It is no secret that Wal-mart is not good for America. Long gone is the quaint notion that a little businessman from Arkansas was helping the average person buy quality goods at a fair price. Wal-mart is more like a warped and twisted sociology project than a positive benefit to the nation. The latest example of the damage it has done was made public this week.
Wal-mart has more than 20% of all national magazine retail sales in the nation. Given the fact of how Wal-mart decides what products to carry by a most unusual, and many argue unfair standard that then impacts the rest of the nation on everything from trash containers to widgets, any final decision by Wal-mart on what to carry has huge consequences.
So when Wal-mart decided this week to end the sales of nearly 1,000 magazines the publishing world did a collective WTF! The fact that magazines such as the well known “Better Homes and Gardens” have been tossed off the shelves along with the “Saturday Evening Post” and “Sports Illustrated For Kids” indicates the savage cutting that took place in some draconian corporate office. While these titles carry some weight, most of the publications were sadly the small and start-up types that will feel the impact more severely.
Those of us who have read new publications and hoped for their success (I fondly recall “George”) understand how fickle and difficult the publishing world can be. The action by Wal-mart is a slap to the industry as a whole, and readers of fine publications all over the country. It is clear this week that Wal-mart, and America that reads, are two separate things.
No one should ever expect Wal-mart to be concerned with any cerebral concerns of the nation, but I do think given its power and scope that Wal-mart might concern itself with better understanding the negative impact it has on society. The news this week is but the latest in a never ending stream of awful decisions from a thoughtless corporation.
Oh by the way, the celebrity rags at the Wal-mart checkout counter are staying. Given that there is now more room to place them I think it makes a perfect statement about the ‘Wal-mart shopping experience’.
Technorati Tags: Wal-mart, Magazines, SaturdayEveningPost, Corporations, Society
CAFFEINATED POLITICS 
We’ve thought something like this would be coming and even though the internet has been long on fireworks and short on substance in giving magazines real volume, we have become more and more THE GATEKEEPERS for people who love magazines. We have worked hard and long to give consumers a better choice of protection from the Newsstands and this is just one more example. Thank you for the coverage on this for consumers who don’t know what Walmart is doing.
te-hee! what is a better choice? this article is about limiting choices in the first place, but the main point is not about choice; it’s about control. oh, what ever would we do without walmart to protect us???? yeah right, people are starting to wake up