Magazine

A magazine is a publication, usually a periodical publication, which is printed or electronically published (sometimes referred to as an online magazine). Magazines are generally published on a regular schedule and contain a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by prepaid subscriptions, or a combination of the three. At its root, the word "magazine" refers to a collection or storage location. In the case of written publication, it is a collection of written articles. This explains why magazine publications share the word root with gunpowder magazines, artillery magazines, firearms magazines, and, in French, retail stores such as department stores.

Definition

By definition, a magazine paginates with each issue starting at page three, with the standard sizing being 8 3⁄8 in × 10 7⁄8 in (210 mm × 280 mm). However, in the technical sense a journal has continuous pagination throughout a volume. Thus Business Week, which starts each issue anew with page one, is a magazine, but the Journal of Business Communication, which starts each volume with the winter issue and continues the same sequence of pagination throughout the coterminous year, is a journal. Some professional or trade publications are also peer-reviewed, an example being the Journal of Accountancy. Academic or professional publications that are not peer-reviewed are generally professional magazines. That a publication calls itself a journal does not make it a journal in the technical sense; The Wall Street Journal is actually a newspaper.

Distribution

German print magazines

Magazines can be distributed through the mail, through sales by newsstands, bookstores, or other vendors, or through free distribution at selected pick-up locations. The subscription business models for distribution fall into three main categories.

In this model, the magazine is sold to readers for a price, either on a per-issue basis or by subscription, where an annual fee or monthly price is paid and issues are sent by post to readers. Paid circulation allows for defined readership statistics.

Non-paid circulation

This means that there is no cover price and issues are given away, for example in street dispensers, airline, or included with other products or publications. Because this model involves giving issues away to unspecific populations, the statistics only entail the number of issues distributed, and not who reads them.

Controlled circulation

This is the model used by many trade magazines (industry-based periodicals) distributed only to qualifying readers, often for free and determined by some form of survey. Because of costs (e.g., printing and postage) associated with the medium of print, publishers may not distribute free copies to everyone who requests one (unqualified leads); instead, they operate under controlled circulation, deciding who may receive free subscriptions based on each person's qualification as a member of the trade (and likelihood of buying, for example, likelihood of having corporate purchasing authority, as determined from job title). This allows a high level of certainty that advertisements will be received by the advertiser's target audience,[1] and it avoids wasted printing and distribution expenses. This latter model was widely used before the rise of the World Wide Web and is still employed by some titles. For example, in the United Kingdom, a number of computer-industry magazines use this model, including Computer Weekly and Computing, and in finance, Waters Magazine. For the global media industry, an example would be VideoAge International.

History

Front cover of 1 October 1892 issue of The Illustrated London News

The earliest example of magazines was Erbauliche Monaths Unterredungen, a literary and philosophy magazine, which was launched in 1663 in Germany.[2] The Gentleman's Magazine, first published in 1731, in London was the first general-interest magazine.[3] Edward Cave, who edited The Gentleman's Magazine under the pen name "Sylvanus Urban", was the first to use the term "magazine," on the analogy of a military storehouse.[4] Founded by Herbert Ingram in 1842, The Illustrated London News was the first illustrated magazine.[3]

Britain

The oldest consumer magazine still in print is The Scots Magazine, which was first published in 1739, though multiple changes in ownership and gaps in publication totalling over 90 years weaken that claim. Lloyd's List was founded in Edward Lloyd's England coffee shop in 1734; and though it's on-line platform is still updated daily it has not been published as a magazine since 2013 after 274 years[5] Despite being among the first mass media outlets to venture from the bible, periodicals still remained rooted in the naturalized class and gender system held by European and American society.[6]

Manufacturing of the early magazines were done via an archaic form of the printing press, using large hand-engraved wood blocks for printing.[7] When production of magazines increased, entire production lines were created to manufacture these wooden blocks.[7]

France

La Gazette, 26 December 1786

Under the ancien regime, the most prominent magazines were Mercure de France, Journal des sçavans, founded in 1665 for scientists, and Gazette de France, founded in 1631. Jean Loret was one of France's first journalists. He disseminated the weekly news of music, dance and Parisian society from 1650 until 1665 in verse, in what he called a gazette burlesque, assembled in three volumes of La Muse historique (1650, 1660, 1665). The French press lagged a generation behind the British, for they catered to the needs the aristocracy, while the newer British counterparts were oriented toward the middle and working classes.[8]

Periodicals were censored by the central government in Paris. They were not totally quiescent politically—often they criticized Church abuses and bureaucratic ineptitude. They supported the monarchy and they played at most a small role in stimulating the revolution.[9] During the Revolution, new periodicals played central roles as propaganda organs for various factions. Jean-Paul Marat (1743–1793) was the most prominent editor. His L'Ami du peuple advocated vigorously for the rights of the lower classes against the enemies of the people Marat hated; it closed when he was assassinated. After 1800 Napoleon reimposed strict censorship.[10]

