
arper’s Weekly
and
Scribner’s Monthly
.
Until the end of the First World War, magazines also took an aggressive role in social
reform. Investigative reporters (muckrakers) exposed corruption in politics and industry
and took on causes such as birth control, child labor, sanitation and the meat-
acking
industry. Their dogged pursuit of records, interviews and the truth changed the way
ournalists investigated tough issues.
With postwar development, collegiate readers sought H.L.Mencken’s
American
ercury
and George Jean Nathan’s
Smart Set
during the Roaring Twenties. During the
1930s, photo-filled magazines such as
Look
and
Life
were born, providing a pictorial
chronicle of American culture. Along with
The Saturday Evening Post,
these large-
circulation reviews dominated the national market until the advent of
television
affected
the numbers of readers and advertisers. General-interest magazines that have maintained
their popularity through the decades include
Reader’s Digest, National Geographic
and
the postwar
TV Guide;
in 1947
Reader’s Digest
became the first magazine to have a
circulation of more than 9 million. News magazines such as
Time, Newsweek
and
U.S.
ews and World Repor
have also had large circulation figures, but must compete with
other information sources.
Magazines in the new millenium succeed when they attract the market niche for which
they are positioned. In addition to general consumer magazines and news, the largest
categories of magazines (with examples) are trade journals reflecting specific economic
niches; sponsored publications (
American Legion,
college alumni magazines); sports; sex
(Playboy, Penthouse);
intellectual/ opinion
(Commentary, The National Review, The
ation);
humor
(National Lampoon, MAD);
business
(Forbes, Business Week);
religion
(Christian Century, Focus on the Family);
teens; and city publications
(New York,
hiladelphid)
. Large markets are also gendered into “women’s” interest
(Goo
ousekeeping, McCal
’s)
and men’s interest
(Gentleman’s Quarterly, Argosy),
as well as
gay and lesbian interest. Magazines targeting blacks and
Hispanics
suggest the normative
readers of other magazines.
The Gale Directory of Publications and Broadcast Media
(1998) includes 7,141 trade/technical/professional publications, 2,591 magazines o
general circulation, 459 religious, 391 agricultural, 208 college, 177 women’s, 154
foreign language, 61 fraternal, 56 Hispanic, 38 Jewish and 29 black publications. There
are also roughly 10,000 company and technical publications.
Various milestones in postwar American magazine publishing reflect changing market
demands and consumer trends. The satirical
MAD,
targeting advertising and media, was
founded in 1952.
Playboy
appeared in 1953 with Marilyn
Monroe
as its first centerfold.
eople
magazine—sold in
newspaper
checkout lines—appeared in 1974 with glitzy
pictures in the
Life
tradition, but more
celebrity
gossip.
Cosmopolitan
and
Ms
also
challenged “women’s” publications in the 1970s. Meanwhile,
Life, Look
and
Saturday
vening Pos
disappeared, victims of television and more media choices. By contrast,
Vanity Fair,
a magazine that had enjoyed decades of popularity before dying in 1936,
was revived in 1983; it continues to set trends for an affluent society
Other milestones refer to business. Advertising constitutes almost half of the economic
Entries A-Z 689