Talk:Reader's Digest

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Reader's Digest article.
Article policies

Contents

[edit] 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 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)