Reader's Digest

Reader's Digest is a monthly general interest family magazine. In 2004, the U.S. edition of Reader's Digest prints 12.5 million copies and reaches 44 million readers each month. Although its circulation has declined in recent years, the Audit Bureau of Circulations says Reader's Digest is the best-selling general magazine in the United States, exceeded only by the membership publications of AARP.

Reader's Digest is known for a consistent view of the world that is politically conservative, upbeat, and pro-American.

It is also published in a large-type edition called Reader's Digest Large Type, a Canadian edition, and in a Spanish language edition called Selecciones.

History

DeWitt Wallace conceived of the idea of a magazine containing condensed articles from many popular magazines while recovering from World War I injuries. DeWitt and his Canadian-born wife Lila Wallace (born Lila Bell Acheson) published the first issue on February 5, 1922, starting out of their own home. It was available by mail for 10¢ a copy. The magazine first became available on newsstands in 1929. Circulation passed the 1,000,000-copy mark in 1935. The 10 billionth copy of the U.S. edition was published in 1994, and the 1,000th U.S. issue was the August 2005 edition.

Types of articles

Reader's Digest includes original articles, condensed articles reprinted from other magazines, book excerpts, and collections of jokes, anecdotes, quotations and other short pieces. The magazine's mission as set out by the Wallaces is to include one article for each day of the month, each of "enduring value and interest."

Articles in Reader's Digest cover a range of topics, including politics and government, health, international affairs, business, education and humor. Articles tend to be short to allow busy readers to keep up with a variety of topics without investing too much time. Regular features include "Word Power," a vocabulary-building quiz; "Life in These United States," a collection of humorous or profound reader-submitted anecdotes; and "Laughter, the Best Medicine," a collection of jokes submitted by readers.

Editorial procedures

Reader's Digest is regarded as one of the most carefully edited magazines in the United States. Articles are fact-checked for authenticity and controlled by an elaborate editorial hierarchy to ensure that the final product is integrated into the Reader's Digest discourse. This discourse is highly homogeneous and articulates a very specific set of conservative values which the magazine deems to be important aspects of the dominant representation of American society.

The Reader's Digest model has been introduced in many countries around the world, in issues that are customized to a certain extent with local content, without presenting the magazine as an American product. The local Reader's Digest editions generally try to remain ambiguous about the American character of the magazine.

Every issue has the same structure. There is, for instance, usually one survival story (called "Drama in Real Life"), normally at least one individual achievement story, as well as a medical article, several moralizing stories on human relations, several articles with practical advice, and some politically inspired stories in which bureaucracy, crime, radical ideologies and other behavior inconsistent with the dominant ideology of the magazine are exposed.

The internal structure of articles also corresponds to an elaborate and fixed model. The survival stories, for instance, have a blurb presenting the drama in medias res (in the middle), then return in time with an elaborate description of the initial situation. Rescue doesn't come at the very last paragraph: there is always time to restore the initial peace and formulate a lesson. The last sentences often thank the Lord or mention the medals awarded to the story's heroes.

The Digest features three types of texts. A first group are the articles condensed from other magazines. Both their selection and condensation are done by two independently working editors, checked by a third, and approved or corrected by at least two senior editors. The same goes for articles written exclusively for the Digest: authors are asked to write articles of normal length, which then pass through the same condensation and editing procedures as other articles.

Although for decades condensations from other magazines have constituted not more than 30 to 40 percent of the editorial pages, the Digest continues to position itself as a reprint magazine, as an overview of journalistic discourse in the United States and abroad.

World view

The following are some of the basic values founding the discourse of the Reader's Digest.

Individual achievement. Digest characters are always struggling, against bad luck, against systems and regulations, against diseases, and their only weapons are their own courage, cooperation between individuals, and an occasional helping hand from God.

Optimism. Most Digest stories have happy endings. There is only one other case: the article may acknowledge in the end that there are still many difficulties to overcome, and give advice.

