978-1305580985 Chapter 4

Chapter 4 – Magazines: Chasing the

Audience

Chapter Outline

• Magazines Reflect Trends and Culture

• Colonial Magazines Compete with Newspapers

• Magazines Travel Beyond Local Boundaries

• Publishers Locate New Readers

Women’s Issues

Social Crusades

Fostering the Arts

Political Commentary

Postal Act Helps Magazines Grow

• McClure’s Launches Investigative Journalism

• The New Yorker and Time Succeed Differently

Harold Ross and The New Yorker

Henry Luce’s Empire: Time

• Specialized Magazines Take Over

• Companies Consolidate Ownership and Define Readership

• Magazines Divide into Three Types

• Magazines at Work

• Magazines Compete for Readers in Crowded Markets

• Readers Represent a Valuable Audience for Advertisers

• Digital Editions Offer New Publishing Outlets

• Magazines’ Future Is Digital

Suggested Activities, Discussions, and Exercises

1. Ask the students, alone or in groups, to create an idea for a magazine.

Ask them to discuss target audience, competition, pricing, anticipated

circulation, and possible advertisers.

2. Assign your students a comparison paper on two issues of the same

magazine that are at least 25 years apart (for example, a 1985 and a 2010

issue of The New Yorker). Criteria for comparison should include price,

length, editorial approach, advertising, layout and design.

3. Invite a writer or an editor from a local magazine to come to class and

speak about their experience with the profession.

4. Ask the students to browse an online magazine, such as Time, Salon,

Sports Illustrated, or The New Yorker, and download two or three articles

that interest them. Then have them write a paper on their findings and

experiences with an online magazine, or have them break into small

groups and discuss what they found. Have the students discuss how

Internet magazines are changing the magazine industry.

5. Ask students to imagine themselves as freelance writers. Ask each

student to think of a freelance article idea and to pitch it to the editor of an

appropriate magazine with a pitch letter, an outline, and a sample of the

writing style.

Activity Pages

Use the following activity pages as class handouts for exercises and to

accompany some of the classroom Ideas described above.

Alone on a Desert Isle

You will be living alone on an isolated desert island for a year, with no access to

the Internet or any mass media except the magazines to which you subscribe

(they will be air–dropped to you). Using an imaginary $100 budget, choose your

magazines, noting the annual subscription prices (research this for accurate

prices) and the reasons for your choices. Be prepared to discuss the assignment

in class.

Magazine/Annual Subscription Price: Rationale:

Magazine Guest Speaker

Invite a reporter or an editor from a local magazine to discuss how the magazine

operates—how it determines its stories, how it makes decisions about story

placement and photographs, how it balances the needs of advertisers with those

of readers and much more. In class, brainstorm ideas for questions to ask—some

suggestions follow. Take good notes and be prepared to write an essay about

what you learn.

• What is the proper spelling of your

name? What is your official title?

• How did you become a journalist?

What did you do as a student and young

person that brought you here?

• How did you come to your magazine?

How long have you been there? Have

you had different positions at your

magazine? What were they?

• What is your job now? What do you do

each day?

• How does your magazine decide what

is important to cover on a regular basis?

Who makes the final decisions about

what is included in the magazine?

• Who are the people reading your

magazine? Is there such a thing as a

“typical” reader?

• How often does the magazine publish?

What is its circulation?

• How many pages/sections are in the

magazine? Which are the most

important ones?

• Is your magazine on the Internet? How

is the Internet version different from your

printed magazine?

• What are the best–read sections of

your magazine?

• How much advertising does your

magazine have? How do you weigh the

needs of advertisers versus the needs

of readers?

• How do your ad costs compare to

those of newspapers? What does a full–

page, color, back cover ad cost for a

one–time run at your magazine?

• How many full–time staffers work on

your magazine? How many freelancers?

• How many editors work on your

magazine? What are their assignments?

• How do you assign photographs and

art for the magazine? Who is

responsible for those assignments?

• Tell us about a major story you

recently covered or edited. How did it

come about? How was it handled? How

many different people participated to get

that story into the magazine?

• What are some of the magazine’s

biggest challenges in the 21st century?

• What do you like best about your job?

What do you like least?

Create Your Own Magazine

Congratulations! You’re going to start your own magazine—printed or online or both.

You must create a business plan for a magazine either by yourself or with a group of

students, as assigned. Please include answers to the following questions. Print your

answers and bring them to class to share.

• The concept: In no more than two paragraphs, describe the concept of your magazine—how

it differs from others now published, and what areas of interest it will cover. How often will the

magazine be published?

• Editorial need: Clearly state why your new magazine should be published. (Hint: Be concrete

and specific. Avoid generic statements such as “The world needs this magazine.” or “None of

the other home magazines covers the field well.”)

