The Canadian edition of Reader’s Digest will cease publication next spring, the magazine’s Montreal office has confirmed. Another “predictable” closure, but a symbol of the collapsing media industry.
Reader’s Digest, in its English version, and Sélection du Reader’s Digest, in its French-language counterpart, have been part of the Canadian media landscape for 76 years. The small-format magazine, focused on stories with human resonance, was once the most widely read in the country, prominently displayed on the coffee table (or toilet tank lid) of many Canadian homes.
Last April, the management of the publication still boasted of having nearly four million readers in the country per month for Reader’s Digest and some 650,000 for Sélection, with a circulation of nearly 500,000 copies in English and 67,000 in French for each of its ten annual publications.
After March 31, the various websites of the publication, owned by the American company Trusted Media Brands, will continue to be powered “for a certain period of time” thanks to the support of American employees.
Last month, the publication’s Montreal office announced the elimination of 10 positions effective January 1, 2024 in a notice published by the Ministry of Labor. The editor-in-chief, Nora Merola, will remain in office until March 31.
Reader’s Digest Selection remains an iconic magazine in Quebec. There are health and scientific sections, but also cultural sections, practical information and numerous stories in the form of testimonials, without forgetting the famous humorous page “Let’s laugh a little”.
According to Hervé Juste, who was an editor at Sélection du Reader’s Digest for a long time, the magazine transposed to Quebec a rather Anglo-Saxon way of approaching stories, by focusing on the human side and allowing readers to identify with stories. characters. Le Sélection, he said, offered local content, translations of the Canadian-English version, and translations of articles that appeared elsewhere in the world.
Hervé Juste was at the forefront of witnessing the decline of the publication, having worked at Sélection from 1995 to 2012, then from 2017 to February 2023, as editor-in-chief.
Hervé Juste feels sadness for his colleagues, “even if there weren’t many left.” “In the written press, we have seen this happening for several years. There was something unstoppable about it. Plus, like many magazines, we ended up being run by accountants rather than editorial people,” he says.
For the president of the Infopresse Group and Formations Arnaud Granata, although the magazine is a “symbol” in the media industry, and despite the fact that the brand is very “strong” in the country, the decision taken by the company- American mother did not surprise him. “It was predictable,” he believes. We are talking about a media with a fairly elderly readership, which has not reinvented itself. It’s a magazine with a business model doomed to disappear. »
Can the brand be “saved” on electronic platforms? “I think it’s too little, too late,” replies Arnaud Granata. It’s a media that is dying out. I have difficulty seeing how its relatively rigid format in a very fragile economic context could survive in a digital environment where we talk a lot to young people, where there are a lot of videos…”
Beyond the case of Reader’s Digest, for this media specialist, all printed magazines have difficulty renewing their readership. “We’re all buying fewer magazines. The reality of the pandemic and the ways in which we consume information today means that we are always on our cell phones. I’m not saying that the magazine is dead, but the case of Reader’s Digest shows that we are losing a symbol, but in terms of information, what was left of this brand? I do not know… “
Journalist Marc-André Sabourin cut his teeth at Sélection du Reader’s Digest, from 2010 to 2013. It was among the magazines that offered the best conditions to freelancers, he says.
“Despite sometimes light appearances, it is an extremely rigorous publication – I had to provide my recordings, the verbatim, the sources,” says Marc-André Sabourin, now head of the business and economics office at L’Actualité. It was a great school for me. » Considering the current context, the end of Readers Digest in Canada does not surprise him, “but it’s the end of an era, the end of a story, and that’s what I find sad.”
This announcement comes in the midst of a media crisis grappling with similar problems. This week, CBC/Radio-Canada announced the elimination of 800 positions, while at TVA, 547 positions were eliminated. Not to mention the job losses at the Information Coops and the closure of the daily Métro.
All this against the backdrop of a standoff with Meta, which is blocking the dissemination of news on its platforms for not complying with the Online News Law which is due to come into force on December 19.
