A history of your magazine/newspaper reading, from birth to present

Here's mine:

Age 8-12:
Your Sinclair, a cult computer game magazine that shaped the humour of a lot of people I know. I think I was probably too young.
Zit/Acne/Viz Puerile but occasionally transcendently funny "adult" comics. I was introduced to Viz by my Dad. I repaid the favour by buying him a subscription when he retired. There is a thread about it somewhere, but I cannot find it.
Match. Children's football magazine. Rubbish.

Age 12-15:
Amiga Power, basically the same people who wrote Your Sinclair but writing about Commodore Amigas. Buying this magazine from the newsagents right by school at which my youunger brother was later caught shoplifting sweets is among my favourite childhood memories.
Super Play was a rather serious magazine about the Super Nintendo which concentrated on Japanese games and covered other aspects of Japanese culture, especially anime. Responsible for me designing a terrible and vaguely racist anime character called "Mr Posse". My dad still has the sketches for this, which I drew in watercolours (!).

Age 12-20:
Digitiser, a teletext "magazine" "about" computer games. Its humour and tone changed my life.

Age 14:
Four Four Two. I thought I was terribly grown up reading this adult football magzine, which arrived at about the time football was becoming socially acceptable/cool again in the early/mid-90s. I was not.

Age 16-18:
Mojo and Uncut. Bloody awful magazines that retarded my musical development. Was given a subscription to Uncut a couple of years ago. Cancelled it after they put The Clash on the cover two months out of three the year Joe Strummer died.

Age 18-22:
University, so no time for magazines, but started reading newspapers other than the Guardian for the first time because they were free in the common room. Spoke in opposition to a motion proposing our union unsubscribe from The Sun, which seemed to me a willfully ignorant thing to do.

Age 13-present:
The Guardian. I started to the left of this paper, and now I'm probably to the right. I never read it in the week any more, but still pick it up on a Saturday.

Age 24-present:
Viz subscriber. The only magazine I have renewed a subscription for. Not as good as it used to be, but still great. A massive pile lives in our unused bathtub by the toilet. Good times.
Economist online (since it's free)

7-11 (so 1987-91) - Beano and Dandy. Not a golden age I daresay but pre-'modernisation' of them both

9-15 - Match, Shoot and 90 Minutes, the latter of which really hit its stride by 92-93 and eventually embarrassed me into realising I was too old for the other two. Match was really good for stats though

12-15 - console mags. Total (first Nintendo only mag I think) and Gamesmaster were the two that really brought the lolz but I'd buy most of the others at random if I was bored. Then Edge came along and I thought that was the coolest thing ever for a while. I still have about the firs 12 issues in the coloured bags they came in. I'd like to think they're worth money to someone but probably not. I should point out that all this time I only ever owned a Gameboy, but had this weird and fairly absurd need to keep up with the culture etc

14-24 - NME/Melody Maker/Select etc. Regular NME buyer/reader most of that time, MM every few weeks or so, Select every month until near the end when it went a bit 'lifestyle'. Bought maybe one Mojo in my life, one or two Uncuts. Just never my thing

16-23 - Guardian. Used to read every day but can't justify paying £5 or £6 a week these days for what's the best of a bad bunch of dailies

21-26 - Terrorizer/Plan B - pretty much the only two music mags I'm happy to shell out for these days; Terrorizer less so, although they've drifted away from my taste rather than actually got worse

ALL THIS TIME - willing to read, without exception, absolutely anything to pass the hours. I can pinpoint the differences between Heat and the mags that bite Heat's style. It's not a good thing and I wish I could bust out of it

In conclusion, I've not become rightist so much as unwilling to shell out for ephemera. Tightist, if you will

Ooh, great thread idea. These are the magazines I'd pick up regularly.

Early-mid 70's(age 5-12) - Beano/Dandy

Late 70's - Stamp Collector Magazine

79-86 - Record Mirror

84-04 NME

84-97? - The Face

84-Present Weather

85-92 - Viz

Late 80s' - Underground/Cut

Late 80's- Mid 90s - Empire

Late 80's-02 Q

96- Present Mojo

98-03? - Jockey Slut

2000 - Magnet

2005-06 - Modern Painters

Other magazines I bought infrequently though a lot more than once 4-4-2, I-d, The Wire, Kerrang, Muzik, Melody Maker, What Hi-Fi, Record Collector, Cut, Sight and Sound, Computer Shopper, Private Eye.

Newspapers - Sunday Times/Scotsman/Glasgow Herald in 80's. Independent/Guardian 90's onwards though only the Guardian now. Occasionally the Daily Record on Mondays for the footy.

