Eureka! I have single-handedly solved the periodical publication crisis in the world. Well - theoretically. Newspapers and magazine subscriptions have taken a nose-dive in the past decade, and most exist now primarily as digital ghosts of their former selves. Even the ubiquitous Entertainment Weekly gave up and opted to only publish books that celebrate a single artist or show like “Ultimate Guide to Cop Rock (we review BOTH episodes)” or “Harry Styles from As It Was to Zayn.” You can find them in the magazine section of the bookstore without ads for $30 each. The actual weekly entertainment stuff? Online only - and daily. No idea why they are still called EW.com. I suppose we can blame the pandemic for permanently snuffing out the existence of the physical newspaper or magazine. After all, who wants to actually contract a supervirus while reading about it?
But, some of us are rather tactile - missing the joys of actually flipping through an issue of our favorite weekly or daily, wowing over the extraordinary photography and insightful writing over a cup of coffee. How do we rescue the periodicals of the zeitgeist from becoming digital-only phantoms that may never disappear, but will also never become collectibles?
I propose a simple solution: the Punch-Out.
OH MY STARZALEAS, do you have any idea how much better Newsweek or Fast Company would sell with Punch-Outs? And I mean the real tangible, grab-it-at-an-airport Newsweek, not the read-a-snippet on Insta and perhaps click for a free trial digital subscription Newsweek. The Punch-Outs are one of the most unfortunate long-lost phenomenas of the 1980’s. They were, of course - the EXTRA in a kids magazine like Supermag or 3-2-1 Contact or my personal favorite, Dynamite!
You would receive your issue of choice in the mail - always wrapped in see-through plastic, yes, so that no bonus spinner or dice could fall out and so that no weather could damage - but also so that the Punch-Out at the magazine’s center would remain untouched.
If one was, let’s say, a tactile learner, and loved the feeling of a brand new magazine’s pages flipping between one’s forefinger and thumb, then one would especially love the Punch-Out, which in 1980’s kids magazines could be anything from a sturdy NASA buildable paper rocket or a rotating wheel decoder, or 3D glasses or collectors cards or - GOD, the possibilities were endless! My parents called these tchotchkes, which is either Yiddish for clutter or what Fonzie called his cousin when his mouth was full. They were bonus surprises located at the stapled center of every issue, the favorite premium aspect of the issue, but more than likely invented so kids wouldn’t inadvertently stab a thumb. They were the equivalent of the prize in the cereal box, but without all the residue. Yes, these were all childlike in nature - but what if Time or Newsweek or People came up with adult variations that gave eager readers something tangible, granting them pause from opting for the digital version?
Better Homes & Gardens could feature a balsa pop-out herb trellis for your kitchen counter
Vogue could feature Kardashian exchangeable face parts
Consumer Reports could provide a fold-together burner phone for weed sales
Sports Illustrated could turn their annual swimsuit issue into paper dolls
In Time magazine, instead of merely voting for your favorite candidate, you could wear a punch-out of his or her face all election day.
National Geographic could still feature pictorials of jungle communities that are clothes-optional, but in pop-up book form.
The New Yorker could allow you to punch out those one-frame comics that aren’t funny - and leave them out.
Bon Appetit magazine could have scratch-and-sniff petit-four mignardises you can savor with your friends as a non-calorie sensory pre-amuse-bouche.
Rolling Stone could offer “Legendary Albums” collectible trading cards - collect ALL TWELVE of Billy Joel - or BOTH of Guns N’ Roses. Wu-Tang Clan’s Once Upon a Time In Shaolin is the 1952 Mickey Mantle.
Travel & Leisure could offer punch-out travel upgrades and fake passports.
Instead of describing your perfect man, Cosmopolitan could have you build a miniature automaton of him piece-by-piece.
Financial Times could include actual Mexican pesos.
AARP Magazine could include a free disposable undergarment.
All of this no-idea-is-a-bad-idea brainstorming also brings to mind the other aspect of Dynamite magazine that made it something you wanted to retain in a stack by the toilet: the puzzle pages! I will be the first to admit that, even as an adult (especially as an adult), I miss the activity book. Since when are brain-challenging teasers and fun pages something adults stopped craving? I have a friend who is a neuroscientist and she tells me that if I don’t keep up the daily practice of challenging puzzles, by age 70, my brain will atrophy and I will lose the 10% that thinks rationally when confronted with a conspiracy - but that’s just THE MAN OUT TO GET ME. I mean, if we can have adult digital coloring, daily sudoku and a New York Times Wordle, then damn it, we should be able to have a monthly set of truly-challenging fun pages for adults.
a maze that is just as difficult to attempt backwards - with four possible entry and exit points (only one of each real) and the maze spanning eight pages over four spreads so you can’t even see the whole thing at once.
a Word Hunt / Word Search where, before you can look for the words in an expanded grid of jumbled letters, you have to hunt out what the word actually is out of clues that lead you through news articles in search of correct terminology.
