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The magazine was nominated two years ago for a National Magazine Award, and Utne has plans to increase circulation to 500,000 by 1995. The readers are the kind that advertisers slaver over -- average household income nearly $70,000, 80% college graduates and 62% professionals or managers -- but success carries an inevitable cost. Some of the magazine's early quirkiness is gone, and a few signs of middle-age complacency are appearing. Although Esprit clothing ads have not yet overwhelmed plugs for homeopathic remedies, the Reader is almost obsessive in its baby boomerism, with recent covers on dream houses, good schools and growing old. Some critics now call the Reader smug, self- satisfied, a bit too yuppified, and say it has sacrificed some edge to gain a broader audience. "There's a big chance they will lose their identity," says Samir A. Husni, a University of Mississippi associate journalism professor and magazine watcher. It sounds like the kind of thirtysomething problem that publisher Utne, on his TV-watching days, might appreciate.