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52-567: The former ranch property was initially offered for sale for $ 32 million in October 2014. Not having sold by 2017, the property was put up for auction by Thomas Industries, Inc., an industrial auction house with a specialty in the auction of printing companies. The property was listed for sale as a combined acreage of the foundation, the personal property of the Imuses, and state leased adjoining land totaling almost 3,000 acres. The deadline for auction

104-487: A conservative and anti-Communist perspective on political and social issues. The Wallaces initially hoped the journal could provide $ 5,000 of net income. Wallace's assessment of what the potential mass-market audience wanted to read led to rapid growth. By 1929, the magazine had 290,000 subscribers and had a gross income of $ 900,000 a year. The first international edition was published in the United Kingdom in 1938. By

156-520: A country music CD, was released in September 2008. A New York Times critic called it "pairings of artists and material that are inspired, and often inspiring, and nothing if not eclectic". Sales of the album benefited the ranch. Artists who agreed to record for the project include Willie Nelson , Vince Gill , Dwight Yoakam , Patty Loveless , Randy Travis , Little Richard , and Lucinda Williams . In his broadcast on September 9, 2014, Imus announced

208-420: A direct mail series of hardcover anthologies containing abridged novels and nonfiction. The series was originally called Reader's Digest Condensed Books and renamed in 1997 to Reader's Digest Select Editions . From the mid-1960s to early 1980s, full-length, original works of non-fiction were published under the imprint Reader's Digest Press and distributed by Thomas Y. Crowell Co. Beginning in 1982,

260-501: A New York radio telethon in 1988, raising money for a charity assisting such children. After his marriage to Deirdre Coleman in 1994, the couple decided to build a western ranch where cancer-stricken children could regain their self-esteem by engaging in authentic ranch work. Deirdre Imus said in an American Profile magazine interview, "After working with these kids, we noticed a common theme: they had cancer but they were like normal kids, except they lost their self-esteem. We found no one

312-453: A farmer, commodities broker, and satellite dish installer. In 1988, Gottsch started RFD-TV, which aired news, weather, agribusiness and market reports. The channel went into bankruptcy a year later, as no cable network would carry the station. From 1991 to 1996, he worked for Superior Livestock Auction in Fort Worth, Texas . In 1996, Gottsch left Superior to restart RFD-TV, this time as

364-458: A general store, a "marshal's office", and a "saloon" (actually an infirmary where the young guests receive their medications at the saloon's "bar"). The main ranch house is a 14,000 sq ft (1,300 m) adobe hacienda with Native American rugs and rustic chandeliers in the great room. It had five bedrooms for the ten children who attended each week in the summer, a library, and a dining hall which served only vegetarian meals. The design

416-466: A global circulation of 10.5 million, making it the largest paid-circulation magazine in the world. It is also published in Braille , digital, and audio editions, and in a large-type edition called "Reader's Digest Large Print." The magazine is compact: its pages are roughly half the size of most American magazines. With this in mind, in summer 2005, the company adopted the slogan "America in your pocket” for

468-548: A non–profit at the suggestion of Charlie Ergen , co-founder of Dish Network . He developed the channel which aired existing agriculture, equine, music, and rural programs. It began airing on Dish Network in 2000, then on DirecTV in 2002. In 2007, he converted the business into a for–profit company. The channel began simulcasting Imus in the Morning broadcasts, which had been cancelled by MSNBC . RFD-TV subsequently began airing on Comcast cable network. In 2017, Gottsch started

520-520: A page of "Amusing Anecdotes" and "Personal Glimpses", two features of funny stories entitled "Humor in Uniform" and "Life in these United States", and a lengthier article at the end, usually condensed from a published book . Other regular features were "My Most Unforgettable Character" (since discontinued), the "Drama in Real Life" survival stories, and more recently "That's Outrageous". These were all listed in

