Now called Global Sources, it still publishes magazines -- in fact, it runs more than a dozen.

CNN: Grandaddy of Them All

This seemingly seamless alignment has meant that she has managed to catalyze real change through a global company whose portfolio extends to 22 magazines and as many websites.

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"It's hard to see a payoff--a financial payoff--on this project in my lifetime, " concedes Hodel, 73, from his Lakewood, Colo. living room, near a stack of ski magazines and a book about global energy.

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Perhaps the decline of Reader's Digest's fortunes was inevitable with the longer-term social and political influences of 60s counterculture, the failure of general interest magazines, the rise of global media targeted at specific niches and the advent of the internet.

CNN: Rise and fall of Reader's Digest