are all magazines useless?

[captZEEbo]

Everyone on the forums seems to love the economist, but I bet if you follow world news really closely the economist is boring too.

[gusmahler]

[ QUOTE ]
Workout Magazine are by far the worst.


[/ QUOTE ]

There's a lot of competition for the worst. Photo magazines always give positive reviews and their "tips and techniques" are usually pretty lame.

[gamblore99]

For now on I will only read general science magazines, or the economist.

[illeagle]

I got some good use out of guitar mags when I was a youngster.

[onthebutton]

The Economist is an outstanding magazine. Read it, then read Time. It will make you laugh.

Science is also good, for us research/science types.

[kyleb]

Most magazines are pretty bad, I will agree. However, I do like a few for specific purposes:

Bathroom Reading: Newsweek (short news blurbs), Maxim (mindless entertainment), 2600 (mostly crap but sometimes entertaining/informative), Popular Mechanics / Popular Science (new tech/science stuff), Game Informer (probably the best video game magazine out there)
Plane Trips: The Economist (actually intelligent, well-written and in-depth articles)
Waiting in-between hands at the casino: Cardplayer (obviously)

[BigPoppa]

"New Yorker", "Atlantic Monthly", and "Washington Monthly" all have well researched and written articles about non-obvious stuff.

If you read crap like Maxim for the articles, then you get what you deserve.

[DrewDevil]

I had a subscription to Sports Illustrated for something like 20 years (my dad first got it for me when I was 12), and it used to be an outstanding magazine with top-notch, in-depth writing, superior analysis, and amazing photography. I looked forward to reading it every week.

A few years ago, however, there was some sort of management change at Time/Life, and someone mandated a shift to a more sports/entertainment style. There was a new section that was basically gossip, how such-and-such sports personality was at such-and-such game with such-and-such movie star, or some crap like that. And there were a lot of articles that were just fluff that I had never noticed before.

So I canceled my subscription, and I don't really miss it, except for the swimsuit issue.