COMMON THREADS
338
One of the Common Threads discussed in Chapter 1 is the commercial nature of mass media. The magazine industry is an unusual example of this. Big media corporations control some of the most popular magazines, and commercialism runs deep in many consumer magazines. At the same time, magazines are one of the most democratic mass media. How can that be?
There are more than twenty thousand magazine titles in the United States. But the largest and most profitable magazines are typically owned by some of the biggest media corporations. Advance Publications, for example, counts GQ, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Vogue among its holdings. Even niche magazines that seem small are often controlled by chains. Supermarket tabloids like Star and the National Enquirer are owned by Florida-
High-
Yet the huge number of magazine titles—
So there is the glitzy, commercial world of the big magazine industry, with Time’s Person of the Year, the latest Cosmo girl, and the band on the cover of Rolling Stone. But many smaller magazines—
KEY TERMS
The definitions for the terms listed below can be found in the glossary at the end of the book. The page numbers listed with the terms indicate where the term is highlighted in the chapter.
magazine, 311
muckrakers, 317
general-interest magazines, 317
photojournalism, 317
pass-along readership, 319
Webzines, 324
supermarket tabloids, 331
desktop publishing, 332
regional editions, 333
split-run editions, 333
demographic editions, 333
evergreen subscriptions, 333
magalogs, 335
zines, 336
REVIEW QUESTIONS
339
The Early History of Magazines
The Development of Modern American Magazines
The Domination of Specialization
The Organization and Economics of Magazines
Magazines in a Democratic Society
QUESTIONING THE MEDIA
LAUNCHPAD FOR MEDIA & CULTURE
REVIEW WITH LEARNINGCURVE LearningCurve, available on LaunchPad for Media & Culture, uses gamelike quizzing to help you master the concepts you need to learn from this chapter.