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Why I Will Cancel Advertising Age

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No offense Rance Crain. In my book anything the Crains do is golden, coming from a Chicago girl (no I’m not native, but my child IS, so there). I will cancel after subscribing for many years as a loyal customer of the print edition.

  • I was around when B2B was its own magazine and then it merged inside its sister publication, Ad Age, and then it disappeared completely.
  • I was around when there was at least a smattering of public relations news somewhere in the publication, and then there was none.
  • I’ve been around since the campaigns like ‘how many licks does it take to reach the center of a Tootsie Roll pop’ were the norm and there was more dispersed coverage of all campaigns than just those that cater to the big advertising guns.

Alas, we ‘fair to middlin’ (what my grampa used to say)’ marketers no longer compute. We don’t have the advertising dollars to play in the same sandbox as the big guns, and the reporting shows.

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Reading Online Vs. Print Publications

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When Bacons, now , published its media directories online, I was so accustomed to turning the thin pages of the five green telephone bookish resources that I was forever lost. I needed to skim and scan and quickly flip the dog-eared newsprint with the flick of a licked tall man to make my media list.

Tactile. Tactilization. Tactilness.

I think the latter two mean something like, “I’m so old, I like to physically turn the page.”  And, guess, what? That goes the same for my morning paper.

  • I want to have a coffee and scan the headlines of the every day for blog fodder and client news.
  • I want to take the entire sheet into my sight line and  scan down the page without clicking, scrolling, tapping or sliding pads and mice and pointers and other spongy-tipped gizmos along a colored screen.
  • I want to recycle the soy-ink, best newsprint for , who uses stacks of wet Wall Street Journals to shape and cool near-liquid glass into paper weights (I made two of them!).
  • I want to mark up the story I need to read later and tear it out. I want to use it as reference to write a blog post and extrapolate snippets from the story. How can I do that from the iPad when I’m writing on the iPad?

I’m on the computer all day, and when I’m not I’m thinking about being on the computer; I dream of being a computer. I don’t wish to read my media online. Some outlets require that, but I’ll tell you I prefer to see the pretty colored pages with lots of advertising hit my mail box to the kitchen table to the dining room table to the office to the floor of the office and then eventually to the recycle bin. Or, perhaps I share copies of some pieces, like or .

I haven’t counted in awhile, but I subscribe to likely two dozen periodicals; there are stacks and stacks of them all over the office shelves. I could probably keep an art class swimming in collage materials for years. Do not even think of me as a hoarder! That’s not the case; it’s just that I will one day get to my reading and find a gem to inspire my story writing.

Don’t you wonder how I write about such a wide range of topics? I read a wide range of print publications. I am not inspired as much when I read online. I am unfocused; over-stimulated and cannot pay attention to the story and the never-ending clicks that take me deeper with snarky comments from anonymous idiots.

Think about the peacefulness that goes along with reading a publication that smears ink on your sweaty hands? Then compare the experience of reading the same publication online with all the intense distractions targeting your attention.

As long as publishers are foolish enough to offer me a subscription for $10/year, or thereabouts, I’m good to sign on the dotted line and have a hard-copy publication arrive in my mail box.

What’s your practice? Online or print publications?