Call Girls Ludhiana Just Call 98765-12871 Top Class Call Girl Service Available
Mm ch 05magazines
1. Mass Media in a Changing World
Second Edition
George
Rodman
Brooklyn College of CUNY
HISTORY
INDUSTRY
CONTROVERSY
2. Chapter 5
Magazines: The First of the Specialized
Media
Chapter Outline
• History
• Industry
• Controversies
3. A Brief History of Magazines
The First Magazines
• The first magazine appeared in Germany in 1663, nearly
200 years after printing technology had been used to
produce books. Edifying Monthly Discussions was
targeted to an elite, literate audience.
• The first two magazines in America, Andrew Bradford’s
American Magazine and Benjamin Franklin’s General
Magazine, were published within three days of each
other in 1741.
• Six months later both magazines had failed
because, while books and newspapers were considered
necessities, magazines were seen as a luxury.
• By 1776, a hundred magazines had started and failed.
4. A Brief History of Magazines
• Ladies’ Magazine was a special interest
magazine that began publishing in 1828, under
the editorship of Sarah Josepha Hale, a widow
who took up writing and editing to support her
family.
• Ladies’ Magazine was the predecessor for
Ladies’ Home Journal, which was founded in
1883 and expanded the area of women’s interests
to include sheet music and popular fiction.
• The first magazine to achieve a general
interest, mass audience was The Saturday
Evening Post.
5. A Brief History of Magazines
• During the 1880s magazines were luxury items that
cost 35 cents a copy. The first magazine to cut
prices was the Munsey Report, which dropped its
price to 10 cents.
• Publisher Frank Munsey later estimated that his
move tripled the size of the magazine reading
public from 250,000 to 750,000.
• Within a short time advertising became the chief
source of revenue for the magazine business and
CPM, or cost per mille (thousand), became the
standard guideline.
6. A Brief History of Magazines
• In the early 1900s magazines and
newspapers got serious about crusading
for social reform.
Magazines, however, were most effective
in bringing about in-depth
investigations.
• McClure’s Magazine attacked the
monopolistic practices of Standard Oil
and exposed municipal corruption in
several cities. Other magazines began to
follow suit.
7. A Brief History of Magazines
• Muckraking articles of this period
helped bring about child labor
laws, workers compensation and the first
congressional investigations.
• Congress passed the Pure Food and
Drug Act in 1906 partially because of the
influence of muckraking reporting.
8. A Brief History of Magazines
Mass Circulation Magazines
• Cultural magazines included the New
Yorker, founded in 1925 by Harold
Ross, style magazines, and pulps such as
True Confessions.
• Reader’s Digest, published in 1922 by
Dewitt and Lila Wallace, was a digest
featuring brief versions of articles that were
informative, well-written, and stressed
conservative middle class values.
9. A Brief History of Magazines
• The first news magazine was Time, founded in
1923 by Henry Luce, which originated the terms
“photojournalism,” and “photo essay.”
• The true golden age of photojournalism began in
the 1930s with the introduction of the 35 mm Leica
camera, which made it possible for photographers
to move with the action, taking shots of events as
they were unfolding.
• This golden age lasted until the decline of the
great general-interest magazines.
10. A Brief History of Magazines
• Magazines were America’s only national medium until
the 1920s, when radio networks were established.
• By the 1960s advertisers interested in reaching the
wide and diverse audiences of general-interest
magazines moved to television.
• Ethnic and business magazines flourished as the
U. S. became more culturally diverse in the post-
industrial information age.
• Special interest magazines include Latvian
Dimensions, Filipina, Lefthander Magazine, Working
Woman, Black Scholar, and Hispanic Engineer.
11. A Brief History of Magazines
Adapting to New Media
• Magazines have always adapted to competition from
new media. When movies became popular the industry
developed magazines about movies.
• Playboy makes more money from cable and broadcast
than from magazines.
• Magazines publish their content on the Internet which
is cheaper because of no investments in paper, ink, or
presses, no printing overruns or underruns, or postal
rates. Online publishing also provides an interactivity
with readers that is appealing to advertisers.
12. A Brief History of Magazines
Global Endeavors
• Ulrich’s International Periodicals directory
lists over 165,000 serials published
throughout the world.
• Many U.S. publishers are moving to
international editions to take advantage of
new markets, especially in post-iron curtain
countries and in Latin America.
• There are more that 50 versions of
Cosmopolitan.
• Selecciones, the Spanish version of Reader’s
Digest, is the best selling magazine in both
Argentina and Chile.
15. Understanding Today’s Magazine
Publishing Industry
Types of Magazines
• A consumer magazine is released at
least three times a year, with a
circulation of at least 3,000 general
readers, and containing at least 16 pages
of editorial (as opposed to advertising)
content.
19. Understanding Today’s Magazine
Publishing Industry
• Trade magazines are those that focus on a particular
business, and are usually essential reading for people
in those businesses. Billboard is the trade magazine
for the music industry.
• Public relations magazines are put out by
organizations, corporations, and institutions with the
sole intent of making their parent organization look
good.
• Cigar Aficionado was a public relations magazine for
the tobacco industry that caught on as a men’s
lifestyle publication.
20. Understanding Today’s Magazine
Publishing Industry
• Professional journals are periodicals that
doctors, lawyers, engineers and other professionals rely
upon for the latest research and information in their fields.
• Professional journals are expensive. For example, a
subscription to Brain Research costs $14,919 a year.