Magazines flourished after Napoleon left in 1815. Most were based in Paris and most emphasized literature, poetry and stories. They served religious, cultural and political communities. In times of political crisis they expressed and helped shape the views of their readership and thereby were major elements in the changing political culture.[11] For example, there were eight Catholic periodicals in 1830 in Paris. None were officially owned or sponsored by the Church and they reflected a range of opinion among educated Catholics about current issues, such as the 1830 July Revolution that overthrew the Bourbon monarchy. Several were strong supporters of the Bourbon kings, but all eight ultimately urged support for the new government, putting their appeals in terms of preserving civil order. They often discussed the relationship between church and state. Generally, they urged priests to focus on spiritual matters and not engage in politics. Historian M. Patricia Dougherty says this process created a distance between the Church and the new monarch and enabled Catholics to develop a new understanding of church-state relationships and the source of political authority.[12]

Turkey

General

The Moniteur Ottoman was a gazette written in French and first published in 1831 on the order of Mahmud II. It was the first official gazette of the Ottoman Empire, edited by Alexandre Blacque at the expense of the Sublime Porte. Its name perhaps referred to the French newspaper Le Moniteur Universel. It was issued weekly. Takvim-i vekayi was published a few months later, intended as a translation of the Moniteur into Ottoman Turkish. After having been edited by former Consul for Denmark "M. Franceschi", and later on by "Hassuna de Ghiez", it was lastly edited by Lucien Rouet. However, facing the hostility of embassies, it was closed in the 1840s.

Satire

Satirical magazines of Turkey have a long tradition, with the first magazine (Diyojen) published in 1869. There are currently around 20 satirical magazines; the leading ones are Penguen (70,000 weekly circulation), LeMan (50,000) and Uykusuz. Historical examples include Oğuz Aral's magazine Gırgır (which reached a circulation of 500,000 in the 1970s) and Marko Paşa (launched 1946). Others include L-Manyak and Lombak.

United States

Late 19th century

Harper's Monthly, a literary and political force in the late 19th century

In the mid-1800s, monthly magazines gained popularity. They were general interest to begin, containing some news, vignettes, poems, history, political events, and social discussion.[13] Unlike newspapers, they were more of a monthly record of current events along with entertaining stories, poems, and pictures. The first periodicals to branch out from news were Harper's and The Atlantic, which focused on fostering the arts.[14] Both Harper's and The Atlantic persist to this day, with Harper's being a cultural magazine and The Atlantic focusing mainly on world events. Early publications of Harper's even held famous works such as early publications of Moby Dick or famous events such as the laying of the world's first transatlantic telegraph cable; however, the majority of early content was trickle down from British events.[15]

The development of the magazines stimulated an increase in literary criticism and political debate, moving towards more opinionated pieces from the objective newspapers.[14] The increased time between prints and the greater amount of space to write provided a forum for public arguments by scholars and critical observers.[16]

The early periodical predecessors to magazines started to evolve to modern definition in the late 1800s.[16] Works slowly became more specialized and the general discussion or cultural periodicals were forced to adapt to a consumer market which yearned for more localization of issues and events.[14]

Progressive Era: 1890s–1920s

Mass circulation magazines became much more common after 1900, some with circulations in the hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Some passed the million-mark in the 1920s. It was an age of mass media. Because of the rapid expansion of national advertising, the cover price fell sharply to about 10 cents.[17] One cause was the heavy coverage of corruption in politics, local government and big business, especially by Muckrakers. They were journalists who wrote for popular magazines to expose social and political sins and shortcomings. They relied on their own investigative journalism reporting; muckrakers often worked to expose social ills and corporate and political corruption. Muckraking magazines–notably McClure's–took on corporate monopolies and crooked political machines while raising public awareness of chronic urban poverty, unsafe working conditions, and social issues like child labor.[18]

The journalists who specialized in exposing waste, corruption, and scandal operated at the state and local level, like Ray Stannard Baker, George Creel, and Brand Whitlock. Other like Lincoln Steffens exposed political corruption in many large cities; Ida Tarbell went after John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company. Samuel Hopkins Adams in 1905 showed the fraud involved in many patent medicines, Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle gave a horrid portrayal of how meat was packed, and, also in 1906, David Graham Phillips unleashed a blistering indictment of the U.S. Senate. Roosevelt gave these journalists their nickname when he complained they were not being helpful by raking up all the muck.[19][20]

