Working on my media industry blog today, I was sorting through the list of 283 companies that Moody's has placed on its Bottom Rung list, which is the equivalent of a corporate endangered species list.
I was most of the way through this terrible list when, to my shock, I spotted the name of The Readers Digest Association, Inc.
Suddenly, I was lost in the '50s again. This magazine, as well as the books that serialized its content, were constant companions in my youth. We didn't have a lot of magazines or books around us in those days, so much of what I knew about the world beyond the small town where we lived was courtesy of the Readers Digest.
My other source of knowledge was the local library.
It's probably about time we all started returning to our local libraries, isn't it? Meanwhile, as for magazines, if Moody's is correct, we will not be able to access the Digest much longer. On the other hand, I'm not sure that I know any of its subscribers (10 million in the U.S., 40 million overseas), so as it passes, this may be a moment for Google to move in, and preserve digitally, the magazine that perhaps more than any other helped define the mainstream of the 20th century.
And, Googlers, please save a place for Popular Mechanics as well.
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