The (Glorious) Story of Magazines
It is routine now to declare legacy institutions as in irreversible decline or already dead. I could have called this piece some variant of “The End of Magazines” because so many of them have been eviscerated as readers and advertisers abandoned the printed pages for the internet versions.
A decade ago, I wrote about finding the first issue of Esquire from 1933 in an attic box at home. I praised its glossy elegant look, and its contributors, among others, Hemingway, Ring Lardner, Dashiell Hammett, and cartoons, I wrote, with “shapely showgirls in lingerie.” It was called “The Quarterly for Men.” The cover price was $0.50. Esquire is still published. I am not a reader.
In this century, magazines in the classic Esquire style have increasingly struggled. Graydon Carter whose Vanity Fair was the quintessential magazine of Conde Nast’s golden era now edits Air Mail, a lively weekly of features, reviews with an upscale sensibility entirely for the web. It lands in my inbox on Saturday mornings.
So, is the age of the printed magazine really ending? No, The New Yorker in print circulates at well over a million and its readers span the age spectrum, from millennial to aged. It is said to be the most profitable magazine in the beleaguered Conde Nast portfolio. The web site generates its own daily copy and has a strong, but separate, identity.
The Economist’s global circulation in print is about one million with another 600,000 digital readers. The annual subscription is $225 but there are opening offers at lower cost. I read every issue and peek on the web for a preview on Friday mornings when the print magazine is released.
Our household is not, I acknowledge, typical. In addition to The New Yorker and The Economist, there is a steady stream of other publications that land in the mailbox in our lobby. There are also the magazines that are tucked into The New York Times and regularly in The Wall Street Journal. The fashion mags from these newspapers with expensive ads must be worth the trouble. I am definitely not their target audience.
Is there time to read all this stuff plus the daily perusal of social media? The last year has been unusually open. Truth be told, the print magazines do pile up and there is a slightly guilty sense that all that paper is being deployed and thrown away.
At New York’s Grolier Club now, there is an impressive exhibit called “Magazines and the American Experience” drawn from the vast collection of Steven Lomazow, M.D. Display cases have magazines of every sort. Number 1 in the exhibit is The New York Weekly Journal November 5–12, 1733 printed by John Peter Zenger, the ancestor of ambitious editors down to the present day. The Atlantic from 1861 is there as is The National Geographic from 1888 and the first issue of Vogue in 1892, all of which are still around. The New Yorker’s first cover in 1925 is essentially reproduced every year.
I was particularly struck by the display of magazines that were intended over time, as language usage evolved for colored, Negro, Black and African-American audiences. The other categories, including sports, entertainment and women appear to be geared mainly to White readers. Today it is expected that major publications will be designed for multi-cultural –diverse — communities. After 400 years, the racial integration of society, culture and journalism is still a work-in-progress.
The Grolier exhibit (47 East 60th street) closes April 24. It is free and you are asked to call ahead for tickets.
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What now for magazines?
The answer is very much debatable. The dominance of digital enterprises is generally assumed. The pioneer — Slate, founded by Microsoft about 25 years ago is now owned by Graham Holdings, the family that were the proprietors of The Washington Post. Other digital “brands” like HuffPo and BuzzFeed are discovering that their futures are not assured, once the initial funding runs out and they need paying customers and advertisers, just as magazines always have.
The luxury of spending months — what was called “lead time” preparing an issue has been replaced by constant updating and the challenge of meeting standards and urgency and, of course, financial stability.
None have become, as far as I can tell, as formidable in their fields as Time and Newsweek were in their heyday. There is no equivalent of Life, once the industry showcase for photography when video, Instagram and YouTube are so pervasive. The major national newspapers, lacking in print advertising, have created magazine style features and in print, long stories to fill the empty spaces.
I don’t fully agree with the consensus favoring the eventual triumph of digital over the sort of stuff in those museum displays. Print is more resilient than is commonly acknowledged as long as you are willing to pay for the pleasure. The newsstand price of The New Yorker (actually newsstands now sell more chewing gum and lottery tickets) is $8.99 a copy. Web subscriptions are less costly which, in principle, make them more accessible.
The past of magazines is glorious. The present is in most respects collected writing, images and design will endure. But few if any of these pixels will be in museum cases a century from now.
