Reader's Digest: How to kill a successful brand

R.S. McCain comments on the magazine's bankruptcy:

Reader's Digest: Death by Consultants

McCain is exactly right. The Reader's Digest did not need consultants. It just needed a great editor who did not have contempt for the core market.

The greatest praise ever given to the RD came from an enemy:

Imagine, if you will, someone who read only Reader's Digest between 1950 and 1970, and someone in the same period who read only The Nation or The New Statesman. Which reader would have been better informed about the realities of Communism? The answer, I think, should give us pause. Can it be that our enemies were right?

Susan Sontag