I am watching a show I recorded called Inside the Great Magazines as I write this. It is a Canadian series that take viewers inside the most influential magazines of our times – Cosmo, Rolling Stone, Ebony, Time – and for magazine addicts like me, a fascinating social history and insight into the publishing world. I am in viewing heaven.

I love magazines. My first journalism job was on a magazine – my cadetship at Disney Adventures and then a year-and-a-half on New Idea (an Australian weekly women’s magazine) before I moved to London.  As a child I would go straight for my mum’s friends’ magazine racks or coffee tables to read Woman’s Day, New Idea or Australian Women’s Weekly.  As a teen my friends and I would read Dolly (the columns Dolly Doctor and What Should I do? were always faves) and I had the local newsagent put away a copy of Smash Hits each week.

I am a rabid mag reader…though less so these days since I moved back to Australia because they are so expensive! I subscribe to Vanity Fair and Australian Harper’s Bazaar (it was a gift from my brother and his partner and I love to look at stuff I can’t afford!). When I lived in the UK  I bought about 10 magazines a month (OK!, Heat, Red, Marie Claire, Radio Times, Good Housekeeping, Vanity Fair, Eve, Newsweek) and more if I was going away on holiday.

I anxiously await my copy of VF every month and look forward to poring over the stories. I love the knowledge that a magazine is in my bag or at home waiting for me to read.

So, the talk of the last few years (especially with the Global Financial Crisis) that the newspaper and magazine publishing industry is dying is a horrifying thought. A lot of my horror is based in fear because I work as a journalist. I love my career. I don’t want to do anything else.

And I love magazines. I’ll read anything, seriously. I’ll pick up my dad’s copies of Feathers and Fur and have a read. Ditto my husband’s Australian Nursing Journal.

I like to touch magazines and keep them, then I re-read them. I love what Magazine expert Samir Husni says:  ”…Playing tennis on Wii is not the same as playing tennis at the tennis court.”.

There’s a great post by Husni on his blog Mr Magazine about his 10 reasons to be hopeful for magazines going into this next decade of the 21st century.

I’d love to know your magazine reading habits or thoughts.

Now, I can’t afford the habit and the Australian magazine selection pales in comparison to the offerings in the UK and US, sadly. My one indulgence, however, is a subscription to Vanity Fair (US edition).

I was looking at a “stars without makeup” photo gallery today (pics of stars sans their “done” faces are guaranteed to shift more copies of magazines!) and some of the captions were hilariously bad (I’ll leave out the celeb names).

… looks exhausted while taking a jog in Santa Monica. REALLY? She’s jogging!

… spotted looking exhausted without makeup carrying daughter. SHOCK! She’s a new mum. It is tiring! And who has time for full makeup when you have kids?

… looking less then hot with bags under her eyes and no make up… I could never be a celeb because I would be so sensitive about comments like this.

What will be next? A caption of a pic from a celebrity funeral:

… looking lifeless at her open casket viewing?!

This woman has 14 kids and can manage to put on a face mask and have coordinated pajamas? (Not just any pjs – Stripey Victoria’s Secret pyjamas, as reported in The Daily Mail).

I’ll admit, I was born a cynic and it has only grown with age. I only have two kids and I can’t manage to look even a fraction of how Octomum looks in those pics. I don’t own coordinated pajamas and I have serious tummy overhang from just two bubbas. I find her abhorrent but she looks amazingly together.

Personally, I would have ditched the baby bottle filled with juice (just another thing for people to slam her for…and I have no sympathy for her, just her poor kids)

In this age of spin and the micro-managing of all aspects of  “public” figures’  lives, I want more Cherie Blair moments.

Cherie Blair opens to door in her nightie the morning after Tony Blair's 1997 election as PM.