I miss the penetrating insights of old.

I'll wade in.

And what's the problem with the Word?

Cancelled both a year or so back.

Still have The Word and Today's Golfer!

Either NME or Q have got to top this one. Rather like being at the tail end of a party, after all the interesting people have long since left. And in the case of Q, the ones still left are trying to light their own farts for your attention. Oh how the mighty fall.

my Word subscription but I am allowing it to run out. The days of buying 2 or more monthly mags are sadly behind me and I will now opt each month for the issue of Word/Mojo/Uncut that interests me the most.
Also, and I hate to say it, but I look for much more in a review section than Word offers me.

Word alongside two others (THAT ONE and Fortean Times, although that may go soon) and that stops me going into newagents and impulse buying other mags that I don't really need to.

Truly amazing how something so good went downhill so quickly.

Whether these are rose tinted glasses or not, I couldn't tell you but from the cursory glances I've given it since the last wave of brilliant journo's upped sticks post Britpop, it's been truly shocking.

S'pose there's not been much to write about.

I cancelled Mojo a couple of years back - only picking up the issues that catch my eye. Became very dull. Cancelled Nat Geo too. Used to get them for my son but he lost interest and it was mag too many. Just sub to The Word now.

Never the same after Paul Raymond took over.

I think magazines and readers have a natural lifespan - I was an avid buyer of Fortean Times for years until one day I just realised that I was no longer interested in it. Practical Fishkeeping ceased to be practical after about a year, as, let's face it, how many times can you read an article about "Setting up your first aquarium" - all hobbyist magazines suffer the same fate - the articles needed to attract new readers won't necessarily be pertinent to the more experienced enthusiast.

but why shout about it? I'm sure Fraser and the team will be thrilled with your news. Do you want a gold clock or something to commemorate the occasion?
I'd love to stay and chat but the new issue has arrived.

I have just renewed my subscription the The Word, I buy half a dozen copies of The Mojo and The Uncut every year but stopped buying The NME 20 years ago, when I grew up.

Both The Word and The Eye. I occasionally toy with cancelling the Eye just because the stories never seem to change. People are still inherently sleazy which gets depressing after many years.

I'll list my all time fave mags.
Crash - ZX Spectrum
When Saturday Comes - footie
Smash Hits - 80s essential
The Word - true. wished I found it earlier.
Frattonise - Pompey fanzine
All ones where I read every word.

Q, Time Out, BBC Good Food and Word.

Word's the only subscription still standing. Can't see that changing either, still love reading the mag.

I maintain my subs to Private Eye and WSC. I buy Word every month.
The Eye, in particular, has changed over the years, but I still find a great deal of its journalism to be important.

I buy Empire more often than not.

Q I've dropped. $10 a magazine makes me think about where I spend the dollars.

mojitojoe - Do your friends call you Mojo?

I stopped buying the NME around the time I went to University, since then I've seen around two or three issues a year (left in a cafe or whatever) and it did seem to become an appalling pile of drivel for a while BUT I actually bought an issue a few months back (Elliott Smith Cover. Had to be done) and was quite taken aback. The word count had risen - at one point a few years back it had begun to resemble a poster book - and it seemed better written and...well it had an Elliott Smith cover.

All this is presumably since the new editor replaced the ridiculous twit who had been running it - Conor something.

I still wouldn't buy it. It's not really aimed at me. The opinions are very 'posed' and it's all a bit in love with style and newness - but that's what 6th form's like. I don't know if der Kidz bother with magazines anymore, but for the type who do - slightly obsessive indie kids I would presume - it seems ok. And, at least on the basis of the last couple of issues I've seen, it's doing it's job as well (better, probably if I'm honest) as when I was last in a 'common room'.

I have just given up my subscription to 'Nocturnal, Semi-Aquatic Rodents Monthly'. It used to be quite a classy publication, but has recently gone a bit downmarket.

It now has too many beaver shots for my liking.

I will, indeed, get my coat.

I thought this was a top music magazine back in the 1990s. Good articles, witty writers and it always had super pull out posters. This isn't a teen nostalgia thing as I was in my thirties at the time. (Yes, far too old to stick up pull out posters).

I still really enjoy The Word and read it page to page. Love the new cartoony covers.

but I won't - all I'll say is White Dwarf

I was too broke to continue to contribute to the salaries of Liddle, Delingpole and Young. Plus, frankly, I got pissed off with the climate change denial.