5-10: Beano, The Topper.
9-11: Smash Hits.
12-15: Mean Machines - really rather funny until it split into two mags and Julian Jaz Rignall left.
14-19: Select, which I stand by as one of the greatest mainstream music mags of all time. A short amount of time reading the NME (ugh!). Sometimes I remember getting FHM and stuff and thinking it was all a bit beyond me. Then I lost my virginity and realised it still is but in a different way.
20-23: Terrorizer, Viz. Post-university Beavis and Butthead stage.
23-Present: Jockey Slut (RIP), Mixmag, Vice, Wire etc. I guess I don't really read mags very much any more which is sad. It seems the good ones have died and the bad ones have become even worse. I buy the Guardian every Monday, but mostly for the G2 section and the jobs.

Oh yes, I've bought all the issues of Monocle so far, which is some globetrotting Danish architect bullshit, but is fun.

7 - 10: Nintendo Power, newspaper comics page

14 - 18: Modern Drummer, the Onion

25: scavenging for crosswords, reading music magazines in bookstores, the Onion

I should point out that all this time I only ever owned a Gameboy, but had this weird and fairly absurd need to keep up with the culture etc

OTM OTM OTM. Just reading the reviews and slathering over the pictures was enough to make me believe I had a proper console.

Yeah I should probably put Vice in my last but one category, I sort of discounted it cos it's free but I always more or less look fwd to reading it

Ooh, tricky.

Hard to give ages, but in some kind of order:

Oor Wullie
Whizzer & Chips, Whoopee
Shoot
Viz
Melody Maker, NME
Private Eye
New Scientist

Think that's about it, in terms of regularity of buyin. Obviously the MM/NME period was the most intense, never missing a week from 1990-1997. New Scientist is the only magazine I have a subscription to these days, and I think I may be tiring of it a bit.

Newspapers: The Times and The Observer (my parents Sunday reading), dropping the Times when I went to university, buying the Guardian and (ugh) The Standard when I started work. Still with the lefties - The Standard can eat a bag of dicks.

OMG how could I forget the "Willy the Kid" annuals I devoured when I was a kid! Man they were great.

hmm young ages: Highlights - esp. the "What's wrong with this photo?", Sports Illustrated for Kids - Never much of a sports guy but this magazine was fun.

early adolescence: Snowboarder - lots of cool mountain pics. Didn't subscribe but read my older brothers' copies.

Teens: Rolling Stone - checked out issues from the local library. Spin - subscribed and thought it was the apotheosis of music criticism. Never read any of the MM/NME/etc. stuff though that I saw on the newsstands. I remember one year I vowed to buy every album on their year-end list. Cleveland Plain Dealer (the city's daily), especially the weekly "forum" section and editorials.

College - mostly web stuff, no real magazines. Our group house got the NYT, which I then read daily. Oddly enough, living in DC didn't make me read the Post all that much.

Now - New Yorker, Decibel, the Wire. I like all three a lot. All my news I read online, mostly BBC and some others.

Also, at my current job (in a bioethics library), I'm able to browse a lot of science journals, especially the major weeklies, e.g. Science, Nature, New Scientist. Won't claim to understand any of the articles apart from the news items/editorials/bioethics stuff, though, but those parts are interesting.

0-6:
Highlights
6-8:
Weekly Reader, Mini Page
8-12:
National Geographic
13-17:
Sassy, Seventeen, Maximum Rock and Roll, Flipside, Fizz, Thrasher sometimes (haw)
18-24:
Wire, Q, NME, Mojo, Metro Pulse.
25 up:
Knoxville Voice, Harper's, Make.

Newspapers: At home there was The Daily Mirror till Maxwell took it downmarket in 1984, then The Guardian, then later The Guardian & The Independent. I used to buy Today for the football reports because they were the only newspaper which a)had a report on EVERY game in the top division and b)had colour photos. Nowadays I never buy a paper unless I'm going on a long train journey, apart from maybe The Observer every now and then.
Others:
The Beano (roughly 1981-84)
Roy of the Rovers (roughly 1983-85)
No.1 (1985ish)
Match / Shoot (roughly 1986-1988)
Smash Hits (1985-1988)
Cycling Weekly (1988-1991)
Sounds (1990-1991)
Melody Maker / NME (1990-1992)
Select (1993ish-1996ish)
Muzik (1995-1997ish)
Mixmag / DJ (mid-90s, sporadically)
Red Issue / United We Stand (mid-90s to now) - do fanzines count?

I also saw quite a few Qs (late 80s/early 90s) because my Dad bought it and several Loadeds or similar (mid-to-late 90s) (not because my Dad bought it).

Come to think of it, I don't buy any newspapers or magazines nowadays.

The first magazine I subscribed to was Highlights for Children, from around the age of 5 to 8. Around 10 or 11, I got Sports Illustrated for Kids and Boys Life, both for only about a year (the latter only because I was in Cub Scouts). And I never subscribed, but I bought Mad from the supermarket every month from the age of 10 to 12.

