Someone posted the bad news last week on a New Nigerian pensioners platform. Otherwise I would have missed it.The post went thus: “*End Of An Era: Reader’s Digest UK Closes After 86 Years* Reader’s Digest UK has ceased operations after 86 years of publication. The monthly magazine, known for its health tips, financial advice, and recipes, closed due to the *”unforgiving magazine publishing landscape”* and the company’s inability to withstand the financial pressures.Once a market leader with a circulation of over 1 million copies per month in the UK in 2000, the publication’s readership had declined sharply in subsequent years, dropping to under 200,000 copies recently.
“The closure marks the end of an era for the iconic magazine, which was founded in the US in 1922 and first published in the UK in 1938.The editor-in-chief cited the “relentless change” in the media industry and the need for companies to “continuously seek out and implement innovations” to survive.The closure of Reader’s Digest UK serves as a cautionary tale about the importance of adaptability in the face of a rapidly evolving landscape.”
I can’t recall when I first came by a copy of the Reader’s Digest but I remember it was many, many years back in the apartment of a bookish cousin of mine. I had just graduated from college [1975] but instead of returning to my parents in the village, I chose to visit him in Keffi. It was an old edition but I enjoyed reading it all the same. Since then, I would hunt for a copy, new or old, at every bookstore and post office. What attracted me to the magazine mainly was its structural makeup or style: make it interesting and keep it short. One of its editors said famously, “Anything you cannot say in 500 words isn’t worth saying.” A wise saying which I have lived to find very helpful. I was horrified by an editorial style the New Nigerian adopted in the 1990 when it replaced the popular 9 em inside editorial with copious nonsense that took up the whole of the front page and continued inside. The Reader’s Digest didn’t pretend to be anything other than what it set out to do: summarize lengthy but exciting research findings and human interest features like crime reports. Its health tips, financial advice and food recipes as well as general knowledge quizzes were also fantastic. But as I said earlier, its literary reporting made my day.
However, getting the latest edition wasn’t easy. One, the readership in Nigeria was small, mainly university teachers and journalists. Two, the fact that copies had to be shipped in from mainly the United Kingdom and paid for in foreign exchange made it a scarce commodity. But I didn’t mind buying back copies, sometimes half the price of a new edition. If you were lucky, you might get a copy three, four months and a year even old. To get the “latest” edition, I had had to strike a deal with a bookshop owner at Hamdala Hotel in Kaduna. Even so I wasn’t always lucky. He always exploited my hunger by adding to the price of the next copy. The last copy I bought from him was a thousand naira in 2016 or thereabout. Then the magazine disappeared altogether from view when the hotel shut down and then bookseller left town. I had not seen a copy since then. In other words, Reader’s Digest, for me, ‘died’ long before its official death was announced last week.
There was an element of inevitability in the death of the magazine. “An unforgiving media publishing landscape,” according to the editor- in- chief, pushed monthly circulation down from a high of a million copies in 2000 to under 200,000 lately. The company was unable to withstand the financial pressures thrown up by the “relentless change” and so ended, sadly, a glorious era for the “iconic” Reader’s Digest. I mourn your passing as I would a good friend of many many years ago who has just died.
