit into the geography of the matter, I guess what the anon who added it was trying to say was that Chappaque is in the direction of Mount Kisco from Pleasantville. I still don't quite know how the 'other' part came into it, maybe anon lives near Pleasantville. In any case I removed the part completely as it was unnecessary and pointless. It is unlikely many readers will know enough about US geography that they will know where Pleasantville is and Mount Kisco but not Chappaque and want to know where Chappaque. And if they did, they'll likely be checking out the appropriate articles rather then wanting to get the information on a largely unrelated topic from here Nil Einne (talk) 12:23, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

New Logo

http://www.logodesign.com/logo_design/2007/12/17/readers-digest-new-logo-what-do-you-think/

Should the old logo get replaced? 71.196.30.207 (talk) 19:22, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Content of Magazine

Shouldn't there be information about the content of the magazine? From what I understand, RD collects articles and stories from other publications and puts those in it's magazine, along with original articles from it's own writers. There should be some information about this practice. Diemunkiesdie (talk) 17:56, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

My thoughts precisely. The whole "shtick" of RD has always been to summarize ("condense") articles from other publications. Had I not known that, I wouldn't have learnt it from the Wiki page. There is lots of talk about the localization of content, but no explanation of what that content IS. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.97.110.64 (talk) 22:35, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

...Wow. This comment has been here for four months and is yet to be addressed? I was going to write exactly the same thing. I'll try and work on this soon. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 14:40, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Also, RD has so many iconic sections—Humor in Uniform, My Most Interesting Character. I can't recall them all. But it would be great to have a list because they are culturally relevant. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.154.215.65 (talk) 14:56, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. The lack of information on the content (both the digest content that is copied or summarized from other publications) and the original-in-RD content (including the humor columns like "Humor in Uniform" and popular health series like "I am Joe's pancreas") should definitely be covered in the Wikipedia article. However, I can't do it without original research. Can someone? --Haruo (talk) 19:36, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

International editions

Is the editor making changes to the International editions claiming that these local language versions were licensed and not printed by the company called "Readers Digest?" This should be clearly stated. Either the company printed them or the government did or somebody did. Student7 (talk) 12:21, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

I assume the Digest itself printed them?Student7 (talk) 11:57, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Not sure what you're referring to, but I went looking for a reference for the Indian section where the cite tag is, found nothing useful, and gave up. I did come across something that might answer your question, though. Reader's Digest is in syndicated print in India through one of its largest media conglomerates. This is likely the case in most other countries as well. So to answer your question, The Reader's Digest Association very likely sells the name and print rights to companies in other countries rather than printing every last edition themselves. The Cake is a Lie ^{T / C} 12:10, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I see what you mean about trying to find a clearcut reference. But they all use the same logo and can be ordered through RD. Yes, they may have outside editing but it all comes under the same banner ultimately. I think we can switch to active tense. I will change and see if you agree. Student7 (talk) 20:34, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Change whatever you wish, I don't know how I ended up editing this article anyway, but I think it would be technically incorrect to state that The Reader's Digest Association owns and operates every magazine. The syndicated Indian Reader's Digest is select material purchased from the original US version and printed in their own magazine with local Indian content. As far as I can tell, this is wholly operated, edited and published by Living Media and the India Today newsgroup, with no assistance or association with the US outlet other than the syndicated articles. The Indian RD is a division of Living Media, not the RDA. They even run their own contests and raffles and such. Then again, RDA could liaise on a day to day basis with all of their foreign syndication outlets, so who knows? I guess somebody would have to actually e-mail RDA themselves to find out for sure. The Cake is a Lie ^{T / C} 22:00, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Kind of like a fast food franchise at worst, isn't it? My local fast food distributor owns the store, but the large firm gets the credit. If I write an article, I don't say, "Joe owns the place and leases the name from X." Instead I say, "X runs 10,000 branches worldwide!" A bit of an overreach maybe, but not considered inaccurate.

I was more worried that for lack of any income at all, RD was winking at under-the-table translations into Tibetan or something. I don't think this is happening.

It would be nice to clarify however, but not absolutely essential IMO.

