Media - Magazines

The first American magazines appeared a half century after the first newspapers and took longer to conquer widespread readership. Andrew Bradford, a London-born printer, published the first U.S. magazine in Philadelphia on February 13, 1741, but it lasted only three months. 152 years later, in 1893, the first mass-circulation magazines, which cost ten cents at the time, began to appear. Frank A. Munsey, Cyrus Curtis, Edward Bok and S.S. McClure were some of the leading publishers who competed for mass audiences with low-cost magazines from the 1890s well into the 1930s, a period considered the golden age of U.S. publishing.

In 1923, Henry Luce invented the concept of the weekly news magazine, creating Time. It and its major competitor, Newsweek, gradually carved out important niches with their in-depth analyses of national and international developments. The advent of television spelled the downfall for several major American mass-circulation magazines, which steadily lost advertising revenue to the new medium throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

Magazine publishers have increasingly tried to appeal to clearly-defined audiences rather than the public at large. Magazines on virtually any subject imaginable have mushroomed, including Tennis, Antiques, Trailer Life and Model Railroading. Computer technology has helped publishers to target special-interest audiences which are not necessarily small in number.

In September 1993, Time became the first magazine to offer its readers an on-line version by which readers can call up each edition on their computers before it arrives on the newsstands. Through "Time Online," readers can interact with editors and reporters, exchanging ideas and letters to the editor electronically.

Time, Newsweek, and several other U.S. magazines print special international editions geared to geographical regions. Cosmopolitan is distributed in 70 countries, and Vogue has had an international following for years.. In 1990, more than 12 million of its 29 million subscribers lived outside the United States. In the same year, the Ladies Home Journal also came out with a special issue with a 32-page Russian insert that sold 10,000 copies in Moscow.

The Magazine Publishers Association, founded in 1919, continues as the principal spokesman for the magazine industry, while the American Society of Magazine Editors, founded in 1963, acts as the main forum for magazine editors.

Fredric A. Emmert is a U.S. Information Agency foreign service officer who has observed and worked with U.S. and foreign media during a 25-year career, including Public Affairs assignments in Latin America, Europe and Washington. D.C. NOTE: This article is in the public domain. Credit to the author should appear on the title page of any reprint.

- From “U.S. Media in the 1990s. Part I. Overview and the Print Media,” by Fredric A. Emmert

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[Last Updated: 12/9/2010]