*Leave country as tit-for-tat opens up*

for the first (and last) time in eons because of a combination of being an ex avid Smiths fan and having to wait for a train and the proceeding journey. I found it so dull I've read less than half of it two weeks later. The Word's the only mag I buy without fail and - perhaps not coincidently - the only one I read every single page of.
I now realise there's nothing Heyho or Unread could ever tell me about my favourite bands that I don't already know, often feeling I've read more books and interviews with the cover artists than the hacks writing the pieces. I prefer The Word because it has writers whose opinions I'm actually interested in. These seem to be writers who aren't as in awe of successful popstars as other mags are, but at the same time they manage to convey an enthusiasm that doesn't include posterior cleansing.
I'm amazed The Word isn't the best selling periodical in the country, but then again I've only ever seen it on sale in WH Smiths.

Last year I ended a 23 year relationship and stopped buying Viz. Truth of the matter is things had been strained between us about the last 10 years but we ploughed on until the relationship could go no further. We're still good friends though and I will continue to flick through each new copy in the newsagents to read the Drunken Bakers and tut at the continuing inclusion of the fat slags. Then I'll leave all melancoly remembering the days back in the late 80's when new Viz day was a big event indeed in my little world and the first read would frequently reduce me to helpless laughter much to the bemusement of the other communters on the 8.05 Amersham to Marylebone.

A subscription to any magazine, and used to just buy one a month according to the features, but now only buy the word, mostly out of a sense of fairness for the hours of enjoyment I get from the website.

I did used to be a regular guardian reader but now buy no newspapers, instead I get my news on BBC online and comment/polemic on blogs. Had enough of newspapers full of often ill informed speculation on what might happen next and poor analysis of what already happened. Also sick of the broadsheet weekend supplements presumption that every reader is looking for a 700k house and 150quid throws, and don't get me started on columnists called Dee who bleat on about how little Skye and Alfie were so well behaved on the flight to Laos for the family yurt holiday.

are my only subs. The rest I get for free (Mojo, Q, Empire - and if they didn't come free, I wouldn't buy them).

I also buy Record Collector, Private Eye and sometimes, if I want a long read, The New Yorker, but I feel like a pretentious urban twat reading it on the Tube.

A few years back I subscribed to a few magazines in order to save money, but invariably found the magazine would turn up in the shops long before my subscription copy, plus the one I bought in the shop wouldn't arrive ripped, bent, or missing anything mounted to the cover (a bit of an issue when two of the mags I subscribed to were computer ones) because the packaging had torn or split.

Since then I've picked the magazines up in the shop and bought them the old fashioned way. Yes it might be more expensive, but to be honest I'm not overwhelmingly arsed about getting a "special" cover as once I've read the magazine it goes into the recycling bin.

So which ones do I still read?

"The Word". Don't like it as much as I used to as it seems to have "aged" somewhat, apparently obsessed with bearded musicians whose work I don't care for, and there is now less and less I read in each issue (plus the CD instantly goes in the bin without being played). I still get it though.

"Q". A shadow of its former self. Used to be a bit of a bible for me back in the early 1990s but not as much these days.

"Empire". The best film magazine IMHO, but there are fewer and fewer films coming out that I really want to see, so it seems.

"FHM". I'm still clinging onto my youth, but the endless beer & boobs in there is a bit tiresome. Still mildly entertaining though.

I was loyal to Word for a couple of years, but I only need so many “state of the music industry what with downloading and all that…” articles. I’ve also never gotten on with the new format, it’s too dense and the cover now looks a bit like an 80s computer game magazine. I loved word originally because it brought a quality of writing back into music journalism that I felt had been lost in the overly commercial NME, Q and Mojo – which had all become a little formulaic.

I love the podcast and would probably pay for it if I had to but there is a sense with the magazine that they may be running out of things to write about. The cover story often follows a fairly loose un-inspiring theme (the “great cover versions” was a low point for me, there is no way this should have been THE main feature). So I will still buy Word if it looks like it has a couple of things that will interest me but I have found myself straying increasingly in recent months… that said I DO want Word to be the one I buy – I still respect it’s independence and the quality of it’s writing staff but I think it needs a change of direction.

I like the in depth Word reviews because thy seem to focus less on adulation and more on providing ther reader with an insight. A good example is the Paul Simon review in this months magazine - a perfect review by David Hepworth which appears to be praiseworthy but certainly not fawning.

