by Keith Bassham
One of my favorite cartoons is a picture of a crowd standing around a newsstand, each person holding a newspaper with the headline, “EXTRA — Print Is Dead!”
Despite what you may have heard, print magazines are not going away. Alas, some titles will, and I am not claiming the Tribune is invincible, but it is by no means inevitable that print is dead.
It is true that the Tribune can’t include flashing lights, or show Youtube clips, or display pop-up advertising. There are no video games on its pages, in fact, there is no video at all, so DVR-ing the magazine is out of the question (and if it were possible, skipping commercials would still be easier in the Tribune).
But you can take the Tribune anywhere, read it when the flight attendant tells you to turn off all your electronics, drop it without breakage, get sand in it at the beach, and even spill coffee on it, and it will still work just as well as before. Put one in a folder and store it in a cabinet, and decades from now, its pages will still pour out their information no matter what format the recording devices are using in the future. Try that with your VHS tape of the Bob Newhart Show.
At least one study says magazine readership is up the past five years, and the top 25 magazines have a wider audience than the top 25 prime-time television programs. Another says 93 percent of adults overall and 96 percent under age 35 read magazines. Plus, when people read magazines, they are more likely to stay focused than when they use other media, and it is especially true of “inspirational” content. I often hear from people that they read the Tribune from beginning to end in one sitting.
These are all good reasons for continuing what we do at the Tribune, and that is why we ask once a year for help with the job of publishing the Tribune. No other Baptist Bible Fellowship entity finds its way into all our churches and onto all our pastors’ desks and into all our missionaries’ homes every month (save one) every year. In fact, no other media, print or otherwise, will tell the story of the Baptist Bible Fellowship the way the Tribune does.
You can help in several ways. This is the time of year we receive our annual February Tribune Offering from the churches and pastors. Our regular subscribers and advertisers account for about a fourth of our budget. Half our budget comes from churches that support us monthly, usually in exchange for a bundle subscription (most of our magazines are distributed in churches this way). And the annual offering makes up the last of what we need to continue publishing.
Plus, it’s one more chance to talk about what we do at the Tribune, and that is telling the good news of what God is doing among the preachers and the churches of the Baptist Bible Fellowship. Here’s to hoping we have great stories to tell in 2011.