I'm tiring of the truism that since Sept. 11, everything has changed, mostly because not everything has. Big things changed, but not everything did. You can see that on newsstands, as you can in a hundred mundane places.

Some magazines had no choice but to alter their coverage, while others went rapidly to resuming-normal-life-so-terrorism-won't-win mode. There are even a handful that started publishing in the aftermath, writing of nothing else but adding little of value.

Forbes for Oct. 15 is easily the most impressive for content; about 30 pages are devoted to "Life During Wartime," the single-story cover headline. Topics range from the technologies that will figure in the fight to the record of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which will dole out the $20 billion for disaster relief. (Not great, Ira Carnahan's story says.)

Substantial enterprise is also evident in the fall issue of Money, whose cover story originally was to have been about "The 100 Best Funds," and it still is, sort of. The editors had just enough time to graft a straightforward 12-page Q&A onto the front of the issue; after that is the original cover and the rest of the issue. (Sample question: Should I Buy Gold? Answer: Maybe a little.)

The November Kiplinger's has a similar quantity of coverage, slighter on what to do next, weightier with a feature on the investment firm Fred Alger Management, which lost 36 of 55 on its investment staff, Anne Kates Smith and David Landis report.

Outside the business realm, the November Men's Journal also went with a one-story front, focusing on the New York firefighters. The 20-page package is largely composed of compelling portraits (how could they not be?) of men who were in the mayhem but who survived, and of others who came from around the nation to pitch in. There are a passel of photos from the devastation zone, and three brief essays, none of which distinguish themselves.

Entertainment Weekly (a double issue dated Oct. 5) has a tease across the top of its cover to its reporting of Hollywood's reaction to the terrorism, eight pages that, by their premise, skirt irrelevance. But that's the magazine's beat, and it does a decent job of pursuing its narrow angles: a report from the telethon, an interview with new "cable ace" Aaron Brown, and how the studios are handling twin-tower shots in films just coming out.

Whatever slight heft the magazine earned with this coverage does not make up, however, for the also-just-released "special collector's issue" devoted to "Friends," which boasts, "Could we be any more obsessive?" in pursuit of minutiae. It's standard TV twaddle, but somehow feels coarse in light of events.

Indeed, this may be the foremost example of how life is different: We have two prisms now, one for each side of before and after. GQ editor Arthur Cooper acknowledges as much in a letter stuffed inside the October issue, which arrived about a week ago. Essentially, it apologizes for delivering an issue focused on sports - "not a priority at a time like this" - but says the issue had already gone to press. The October Details arrived the same day, without a similar acknowledgment of the frivolity ("Here's Johnny [Depp], To Hell and Back") contained therein. Maybe they just didn't realize.

The new prism has a different effect on a couple of trifles in the October Esquire. David Sedaris's somewhat funny piece is set in an airport, Logan Airport, and its table-of-contents chatter makes reference to "unfortunate `acts of God.' " He wrote this before Sept. 11, but in the new light, it looks different than it would have. And Ken Kurson's money column begins, "What's the problem with airlines?" and goes on to discuss United, which has "survived some of the worst disasters in corporate history." Little did he know.

Similarly, events gave Paul Fusco's photograph on the cover of Doubletake's fall issue renewed pathos. It was taken along the tracks traveled by Robert F. Kennedy's funeral train after his assassination in 1968, of a baleful people trying to take in their loss. Inside, a remembrance of that day also evokes today's sorrow: "The sight of those many people watching, crying, praying, staring so hard, holding their flags, close, real tight, stirred us to tears . . ."

Lastly, there is an ilk of magazines that prove it's possible to be trivial, even heading into the teeth of the aftermath. They didn't exist on Sept. 10, and probably won't exist a few months from now.

Standing Strong: The Spirit of New York is one of four that I saw, and it is low rent all the way: 60-plus pages of mediocre and/or cliched photos, surrounded by inspirational quotations from Winston Churchill, Ganghi (sic), and Roger Babson (who?). There is a handful of stories, all of which are written without a whit of depth.

Their publishers (this one was Multi-Media International) might argue that these magazines fill a need for tangible remembrances of that awful day. A more cynical observer might say they had been rushed to cash in on a market opportunity.