Printe Media Overview: Magazines

Magazines

HISTORY

In the colonial era the word magazine meant a warehouse or depository, and early American magazines patterned themselves after that model, subsequently offering up a potpourri of opinion pieces, facts, and human interest features. Even though revolutionary-era magazines, almost all with a strong political bias, were written to an educated, literate, and urban audience, most magazines folded simply because they couldn’t make money. But their eventual legacy was to encourage literary and artistic expression and to unify the colonies during America’s struggle for independence.


After The Revolution

Magazines following the war continued to be directed to a highly select and well-educated audience, and the content remained more or less political in nature. Though the roots of some magazine types can be traced back to this era (such as news weeklies), most post-revolutionary magazines were in a transition period in terms of discovering appropriate editorial content for large and loyal audiences, which in turn presumably would lead to profitability.


The Penny Press Era

During the period roughly between 1820s - 1860s, magazines began flourishing by appealing to a mass audience, largely paralleling the emerging strategies of penny press newspapers. New target markets for magazines included the increasingly literate middle class, women, audiences attracted to sensationalism and social crusades, and those people who wanted to read all the best of what American writers were writing. Harper’s Weekly became famous for its woodcut illustrations of Civil War scenes and its crusade against political corruption in New York City, then under the control of William “Boss” Tweed in 1870.


The Magazine Boom

Between 1860 and 1900 there was almost a 700 percent increase in the number of new magazines (260 to 1800). This boom was due in large part to:

. more available venture capital
. improved printing techniques
. lower magazine prices
. the Postal Act of 1879, which gave magazines discounted mailing rate privileges
It was now possible for editors to aim for a national market on a mass scale. The Ladies Home Journal, for example, circulation 700,000 by 1893, was one of several new publications that demonstrated that they could be sold for less money than they cost to make yet still make a good profit by delivering large audiences to advertisers. The general crusading spirit of the times spilled over onto the pages of leading magazines.

Some magazines used investigative reporting techniques to highlight the social and industrial evils often caused by big business; President Teddy Roosevelt called these magazines muckrakers. Their editorial targets included such stalwart institutions as Standard Oil, the U.S. Senate, railroads, and the International Harvester Company.


Between the Great Wars, WWI and WWII

The most striking magazine trend during the 20th century was a move toward specialization, which was given a large impetus by the increasing importance of national advertising. During this period three distinct magazine types emerged: (1) the digest, (Reader’s Digest), (2) news weeklies (Time), and (3) the pictorial magazine (Life and Look).


The Postwar Period

Publishers in the postwar era continued their belief that the best way to make a profit was to deliver specialized content to narrowly defined audiences for the goal of providing tightly targeted national markets for advertisers. A significant increase in American leisure time, liberal views, new interests, urban lifestyles, and an emerging ethnic identity spawned unique opportunities for a wide variety of new editorial content such as Golf Digest, Playboy, Popular Boating, the New Yorker, Ebony, and Essence.


The Contemporary Magazine Industry

The 1980s – 1990s saw several new trends in the magazine industry:

. greater concentration of ownership (by 1999 the top five publishers accounted for 1/3 of all
magazine revenues)
. single-copy sales generally declined as magazines found it harder to attract readers
. magazines continued to specialize for increasingly smaller and more homogeneous groups
. more magazines continued to go online
. the largest magazine publisher (Time Warner) merged with the world’s largest online
service and Internet provider, America Online (AOL)


Symbiosis: Magazines in the Digital Age

Contrary to early beliefs, the Internet is proving to be quite complementary to the traditional print magazine industry. At the start of the new century, almost all major print magazines had an online counterpart; a 1999 survey of consumer magazines found that only seven percent of all major magazines did not have their own website.
Most experts agree that it would be difficult to start a new magazine without also starting a parallel website. The print version and the online version of a magazine complement each other in various ways, such as referring readers to their websites for additional information and longer versions of featured articles. Website visitors, on the other hand, can subscribe online to the printed version. In addition, the website can be used to extend a magazine’s brand and to attract new readers to its print version.

Many consumers are attracted first by the content on the website and then search out the print magazine. In 1999, more than 45,000 subscriptions to Prevention were generated online.


Additional Revenue Streams

Many magazine publishers use their websites for e-commerce, often selling various products generated by their parent company such as books, CDs, and DVDs. Some magazines have formed partnerships with online retailers and make money by taking a small cut of the retailer’s sales or simply charging a flat service charge fee to the retailer.

In addition, web-based companies, or “dot-coms” have become a significant source of advertising revenue, accounting for about eight percent of all magazine advertising in 1999 compared with just two percent in 1998.


Reverse Launches

Some online ventures have started their own print magazines, such as e-Bay, Internet Life, Space.com Illustrated, and Yahoo! The advantage to this group is that they can utilize their web sites to promote their print offspring.


Print to Portal

Emerging technologies, such as scanning bar codes imbedded in articles or advertisements, are promising to make it easier to link the printed page to web pages in order to give consumers more details on features or advertised goods and services.



