Even if such a thing were done, putting an insert into subscribers mags, what good would it have done in a real world sense? Only subscribers would have gotten it, nobody in the newstand. So out of 100% of all VW readers, lets say that 40% are subscribers, so at this point you are only reaching 40% of your readership with the effort. I would imagine that many subscribers are online and would know already what was going on, so you get an even smaller group of people who would even care that the situation got mentioned via flyer, we'll say half of the subscribers... so only 20% of theoretical VW subscribers would have gotten much out of this insert. Only a smaller subset of that 20% of total VW readers not already in the know would have been made happier about the situation by the inserts, maybe half of the people who weren't already aware, so maybe 10% of the total VW readership. It would be a fast & furious effort to get those inserts up and ready for not much of a return.

And I do speak with some small experience in publishing, having worked on elaborate flyers for movie theatre calendar subscribers (kind of like the old Nuart calendar if you are familar with those). Just the effort of getting something extra in a publication is always more intense than the regular publication pressures, much less having to make an alteration like an extra letter in the mailer. (An interesting side note: one time, the deadline was approaching for us to get our calendar to the printer, and after staying up all night we had to do some el cheapo compromises to get it to the printer on time or risk printers delays and financial penalties - hand writing some things rather than printed words - there was literally no time to do anything else. Since I was there, I know exactly what we were up against and the technical and time failures that caused the issue to not get made properly, but to the outside world they would not know of our schedule and the spiderweb of publication forces at work on us to get the issue out, and they did get very upset about the compromises we had to use. No answer was ever good enough for the numerous complains we heard about it for the next 4 months).

I think getting the explanation in the next issue about what happened will be of interest to all involved though and I imagine it will be a worthy read.