Magazines, Development and it's Characteristics, Role of Scope of Magazines

Magazine

A magazine is a periodical publication containing a variety of articles, generally financed by advertising, purchased by readers, or both. 

Magazines are typically published weekly, monthly, bimonthly or quarterly, with a date on the cover that is later than the date it is actually published. They are often printed in colour on coated paper, and are bound with a soft cover.

Unlike newspapers, magazines are periodical publications carrying non-news items. Andrew Bradford’s American Magazine and Benjamin Fralkin’s General Magazine are considered as the first magazines. They were published in 1740s.

Earlier magazines were as expensive as books. So they were affordable only to the wealthy people. Those days purchasing magazines was a status symbol. Invention of power press led to the exponential growth of magazines across the world.

Most of the early magazines were started by newspaper organizations. Magazines are considered as mass medium that spread culture and nationalism.

 Magazine is originally a French word which means storehouse. In journalistic terms, magazine is a collection of materials like stories, ads, poems, and other items that editors believe will interest audiences.

The Spectator published Joseph Addison of England in 1711 is considered to be the first full-fledged magazine in English.

Regular publication of magazines started in the United Kingdom in the eighteenth century as a result of enhanced freedom permitted by Parliament, for public discussion and arguments about government. The earlier magazines focused on political and literary affairs.

Development of Magazines

Rise in education, innovation of cost effective production, advances printing technology, new techniques in photography, transportation facilities, emergence of new writers, growth of reading culture, political freedom to discuss social issues and inclusion of diverse content and huge population growth, rise in advertisement revenue prompted mass production and distribution of magazines, first in Europe and America, then in eastern countries like India in the middle of 19th century.

After their incarnation as a mass medium, magazines started to attract special segments of the audience like women, children, professionals etc.

The first trend was the rise of women magazines. The most important milestone was the publication of Godey’s Lady’s Book launched by Louis A Godey in 1830 in the USA. It had more 150,000 readers in 1850.

Industrial growth after industrial revolution and market boom led to an influx of advertisements to mass media. Magazines benefited from this opportunity.

 Frank Munsey, an American magazine owner showed advertising could pay most of production costs of a magazine. His low pricing attracted millions. He used hose large numbers to attract more advertisers. This is how magazine industry expanded as lucrative business in media sector.

Sensational news, celebrity lives, muckraking, fictions like novels, short stories etc were the trends in magazines in the early 20th century.

 In the later part of the 20th century, wide reach of television posed challenges to magazines as television programming imitated magazines in their content and presentation targeting magazine audiences.

Characteristics of Magazines

  • What makes magazines different from books and newspapers? Magazines are not published daily like newspapers. Periodicity f magazines are longer than that of normal newspapers. In general, they are published weekly, biweekly or monthly.
  • Unlike loose sheets ofnewspapers, magazines are produced as bound volumes.
  • Most of the magazines are meant for light reading and mainly for entertainment, rather than serious reading for information gathering as in the case of books and newspapers.
  • Magazines contain diverse content ranging from poems to comics and cartoons to photo feature.
  • Magazines most often than not target special, segmented audience while newspapers are for general readers.
  • Magazines generally focus on special areas like culture, politics, current affairs, health, wealth, women’s and children’s life.
  • Magazines printed in high quality papers as they are to be used for a longer period. Newspapers are printed using cheap newsprints as they are meant for one-day use.
  • Normally, magazines do not have different editions as in the case of newspapers. They have only one print cycle, except for some international news and financial magazines like NewsWeek, Time, Forbes, and Fortune which publish various regional editions for Asia, Africa.
  • Magazines provide room for in-depth analysis and criticism as the publishers get more time for preparation.
  • Magazines are easier to preserve than newspapers

Role and Scope of Magazines

 Like newspapers, magazines also play vital role in defining modern society. Role and scope of magazines are to judged in terms of their content and focus, not in a generalized way.

General interest magazines and cultural and literary magazines form a social mindset that shapes our cultural identity and consciousness.

 In a democratic society political and cultural magazines trigger heated discussions on vital issues that touch the lives of the marginalized and the downtrodden.

 On the other hand, consumer magazines prompt the society to purchase more, consume more and perish.

Same is the case fashion magazines also. They create media hype about ballooned celebrity lives and misguide the audience. They only help the big business of fashion world and related cultural and entertainment industry.

Women magazines’ general objective is women empowerment. But, this basic task is not performed in most cases as magazines are succumbed to advertising pressure. For example, women magazines publish advertisements depicting ‘ideal’ body images of women considering them as visual treat for the male audience.