Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

Yesterday was a partial travel day, as I returned from NYC to my own office in Michigan. To pass the time between airline flights in various airports, I bought both Time magazine and Newsweek. I had a book with me, but for some reason (Maybe sensory overload of NYC) I wanted to read something easy, something slightly mentally challenging, but something that might provide insight to the week’s economic woes.

I certainly found the easy and the slightly mentally challenging in Time, but any insight was lacking. In addition I felt cheated, since the newsstand copy of this publication cost $4.95 and I certainly didn’t get that much value from its contents.

To start, the magazine had 96 pages, but it seemed most of them were advertisements. To be sure of this, I counted the actual pages that had articles, editorials, etc. I found there were 50 pages of content, although one was the Table of Contents itself, and two of them were letters to the editor, which hardly count as staff writings.

Several additional pages were short snippets of what’s happening in the world, like a condensation of material that someone could download to his or her phone. Nothing in depth here. Then there was the page of cartoons and the six pages of photographs detailing how tuberculosis is still a scourge. If you’re doing the math, you can see I spent about a dime a page to learn what’s going on in the world.

I remember the days when Time offered a cogent weekly analysis of our world for considerably fewer dimes. I remember when articles were three hundred to five hundred words in length, giving the reader something to consider. I remember when the writing was stylish. Columnists had something to say, even if you disagreed. Plays on words abounded.

It’s a fact that readership of print media is declining, and I’m not sure what happened first. Did content decline and discourage readership? Or did readership turn to other information outlets and cause various publications to cut back and decline? I only know I won’t spend $4.95 again for Time; at the same time, I mourn the fact.