Magazines: The Evolution of the People

"A magazine must be like a human being. If it comes into the home it must contribute. It can't just lie around. A magazine must have…blood and brains and pizzazz" (Funny Face). Since their beginning over three hundred years ago, magazines have always contributed to the constantly changing world. Magazines adapted to the needs, wants, ideas, and changes that rocked society persistently. From the social criticisms of the 1700s to the development of mass media and the Internet in the last two centuries, magazines have served, do serve, and will serve as a mirror to the ever-evolving social climate.

Wikipedia defines a magazine as a periodical publication containing a variety of articles generally financed by advertising and/or purchase by readers. They are usually printed in color and "bound with a soft cover" ("Magazine"). There are two types of magazines: consumer and business. The target audience of consumer magazines is the general public, and their topics of interest may be broad, like Time and People, or specific, like Black Enterprise and College Music Monthly. Most of these types of consumer magazines are easily available to the public. On the other hand, business magazines are available almost exclusively by subscription to those willing to pay or for free to those who match certain criteria ("Magazine"). These clear-cut boundaries of different types of magazines were not always available. Since their start in the eighteenth century, magazines have blazed their own trail to become a cultural icon of modern society.

Daniel Defoe, an Englishman, established himself as the father of modern journalism by publishing the first magazine, The Review (Lawrence). From 1704 to 1713, this journal served as an outlet for Defoe's satirical critique on the state of affairs in eighteenth century England ("History"). This English magazine, printed in the style of the newspapers of the time, commented "on the manners, morals, and literature of the day" (Lawrence). Readers of The Spectator bore witness to a few firsts in English literature: the introduction of the short informal essay and the short fiction story ("History"). These achievements reached further than just the aristocracy of England, for colonists across the Atlantic felt them as well. In 1741, the first American magazine went to press, and by the end of the century, nearly one hundred other magazines were being published there as well ("Brief"). Though most lived short lives as imitations of their English predecessors (Lawrence), these colonial magazines launched a promising, though rocky, foundation for the births of a new nation and a new form of media.

At the start of the 1800s, developments in technology led to mass circulation, making magazines more accessible to the lower classes that were formerly unable to afford them ("Brief"). Encouraged by the surge of new readers, magazine publishers began to appeal more to the common people with publications like The Saturday Evening Post in 1821. Publishers also kept up the changing morals, attitudes, and events of society. In 1828, the first women's magazine, Ladies' Magazine, aided the growing women's revolution in gaining equal rights ("Magazines").

The benefits of mass media finally showed through in the last half of the nineteenth century with the introduction of visual media and advertising. In the 1860s, Harper's Weekly upheld the trend of paralleling the maturing nation by introducing "visual news with Civil War illustrations" ("Magazines"). McClure's Magazine used photography and mass media to further the muckraking movement, Lawrence says, that "exposed activities…threatening the social, political, and economic security of the American middle class." Mass circulation also spawned the first ad agencies that opened in 1890. Advertising "made it possible to sell magazines below production cost, [making] it possible to lower their price still more, [increasing] their audience, [making] them even more useful to advertisers" ("History"). The drop in prices, along with the lowered postal rates, aided the increase of literacy thought the nation and secured the cultural status of magazines for the future ("Brief").

The literary magazines that debuted in the early 1800s and flourished throughout the century reflected the increase of other publications due to mass circulation. Wikipedia states, "Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry…essays…literary criticism, book reviews…profiles of authors, interviews, and letters" ("Literary Magazine"). Like the early colonial magazines, the first of these "little magazines" lived short lives, although they did thrive in the cities of their publication. In the early 1900s, literary magazines found their home among the growing colleges and universities. Many now-famous writers, like T. S. Eliot, used these magazines to establish their careers. Ever-advancing technology in the mid-1900s also led to the growth of the small press, and consequently, the rise in the number of literary magazines. With the arrival of the Internet in the late twentieth century, the small press went online. It took some time for literary magazines to gain the respect of their new worldwide audience and other writers who claimed that the online periodicals "were not properly magazines [but] ezines [sic]" ("Literary Magazine").

The twentieth century dawned with a plethora of firsts: in 1922, Time became the first weekly magazine; in 1936, Life inaugurated photojournalism as the premier photo journal ("Key Dates"); in 1962 Hugh Hefner established the controversial Playboy ("Magazines"); and in the 1990s, magazines began publishing articles online in addition to their print publications ("Key Dates"). However, not all publications had access to the overall constant flux in technology.

Pulp magazines existed as a symbol of the poverty underlying the apparent wealth produced by advanced technology. Also known as pulp fiction, these inexpensive magazines owe their namesake to "the cheap wood pulp paper on which [they] were printed," according to Wikipedia ("Pulp Magazine"). In 1896, Frank Munsey began the first pulp, Argosy Magazine. Pulps catered to adults with their "lurid, sensational, and exploitive stories and thrilling cover art." Like with literary magazines, pulp fiction in the early twentieth century did not extend into the global market. Even in the twenty-first century, with the Internet and mass media readily available, the independent presses that published magazines in the style of the early pulps did not resort to mass circulation, nor did they aim at a broader audience ("Pulp Magazine").