• Libraries are cutting back on professional journals and
academic journals to save money. They are reinvesting in
digital online databases instead.
• A little magazine publishes promising and established poets
and authors of literary essays and fiction. Most of
them, including The Antioch Review and The Paris
Review, have tiny circulations.
21. Understanding Today’s Magazine
Publishing Industry
• Comic books don’t contain much advertising and have
a smaller revenue stream than other types of
magazines. But comics, like the superhero monthlies
published by Marvel and DC comics, have been an
important part of American culture.
• Zines are small, inexpensive publications put out by
people who are enthusiastic about a specific, usually
obscure, topic. Zines, were important parts of the beat
movement of the 1950s and the hippie movement of
the 1960s.
• Today, many Zines exist only on the Web. In
fact, Weblogs are an online version of what Zines use
to be.
22. Understanding Today’s Magazine
Publishing Industry
The Players
• Many publishers are entrepreneurs with a deep interest in
the topic, a small amount of money and a high tolerance
for risk.
• Celebrity founded magazines is a recent trend. O, The
Oprah Magazine has been one of the most successful
while Rosie folded after a dispute between Rosie
O’Donnell and her corporate parent.
• Supermarket chains have been the corporate publishers
of several successful women’s magazines including
Family Circle (Piggly Wiggly) and Women’s Day (A&P).
23. Understanding Today’s Magazine
Publishing Industry
The Staff
• The editor, editor-in-chief, or executive editor is in
charge of the magazine’s overall direction. There is
usually a managing editor, several deputy
editors, senior editors or associate editors.
• Magazine editors work mostly with freelance writers
because only the largest magazines have primarily
full time writers.
• The title contributing editor is generally given to the
magazine’s highest paid freelance writers. Tom
Wolfe, a well-known and highly respected author, is a
contributing editor at Harper’s.
25. Understanding Today’s Magazine
Publishing Industry
The Magazine Staff
Each department in a magazine company contributes in its own way
to the success of that magazine.
27. Understanding Today’s Magazine
Publishing Industry
• In the extremely competitive magazine business
advertising sales staffs sell the personality of the
magazine and the worth of the target reader to
advertisers.
• The advertiser needs the magazine to enhance its
product sales and its overall image. The magazine
needs the advertiser for content as well as income.
• The circulation department is responsible for
finding and keeping subscribers, manage the
subscriber list, and to promote single-copy sales.
Most publishers also rely on subscription
fulfillment companies such as Publishers Clearing
House.
28. Understanding Today’s Magazine
Publishing Industry
• Single-copy sales are mostly of interest to paid circulation
magazines whose readers actually pay subscription fees
and newsstand charges.
• Controlled circulation magazines are sent free to readers
who qualify.
• The production department coordinates the actual printing
of the magazines with outside companies, including those
that specialize in high-speed color printing and the use of
glossy paper.
• The publicist’s job is to make headlines (in
newspapers, radio, television and Internet news services)
with news from the cover of the magazine’s current issue.
29. Understanding Today’s Magazine
Publishing Industry
The Reader
• The magazine industry claims that 90 percent of American
adults read 12 issues a month on average, and that the more
education and income people have, the more they read
magazines.
• Magazines have a healthy pass-along circulation, which
means that several more people than the original buyer or
subscriber typically read them.
• Larger magazines have their own research
departments, but rely on outside organizations like
Simmons Market Research Bureau and Mediamark
Research Inc. to run major studies.
30. Controversies
• Fashion magazines define the ideal female
beauty as having perfect facial features, long
legs, a long neck and terrific body tone. She
must also be 5’ 10” tall and weigh less than 120
pounds.
• The average woman is around 5’ 3” and weighs
144 pounds. As fashion magazines continue to
promote this unrealistic body size surveys show
that women are increasingly unhappy with their
bodies.
• Many critics insist that men’s ideas about women
are shaped by images such as Playboy’s
centerfold and editorial content such as
Penthouse Forum.
32. Controversies
• Credibility is a magazine’s primary asset, even in an
industry that includes National Enquirer.
• Legally, magazines are expected to be even more
diligent about truth and accuracy than daily
newspapers are because magazines have a longer
time to work on stories and check facts.
• In 1998 Time, in a joint investigation with
CNN, reported that, during the Vietnam War the U.S.
Army had used lethal nerve gas on U.S. deserters.
The government quickly proved that Time had edited
testimony to prove an untrue allegation. Time was
forced to issue a quick retraction and apology.
33. Controversies
• Editorial independence usually refers to a
magazine’s independence from advertisers, but can
also refer to independence from those it writes
about and those who supply it with information.
• Some magazines have a long history of separating
advertising and editorial matter.
Ms., Mad, Consumer Reports, and Consumers
Digest take no ads, and Reader’s Digest refuses all
cigarette ads.
• The Saturday Evening Post, in its final days as a
mass circulation magazine, promised to feature
Henry Ford on its cover in exchange for $400,000
worth of Ford advertising.
34. Controversies
• Magazines and subscription fulfillment companies
always seek innovative ways to sell.
• For many years, direct-mail solicitations made it look
as if the recipient had won a million dollar check.
Older people often subscribed to magazines they
could not afford on fixed incomes.
• Critics and the courts agreed that this practice was
unethical. Publisher’s Clearing House had to
reimburse subscribers $18 million, Reader’s Digest
was forced to return $8 million, and Time Magazine
was forced to refund nearly $5 million to customers
who were fooled.
