No more public WT & Awake?

mikeflood

Have you guys noticed, this year 2023 no more public edition magazines...I wonder how they are gonna spin that fact

JW GoneBad

I wonder how they are gonna spin that fact

GB Mark Sanderson will be used to soon announce something to the effect:

"We have more exciting news for 2023. The Governing Body has decided that the public editions of The Watchtower and Awake magazines have served there purpose after all these years of production...will cease to be printed and will no longer be available to the general public. Won't you agree with me that this is indeed exciting news!!!"

😀😃 😀

Foolednomore

NO MORE BIRD CAGE PAPER AND PAPER FOR FIRE PLACE.

smiddy3

Have they finally realized that these mags never ,ever, brought in anyone ,over all of these years ?

Disillusioned JW

What is the source for paraphrase of the words of GB Mark Sanderson? What is the source for news/claim of no more public issues of "no more public edition magazines"?

After typing the above I did a web search and found a comment at https://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/comments/yek43h/no_more_public_edition_watchtower_and_awake_mags/ .

Update: I notice one comment posted at the above reddit page says the following. "Branch letter a couple months ago said only one WT and Awake will be released for 2023 (in Nov/Dec). They’re really cutting costs (nobody reads them anyway), we all know where the money is going…"

smiddy3, sadly in my case, the Awake! magazines from the late 1970s - very early 1980s contributed to me deciding to get baptized as a JW in the very early 1980s. That is because they contained articles which were highly critical of biological evolution and carbon dating (and tree ring dating), causing me to greatly question those matters rather than agreeing that scientists were right on those matters. Furthermore, the Awake! and the Watchtower had articles which made me very scared to read articles which promoted evolution and the accuracy of radiometric dating, and of literature promoting atheism (and of criticisms of the Bible), for they made me think I might get deceived by reading such and thus loose salvation.

From the late 1970s through around 2008 the Awake! magazine was far more interesting to me to read than the Watchtower magazine, since the Awake! contained articles on science.

dropoffyourkeylee

Just looking at the JW.org app, it looks like they had 3 public edition WTs in 2021, then down to just one in 2022. The didn’t have a publication date, just No.1, 2, etc. It seems likely 2023 will have one later in the year.

WingCommander

Oh, how the mighty have fallen! As a child of the 80's, I can tell you that magazines were paramount in the door-to-door ministry. They were used as proof, right at the door, of just how close to "The End" everyone was. This is particularly true of anything from the year 1984. It's really hard to convey to anyone not alive during that time just how it was constantly drummed into our heads that we'd never get old, never even get to high school (much less graduate from it) and walk into the New Order waaaaaay before the year 2000 even.

I graduated in 1997. My son graduated 25 years after me, and is now nearly thru his Freshman year of college.

eyeslice

Wasn't it claimed that the Watchtower was the most widely circulated magazine in the world at one time? Greater than the Readers Digest?

In fairness, in the last 25 years, print has fallen out of favour as the internet has taken over.

Anony Mous

It is often claimed, the problem with that is that it may have been true once but the contents and title vary country by country, so the question is whether it is actually the same magazine.

Remember, in some languages they had a “study edition” already since the 80s and 90s. I know moving between countries, the articles and sometimes even the study articles were not the same, often delayed by 1-3 months (so you had to look in your Dutch November article for the US September Watchtower studies)

My Name is of No Consequence

@ WingCommander,

You are right about that! You and I are about the same age. Growing up in the 1980's and early 1990's, there was NO WAY that I would get old. Well, I'm settling into my 40's. While not old, I am older than I thought I would ever get.

No more public WT & Awake?

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