Chapter 4: Magazines in the Age of Specialization
True/False
1. Magazines became a national mass medium in the United States before newspapers did.
2. The word magazine comes from the French term magasin, meaning “storehouse.”
3. The first colonial magazines published by Andrew Bradford and Benjamin Franklin enjoyed
instant success and continued for several years.
4. Since their beginnings in the 1740s, American magazines have primarily been a medium of
entertainment and diversion.
5. The first magazines in the United States were edited for the working classes.
6. Specialized magazines began to appear in the United States in the nineteenth century.
7. The use of illustrations was not important to the growth of magazines.
8. The Saturday Evening Post continued the muckraking tradition—especially by criticizing
business corruption—into the 1920s.
9. TV Guide’s format has largely remained the same since it was founded in 1953.
10. President Theodore Roosevelt criticized magazine journalists who exposed corruption in
government and business by calling them muckrakers.
11. In the early twentieth century, magazines were influential in instituting government survelliance
over businesses.
12. Some advertisers and companies have canceled ads when a magazine featured an unflattering or
critical article about a company or industry.
13. Because of its huge circulation and pass-along rate, Life magazine was actually a much better
advertising buy than network television in the 1970s.
14. In 1974, People became one of the first successful mass market magazines to be introduced in
decades.
15. Magazines have developed strategies for retaining advertisers, like publishing regional and
demographic editions.
16. Most magazines have a circulation of one million or more.
17. The circulation of Rolling Stone has dropped in recent years because readers objected to its
irreverent, left-wing viewpoint.
18. Although they resemble newspapers, supermarket tabloids are considered to be a type of
magazine.
19. The typical consumer magazine distributes far more copies through newsstand sales than
through subscriptions.
20. Professionals in the print magazine industry view the Internet as a death knell.
21. Large companies are increasingly beginning to dominate the magazine business.
22. For many years, Reader’s Digest was one of the most popular magazines in the world.
23. Alternative magazines publish information and viewpoints for readers not served by other
media channels.
24. The circulation of tabloid newspapers, such as the National Enquirer, are down from their peak
in the 1980s.
25. Magazines survived the coming of television in part by developing demographic and regional
editions.
26. Evergreen magazine subscriptions are those that are automatically renewed on the subscriber’s
credit card.
Multiple Choice
Note: The correct answer is asterisked.
27. Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine became an instant success in 1953, thanks in part to
28. The Saturday Evening Post was the first major magazine to appeal directly to
29. What factor had an effect on the dramatic growth in magazine circulation around the end of the
nineteenth century?
30. When Life and Look magazines were canceled in the early 1970s, their failure was the result of
all but the following:
31. Which popular magazine emerged in 1974 as a spin-off of a Time magazine section?
32. The average magazine contains about
33. In targeting audiences by age, the most dramatic recent success has come from magazines
aimed at
34. The New Yorker is an example of
35. Which is an example of a trade magazine?
36. Which magazine was the foremost outlet for photojournalism in the mid-twentieth century?
37. Which of the following magazines was designed as a general or mass audience magazine?
38. Which of the following is an example of a webzine?
39. TV Guide became so popular because
40. Of the following magazines, which has the largest circulation in the United States?
41. Magalogs are
42. The lifeblood of any magazine is what?
43. A national magazine with split-run editions
Fill in the Blank
44. National magazines whose advertising is tailored to subscribers and readers according to
occupation, class, and zip code are _________________ editions.
45. A type of magazine that addresses a wide variety of topics, __________________ magazines
are also aimed at a broad national audience.
46. __________________ subscriptions automatically renew on a credit card account unless
subscribers request that the automatic renewal be stopped.
Matching
Match the nineteenth-century magazines with their descriptions.
A. Founded by Sarah Josepha Hale
B. An oversized pictorial weekly
C. First U.S. magazine aimed at a large general-interest audience
D. Alternative magazine
47. The Saturday Evening Post
48. Ladies’ Magazine
49. The Nation
50. Life
Essay
51. How has the magazine industry adapted to the digital age?
52. What role did magazines play in social reform in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries?
53. When and why did some of the major general-interest magazines fail?
54. In what ways do magazines serve democratic ideals?
55. Do your favorite magazines define you primarily as a consumer or as a citizen?