Green Life, Green Wallet emailed me with a link allowing curious financial readers to view the latest issue of Fortune Magazine for free. This free edition, which is basically a scanned version of the printed magazine, is sponsored by Zecco, and that sponsorship is very evident. The first click on the link, which will be provided at the bottom of this post, presents the viewer with a large Zecco advertisement with annoying music that begins playing immediately without the readers’ ability to pause or stop the noise. When you click through to open the magazine, you are presented with a page in the middle of the issue with a full-page Zecco ad rather than starting on page 1 (with more ads) or the table of contents.
If you can get past that these annoyances, you’ll find a magazine full mostly of more advertisements and lackluster articles. This is simply more free evidence that this magazine is not worth a subscription.
Speaking of advertising, I’ve removed the Google-powered AdSense ads that appear on Consumerism Commentary for readers who have commented here (and thus have a cookie in their browser software to remember their names for the comment entry form). Want to see fewer ads here? Simply leave comments — the more relevant, the better. This is an experiment, but if it works well, it will be permanent.
Here’s the link to read the magazine for free, but make sure your volume levels are low. As another option, read articles from Fortune Magazine online for free, courtesy of CNN.
Updated March 24, 2011 and originally published September 11, 2007. If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the RSS feed or receive daily emails. Follow @flexo on Twitter and visit our Facebook page for more updates.
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Luke Landes founded Consumerism Commentary in 2003 and has been building online communities since 1990. Luke, also known as Flexo, has contributed to PC World Magazine, US News, Forbes, and other publications. 
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
A couple of days ago I received my most recent (2/7/11) issue of Fortune. I started to read “An Accident Waiting to Happen,” the story on BP’s oil spill in the Gulf. It was a very good story as far as it went, but it ended in the middle of a sentence on page 118 followed by some ads. What happened? Did the printer run out of ink or paper? I think subscribers deserve complete articles.
Neil S. James