Old school magazines and newspapers have not adapted well to the internet at all. I don't entirely understand the psychology of it, but somehow it was a lot more satisfying to buy a print magazine and hold it in your hand than take out an online sub. I think it was partly because I tended to buy individual issues based on the cover or contents, rather than buying them blind.

Unfortunately, when these pubs' readership started to decline, so did their revenue and they would have started taking money from "philanthropists" with an axe to grind. (Not always in the obvious areas. I used to read a local sports magazine which has ended up little more than a promotion for various private schools.)

There was always an element of soft power about Scientific American, and it was tailored partly to people without specialist expertise in whatever field, but it did not feel like political propaganda back in the nineties.