Thanks for your contributions to the article.Student7 (talk) 11:10, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, it's pretty common these days. Sell the name, take the money and the credit, wash hands of any input. Reminds me of every video game-to-film movie adaptation ever. I'm not sure Reader's Digest could handle worldwide publication without other groups, though, so maybe just a necessary evil. The Cake is a Lie ^{T / C} 14:35, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Competitions headline update

Made a change to the information under competitions, since the competition Reader's Digest used to manage has been put on hold in 2007, and it does not seem to be scheduled to resume. --Kindneyjames (talk) 23:03, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Staunchly conservative

I agree that RD has been conservative. But in the context, it tends to overemphasize this. RD was the first (as the article says) to proclaim that smoking was bad and kept up a drumfire until Congress/Surgeon General actually did something about it. Sorry, that is not "stauchly conservative." The two sentences, in the same paragraph, need to be reconciled. Having a citation might help wording which now contrasts and confuses IMO. Student7 (talk) 03:01, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

If conservatism=realism then RD's critique of smoking is conservative. Conserving people's lives would seem to be rather important... 67.173.10.34 (talk) 08:10, 21 July 2010 (UTC)Larry Siegel

I stumbled upon this article about Native American heroes which does not appear to be very conservative (in the traditional political sense), https://www.rd.com/article/untold-stories-of-native-american-heroes/

Read the section titled "Osh-Tisch".

Now, this one-off observation by me is not only original research but also lacks a verifiable source, so does anyone know of research done on the possible change of political bias of the RD? Amandashusse (talk) 00:09, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Not sure about research, but here’s another article of theirs from 1 day ago, and it’s about as “woke” as you can get. Definitely not like the anti-affirmative-action material they used to publish. So it does seem like they seem to be shifting politically. [4] 2600:1014:B04E:2D68:2D0E:485:935F:5328 (talk) 22:24, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

List of Articles Missing

This entry should mention that DeWitt Wallace used to research magazines at the Minneapolis Public Library to use in the digest. It would also be helpful if there was a list of every article in every US issue, as some sellers have on ebay.70.30.102.162 (talk) 05:48, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Section sweepstakes settlement

Currently the article says:"The agreement adversely affected Reader's Digest ability to sustain its circulation in the U.S. Its 1970s peak circulation was 17 million U.S. subscribers. In 2009, the U.S. circulation was 8 million." Comparing 1970's peak subscription numbers to 2009 numbers, in relation to a 2001 settlement having had an effect has logical problems. I don't know what sort of guideline to quote but there should be something like WP:applicability of statistics.Tjc (talk) 00:03, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Circulation should show a change, if any, within a year or two of the agreement time. The rest of the circulation drop can certainly be attributed to other causes; for example, people reading less. Student7 (talk) 18:45, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

What year is referred to?

The article says "In the US the company cut the number of issues it published a year from 12 to 10 last year." Obviously at some point that needs to be changed from "last year" to "in 20xx", but since I don't have time to wade through the history to see when that line was added, I'm not going to bother to fix it. Hope someone will before it's too egregiously outdated. --Haruo (talk) 19:29, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Looks like maybe 9 issues per year now. Today got offered 2 yrs for $15 claiming 83 cents/issue.

How about Reader's Digest Music?

Reader's Digest has produced albums likeThe Great Band Era. Should those be included in the wikipedia page?--Samoht Nahc (talk) 15:36, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

What does this mean

"It is believed that the printing system MEPS was used to achieve this multi language translation". What is MEPS? How can a printing system translate? Is there a citation? It is believed - weasel words?Feldercarb (talk) 20:49, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

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India edition

A few years back it was seen that the Readers Digest India was promoting local non-English themes and personalities. Most probably they would be paid promotion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.97.10.27 (talk) 05:09, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Arabic readers — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:BDC1:BB0:54DF:3E3:B3D:1299 (talk) 14:08, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

POV in lede

The lede reads like a sales pitch to potential advertisers rather than a description of the magazine. It spends a lot of time talking about readership numbers (even among specific demographics!) but entirely fails to mention anything about the actual content of the magazine, especially the fact that it is mostly taken from other magazines. Ashmoo (talk) 11:13, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Original books

The Books section doesn’t mention recent original hardcover publications, such as The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread.

I don’t want to spend the time to research and write about it, just wanted to note here that it’s a section that warrants expanding. Timothymh (talk) 17:14, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Not very useful

I looked up this article because I wanted to know what Reader's Digest actually contains.

There is very, very little information regarding the typical contents, which I think rather obviously should be the primary topic addressed in an article about a magazine.

There's a lot of tedious stuff about its history and the breadth of its international editions, but I still have no clue what Reader's Digest actually "is"! Barneypitt (talk) 14:48, 23 October 2023 (UTC)