Moral conservatism. Though the Digest has from the beginning written very openly on sexuality, it has always been emphatically in favor of traditional marriage, loyalty to country, discipline and charity, and generally opposed to feminism, free love and affirmative action.

Free market economy. In almost every issue, the magazine opposes taxes, government regulations, budget increases, labor unions and, for many decades, the Communist system.

International editions

Although Reader's Digest was founded in the U.S., its international editions have made it the best-selling monthly magazine in the world. The magazine's worldwide circulation including all editions has reached 21 million copies and over 100 million readers.

The first international edition was published in the United Kingdom in 1938. Reader's Digest is currently published in 50 editions and 21 languages and is available in over 61 countries. In 2006, the Reader's Digest continued to expand, marketing three more new editions in Slovenia, Croatia and Romania.

Its 49 foreign editions, which account for about 50% of its trade volume, are controlled from the American headquarters. Except for 2 or 3 articles in each local issue, they are entirely composed of articles taken from the US and other editions, creating a mix of articles from many regions of the world. The local editorial staff comprise a handful of people that make selections from the US and other editions and commission local content pieces, subject -- in some cases -- to the approval of the American headquarters. The selected articles are then translated by local translators and the translations edited by the local editors to make them match the "well-educated informal" style of the American edition.

Canadian edition

The Canadian edition first appeared in February 1948, and today the vast majority of it is Canadian content. All major articles in the August 2005 edition and most of the minor articles were selected from locally-produced articles that matched the Digest style. There is usually at least one major American article in most issues.

"Life's Like That" is the Canadian version of "Life in These United States." All other titles are taken from the American publication. Recent "That's Outrageous" articles have been using editorials from the Calgary Sun.

Localization procedures

Considerable efforts are made to give the foreign editions a local look to make sure the Digest is never seen to be a threat to the local cultural identity, as imported American cultural products often are. All editions have the table of contents on the front cover, but while the American edition also lists the authors of the articles or the (American) publications they have been taken from, the foreign editions list only titles, although some editions followed the US format in the past. Advertisement placement in the local editions are entirely managed by the local staff and reflect local products.

Many American articles are integrated within the local context. For instance, in an article on air travel, John F. Kennedy Airport will be replaced by a local airport and references to American airlines with information on local companies. Local statistics may be added, currencies and measures will be adapted. Local names, quotes or pictures of local sights will sometimes replace the original ones. All those operations are called "adaptation" by the Digest editors: they are performed by the local editors and writers according to general central rules but without specific US control.

Another, similar intervention is to complement the numerous sections featuring short anecdotes (such as Quotable Quotes, Points to Ponder, Humor in Uniform, etc) with local anecdotes.

Local editions also avoid reprinting articles which may touch on sensitive spots in the receiving culture;for instance, the Italian edition may decide not to select articles which are critical of Catholicism. In general, the local editions will also avoid selecting texts which are too closely linked to very specific American too-foreign situations. The few articles written by local authors always deal with local topics.

Readers Digest for many years also published hardcover "Condensed Books" issued 4 times a years, each one containing short condensations of several newly published novels or inspirational memoirs. These "Condensed Books" can be found today in many used thrift shops. Readers Digest also sells recordings of early big band music, romantic ballads, and various other products through their website.

References

John Bainbridge, Little Wonder. Or, the Reader's Digest and How It Grew, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1945.
John Heidenry, Theirs Was the Kingdom: Lila and DeWitt Wallace and the Story of the Reader's Digest, New York/London: W.W. Norton, 1993
Clem Robyns, "The Internationalisation of Social and Cultural Values: On the Homogenization and Localization Strategies of the Reader's Digest", in Jana Králová & Zuzana Jettmarová, Translation Strategies and Effects in Cross-Cultural Value Transfers and Shifts, Prague: Folia Translatologica, 83-92, 1994
Samuel A. Schreiner, The Condensed World of the Reader's Digest, New York: Stein and Day, 1977.
James Playsted Wood, 1958: Of Lasting Interest: The Story of the Reader's Digest, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1958.

External links

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