Parade magazine, a publication with an audience old enough to appreciate the Spanky and Our Gang reference above, published its final print edition earlier this month. For decades, Parade, founded in 1941, was inserted into Sunday newspapers across the country. More than 700 papers with a total circulation of around 32 million included the magazine at its height but, by January 2022, that number had been cut in half.
Parade will continue in an “e-edition,” available for local publishers to tack on to the distribution of their digital product. But, divorced from the physical Sunday paper, the utility of an online-only Parade is an open question. Its charm and appeal might not be obvious to the type of reader accessing a newspaper on a tablet or mobile device because the information found within is not immediately useful in the traditional sense of the word.
Comments