The smaller, independent presses of literary magazines and pulps did have one benefit over the more popular, mass-produced publications: little or not pressure from advertisers. By the mid-twentieth century, advertising covered sixty-five percent of magazine content ("Brief"). That statistic alone illustrates the outstanding power advertisers held over the publishers who continued to rely on those ads for revenue. Advertisers exercised their control by shunning politically and sexually "offensive" magazines that conflicted with their own views. The format in which magazines were set up also changed in order to showcase advertisements more suitably ("History").

The new developments in format that intended to grab the attention of readers culminated in the slick magazines that commenced in the 1940s and 1950s. The new glossy finishes blossomed from 1920s fashion magazines like Vanity Fair and Vogue, where advertising and content arrangement in itself was an art form. "The History of Magazines" insinuates that publishers used the mid-century as their own print media laboratory, experimenting with bleeds, which are "photographs…that [extend] to the edge of the page," gutters, and headlines. At first, only the more popular and upper class magazine bore the slick look and new formats. Soon, however, this trend glossed over trade publications as well. These magazines reflected the ever-rising conformity of the nuclear family in the 1950s. Differentiated only by their specific niches, such as "runners…dog lovers…music lovers…home restorers," etc, these popular publications held much power over the social identity and interests of their readers ("History").

If the 1950s fostered the era of the suburbanite magazine, then the 1970s parented the era of the counterculture magazine. During this time, hundreds of small press publications flourished in their own "widespread renaissance" with "national organizations [and] book fairs." Because they carried little or no support from advertisers, publishers of small magazines relied on donations and their own income to sustain the low-profit publications. These magazines, born out of the sheer ambition and passion to inform others, held closest to the original idea of the first magazines; the exhilaration of publishing and circulating these unknown periodicals meant far more to their creators than earning a few dollars ("History").

One person who understands the difficulty of establishing a certain voice and agenda over a magazine is Helen Gurley Brown, a former editor of Cosmopolitan. Despite her lack of experience in the magazine industry, Brown gave the women's magazine a makeover, spanning twenty years, which set it on the top of the charts. Enduring the backlash of critical feminists of the 1960s, Brown promoted a new feminist ideal of a woman loving "men and children" while also doing "something on her own for which she can be recognized." Her radical outlook on feminism revolutionized the industry and gave Cosmopolitan its modern cultural status ("Brown Explains").

Obviously, with the changes that technology produces, like the way magazines are formatted, edited, and published, the way magazines are written also change. Many publications rely on freelancers, non-contract writers who are paid to write an article or paid for an article previously written. The magazine publishes the work once in one magazine, with no further complications. However, with the rise in magazines publishing online in addition to print and other media, complex copyright agreements are being forced on freelance writers. Publishers use these agreements "to exploit the work in any and all electronic media" and basically rob the writer of most compensation from all secondary uses of his or her work. Carlinsky expounds on this practice: "In recent years, hundreds of publications have begun to sublicense their content to online databases. Users pay a fee each time they access an article. The magazine publisher receives a royalty; the writer, with few exceptions, is paid nothing…the promotional value of the extra use of the writer's material is obvious." The people who attempt to preserve the original purpose and ideals of magazines are the ones hit hardest by the effects of technology and capitalism.

The evolution of magazines parallels the evolution of social conditions in how it adapts to new developments and reflects the renewed values of citizens worldwide. For the most part, technology benefits the magazine industry more than it harms. Without advanced science, periodicals may still be the miniscule, local one-page pamphlets buried under the more popular newspapers. Technology, however, cannot take all the credit for the success of magazines. If people has not sought out their ambition and passion to give the early presses hope and information, all that technology would have been used to further some other idea that could not have resulted in anything better than the growing promises of the current magazine industry.

Works Cited

- "A Brief History of Magazine Publishing in the United States." BookSpring.

- "Brown Explains How to Make a Magazine Work Without Experience." Medill-Northwestern University. Northwestern University.

- Carlinsky, Dan. "Why writing for magazines isn't what it used to be, and what writers have to do about it." American Society of Journalists and Authors. American Society of Journalists and Authors.

- Funny Face. Dir. Stanley Donen. Perfs. Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire. DVD. Paramount Home Video, 1957.

- "The History of Magazines." BackIn.TheDays.

- "Key Dates in the History of Magazines." Internet Campus.

- Lawrence, Steve. "In a Bind: A Short History of Magazines." Steve's World. University of Colorado at Denver.

- "Literary Magazine." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.

- "Magazine." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.

- "Magazines." The Media of Mass Communication. Pearson Education, Inc.

- "Pulp Magazine." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.