572-728: A readership of 1.354 million, and in the latest Survey (Quarter 1 of 2019), it is not in the Top 10 list of English-language magazines published in India. According to readership estimates by Roy Morgan , Reader's Digest Australia had an average readership per issue of 362,000 as at September 2023. Nonfiction books with the Reader's Digest brand and yearly collections of the magazine's content are currently published by Trusted Media Brands, sold through their website and distributed to retailers by Simon & Schuster . Since 1950, Reader's Digest has published

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624-446: A second time. The company was purchased for £1 by Mike Luckwell, a venture capitalist and once the biggest shareholder in WPP plc . RDA offers many mail-order products included with " sweepstakes " or contests. US Reader's Digest and the company's other US magazines do not use sweepstakes in their direct-mail promotions. A notable shift to electronic direct marketing has been undertaken by

676-488: A series of classic novels was published as World's Best Reading and made available by mail order to magazine subscribers. In Germany, Reader's Digest runs its own book-publishing house called Verlag Das Beste which not only publishes the German edition of the Reader's Digest magazine. Since 1955, it has published Reader's Digest Auswahlbücher (a German edition of Reader's Digest Condensed Books ). Besides publishing

728-724: A team of Arabic advisers counseled on what would be of interest to Arabic readers. The publication of Al-Mukhtar ceased in April 1993. The Canadian edition first appeared in July 1947 in French and in February 1948 in English; today, the vast majority of its content is Canadian. Nearly all major and minor articles are locally produced or selected from Canadian publications that match the Digest style. Usually, there

780-554: A vocabulary competition in schools throughout the US called Reader's Digest National Word Power Challenge . In 2007, the magazine said it would not have the competition for the 2007–08 school year: "...but rather to use the time to evaluate the program in every respect, including scope, mission, and model for implementation." In 2006, the magazine published three more local-language editions in Slovenia , Croatia , and Romania . In October 2007,

832-503: A year rather than 12, and to increase digital offerings. It also cut its circulation guarantee for advertisers to 5.5 million copies from 8 million. In announcing that decision, in June 2009, the company said that it planned to reduce its number of celebrity profiles and how-to features, and increase the number of inspiring spiritual stories and stories about the military. Beginning in January 2013,

884-454: A £125 million pension fund deficit. Private equity fund Better Capital paid around £14 million for the brand and invested a further £9 million into the business. Better Capital sold Reader's Digest UK in 2013 for a nominal fee to venture capitalist Mike Luckwell. The brand was sold again in 2018 to its former chief executive Gary Hopkins. The magazine ceased publication after 86 years in April 2024. The first Reader's Digest publication in

936-508: Is "What [people in various professions] won't tell you," with a different profession featured each time. The first "Word Power" column of the magazine was published in the January 1945 edition, written by Wilfred J. Funk . In December 1952, the magazine published "Cancer by the Carton", a series of articles that linked smoking with lung cancer , and this topic was later repeated in other articles. From 2002 to 2006, Reader's Digest conducted

988-589: Is one American article in each issue. "Life's Like That" is the Canadian name of "Life in These United States". Most of the other rubrics are taken from the American publication. On December 6, 2023, it was announced that Reader's Digest Canada would cease publication in the spring of 2024. The Indian edition was first published in 1954. Its circulation then was 40,000 copies. It was published for many years by

1040-621: Is sorted by year of first publication. Some countries had editions but no longer do; for example, the Danish version of Reader's Digest ( Det Bedste ) ceased publication in 2005 and was replaced by the Swedish version ( Det Bästa ); as a result, the Swedish edition covers stories about both countries (but written solely in Swedish). The United Kingdom edition first published in 1938. Decades later Reader's Digest UK went into administration in 2010 due

1092-567: The Arab World was printed in Egypt in September 1943. The license was eventually withdrawn. The second effort and the first Reader's Digest franchise agreement was negotiated through the efforts of Frederick Pittera, in 1976, an American entrepreneur, who sold the idea to Lebanon 's former foreign minister, Lucien Dahdah , then son-in-law of Suleiman Frangieh , President of Lebanon . Dahdah partnered with Ghassan Tueni (former Lebanon ambassador to

