I just took a Dragon off my shelf at random. It's issue 323, September 2004.
Total page count, including the bonus 16-page D&D buyer's guide, is 130 pages.
If we take out those 16 pages and all adds, we get a total of 81 and a half pages of magazine content. Even if we remove the TOC, ad index, and so on, the magazine was still double the size it is today.
Interesting--thanks! I just did the same with one of my old Dragons--#145, May 1989. The ALL NEW second edition is advertised on the back cover.
After cutting out the letters, forum, sage advice, convention calendar, and other stuff that's found on the Internet these days, I counted:
1/3 page editorial
21-2/3 pages of meaty content (including pictures)
4 pages of fiction
5 pages of comics
20 pages of columns (reviews + 5 pages on miniature painting)
5 full-page pictures (not counting cover)
(56 pages of content out of 104 print pages)
In comparison, the recent PDF has:
2/3 page editorial
20 pages of meaty content (including pictures)
9 pages of columns ("Eye on" three campaign settings)
(30 pages of content out of 34 print pages)
At least in comparison to that old Dragon, it seems like what we've lost is
- Fiction
- Comics
- Reviews
- Full-page pictures (but we get art rather than whitespace on front page of articles, and it's much better quality, so I'd call that one even)
I don't have any of the Paizo-era Dragons--how do they compare?
