Culture

What Americans Want to Know Sunday Morning

by YankeeJim | December 19, 2009 at 09:12 am

163 views | 26 Recommendations | 7 comments

Delivered every Sunday (sometimes delivered on Saturday in a plastic bag with advertising) is Parade, a newspaper magazine.

Inside the cover are key questions that Americans presumably want answered before their first cup of coffee?

I say this because while other print media falter, Parade persists on merit that it serves its readers well.

So, I go through a ritual first asking my wife, what is the burning question with which you awoke this morning? It is a contest to see if what the interest of nearly 73 million Americans is on her mind matches.

“Has Ron Howard ever directed his daughter Bryce Dallas Howard,” asks Ed Ward of Syracuse New York?

This is a question that can really be broken into multiples:
1) Did you know the Ron Howard has a daughter?
2) What is her name?
3) When was she born?
4) Who is her mother?
5) Did Ron ever direct his wife?
6) Has his wife ever directed him?

You see how it goes? What a rich reading experience. When you could be reading about healthcare legislation, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, revolt in Iran, climate change, or the local weather, this is what America really wants.

YJ

“A BRIEF HISTORY OF PARADE

PARADE Magazine, the most widely read magazine in America with a circulation of 33 million, began as a small publication with a print run of only 125,000 copies, sold on newsstands for a nickel. Today, PARADE is carried by more than 470 of the nation’s finest Sunday newspapers and reaches 72.775 million Americans every week.

The first issue of PARADE, subtitled “The Weekly Picture Newspaper,” was published on May 31, 1941. It was packed with photographs left over from PM, an experimental New York newspaper produced by Chicago businessman Marshall Field III. Less than two months later, THE NASHVILLE TENNESSEAN began to distribute PARADE on Sundays. A few weeks after that, THE WASHINGTON POST, now PARADE’s oldest continuous subscriber, added PARADE to its Sunday package. By the end of 1942, PARADE was carried by 16 newspapers.”

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Barry ORegan

at 10:19 on December 19th, 2009

Enquiring minds want to know, will Obamarama be the new environmental dali lama and will Tiger be the new Britney meltdown. And what about Batboy? What about Batboy? Is he Maury Povichs spawn lovechild from Miley?

YankeeJim

at 10:31 on December 19th, 2009

Barry, nice to know what you are thinking about today.

a211423

at 11:26 on December 19th, 2009

When you could be reading about healthcare legislation, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, revolt in Iran, climate change, or the local weather, this is what America really wants.

The easy answer here would be to decry the "public" as shallow and disinterested in important current events, but I am not going to do that. When I used to get a hard copy newspaper, I used to read Parade for its human interest stories, and the column by the woman from mensa who had a column, and of course the recipes. I did not read it for political or social enlightment.

The question for Parade now should be how will they survive in the digital age when hard copy newspapers will eventually be replaced by the internet.