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1144-576: The Committee of Advertising Practice code. Reader's Digest was told not to use this mailing again. International editions have made Reader's Digest the best-selling monthly journal in the world. Its worldwide circulation including all editions has reached 17 million copies and 70 million readers. Reader's Digest is currently published in 49 editions and 21 languages and is available in over 70 countries, including Slovenia, Croatia, and Romania in 2008. Its international editions account for about 50% of

1196-646: The Cowboy Channel , a rebranding of the FamilyNet network, and in 2023 the Cowgirl Channel. Gottsch was married to Shirley Hickey until their divorce in 1991. After divorcing, he moved to Fort Worth, Texas, with his two daughters. In 2017, he married Angie Good with whom he had another daughter. In 2013, Gottsch led the effort to break the Guinness World Record for the largest Pick-Up Truck Parade at

1248-625: The Digest expanded into Serbia . The magazine's licensee in Italy stopped publishing in December 2007. The magazine launched in the People's Republic of China in January 2008. It ceased publishing in China in 2012, due to a lack of sales caused by a relatively high price, a poorly defined audience and low-quality translated content. For 2010, the US edition of the magazine reduced its publishing schedule to 10 times

1300-654: The Indianapolis Motor Speedway . Gottsch died on May 18, 2024, at a hotel in the Fort Worth Stockyards district, aged 70. Reader%27s Digest Reader's Digest is an American general-interest family magazine, published ten times a year. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York , it is now headquartered in midtown Manhattan . The magazine was founded in 1922 by DeWitt Wallace and his wife Lila Bell Wallace . For many years, Reader's Digest

1352-560: The Tata Group of companies. Today, the magazine is published in India by Living Media India Ltd, and sold over 600,000. It prints Indian and international articles. According to the Indian Readership Survey Round II of 2009, the readership for Reader's Digest was 3.94 million , second only to India Today at 5.62 million. That has since declined. In the 2017 Survey, the India edition had fallen to ninth position with

1404-635: The WFAN Radiothon to benefit children's causes. The Radiothon was subsequently conducted on WABC radio in New York. As of 2005, the Radiothon raised more than $ 30 million for the ranch, along with Tomorrows Children's Fund and the CJ Foundation for SIDS. Organic food items and cleaning products were sold in large markets and online under the now-defunct "Imus Ranch Foods" label. All after-tax profits from

1456-497: The 40th anniversary of Reader's Digest , it had 40 international editions, in 13 languages and Braille, and at one point, it was the largest-circulating journal in China , Mexico , Spain , Sweden , Peru , and other countries, with a total international circulation of 23 million. The magazine's format for several decades consisted of 30 articles per issue (one per day), along with an "It Pays to Increase your Word Power" vocabulary quiz,

1508-608: The U.S. edition. In January 2008, however, it changed the slogan to "Life well shared." In 1920, Dewitt Wallace married Lila Bell Wallace in Pleasantville, New York . Shortly thereafter, the two would launch Reader's Digest in the basement below a Greenwich Village speakeasy . The idea for Reader's Digest was to gather a sampling of favorite articles on many subjects from various monthly magazines, sometimes condensing and rewriting them, and to combine them into one magazine. Since its inception Reader's Digest has maintained

1560-555: The U.S. version of the magazine, but over time they became unique editions, providing material more germane to local readers. Local editions that still publish the bulk of the American Reader's Digest are usually titled with a qualifier, such as the Portuguese edition, Seleções do Reader's Digest ( Selections from Reader's Digest ), or the Swedish edition, Reader's Digest Det Bästa ( The Best of Reader's Digest ). The list

1612-418: The US edition was increased to 12 times a year. In 1990, the magazine's parent company, The Reader's Digest Association, Inc. (RDA), became a publicly traded corporation. From 2005 through 2010, RDA reported a net loss each year. In March 2007, Ripplewood Holdings LLC led a consortium of private-equity investors who bought the company through a leveraged buyout for US$ 2.8 billion, financed primarily by

