The Dinosaur's Birthday Party

The Strib gives us a look into the bad old days with this editorial on the 20th birthday of the Utne Reader.

If you've missed it, Utne (as it's now called) is a bit of a Reader's Digest for the free-range-alpaca-wearing, Volvo-driving, unisex-ponytail-wearing, MPR-worshipping, Kucinich-voting set.

It fills a specialized editorial need that, in the Strib editorship's social circles, isn't that specialized:

In those days, the friend to have was a magazine addict -- somebody who kept up a whole bunch of subscriptions to interesting publications, so you didn't have to, and who liked to pass along the gems he found. Somebody like Eric Utne of Minneapolis, who one day had the brilliance to see that all his foraging in the fringes of periodical publishing could be the basis of an actual business.

Thus was born the Utne Reader, a newsletter-looking thing that became a real magazine with its fifth number, and this month has delivered its 20th anniversary issue to some 225,000 customers. Aiming to publish something that would make the world a bit kinder and a bit greener, Utne produced a reader's digest, and an enduring icon, of lefty/veggie/spiritual/communitarian living.

And along the way, become perhaps a bit green but not in the least bit kind.

I have no problem with Utne; I used to read it until the preening condescension became too oppressive.

But here's the interesting part about this article:

It comes off a bit self-admiring, but hearty congratulations are in order for Utne, both man and magazine -- if not for groundbreaking journalism then for one brilliant concept and 20 years of reliable execution, pointing an eclectic readership toward the material that matters most in their lives.

Nowadays the Web makes it easy to find and share instructions on making your own aromatherapy soaps, but it has also increased the ratio of chaff to wheat, so it's harder than ever to find out what you want to know but don't yet know you want to know. For help with that problem, Utne readers still know where to turn.

Can you feel the wistfulness of the editorialist for the good ol' days, when "democratization of the media" meant "more niche-y gatekeepers", rather than "Visigoths trampling our organic gardens"?

Utne, like so many of its' (mostly-extinct) compatriots, is still a dead-tree, top-down, highly-capitalized operation, the kind of thing any Strib editor could step into and feel comfortable (either managing or reading).

'...it's harder than ever to find out what you want to know?" Really? So hard that you'd rather let Eric Utne pick what you want to know, rather than running wild on Google?

Posted by Mitch at September 28, 2004 04:47 AM | TrackBack