DEFINING FEATURES OF MAGAZINES

• more so than any other medium, attract and hold specialized audiences

• the one medium most in tune with social, economic, and cultural trends

• have the power to influence social trends

• offer a convenient high-quality format of portability and outstanding graphics

ORGANIZATION OF THE MAGAZINE INDUSTRY

One problem in discussing the magazine industry is deciding exactly what a magazine is. The dictionary defines a magazine as a “periodical publication, usually with a paper cover, containing miscellaneous articles and often illustrations and photographs.”

It’s estimated that there are 11,000 to12,000 magazines now being published in the United States, but their editorial content varies so widely that classifying them by category is difficult. Here we will employ two organizational schemes.

The first involves classifying magazines by content into five major categories:

1. general consumer magazines
2. business publications
3. literary reviews and academic journals
4. newsletters
5. public relations magazines

The second scheme divides the industry into three traditional components of manufacturing:

1. production
2. distribution
3. retailing

Content Categories

General Consumer Magazines

A consumer magazine is one that can be acquired by anyone through a subscription, single-copy purchase, or by obtaining a free copy. These magazines are called consumer magazines because readers can generally buy the products and services advertised in their pages. Standard Rate and Data Service (SRDS), a monthly directory of magazine advertising rates and other related information about magazines, lists 50 content groupings of consumer magazines.

Business Publications

Business publications, or trade publications, serve a particular business, industry, or profession. They are not sold on newsstands, and their readership is largely limited to those in a specific business or profession. Business Publications Rates and Data, a companion service to SRDS, lists over 4,000 different business magazine titles. Some of these magazines are called vertical publications since they report on all aspects of a business or industry, Pulp and Paper, for example, which is a paper mill industry publication. Other publications are termed horizontal magazines because they deal with a certain business function no matter in what industry it exists, such as a magazine on selling which could be targeted to sales people in all industries.
Business publishers are also now engaged in supplying databases and PC-based bulletin board systems to their business clients.

Literary Reviews and Academic Journals

This group is comprised of hundreds of small, non-profit publications, usually under 10,000 or so in circulation. Most of these magazines are funded by universities, foundations, charity groups, and professional organizations, which usually do not accept significant advertising.

Newsletters

Commercial newsletters are characterized by their relatively small size (about 4-8 pages), their highly specialized audiences, and their professional look. Most are sold by subscription, and most carry expensive fees ($200-$800 per year is not uncommon). While their content ranges from broad to narrow, they’re usually focused on a specific business, government agency, or industry. Most newsletters are also targeted to content “insiders.” Examples include: the Daily Labor Report, Aerospace Daily, Oil Spill Intelligence Report, and the Media Monitor.

Public Relations Magazines

Public relation magazines are published by sponsoring companies and are designed to be circulated among a company’s internal public (employees and dealers) or to an external public such as customers and stockholders. These magazines are almost always free, being funded by the parent company, and rarely accept advertising. PR magazines have their own professional organization, the International Association of Business Communicators.


Function Categories

A second way to categorize the magazine industry is to divide it by functions into the industry’s three main segments: production, distribution, and retail.

The Production Function

This part of the industry consists of about 2000-3000 publishers, and encompasses all the elements necessary to produce a magazine: copy, artwork, photos, titles, printing, and binding.

The Distribution Function

This part of the industry handles the complex job of getting magazine to readers. As with newspapers, a magazine’s total circulation = subscription + newsstand sales. There are two types of circulation:

Paid circulation: means readers pay to get the magazine; this method has two advantages:

. they qualify for lower second-class postal rates
. subscriptions provide a partial revenue source
On the negative side, paid circulation magazines, which include most consumer magazines, incur large costs in promotion campaigns to increase subscriptions. They also have the added expense of collecting and processing the subscription payments. Promotion methods range from door-to-door sales, to the well-known Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes, to magazine “blow in” cards.

Controlled circulation: this type sets specific qualifications for those who get the magazine;
the advantages to this circulation category include:

. publications can reach everyone in a targeted field
. they avoid the high costs of subscription promotions and processing
On the minus side they get no subscription revenue and don’t qualify for lower postal rates. Most magazines in this category are targeted at people able to influence a specific business, industry, or organization.

Circulation and Distribution

No matter which method a publisher chooses, total circulation remains the key ingredient, because the larger the circulation the more a publisher can charge for advertising space. For paid circulation magazines, distributing copies is relatively easy; the difficult and expensive part is getting—and keeping—subscribers. Magazines employ no less than 14 methods to build their subscription lists.

Single-copy distribution to newsstands is a multi-step process, but one in which the publisher works only with a national distributor. Four national distributors, each of which handles 50 or more titles, work with all the nation’s publishers. A national distributor then hands off its titles to wholesalers who sell magazines and paperback books within a specified geographical area. In any given month a wholesaler might receive 500 to 1,000 magazines to distribute to dealers.

