by Bob_NC 9 Replies latest jw friends
The magazines were left in my door today. Skinny little things with a lot of pictures and bullet-type commentary. Actual articles are almost non-existent. I was surprised when I found the skinny little Awake! inside the Watchtower.
The little things are now monthly magazines. Where is the fire? What does the Writing Department do any more? Certainly not research anything of depth and then submit it to print. Sad. Too sad.
That started shortly before i left. I thought the same thing. In fact, i think it was the month they first came out that i called it quits. I remember telling a fellow friend and MS "well those are a bit pathetic." he just chuckled. I think he thought the same thing.
It takes an iron grip on family member's brains from a soulless hostage-taker to keep many common sense bearing people from walking away. Their senses do not deceive them. They do not possess any pretensions to an excuse. I'll be damned if my biological brothers are as stupid as to swallow all these manifest contractions and back-pedalling without a few cracks in the foundation.
I wonder if the WT did a survey and discovered that going door to door and handing out mags was a waste of time and thats why they down sized the size of them?
I think downsizing the page count of the magazines was simply to cut costs.
First, they cancelled mail subscriptions.
Then,in 2006 they made Awake! a monthly. Then in 2008 they created the study Watchtower, which does not get public distribution. These steps cut magazine production way down, but they were not satisfied. Despite all the money saved by these changes, the circulation of both magazines kept going up, so they still had to print more.
Thus, they shrank the Awake! and public Watchtower down to...24 pages? No- to 16! It is rediculous and should be obvious to any witnesses what is happening. But no, a sister told me it is a good thing, how beneficial that the GB decided to save more trees!
I imagine even these changes won't satisfy the stingy, greedy new gb. They will eventually cut back the frequency of the Awake! and public Watchtower to bi-monthly, and eventually quarterly, before they just stop printing them altogether and publish only e- magazines.
But what have they been doing with all of the money they have been saving on these cutbacks?
They have turned most books, including larger sized ones into softcover editions, and cut down on book production. They decreased the page count of the Yearbook from 256 pages to 192. (Although I like the new format!)
So what are they doing with all the money they have been saving on continously cutting back their printing budget?
Interesting. I spoke to an elderess about this when I was still going earlier this year. She said it was to reach a larger audience, some of which were not so well educated and thus the pictures and bullet points. How bloody smug and patronising!!! That'll endear people to you every time.
Give those idiots in the WT enough rope and they'll hang themselves.
It's not about costs - you ignore that they print a "members" Watchtower - there are two, with different articles - the members one is heavier; stuff they wouldn't say to the public. They are desperately using this magazine to keep people in the cult, while the other Watchtower features any articles that are safe for the outside world. The Awake was only a less spiritual magazine to get attention, subtly draw people in - you could leave them an article about saving the rainforest, without mentioning the Bible, then at the end of the article, it would mention paradise - it's still used for that, but wasn't felt they needed to have it so big to achieve that.
When we left I did not complain when my husband trashed all the bound volumes. As soon as I realised how poor the writing was and how poorly researched I couldn't stand them taking up space in the house. It is a sad fact that they had no intellectual value even as basic reference works. God knows how the latest 16 page excuses for magazines would stand up to scrutiny and why would anyone want to keep them for long term research if all they are is bullet points.
Fewer pages and content — but big Logo and new merchandising!
... and they call it the "truth" LOL!
Hey man what's up? I'd have thought you'd be ecstatic that the one-time supposedly fastest growing religion in the world is now the incredibly shrinking religion. Never complain when nutcases want less space.At the present rate the Awake! and the Watchtower's slim pickings will be all but stubble in less than 20 years time. When I beheld the colorful
but skimpy Awake hanging limply out of my letterbox like a grocery catalogue, I did the gay gordons. Memories of the thumping long-winded Watchtower tomes of my youth.