Loaded under James Brown then Tim Southwell, but not subsequently
i-D under Matthew Collin but not subsequently
Deadline comic when it had Tank Girl in
Wallpaper* until Tyler Brule left
The Spectator when Boris was editor but not now
Wired, when the internet seemed new and shiny
Scotland on Sunday (a newspaper) when having a Scottish quality Sunday seemed radical and interesting (from 1988 until sometime in the 1990s when as a grizzled 30something i realised that the country was actually *quite small* so it was hard not to simply rehash stuff after a few years)

Had a golden age around about 1992 - 1997 with huge articles on pre-war blues, the history of record shops, pop music in film, pop music books etc. and is now a pale shadow of its former self.
Far too much metal, far too many lists, and the rise of the moderate and crap from the 1980s and 1990s as RC favourites has killed it (e.g. Madonna).
It was also a magazine which made alarmingly few errors but now each issue is littered with them 'cos the 12-year-olds have never heard of Gene Vincent etc.
My favourite was a few years ago in the letters page when a Bowie 60s 45 re-issue from 1980 was declared to be an original and worth £500!.....bet that guy was happy when he found out it was worth a fiver!

OK, they're comics, not mags, but the romance has long gone out them now they're pitched at the Play Station generation.

For half a century they used to be inky weeklies, printed on newsprint. Now they've gone monthly, the shape has changed AND they're printed on glossy paper.

They've gone worryingly PC as well. Dennis the Menace's dad hasn't been allowed to slipper him since the early 80s (I checked) and Walter the Softie is no longer quite so blatantly, well, soft.

Lord Snooty now gets around in modern dress and appears not to be nobility any longer.

Thank god the Numbskulls are still going strong!

I'd broadly disagree with Six Centres that When Saturday Comes has gone posteriorwards, though there are too many features on football abroad at the expense of insights into the game here in issues for the past couple of years - their editorials are great, and could easily be expanded into features.
The mag I'm on the verge of giving up with is Private Eye. Never mind the stories being the same, the jokes have been the same for ages now. You know exactly what to expect from Glenda Slagg, The Premiershits, Polly Filler, Ron Knee et al. The last good idea was the spoof message boards, and even that's become formulaic rather rapidly.

like many I'd like more reviews in Word but I buy songlines and occasionally "ojom" and find I get overwhelmed by em.

Hard to please eh what?

I subscribe to Word and will continue to do so as shop shelf copies are too rare down here ,and too late, plus I know that it is the regular income stream from subscribers that is critical to a small outfit such as this.

I also subscribe to Rhythms magazine a roots magazine on Australian bands and visiting artists.

http://www.rhythms.com.au/

I concur with the comment that "I liked NME until I grew up". I liked Rolling Stone until it got an Australian franchise -it's heyday was the US version when folded over into an A4 cover if you know what I mean.

I also miss Black Music and Jazz edited Chris May

I think it is mean spirited to pronounce on this forum and in an OP no less, that you no longer read or subscribe to Word. Fine -your call but why put a downer,and it is a downer , on everyone else on the blog?

he didn't say that if you want to argue pedantically.

the header was
magazines we used to love.... but they've changed...... or I have.....

It clearly suggests: end of relationship. It deosn't say "magazines I now prefer to purchase from a newstand."

I think it is fair to say that the author was announcing to the Word Massive I dont like this mag any more -for whatever reason.

I am not saying criticism should not be made or aired.But this is hardly a critique as you seem to suggest yourself.

A couple of years ago I posted a thread criticising a review of a bad seeds remaster and got hammered. In this thread i cite a preference for more reviews -so it is not a case of a gushing fan.

that mojitojoe hasn't contributed anything other than the OP I'm tending to think of his intention as little more than a troll flicking some bum fluff in our direction.

Fantastic that it's spawned so much hand-wringing and porn wrangling though

... and goodnight !

just skimmed it really, have I missed it or has the most blatant of all nosedives been missed completely?

Viz.

Roy of the Rovers and his thinly disguised Manchester United parody, Hot Shot Hamish and his hideously deformed biceps, the groovy and oh-so right on sporty crime fighting team of Johhny Couger (native American wrestler) and Splash Gorton (Likely dope smoking, Zappaish swimmer) Billy and his spookily possessed footwear...whats not to like?

It's all Beyonce, Big Brother and Jordans tits (Peter and the other one) now.