• Editorial content: This contains the nuts and bolts of your plan. List four specific things that

your magazine will provide to its readers (in–depth interviews, high–quality photographs and so

on). Then make a list of at least six specific stories that the first issue might contain. Come up

with actual headlines for each story (such as, “How To Redecorate a Bathroom for Less Than

$500” or “China: A Far East Adventure”).

• Reader potential: Answer the following questions:

1. What is the age group of your target audience?

2. What are their demographics (how much money do they make, are they married, do they

have families, what do they do for a living, what products do they buy, what other magazines do

they read)?

3. How many subscribers/readers realistically do you expect to attract? How soon?

4. What are the circulation objectives of your magazine for the first three or four years? How will

you distribute the magazine? Will it be free, sold on newsstands, by subscription, online or a

combination of these? How much will each issue cost on the newsstand? How much is a

subscription, either printed or online?

• Advertising potential: Perhaps the most important item. You need to anticipate primary and

secondary advertising clients. Who will you approach first? Why should they advertise with you?

List at least five target ad areas for your magazine (automotive industry, cosmetics, sports

equipment, alcoholic beverages).

• Key staffers: If you’re working with classmates, provide names and their positions on the

magazine. List the publisher, editor–in–chief, art director, advertising director, circulation

manager, and production manager. State why each person would be perfect for his or her job.

• Money: How much will you need to make ends meet for the first two years? Factor in salaries,

printing costs, office expenses, circulation costs, mailing, as well as income from advertising,

subscriptions, single copy sales. Where will you get that money?

After brainstorming: Compile all the answers into a written report to present to the class. To

accompany your presentation, you might wish to make mock–ups of the cover, the logo, ads,

magazine pages, or promotional materials to attract readers.

Chapter 4 Quiz

Multiple Choice

1. The first truly national magazine with a large circulation was:

a. American Magazine

b. The Saturday Evening Post

c. Life

d. The New Yorker

2. Magazines widened their audiences in the 1800s by:

a. discouraging political debate.

b. translating the essays of famous German and French writers.

c. catering to women.

d. All of these answers are correct.

3. W. E. B. Du Bois:

a. edited The Nation.

b. began Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in 1850.

c. founded and edited The Crisis, the NAACP’s magazine that continues to publish

today.

d. was one of Samuel S. McClure’s famous muckrakers.

4. Investigative reporting was pioneered in the early 1900s by which magazine?

a. McClure’s Magazine

b. The Nation

c. National Review

d. The New Yorker

5. The Postal Act of 1879:

a. crippled the magazine industry until the tax was repealed in 1894.

b. was hotly debated and finally rejected by Congress.

c. essentially censored certain content by controlling distribution.

d. lowered the mailing rates for magazines.

6. “Muckrakers” were America’s first:

a. scandalmongers.

b. agriculture writers.

c. yellow journalists.

d. investigative reporters.

7. Which of the following is not part of the empire Henry Luce built?

a. Time

b. Fortune

c. Sports Illustrated

d. The New Yorker

ANS: D

8. The most striking characteristic of magazine development in the second half of

the 20th century has been a trend toward:

a. fiction.

b. targeted audiences.

c. news digests.

d. general-interest reporting.

9. From the beginning, ____________ have been magazines’ best audience.

a.

recent immigrants

b.

single high income professionals

c.

people living in rural areas

d.

Women

10. Which of the following is true of magazine economics today?

a. circulation of most magazines is up

b. the number of magazines being published is increasing

c. advertising rates are down

d. none of these is true

True/False

1. Ida Tarbell’s most famous series of muckraking articles examined the practices of

John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company.

2. Over the past 20 years, magazines have begun to rely less on freelance writers.

ANS: F

3. Today, men are the largest purchasers of print magazines.

4. Time Warner’s Sports Illustrated magazine was first published by Henry Luce.

a.

True

b.

False

ANS: T

5. According to the Impact/Money box, “Digital Cracks 50 Percent of Ad Revenue at

Wired Magazine,” roughly 90 percent of Wired’s digital ad revenue is coming from the

traditional website.

ANS: T

Essay Questions

1. Why do most new magazines fail? What must publishers do to make magazines

popular with audiences?

2. Describe where the stories in most magazines today come from—who proposes

the subjects, gathers the information, and writes the stories? What assurances

do you believe magazine readers have about the qualifications of those who

write the stories and the credibility of the information and ideas?

3. Discuss the relationship between the subject matter of tightly targeted special

interest magazines and advertising in magazines. What has happened to

advertising rates, and why? Why do advertisers see the readers of special

interest magazines as a profitable audience?

4. Discuss the social development role of magazines in America from 1830 to 1910,

mentioning key personalities, publications, issues, and achievements.

5. Discuss the three categories of today’s magazines described in Chapter 4,

explaining the specialization, strengths and financial structure of each category.

What are the editorial pressures that each type of magazine face?