Some of the most fascinating industry secrets can be found by reading specialized trade magazines. You've probably seen them: things like "Supermarketworld" and "Waste Management Monthly." These are typically "free to qualified subscribers" which means you fill out a card saying you buy X hundred thousand dollars of Y processing equipment. When recieved, the publishers will send you the rag gratis, so they can puff subscription rates to advertisers.

Because a whole year of these things would be slow death (unless, of course, you work in the supermarket or waste management industries), the qualified magazine club is a group of, say, 12 people, each of whom subscribe to one of these monthly periodicals. Members trade copies in a rotating fashion, so everyone sees a new industry every month. Particularly good issues get earmarked for all to read. Probably all on the web now, but easier to read magazines on the toilet.
-- rmutt, Sep 16 2000

McSweeney's: If you work at a trade magazine... http://www.mcsweene...t/if_you/trade.html
My favorite deliberate humor magazine, McSweeney's, also knows the value of trade magazines and has been offering exchange subscriptions for a while. [jutta, Sep 16 2000]

Actually not a bad idea. My father used to work for Lykes, and got all the food handling and storage rags, and they could be really interesting sometimes.
-- StarChaser, Sep 16 2000


Pictures of your cat, random humor sites... we're getting pretty random, aren't we?
-- egnor, Sep 17 2000


i dont get it
-- monty, Sep 17 2000


Just for the record: I missed whatever happened up there. If there was an annotation deleted, it was not by me. Fear not: as a principle, I will not deprive anyone of the right to make stupid comments in a public forum.
-- rmutt, Oct 16 2000


Uhm, I still remember that PeterSealy at some point posted a link to the Onion (because it, too, was a humor magazine, like McSweeney's -- never mind that that didn't have anything to do with trade magazines), and then someone posted pictures of their cat - I don't remember why.

If you delete everything after StarChaser's first annotation, you're pretty much back to normal.
-- jutta, Oct 17 2000



random, halfbakery