The Retail Function

Accounting for the largest slice of the approximately 14,000 retail outlets for the periodical industry, supermarkets handled 44 percent of all sales in 1998. This market has become so important to magazines that publishers will often pay about $20 per checkout rack to have their titles prominently displayed. And unlike few other industries, unsold items (magazines copies) can be returned to the wholesaler for a full credit refund.


MAGAZINE OWNERSHIP

Recent mergers and acquisitions have resulted in a magazine industry dominated by large corporations, though concentrated ownership is not as pronounced as it is in the newspaper or broadcast industries. Three of the top ten publishers, however, are foreign controlled.




PRODUCING THE MAGAZINE


Departments and Staff

A glance at the masthead (the page that lists the magazine’s personnel) will generally show that although there are many variations, a typical magazine is headed by a publisher who generally sets the policy for the publication while overseeing four main departments: (1) circulation, (2) advertising, (3) production, and (4) editorial. The publisher is also responsible for budgeting, maintaining a healthy advertising position, keeping circulation high, and keeping a consistent editorial direction to the magazine. That said, most publishers let the editor-in-chief make most decisions concerning the regular content of the magazine.

The Circulation Department

This department is responsible for getting new readers and keeping the current ones satisfied. Responsible to the Circulation Director are generally three sub-department heads:

. subscription manager, in charge of increasing subscription base
. single-copy sales manager, who works largely with national distributors and wholesalers
. subscription-fulfillment manager, responsible for deliveries, renewals, address changes,
new subscribers, reader complaints, and so forth

The Advertising and Sales Division

These are the people responsible for selling magazine space to potential advertisers; sub-departments may include:

. sales promotion manager, who creates new programs to enhance sales
. sales staff, the people who do the actual space sales
. research director, who studies audience demographics of interest to advertisers

The Production Department

These are the people responsible for the actual printing and binding of the magazine.

The Editorial Department

These are the people responsible for all the non-advertising content of the magazine, usually run by the editor-in-chief of the magazine who is in charge of the magazine’s overall editorial direction. Day-to-day editorial operations are generally run by the managing editor.



Publishing the Magazine

The first step in putting out a magazine is planning for upcoming issues. The next step is to convert those ideas into concrete articles, pictures, and illustrations using a variety of in-house and freelance staff members. The next step is to create a magazine dummy, a conceptual plan or blueprint of the final publication generally using a miniature visual mockup. Editorial and production schedules are assigned, copy and artwork deadlines set, and the work begun. Many schedules will overlap since the staff generally works on several issues simultaneously.



MAGAZINE ECONOMICS

There are four basic sources of magazine revenues:

1. subscriptions
2. single-copy sales
3. advertising
4. ancillary services such as e-commerce, custom publishing, and database assistance
At the start of the century, the magazine industry, including distributors, wholesalers, and advertising agencies, took in some $28 billion in revenues. In general, magazine subscriptions were growing and advertising revenue was increasing across the board. That good news was tempered by a 15 percent decline in single-copy sales.

Other major economic trends include:

. retailers and distributors have begun to limit orders to quick-moving titles; slower and newer
magazine titles are being charged premium distribution rates, if accepted at all

. ad revenues cover about 67 percent of a magazine’s income, subscription sales about 23
percent, with single-copy sales accounting for the remaining 10 percent; these figures
can, of course, change radically depending on the nature of the publication itself.

. from the consumer’s standpoint, magazines are getting more expensive

. cover prices have risen sharply

. magazines are costing more to produce, the two largest factors being paper and postage






FEEDBACK

The Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) is responsible for reporting readership figures for both newspapers and general circulation magazines. ABC issues its twice-annual report in June and December. Figures in that report include:

. the magazine’s average paid circulation
. the magazine’s rate base, the number of buyers the magazines guarantee and also the
figure used to compute their advertising rates
. circulation per issue in the last six months
. state-by-state circulation totals, and a report on five-year trends
. if applicable, ABC also reports the number of visitors to a magazine’s website
The Business Publication Audit (BPA) provides somewhat similar services, but concentrates its efforts largely in the business and trade magazine fields. Unlike the ABC, the BPA provides additional information about the occupations of BPA-audited magazines.


Total Audience Data

Other organizations, such as Mediamark Research Inc. (MRI), provide greater detail about audiences. That information includes:

. primary audience, made up of subscribers and those who buy the magazine at newsstands
. pass-along audience, the people who get the magazine in a second-hand capacity


Magazine Audiences

Total and accurate audience statistics, unlike single magazine figures, are difficult to come by because it’s difficult to define exactly what qualifies as a magazine. But if we listen to ABC, total magazine circulation stands at around 360 million copies (80 percent subscription and 20 percent newsstand sales). A strong positive sign: total circulation appears to have exceeded adult population growth during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. General readership profiles:

. 94 percent of U.S. adults read at least one copy of a magazine a month (most read more)
. adults read or look though an average of ten magazines a month
. 28 percent of adults spend about 25 minutes reading a magazine each day
. the typical magazine reader is more educated and usually more affluent than a non-reader
. magazine readers tend to be joiners