Weeding the Readers

While most national magazines are out after new subscribers, so they can raise their advertising rates, the Farm Journal is earnestly doing just the opposite. The 81-year-old monthly is trying to winnow some 220,000 non-farm readers out of its circulation of 3,533,956 and is already paring its ad rates accordingly. Last week readers without R.F.D. addresses were considering a special query from the magazine: "Do you own, operate, live on, work on a farm, or do business with a farmer?" If the answer was no, the subscriber got the choice of a cash rebate or a subscription to one of 17 other magazines (from True Confessions to Catholic Digest). The scheme: by lowering its space rates and assuring advertisers of a full crop of farm readers, the Farm Journal hopes to attract enough new ads to more than make up for the cutbacks.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.