Missing the Parade

For as long as I can remember, my Sunday paper has arrived with an inserted magazine called Parade.

It used to be the second thing I read with my breakfast on those lazy mornings, right after the funnies. That is not the case anymore.
Parade of old had informative articles and useful information. For a long time they ran in-depth stories about what people earned and what they did. I found those entertaining and useful. It was good to know that someone made X amount of money doing what they loved. But the last time they ran that section, it was a pitiful shadow of the former articles, barely worth a glance.

They also often ran good articles about health, dealing with aging parents, that type of thing. I haven't seen one of those in quite a while. Or at least not one that was memorable.

In the last few years the content of Parade has become less and less relevant to me. Mostly it is about popular culture, especially movie and TV personalities. It has always had some of that but now that seems to be all it has. I have better things to waste my time on.


The magazine started in 1941 and today it claims to have a wider circulation than any other publication. It is inserted into the Sunday edition of about 500 newspapers.

Recently the magazine came under fire for doctored photos. Unfortunately for Parade, those photos were in its rebranded debut issue, on June 2.


Most people probably didn't notice, but this type of sloppiness does great disservice to the publication and the industry.

Last month the magazine shrunk itself, becoming smaller in size and in number of pages, and creating a new logo. That rebranding has impressed me not at all.

In fact, this little magazine may as well not even exist anymore as far as I am concerned. Apparently now the print edition is a vehicle to get people to the website. But there is nothing there that remotely interests me so I do not bother.



For two decades now I have watched newspapers and magazines eat themselves alive. They have cut staff, written crap, and made themselves completely useless to the public they profess to serve. It is as if some great god of relevant information was toppled from his throne and replaced with a joker of insipid and tepid media lunacy. I cannot name another industry that has taken its own legs into its mouth and then swallowed its body whole, but this one certainly has.