Although long in existence, elite magazines grew in popularity during the age of specialization. Elite magazines are characterized by their combination of literature, criticism, humor, and journalism and by their appeal to highly educated audiences, often living in urban areas. Among the numerous elite publications that grew in stature during the twentieth century were the Atlantic Monthly, Vanity Fair, and Harper’s.

However, the most widely circulated elite magazine is the New Yorker. Launched in 1925 by Harold Ross, the New Yorker became the first city magazine aimed at a national upscale audience. Over the years, the New Yorker featured many of the twentieth century’s most prominent biographers, writers, reporters, and humorists, including A. J. Liebling, Dorothy Parker, Lillian Ross, John Updike, E. B. White, and Garrison Keillor, as well as James Thurber’s cartoons and Ogden Nash’s poetry. It introduced some of the finest literary journalism of the twentieth century, devoting an entire issue to John Hersey’s Hiroshima and serializing Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. By the mid-1960s, the New Yorker’s circulation hovered around 500,000; by 2013, its circulation stayed steady at 1 million and its Web presence was healthy at 10.7 million monthly unique visitors.