In middle school, I also started reading the magazines my parents subscribed to. This was probably Sports Illustrated at first and then, later, Time. Maybe National Geographic every now and then, too, but mostly for the photos. My parents also had a daily subscription to the Chicago Tribune, which I started reading at around the age of 13, too. In high school, I also read Harper's and The Atlantic when they held my interest.

The first magazine I subscribed to that I paid for with my own money was Rolling Stone, when I was 14. A couple years later I subscribed to both Spin and Option, the latter of which I had first encountered at a booth at Lollapalooza '95. I also subscribed to Premiere for a couple of years in late high school.

In college, I missed my parents' weekly copy of Time enough to subscribe during my freshman year. After that year, I let my Rolling Stone subscription lapse, and when Option went under, I replaced it with Magnet. I stopped reading Spin after my junior year. My favorite magazine when I lived in the UK was The Face, and my favorite newspaper was The Independent, which I read in campus coffee shops. Back home, the only newspaper I read with any regularity was the free copies of USA Today in the college cafeteria.

At 22, I started a trial subscription to The Nation that lasted about six months and a subscription to The New Yorker that's now the longest-lasting magazine subscription I've ever had. I don't read a daily newspaper since I get the majority of my news either online or from public radio, but occasionally I'll buy a copy of the Sunday New York Times.

10 and under - Bunty, Beano, Dandy (which I never really liked that much, compared to the other two), some guff associated with My Little Pony and She-Ra.

11- 13 - Just 17, which I adored and continued to buy sporadically until it folded in 2004. Mizz and Jackie occassionally.

13 - Started on NME (nearly every week), Melody Maker (every three weeks-ish) and Select and Vox (one or the other every month). Still reading J17 too.

14 - 16 - When My Great Love Afair With The Face started. I am probably still one of the world's biggest Face bores. I have an almost complete run from 1993-ish to 2004, when it folded. Started to read Cosmo, Vogue and Elle. Still reading J17 regularly and the music press above. Would also read The Observer on Sundays and The Guardian on Wednesdays (when my public sector mother had it delivered for the Society section.)

17 - 18 - all of the above, plus i-D, Sleazenation, Dazed and Confused and Mixmag.

18 - 21 - oh Jesus, everything on the newstand nearly, I couldn't pass a newsagent without buying something. Special mentions to The Face, Elle, Mixmag, Muzik, DJ, Knowledge (these were my prime clubbing years), Vogue, Dazed, The Press Gazette, The Saturday Guardian, The Independent, The Guardian on Monday (third year of uni, looking for a job, we used to pass it around after lectures) and Minx magazine, which was brilliant and I still have the entire print run.

21-23 - I was working at Mixmag, so that every month, plus all other music mags - first started regular reading of American import mags, so Rolling Stone, Spin etc. Read Q, Kerrang, Mojo and Smash Hits because they were in the building, but strangely never Heat. Still reading most fashion and style mags and start buying Elle Girl, because even though it was for teenagers I could actually aford some of the clothes in there, unlike grown-up Elle.

23-26 - All of the above when I could afford them, except Mixmag, which I still wrote for as a freelance, but couldn't face looking at any more.

26+ - Less than I used to. I read the Guardian on Saturdays, sometimes on Mondays and Fridays, The Observer two Sundays out of four, The Independant when I think about it. I read Grazia, Plan B, Music Week, most music magazines when I come across them, but not as a point of principle. Bits of the New Scientist because my boyfriend buys it. Elle is nowhere near as good as it used to be. I buy Nylon on import every month, wish we had a UK version.

I also buy second-hand copies of The Face, even now.

It took me a really long time to remember the name of The Face. I was about to write, "you know, that magazine that had Christina Ricci on the cover of the October 1998 issue."

OK, I remember that issue. I guess that means I bought the fact around age 17-18 (sounds right).

2008 update:

Still subscribing to Viz
Also subscribing to New York Review of Books (Christmas present)
Picking up every other issue or so of Monocle and Sight and Sound, reading The Economist online

For work: Notices of the American Math Soc., Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Soc., Astronomical Journal, Astrophysical Journal

Is Monocle worth subscribing to?

Not really. It's not definitive in that sense. It's great fluff if you have a flight to waste time on coming up, but I don't feel like I'm maybe missing stuff when I skip an issue. Maybe it's like Marie Claire but for guys.

8-15: Boys Life, Playstation Magazine, Guitar One,

15-18: Spin, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork

19-21: Harper's, XXL, VIBE, Atlantic, Poet's & Writers Monthly (I get it for free, why not)

i read no magazines from the age of 18 to the age of 19

i was a humorless philosophy major who only read books and things with 'journal' in the title