|
overview
landmarks
|
overview
This note considers the Readers Digest and Wallaces
as a point of reference in considering other media czars
such as Hearst, Hersant,
Hoiles and Annenberg.
It covers -
introduction
Reader's Digest has attracted attention, favourable or
otherwise, for a visceral anti-communism, enthusiasm for
direct marketing (which at one time extended from chocolates
to recordings and insurance) and pre-digested bestsellers.
Along with groups such as Primedia
and American Media it struggled
in its home market as audiences headed towards television
(or even the net) and competitors fought back in its more
lucrative overseas markets. That struggle was exacerbated
by management complacency and increasing debt that resulted
in transformation of the publisher from an ongoing memorial
to its founders - exponents of a Norman Rockwell American
Eden - to just another downmarket commercial publisher.
the group
As of 2006 the Reader's Digest Association claims to be
"world's preeminent publisher and direct marketer
of distinctive products that inform, enrich, entertain,
and inspire people of all ages and cultures around the
world". That is of course a claim, minus the reference
to direct marketing of distinctive products, echoed by
major competitors
Funk & Wagnalls
The RD acquired Funk & Wagnalls, Inc (Standard Reference
Works Publishing Company) in 1965.
Funk and Wagnalls was founded by Lutheran Isaac Kaufmann
Funk (1839-1912) in 1876 as I K Funk & Company, initially
publishing the Metropolitan Pulpit and other
religious-oriented works. Adam Willis Wagnalls (1843-1924)
became a partner in 1877 and the firm was renamed Funk
& Wagnalls Company in 1890. In that year it released
The Literary Digest, thereafter emphasising mass
market dictionaries and encyclopaedias such as The
Standard Dictionary of the English Language (1894)
and Funk & Wagnalls Standard Encyclopedia
(1912).
Flagging sales and aggressive competition from Crowell
in door to door selling of Collier's Encyclopedia
saw Funk emphasise 'continuity marketing' of its reference
works in supermarkets (ie buy a volume of a low-cost -
and increasingly low quality - set with the groceries
each week) from 1953 onwards. It was unloaded to Dun
& Bradstreet in 1971, with the publication rights
being spun off by D&B in 1983 and acquired by K-III
Holdings Inc (the precursor of Primedia)
in 1990. The content was licensed to Microsoft
as the basis for its Encarta product.
studies
For the Readers Digest - books, pre-digested bestsellers
and direct marketing - see James Playsted Wood's self-congratulatory
Of Lasting Interest: The Story of the Reader's Digest
(Westport: Greeenwood 1975 [orig. 1958]), John Heidenry's
soft-focus Theirs Was the Kingdom: Lila & Dewitt
Wallace and the Story of the Reader's Digest (New
York: Norton 1993) and Peter Canning's American Dreamers:
The Wallaces and Reader's Digest: An Insider's Story
(New York: Simon & Schuster 1996).
A perspective is provided in The Making of Middlebrow
Culture (Durham: Uni of North Carolina Press 1992)
by Joan Shelley Rubin.
The most perceptive study is still probably John Bainbridge's
Little Wonder; or, The Reader's Digest & How It
Grew (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock 1946).
For Encarta and Funk & Wagnalls see Fred Moody's I
Sing The Body Electronic (New York: Viking 1995)
 next
page (landmarks)
|
|
