On the Newstand: Time for another challenger to long-popular home tomes
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Not only is everyone buying houses, they're buying magazines about houses, too.
This month, Time Inc. rolled out its new offering, setting the scene for some more competition. The new entry, Cottage Living from Time's Southern Progress unit, makes a very strong argument for the joys of small-home living. To the editors' credit, they have pretty much stuck to smaller, quainter homes that really could be called cottages. We loved the tiny 638 square-foot ``earthquake cottage'' and the gardening feature ``down to earth'' with P. Allen Smith.
The upscale House Beautiful is dead serious about decorating, with readers who are clearly interested in more than just a fresh coat of paint or new pillows. For its October issue, the magazine shifted into massive renovation mode, assembling a team of designers to take on a major project: restoring a faded suburban Chicago house.
Home, on the other hand, is for those who would opt for Botox over plastic surgery. The more down-to-earth decorating magazine focuses on simple how-tosand advice on such subjects as re-covering a chair, finding the right wall clock and un-cluttering the space beneath the kitchen sink. There are a couple of more ambitious projects as well, including a showcase vacation home in South Carolina and a more modest makeover in Denver.
Country Living's October issue shows that after years of neglect, it is finally getting a little tender loving care from its parent corporation. Hearst jazzed up the issue with slightly-oversized format and brighter, whiter paper. Two features we loved - the Pumpkin carving party in Ohio for 80 tossed by one of the editors, and the ``what to do when the barking dog is yours.'' The editors could have dropped a few of the decorating-your-home-for-Halloween features - one would suffice, thanks. And in the ``What is it? What is it worth?'' section, we're happy to see that the ``Rifleman'' metal lunchbox that a certain boomer might have lugged to school in the 1960s is now valued at $450. Hey Grandma, whadjya do with it?
On the eve of the Democratic Convention, Time and
Newsweek plunged into the life of John Kerry, delivering an effective portrait
of the candidate. This week, Newsweek attempts to do the same thing with President
George Bush but comes up short, spending too much time on the well-told past and
not enough on the present. Anyone who's been living on planet Earth (and cares
about politics) knows the president quit drinking, lives by his faith and sees
the world in black and white. So what's new?
What Newsweek lacks, Time delivers. A long interview with the president asks tough questions and gets comprehensive answers about such real issues as the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, how it feels to have American soldiers die on his watch and whether he had come up with any mistakes yet. ``Inside the Mind of George W. Bush'' by Nancy Gibbs and John Dickerson poses the challenge he faces: If John Kerry has to look strong - a trait the electorate assigns confidently to Bush - Bush has to prove that his strength has been founded.
