The Three R's

That's right. We all know them. Reduce, reuse, recycle. No, I've not suddenly taken off on a "green" frenzy, not that that would be a bad thing (no worries, I do recycle).

However, I now refer to the magazine industry. As I said in my previous post, I did stop into B&N to pick up some mags to play some catch up. What did I see? A very familiar In Style cover. I noticed it right away because In Style is one of my frequent magazine buys, not to mention I thought it seemed a bit too "springy" for an October issue.

How strange, I thought, that they would be using that again! Of course upon closer inspection I realized that this was the October issue for the UK. I did a little checking (and will confirm when I get home, since I'm certain I still have the US issue) and I believe this was the May cover for the US.

Hmm...so this got me thinking, about how often do magazines recycle their cover images? Is this common practice? We all know they love to Photoshop, and I've certainly read about images being Photoshopped to look like they're in a certain location or wearing something that they never wore, even on covers.

For some reason I'm inclined to believe that this is more commonly done on covers for their off-shoots such as the UK, Paris, Australia, etc. and not as much on US covers. Then again, they could probably just as easily shoot a cover for a UK edition and then later recycle it for the US a few months later, and would I really know? Most likely I only noticed this because I bought my mags from B&N this time, which usually carries the European issues as well as the US. It just seems a bit unfortunate, because if European issues can be purchased here, then US issues (and I know because I bought them in Paris) can be purchased over there. And really, if you're going to recycle a past cover image, at least make it appropriate to that month...

-B