21st century

In 2011, 152 magazines ceased operations and in 2012, 82 magazines.[21] Between the years of 2008 to 2015, Oxbridge communications announced that 227 magazines launched and 82 magazines closed in 2012 in North America.[22] Furthermore, according to MediaFinder.com, 93 new magazines launched between the first six months of 2014 and just 30 closed. The category that produced new publications was "Regional interest", six new magazines were launched, including 12th & Broad and Craft Beer & Brewing.[23] However, two magazines had to change their print schedules. Johnson Publishing's Jet stopped printing regular issues making the transition to digital format, however still print an annual print edition.[24] Ladies Home Journal, stopped their monthly schedule and home delivery for subscribers to become a quarterly newsstand-only special interest publication.[25]

Magazine stand, Sweden 1941

According to statistics from the end of 2013, subscription levels for 22 of the top 25 magazines declined from 2012 to 2013, with just Time, Glamour and ESPN The Magazine gaining numbers.[26]

Women's magazines

Fashion

Immortalized in movies and magazines, young women's fashions of the 1920s set both a trend and social statement, a breaking-off from the rigid Victorian way of life. Their glamorous life style was celebrated in the feature pages and in the advertisements, where they learned the brands that best exemplified the look they sought. These young, rebellious, middle-class women, labeled "flappers" by older generations, did away with the corset and donned slinky knee-length dresses, which exposed their legs and arms. The hairstyle of the decade was a chin-length bob, which had several popular variations. Cosmetics, which, until the 1920s, were not typically accepted in American society because of their association with prostitution, became, for the first time, extremely popular.[27]

In the 1920s new magazines appealed to young German women with a sensuous image and advertisements for the appropriate clothes and accessories they would want to purchase. The glossy pages of Die Dame and Das Blatt der Hausfrau displayed the "Neue Frauen," "New Girl" - what Americans called the flapper. She was young and fashionable, financially independent, and was an eager consumer of the latest fashions. The magazines kept her up to date on fashion, arts, sports, and modern technology such as automobiles and telephones.[28]

Religious magazines

Religious groups have used magazines for spreading and communicating religious doctrine for over 100 years. The Friend was founded in Philadelphia in 1827 at the time of a major Quaker schism; it has been continually published and was renamed Friends Journal when the rival Quaker groups formally reconciled in the mid-1950s[29]. The Watchtower publication was started by Charles Taze Russell on July 1879 under the title Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence. The Watchtower—Public Edition is the most widely circulated magazine in the world, with an average circulation of approximately 62 million copies every two months in 200 languages.[30] The Plough Quarterly was started in 1920 as the magazine of the Bruderhof, and has continued publication to this day, despite Nazi persecution.[31] The Catholics have several titles, including First Things.

See also

Lists

Categories

  • Periodicals
  • Religious magazines
  • Satirical magazines
  • Wildlife magazines

References

  1. ↑ "Home Page - PPA". PPA.
  2. ↑ "History of magazines". Magazine Designing. 26 March 2013. Retrieved 10 October 2013.
  3. 1 2 "The History of Magazines". Magazines.com.
  4. ↑ OED, s.v. "Magazine", and "Magazine - A Dictionary of the English Language - Samuel Johnson - 1755". johnsonsdictionaryonline.com.
  5. ↑ "Lloyd's List set to become a totally digital service on 20 December 2013". lloydslist.com.
  6. ↑ Gardner, Jared. The Rise and Fall of Early American Magazine Culture. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2012. 224 pp. Reviewed by Edward Cahill Fordham University. Web.
  7. 1 2 Martin, Michèle (March 1, 2014). "Nineteenth Century Wood Engravers at Work: Mass Production of Illustrated Periodicals (1840-1880)". Journal of Historical Sociology 27, 1.
  8. ↑ Stephen Botein, Jack R. Censer, and Harriet Ritvo, "The periodical press in eighteenth-century English and French society: a cross-cultural approach." Comparative Studies in Society and History 23#3 (1981): 464-490.
  9. ↑ Jack Censer, The French press in the age of Enlightenment (2002).
  10. ↑ Robert Darnton and Daniel Roche, eds., Revolution in Print: the Press in France, 1775–1800 (1989)
  11. ↑ Keith Michael Baker, et al., The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture: The transformation of the political culture, 1789–1848 (1989).
  12. ↑ M. Patricia Dougherty, "The French Catholic press and the July Revolution." French History 12#4 (1998): 403-428.
  13. ↑ Straubhaar, LaRose, Davenport. Media Now: Understanding Media, Culture, and Technology (Nelson Education, 2015)
  14. 1 2 3 Biagi, Shirley. Media Impact: An Introduction to Mass Media, 2013 Update. Cengage Publishing, 2013. Textbook.
  15. ↑ "About". Harper's Magazine. 2018.
  16. 1 2 Mott, Frank Luther (1938). A History of American Magazines, 1865–1885. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674395527.
  17. ↑ Peter C. Holloran et al. eds. (2009). The A to Z of the Progressive Era. Scarecrow Press. p. 266. ISBN 9780810870697.
  18. ↑ Herbert Shapiro, ed., The muckrakers and American society (Heath, 1968), contains representative samples as well as academic commentary.
  19. ↑ Robert Miraldi, ed. The Muckrakers: Evangelical Crusaders (Praeger, 2000)
  20. ↑ Harry H. Stein, "American Muckrakers and Muckraking: The 50-Year Scholarship," Journalism Quarterly, (1979) 56#1 pp 9–17
  21. ↑ Christopher Zara (22 December 2012). "In Memoriam: Magazines We Lost In 2012". IBT. Retrieved 9 October 2013.
  22. ↑ "Number of magazine launches and closures in North America 2015 | Statistic". Statista. Retrieved 2016-05-06.
  23. ↑ Erik, Sass (July 1, 2014). "93 Magazines Launch in First Half of 2014". Retrieved 6 May 2016.
  24. ↑ "Jet Magazine to Shift to Digital Publishing Next Month | Johnson Publishing Company". www.johnsonpublishing.com. Retrieved 2016-05-06.
  25. ↑ Cohen, Noam (2014-04-24). "Ladies' Home Journal to Become a Quarterly". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2016-05-06.
  26. ↑ "A Brief History of Magazines and Subscriptions". MagazineDeals.com.
  27. ↑ Carolyn Kitch, The Girl on the Magazine Cover (University of North Carolina Press, 2001). pp. 122–23.
  28. ↑ Nina Sylvester, "Before Cosmopolitan: The Girl in German women's magazines in the 1920s." Journalism Studies 8#4 (2007): 550-554.
  29. ↑ "Liberal Quaker Journal Publishing to 1955", Friends Journal, retrieved 2018-09-16
  30. ↑ "Read the Watchtower and Awake! Magazines Online". JW.ORG. Retrieved 2017-09-30.
  31. ↑ "About Us". Plough. Retrieved 2017-09-30.