A Crosswords where all of the words are actually cross and angry - either profanities or common slang we use across the globe when attempting to offend.
A variant on Where’s Waldo where the hidden individual is Anthony Fauci trying to be noticed within large rooms of taller people.
A sudoku, but instead of Arabic numerals in pencil, Egyptian hieroglyphics must be carved in stone.
The move from physical, tangible publications to digital bites of news out in the ether is actually a bigger problem than we tend to consider.
Let’s take Entertainment Weekly, for example - back when nearly 70 pages of content (excluding ads) needed to be filled every week, EW would bring in a significant cabal of interesting and compelling journalists from across the entertainment news spectrum - unique perspectives ranging from critics to experts to comedians to everything in between. This meant that we weren’t just receiving puff pieces, starlet interviews, and top ten at the box office. We were also gaining unexpected charm, wit, and insight from real journalists who had a point-of-view and flavor. In the true heyday of the magazine, you could find a Jeff Jensen diatribe on the philosophical and spiritual references of that week’s installment of Lost, or Dalton Ross comedically picking a Survivor contestant’s strategy to shreds, or an entire issue breaking down every single episode, character, and conspiracy of The X-Files just to grow the beloved series new fans. You could find a published vehement disagreement between film critics Owen Lieberman and Lisa Schwarzbaum, and you could find a sidebar of recommended indie band rarities just landing under the radar at your local Virgin Megastore. In other words, you would get what you expected to get from a regular entertainment news source: sharp thinking about the stories and songs we choose to motivate us. Insight into where we should spend our hard-earned resources on entertainment. I should know. I was a loyal subscriber from the very first k. d. lang issue on February 16, 1990 up until they dropped the print version unceremoniously in April of last year with Issue #1630: a Ewan McGregor cover returning as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Disney+ series. Sad trombone sound, please. They ended the print version by barely mentioning it - and without any refunds to subscribers. All that was left behind was the online fart known as ew.com.
Have you visited ew.com lately? It is an absolute nightmare. Nothing but clickbait headlines with nary an artistic criticism anywhere - and you are fortunate if everything in the small article is spelled correctly. Nearly every headline includes the word reaction, shocking, canceled, or Housewives. And the concept of news has been completely usurped by calendar updates: “Marvel’s slate of 2025 films shifts by three months. World leaders react!” Celebrities are no longer interviewed as much as they are asked a single question - and the question is “how dare you.” They can’t possibly be sending press on junkets to ask a single question. They must be doubling up: “Prime Minister Netanyahu, I’m Steve with Time Warner. What is your response to the latest Hamas attack - and who’s your pick to replace Katy Perry on Idol?” And, saddest of all, there is no art to this shtick. No new intriguing photography. No compelling thought. Just reporting one bit of tantalizing bad behavior after another combined with release dates. Ew - indeed.
In other words, what was once the fair expounding upon of issues in order to enlighten readers with the facts i.e. journalism has transformed completely into the most profitable versions of telling stories. And what is the most profitable version of telling stories? A clickable headline that suggests an enemy and takes advantage of a side the reader has chosen.
And though I have been referring mostly to entertainment news, this pox upon journalism has impacted us across all news media. We each may or may not be ingesting daily fake news (I’m sure I think it’s your source and you think it’s mine - but it’s probably both), but we are definitely getting all of our world events in tainted globs that care more for staining elected hopefuls than for giving the audience absolute clarity. What happened to the “hearing from both sides” think piece that asked the reader to form his or her own educated opinion? Instead we have right media that caters to the right and left media that caters to the left. They both package the news in a way that keeps their viewer base loyal regardless of whether or not what it is spooning out is precisely accurate - and it makes a killing in the process. How does it do this? By keeping you and I frustrated and angry.
