Highlights Is Still A Hit With Kids
Kids of a single-digit age are engrossed in a magazine of a certain age.
Throughout its 60 years, Highlights has managed to modernize without changing much and still finds new audiences with the same old features.
"I like to do the picture-finding here," a child named Austin tells CBS News correspondent Richard Schlesinger.
Hidden pictures, which appeared in the first edition of Highlights, still appear in every issue.
And the kids are playing the same games as their grandparents.
"It takes some looking, but you can find them. I bet you can, too," says Kent Johnson, the magazine's CEO.
Johnson is the great-grandson of the founders, who were retired educators when they started the magazine. Earlier this month, Highlights printed its 1 billionth copy.
Asked why the magazine's overall content has remained consistent, Johnson says, "Children have not changed a great deal in 60 years. What's changed is the society around them." So Goofus and Gallant are still playing good kid-bad kid in a never-ending quest to teach right from wrong.Play The Highlights Hidden Picture Game
Highlights still attracts about 2 million readers every month — more than Forbes and Business Week combined. That total includes kids who get the magazine at home and those who see it in virtually every doctor's office in the country.
Highlights has an active readership. A lot of readers submit material, including drawings and jokes, to editor Christine French Clark.
A sample:
Why did the cowboy get a dachshund? Because someone told him to get a long little doggy.
It's old-fashioned, pre-electronic interactive entertainment — and it shows that in an age when kids can point and click, they sometimes choose to look … and read.