Yet another casualty of the recession – word came late last week that Disney was suspending publication of Wondertime magazine.
This was unhappy news to me. I’d always liked Wondertime, in part because it was so, well, not Disneylike. Unlike the other parenting mags out there which seem to push a really standard, plasticized, product-driven view of perfect parenting (not to mention all those ads, aka why it’s no mystery that some have shown up unbidden in my mailbox during both pregnancies and the infancies of both my kids), Wondertime published good writing and was beautifully laid out with nice photography. Basically, it was similar to Brain, Child with a huge budget and lots of advertisers to please.
Like all parenting mags, of course, it presented a vision of unattainable perfection none of us could hope to achieve, which is one of the reasons I think half the people I know are depressed. If you can’t afford the charming character-filled home at which you entertain your wide and attractive circle of close friends, don’t drive the Volvo or push the $800 stroller, magazines can reinforce that feeling of being the last kid picked in gym.
According to Ad Age, the website will go dark too, although Disney plans to move some Wondertime blogs and community areas to other sites such as FamilyFun.com and iParenting.com. Interestingly, its ad pages expanded 20 percent in 2008, which was a terrible time for ad-page sales. Average paid and verified circulation was just below 400,000 copies in the first half of last year according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
