COMMON THREADS
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.
REVIEW QUESTIONS
The Early History of Magazines
Why did magazines develop later than newspapers in the American colonies?
Why did most of the earliest magazines have so much trouble staying financially solvent?
How did magazines become national in scope?
The Development of Modern American Magazines
How did magazines position women in the new consumer economy at the turn of the twentieth century?
What role did magazines play in social reform at the turn of the twentieth century?
When and why did general-
Why did some of the major general-
What are the advantages of magazines’ movement to digital formats?
The Domination of Specialization
What triggered the move toward magazine specialization?
What are the differences between regional and demographic editions?
What are the most useful ways to categorize the magazine industry? Why?
The Organization and Economics of Magazines
What are the four main departments at a typical consumer magazine?
How do digital editions of magazines change the format of magazine advertising?
What are some of the models for digital distribution of magazines?
What are the major magazine chains, and what is their impact on the mass media industry in general?
Magazines in a Democratic Society
How do magazines serve a democratic society?
How does advertising affect what gets published in the editorial side of magazines?
QUESTIONING THE MEDIA
What role did magazines play in America’s political and social shift from being colonies of Great Britain to becoming an independent nation?
Why is the muckraking spirit—
If you were the marketing director of your favorite magazine, how would you increase circulation through the use of digital editions?
Think of stories, ideas, and images (illustrations and photos) that do not appear in mainstream magazines. Why do you think this is so? (Use the Internet, LexisNexis, or the library to compare your list with Project Censored, an annual list of the year’s most underreported stories.)
Discuss whether your favorite magazines define you primarily as a consumer or as a citizen. Do you think magazines have a responsibility to educate their readers as both? What can they do to promote responsible citizenship?
Do you think touchscreen tablet editions will become the dominant format for magazines? Why or why not?
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.