1. Magazines in the Age of Specialization
Chapter 9

2. Magazine Specialization
Like radio, magazines specialized to survive television.
Ex. TV Guide. Also an early example of media convergence
Developed market niches to cope
Appealed to advertisers who wanted specific audiences
Defined by gender, age, race, class, or social and cultural interests
More than 22,000 commercial, alternative, and noncommercial publications and newsletters are published in the U.S. today.

3. Early History of Magazines
Defoe’s Review, 1704
For elites
Political commentary
Looked like a newspaper
Gentleman’s Magazine, 1731
Samuel Johnson
Alexander Pope

4. Colonial Magazines No middle class No widespread literacy
Often unaffordable
No widespread literacy
Served political, commercial, and cultural concerns
Ben Franklin, in Philadelphia
General Magazine
Ruthlessly suppressed competition
Used privileged position as postmaster
By 1776 about 100 magazines in colonies

5. Saturday Evening Post Longest-running magazine in U.S. history
Started by Alexander and Coate, 1821
First major magazine to appeal directly to women
First important general-interest magazine aimed at national audience

6. The National Magazine Better, cheaper technology
Fed growing literacy and education
Better distribution and transportation
Most aimed at women
Sara Josepha Hale: Ladies’ Magazine
Godey’s Lady Book
E. L. Godkin’s Nation, 1865
Oldest continuously published magazine

7. Modern American Magazines
Postal Act of 1879 lowered postage rates.
Equal footing with newspapers delivered by mail
By late 1800s, advertising revenues soared.
Captured customers’ attention and built national marketplace
The magazine became an instrument of emerging American nationalism.
Readers no longer maintained only local or regional identities.

8. Muckrakers Teddy Roosevelt coins term in 1906.
Early form of investigative reporting
Journalists discouraged with newspapers sought out magazines where they could write in depth about broader issues.
Not without personal risk to reporter
Famous American muckrakers:
Ida Tarbell takes on Standard Oil
Lincoln Steffens takes on city hall
Upton Sinclair takes on meatpacking industry

9. General-Interest Magazines
Popular after WWI from 1920s to 1950s
Combined investigative journalism with broad national topics
Rise of photojournalism plays a prominent role in general-interest magazines.

10. The General-Interest “Bigs”
Saturday Evening Post
300+ cover illustrations by Norman Rockwell
Reader’s Digest
Applicability, lasting interest, constructiveness
Time
Interpretive journalism using reporter search teams
Increasingly conservative as became more successful
Life
Oversized pictorial weekly
Pass-along readership of more than 17 million

11. Modern Challenges to Photojournalism
“Original film has qualities that make it easy to determine whether it has been tampered with. Digital images, by contrast, can be easily altered.”
—Christopher R. Harris

12. Decline of General-Interest Magazines
Advertising money shifts to TV.
TV Guide is born.
Paper costs rise in early 1970s
Life
Look
Saturday Evening Post
…all fail
But many women’s magazines survive.
People, 1974, is first successful mass market magazine in decades.

13. Fragmentation of the Industry
In 2006, the Magazine Publishers of America trade organization listed more than forty special categories of consumer magazines.

14. Magazine Classifications
Leisure, sports, and music
E.g., Playboy, Soap Opera Digest, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone
Travel and geography
E.g., Smithsonian, Travel & Leisure, National Geographic
Age-group specific
E.g., Highlights for Children, Teen People, AARP The Magazine
Elite magazines and cultural minorities
E.g., The New Yorker, the New Republic, Ebony, Imagen

15. Web Magazines
By 2006, the three most popular Internet magazines were Entrepreneur, Forbes, and Sports Illustrated, with entrepreneur.com scoring “6 million unique visitors” in February 2006.

16. Tabloids National Enquirer is founded in 1926 by Hearst.
News Corp. launches Star in 1974.
In early 1990s tabloid circulation numbers start to decrease.
“I love talking to witches and Satanists and vampire hunters, and people who have been kidnapped by UFOs — it sure beats covering zoning board meetings.”
—Cliff Linedecker

17. Magazine Structure Production Editorial Advertising and sales
Machines and paper
Layout and design
Editorial
Content, writing quality, publication focus, and mission
Advertising and sales
Manage the income stream from ads
Circulation and distribution
Either “paid” or “controlled”

18. Chains Hearst Condé Nast Advance Publications Time, Inc. PRIMEDIA
Hachette Filipacchi
Rodale
Meredith

19. Media Giant

20. Contemporary Magazines
Fewer than 90 U.S. magazines sell to more than 1 million readers.
The other nearly 19,000 U.S. magazines struggle to find a niche.