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Magazines have changed extensively during their journey to mass-medium status. They started out in Europe as infrequently published periodicals that looked like newspapers and contained mostly political commentary. These caught on slowly in colonial America and served mostly as vehicles for politicians (such as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson) and thinkers (including Thomas Paine) to convey their views. It wasn’t until the nineteenth century that magazines really took off in America. During the 1800s, magazines took the form of specialized and general-interest periodicals that appealed to an increasingly literate populace, that could be published quickly through improved printing technologies, and that boasted arresting illustrations.

Today, the word magazine broadly refers to any collection of articles, stories, and advertisements published on a nondaily cycle (such as weekly or monthly) in the smaller tabloid style rather than larger broadsheet newspaper style.