Brand names aren't worth squat without the right attitude

Guess what? Readers don't give a hoot about magazine brands; they want content relevant to their lives presented in a way that's visually appealing. I'm not reading Rolling Stone again because I have fond memories of checking it out while stoned and listening to "Fables of the Reconstruction" during high school; I'm reading it again because it has abandoned its we-are-cultural-trendsetters-and-you-shall-respect-us-as-such 'tude in favor of provocative writer/subject pairings, like sic'ing Maureen Dowd on Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart. Brand names are all well and good, but they don't mean a whole heck of a lot without the brand attributes that lured readers in the first place.

--Larry Dobrow, in his Magazine Rack review column for MediaPost. He was writing about the sad-sack version of the venerable brand Life, now reduced to a 16-page weekend supplement which he describes as "weightless piffle".