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1664-567: The US$ 2.2 billion debt undertaken by the leveraged buyout transaction. The company emerged from bankruptcy with the lenders exchanging debt for equity, and Ripplewood's entire equity investment was extinguished. In April 2010, the UK arm was sold to its management . It has a licensing deal with the US company to continue publishing the UK edition. The closure of the UK edition was announced in April 2024. On February 17, 2013, RDA Holding filed for bankruptcy

1716-611: The United Nations , and publisher of Al Nahar newspaper, Beirut ) in publishing Reader's Digest in the Arabic language. It was printed in Cairo for distribution throughout the Arab world under title Al-Mukhtar . In format, Al-Mukhtar was the same as the U.S. edition with 75% of the editorial content. Philip Hitti , Chairman of Princeton University 's Department of Oriental Languages and

1768-478: The company to adapt to shifting media landscape. In the mid-20th century, phonograph record albums of popular classical and easy-listening music, bearing the magazine's name, were sold by mail. Reader's Digest also partnered with RCA to offer a mail-order music club which offered discount pricing on vinyl records. In 2001, 32 states' attorneys general reached agreements with the company and other sweepstakes operators to settle allegations that they tricked

1820-405: The discontinuation of the ranch program, after 16 years of operation, due to his "health and other issues". He said the property would be sold with proceeds going to a 501(c)(3) charitable foundation. In October 2014, the ranch was offered for sale, with an asking price of $ 32 million. After not selling for almost three years even when the price was reduced to $ 19.9 million, the closed property

1872-491: The elderly into buying products because they were a "guaranteed winner" of a lottery. The settlement required the companies to expand the type size of notices in the packaging that no purchase is necessary to play the sweepstakes, and to: The UK edition of Reader's Digest has also been criticized by the Trading Standards Institute for preying on the elderly and vulnerable with misleading bulk mailings that claim

1924-497: The issuance of US$ 2.2 billion of debt. Ripplewood invested $ 275 million of its own money, and had partners including Rothschild Bank of Zürich and GoldenTree Asset Management of New York. The private-equity deal tripled the association's interest payments, to $ 148 million a year. On August 24, 2009, RDA announced it had filed with the US Bankruptcy court an arranged Chapter 11 bankruptcy to continue operations, and to restructure

1976-532: The magazine's trade volume. In each market, local editors commission or purchase articles for their own markets and share content with U.S. and other editions. The selected articles are then translated by local translators and the translations edited by the local editors to make them match the "well-educated informal" style of the American edition. Over the 90 years, the company has published editions in various languages in different countries, or for different regions. Often, these editions started out as translations of

2028-509: The magazine, the publisher is especially well known in Germany for the science fiction anthology Unterwegs in die Welt von Morgen ("The Road to Tomorrow"), consisting of 50 hardcover volumes of classic science fiction novels (such as Robert A. Heinlein 's Stranger in a Strange Land , Arthur C. Clarke 's 2001 , or Ray Bradbury 's Fahrenheit 451 , usually two novels per volume) published between 1986 and 1995. More recent book series by

2080-715: The ranch and the amount of money spent on each child. In 2006 the ranch spent $ 2.5 million on 90 children who stayed at ranch, or $ 28,000 per child. Accusations of accounting irregularities and personal use of the charity's assets were investigated by both the Attorney General of New Mexico , Patricia Madrid , and the New York State Attorney General , Eliot Spitzer . No charges were filed in New Mexico. New York closed its investigation on March 24, 2005. The Imus Ranch's annual operating cost of $ 1.8 million

2132-480: The recipient is guaranteed a large cash prize and advising them not to discuss this with anyone else. Following their complaint, the Advertising Standards Authority said they would be launching an investigation. The ASA investigation upheld the complaint in 2008, ruling that the Reader's Digest mailing was irresponsible and misleading (particularly for the elderly) and had breached three clauses of

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2184-468: The sale of these products were donated to the ranch. In 2004, Deirdre Imus wrote a book, The Imus Ranch: Cooking for Kids and Cowboys , published by Rodale, Inc. in Emmaus, Pennsylvania . All after-tax profits from the sale of the book have been donated to the ranch. On April 10, 2007, a second book by Deirdre Imus, Greening Your Cleaning , was published by Simon & Schuster . The Imus Ranch Record ,