Further reading

  • Angeletti, Norberto, and Alberto Oliva. Magazines That Make History: Their Origins, Development, and Influence (2004), covers Time, Der Spiegel, Life, Paris Match, National Geographic, Reader's Digest, ¡Hola!, and People
  • Brooker, Peter, and Andrew Thacker, eds. The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines: Volume I: Britain and Ireland 1880–1955 (2009)
  • Buxton, William J., and Catherine McKercher. "Newspapers, magazines and journalism in Canada: Towards a critical historiography." Acadiensis (1988) 28#1 pp. 103–126 in JSTOR; also online
  • Cox, Howard and Simon Mowatt. Revolutions from Grub Street: A History of Magazine Publishing in Britain (2015) excerpt
  • Würgler, Andreas. National and Transnational News Distribution 1400–1800, European History Online, Mainz: Institute of European History (2010) retrieved: December 17, 2012.

United States

  • Baughman, James L. Henry R. Luce and the Rise of the American News Media (2001) excerpt and text search
  • Brinkley, Alan. The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century, Alfred A. Knopf (2010) 531 pp.
  • Damon-Moore, Helen. Magazines for the Millions: Gender and Commerce in the Ladies' Home Journal and the Saturday Evening Post, 1880–1910 (1994) online
  • Elson, Robert T. Time Inc: The Intimate History of a Publishing Enterprise, 1923–1941 (1968); vol. 2: The World of Time Inc.: The Intimate History, 1941–1960 (1973), official corporate history
  • Endres, Kathleen L. and Therese L. Lueck, eds. Women's Periodicals in the United States: Consumer Magazines (1995) online
  • Haveman, Heather A. Magazines and the Making of America: Modernization, Community, and Print Culture, 1741–1860 (Princeton UP, 2015)
  • Johnson, Ronald Maberry and Abby Arthur Johnson. Propaganda and Aesthetics: The Literary Politics of Afro-American Magazines in the Twentieth Century (1979) online
  • Mott, Frank Luther. A History of American Magazines (five volumes, 1930–1968), detailed coverage of all major magazines, 1741 to 1930 by a leading scholar.
  • Nourie, Alan and Barbara Nourie. American Mass-Market Magazines (Greenwood Press, 1990) online
  • Rooks, Noliwe M. Ladies' Pages: African American Women's Magazines and the Culture That Made Them (Rutgers UP, 2004) online
  • Summer, David E. The Magazine Century: American Magazines Since 1900 (Peter Lang Publishing; 2010) 242 pages. Examines the rapid growth of magazines throughout the 20th century and analyzes the form's current decline.
  • Tebbel, John, and Mary Ellen Zuckerman. The Magazine in America, 1741–1990 (1991), popular history
  • Wood, James P. Magazines in the United States: Their Social and Economic Influence (1949) online
  • Zuckerman, Mary Ellen. A History of Popular Women's Magazines in the United States, 1792–1995 (Greenwood Press, 1998) online
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