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I've joked recently about my ability to kill a magazine simply by subscribing. But I didn't realize my true power till just recently. I have subscriptions to several gaming magazines. (Apparently, I'm something of a dinosaur on this count, judging from the forum posts I have recently read). One of these is… er, was… Computer Games magazine. The other day, I realized that it's been a while since I'd received an issue. I checked the date on that last issue and figured I had to be at least a month behind. So I went to their site to contact customer service. I noticed that it looked like it had been a while since the site had been updated, and that the cover page they were showing on their subscriptions page was the same as the last issue I'd received. But it wouldn't be the first site I'd found that was slow to update. Then I started clicking on customer service links, and found myself getting redirected to "this page cannot be found" links. Cur...

I saw an article in the LA Times a few weeks ago about the demise of Premiere Magazine, so it wasn't a surprise last week when I got a postcard, notifying me that the April issue was the last one to be published. But finding out that they were going to finish out my subscription with issues of Us Weekly did come as a bit of a surprise. I mean, seriously… Us Weekly? I know they blamed the end of Premiere (at least, the physical magazine—it apparently lives on on the web) on the rise of the gossip mags and websites. But can you really compare Premiere's movie coverage with… well, whatever it is Us Weekly actually covers? Frankly, the first issue arrived the other day… I took one glance at the cover and tossed it aside. Apparently, nothing stuck with me, since I can't remember a single item on the cover now. I have an interesting knack for "discovering" new magazines just in time for them to go out of business. PC Accelerator , Cinescape , Iniquities … ea...