2236-489: The serious health needs of the campers, the ranch also had qualified personnel present to treat medical needs. During the summer months, Imus broadcast his nationally syndicated radio program, Imus in the Morning , from a studio at the ranch. Occasionally, children attending the ranch appeared on the program along with his wife, Deirdre, and son, Wyatt. Imus, who was raised on an Arizona ranch, became interested in helping children stricken with cancer after he participated in

2288-481: The table of contents on the front cover. Each article was prefaced by a small, simple line drawing. In more recent times, the format evolved into flashy, colorful, eye-catching graphics throughout, and many short bits of data interspersed with full articles. The table of contents is now contained inside. From 2003 to 2007, the back cover featured "Our America", paintings of Rockwell -style whimsical situations by artist C. F. Payne . Another monthly consumer advice feature

2340-424: Was actually restoring their self-esteem or dignity." Initially, the Imuses used more than $ 1 million of their money to purchase 810 acres (3.3 km) for the ranch in 1998. The ranch cost almost $ 25 million to construct, raised through a public foundation they established. The ranch cost $ 1.8 million annually to operate. In March 2005, a Wall Street Journal reporter wrote an article critical of

2392-514: Was an American media executive. He was the founder of Rural Media Group , which includes RFD-TV and The Cowboy Channel . Patrick Gottsch was born on June 3, 1953, in Omaha to Bernard Gottsch, a farmer, and Gloria Gottsch (née Borowiak). He was raised on a farm in Elkhorn , Nebraska. He attended Sam Houston University on a baseball scholarship for one year until leaving due to a hand injury. He worked as

2444-537: Was largely under the direction of Deirdre Imus at a cost of construction placed at more than $ 25 million. There were bunk houses for doctors, other medical staff and ranch hands. The Hackensack University Medical Center provided physicians, nurses, and guidance counselors who attended the ranch sessions. For seven days, the children were expected to perform chores and tasks as if they were cowboys , such as caring for horses, in order to gain self-esteem. The ranch operated all year but hosted children only when school

2496-408: Was not in session, in eight one-week sessions. Nearly half the children were from minority groups; 10% were black. During a typical day, the children performed chores beginning early in the morning, such as feeding the various ranch animals, watering plants, gathering eggs, and saddling horses for a two-hour ride led by the Imuses. Recreation included swimming, board games, and pool. In a concession to

2548-427: Was originally set for June 15, 2017, with a minimum bid of $ 5 million. The property was sold to Patrick Gottsch , owner of RFD-TV , in April 2018 for $ 12.5 million. RFD-TV has used the ranch as a production facility for its Western shows. A portion of the historic Santa Fe Trail passes through the property. The ranch contained a village of eight buildings constructed to emulate an Old West town, including

2600-480: Was raised by various corporate sponsors and individual contributions, enabling the youth to attend at no charge. Numerous large corporations donated significantly to the ranch. Major donors included Reader's Digest , for which the ranch's "locale" was named, Unilever , and Wrangler Jeans , among others. General Motors donated vehicles for use on the ranch. Buildings at the ranch were named for major corporate donors. Each spring beginning in 1990, WFAN conducted

2652-443: Was scheduled for auction on June 15, 2017, at a starting bid of $ 5 million. The ranch was finally sold in April 2018 to Patrick Gottsch (Imus's former employer at RFD-TV and the founder of Rural Media Group) for $ 12.5 million. 35°22′43.8″N 105°24′16.4″W  /  35.378833°N 105.404556°W  / 35.378833; -105.404556 Patrick Gottsch Patrick Gottsch (June 3, 1953 – May 18, 2024)

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2704-550: Was the best-selling consumer magazine in the United States; it lost that distinction in 2009 to Better Homes and Gardens . According to Media Mark Research (2006), Reader's Digest reached more readers with household incomes of over $ 100,000 than Fortune , The Wall Street Journal , Business Week , and Inc. combined. Global editions of Reader's Digest reach an additional 40 million people in more than 70 countries, via 49 editions in 21 languages. The periodical has

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