Think about it. Look at the headlines on your news outlet. How many of those headlines and stories are crafted to make you (only) feel good about the party you’ve chosen as opposed to (also) making you feel furious at the party you are against. Most of these stories are exaggerations or lies that can be quickly sorted out with an online fact check, but the outlets trust viewers won’t do that. Because we’ve each already decided who we will vote for, which in this society, dictates which news source is our family - and you don’t question family, right? For some bizarre reason, modern culture’s faith in their news source of choice does not seem to waver. We do not seem en masse all that compelled to force any of our networks to prove their so-called stories. Well, except for that one news network who settled out of court to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787.5 million and acknowledge that they simply made up the stories that the Systems were rigged. Now, I’m not picking sides. I’m certain that all the cable news networks have had their hands slapped and their pockets emptied for misleading the public, but let’s use this specific instance as an example. Why was this network willing to publicly settle, admit they were lying, and pay so much money? Because - according to that news network - they made more profit in that voting cycle by lying and admitting it than they lost paying for those lies.
It’s important to note that the FCC (the Federal Communications Commission) has always held regulations regarding the distribution of false information on the news. This is why our parents and their parents grew up trusting newspeople, because they were regulated - but the FCC only has authority over Broadcast Networks (like ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox - not FOX News, which is on cable as opposed to Broadcast). The FCC ONLY regulates broadcast networks - which is where our parents and grandparents got their nightly news from Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and the like. And, guess what - you could flip between those news outlets on a single night and they would all have THE SAME STORIES told in very similar ways. Regardless of the politics of a broadcast network (politics are not the same as the news, by the way), they would report the truth - and reporting the truth caused all of the reputable networks to have almost identical news reports. Viewers would choose who they would watch primarily based on what show came on afterward. But, the moment Cable News Networks became a reality (which includes CNN, FOX News, and MSNBC) - NONE of those networks were accountable to anyone at all. The FCC (in fact, no fact-checking organization at all) has any jurisdiction over Cable Networks - which means that the world suddenly had dozens more news anchors that we were trusting like news anchors, but who no longer had the obligation to report the facts like news anchors - and that slippery slope has descended ever since - to greater and greater profits for the news channels - and to greater and greater slights of the truth to the viewing public. I’ll tell you what, regardless of who is elected in November, all of the news outlets will be secretly cheering over extravagant profits. They will be the real winners - and the viewing public on both sides will have lost again - because we are each so certain we are not being manipulated - and we all most certainly are.
The other reason the News Network who lost the ruling against Dominion was willing to admit that they lied was because they didn’t believe that admitting those lies would alter their viewing base’s habits all that much. Why? Because we all come up with excuses to believe what we want to believe. We work significantly harder to maintain a decision we have made public than we work to investigate truth. What if - for just one solid day - Republicans and Democrats both questioned the very core of the accuracy of what they have been told about their party, their candidate, and current events, and went on an investigation to require proof. What would we then discover? Probably a lot more truth in common than lies that divide us.
Why? Because we’re all good people with good hearts who want to do right by God and those we care about - and we are also people of integrity who can’t stomach making a choice that is morally wrong or hurtful. In other words, when it comes to what we believe - we are very tactile. We want to punch out the truth and hold it in our hands as a reminder of what to do with our choices. But, the news media is only making opinions appear as facts - and that is something no one can hold onto.
Not too long ago, I met and had a pleasant, casual conversation with a then-member of the House of Representatives. I asked him if he had a home in Washington D.C. His answer shocked me, “Oh, heavens no. There are some great houses out there that many of us rent out together and share since we’re only there a few days a week.” I responded, puzzled, “Many of who rent together?” He continued, “Many Representatives of the House and Senators, politicians who don’t live in the city 24/7.” I laughed. “That’s crazy to picture. You and a bunch of Republicans sharing a house.” He corrected me, “I didn’t say Republicans. We don’t rent together based on party. We rent together based on being friends. It’s about half-and-half. Most of us get along quite well.” Again, puzzled, “But, the news networks…” He smiled, “That’s just the networks putting on their show.”
Maybe we need to unplug digital and go back to one big tactile bipartisan magazine that just lays out all the facts about a political issue on the same page of the magazine without opinion - but then we are given two different punch-out page overlays: one conservative and one liberal - and those punch-outs block out the words with which we each do not agree. That way, the truth is always on the page and none of us have an excuse to be ignorant, but - if we really want to - we still get to wallow in the news that we prefer. Now, that sort of journalism - would be absolute Dynamite.
Next: "DAD-ROCK THEOLOGY" (2024) A brand new long-form comedic essay by Mark Steele. Exclusively written for the Mark Steele Archive.