Project: History of the Book, Volume 5 -- Magazines (Chapter 7) Reflecting and Shaping American Culture: Magazines Since World War II David Abrahamson Northwestern University The most notable feature of the narrative arc of the American magazine in the five decades following Word War II is a major discontinuity. After more than a half-century of ascendance dating back to the commercial origins of the national advertising model in 1890s, the large general-interest magazine lost its dominant position. The late 1950s and 1960s saw a major transformation of the American consumer magazine publishing industry: the decline of many large mass-market, general-interest publications and the emergence of a wide variety of smaller "special-interest" magazines focused on specific leisure and recreational subjects and aimed at specialized audiences. Just as the enormous mass-audience magazines reflected and reinforced both the broad wartime social accord and the postwar consensus of the 1950s, the rise of the special- interest magazines can be considered evidence of a little-noticed but significant value shift in America in the 1960s. This argument suggests that, for millions of readers of successful special-interest magazines during this period, the quest of the age may not have been for social justice or political reform, but rather for personal fulfillment. Freed from wartime exigencies and the conformist strictures of the 1950s, many Americans found themselves newly empowered by affluence, education, and the possibility of social mobility. But they were also cut off from traditional communal sources of identity and social class, and so many turned to active leisure pursuits to add coherence, status, and meaning to their lives. An important reflector and shaper of those new interests were the specialized magazines. In addition to these externalities of broad sociocultural change, the transformation of the American magazine industry in the second decade after World War II was also the result of a number of internal economic factors. Competition from television and apparent mismanagement played a role in the demise of many mass-market magazines, while new publishing technology and a major shift in national advertising toward segmented marketing favored the development of smaller, more specialized magazines. Magazine publishers who understood these developments and focused their efforts on special-interest magazines in the 1960s and 1970s enjoyed significant advantages in both circulation and advertising income -- and hence, commercial success. As a point of departure, a key turning point in the evolution of the twentieth-century media was the rise of television in the 1950s. By 1961 television would reign supreme as the primary source of information for Americans about the world, and as a result, by that decade's end, the character and structure of the U.S. magazine publishing industry would be effectively transformed. By the early 1970s three of the once-dominant general-interest titles, Life, Look, and the Saturday Evening Post, lost to television significant portions of both their national advertising incomes and their audiences' loyalty and were all forced to cease publication. [1] It soon became apparent that a new, revolutionary, genre of magazine, the "special-interest" publication, would flourish in their place. Edited for specific, smaller audiences, addressing particular reader interests related to specific leisure activities, special-interest magazines with titles as diverse as the nation's newfound avocational pursuits (Boating, Car and Driver, Cycle, Flying, Golf, Popular Electronics, Popular Photography, Skiing, Stereo Review, Tennis, etc.) blossomed during the 1960s. In retrospect, it can be argued that they had two distinct advantages: Unlike their general-audience brethren, they were not in competition with television for mass-market advertising dollars; and perhaps more importantly, the nature and specificity of their subjects enjoyed a unique resonance with the underlying temper of the times. Virtually all communication media include key societal aspects that both reflects and shapes the social actualities of their time. Perhaps even more than newspapers, which are geographically limited, and the broadcast media, which are largely derivative -- amplifying rather than creating social and cultural trends -- magazines reflect and shape their times. In this sense, then, the emergence of the special-interest magazine in the 1960s was both a product of and contributor to major sociocultural and economic changes in postwar America. This shift in the dominant value set might be called "The Other 1960s." It both provided the societal context from which modern special- interest magazines arose and was significantly furthered by their success. [2] To a large extent, the unprecedented economic growth following World War II caused these changes. This economic prosperity contributed to a large sense of social conformity that characterized the 1950s. However, while the plentitude continued with the arrival of the 1960s, the social consensus did not. America underwent a concurrent social change in the early 1960s: Less concerned with political aspirations, the social transformation was driven instead by a desire for personal fulfillment and defined by new notions of identity and individualism, class and community, and leisure consumption. For many Americans, the social unity of the 1950s gave way to a cult of "domestic privatism." The crucial determinants of the postwar success of the specialized magazine may have been the interaction between the larger sociocultural forces and the smaller operational considerations both within the industry and at individual enterprises. And it is these factors -- the pattern of larger forces driving social change, as well as the details of both changing industry norms and the specific magazine responses -- that can help illuminate both America and its magazines. The progress of the American magazine through the twentieth century can, for the purposes of historical analysis, be divided into four major eras. Two periods leading up to mid-century might be called The Magazine's Triumph as a Commercial Enterprise (1900-1920) and The Golden Age of Mass Magazines (1920- 1950). Two other eras, The Rise of the Specialized Magazine (1950-1990), Magazines as New Media (1990-present), follow. The first twenty years of the twentieth century saw the emergence of modern magazine publishing. Specific technological and commercial developments played a role in this transformation. Economies of scale provided by new high- speed printing presses, as well as improvements in photo-engraving technology, made both larger press runs and higher-quality reproduction affordable. The prospect of marked increases in readership became a reality once distribution networks could be established based on a newly completed national railroad system, made possible by the national standardization of track widths in the mid-1880s. Circulation growth was also encouraged by favorable postal rates. Explicitly intended as a subsidy for magazines, the creation of the second- class mailing permit in 1879 and an additional lowering of its rates six years later, as well as the establishment of Rural Free Delivery in 1897, significantly reduced the cost of delivering magazines to their growing national readerships. The most important factor in shaping both the form and content of the twentieth-century magazine was the advent around 1900 of national advertising. With the rise of nationally branded consumer goods and a significant shift from retail advertising, largely the province of newspapers, to that placed by manufacturers, national advertising quickly became an essential source of revenue for magazines. Inherent in the triumph of the magazine as a large-scale commercial enterprise was the widespread validation of the advertising-based model of magazine publishing. The second twentieth-century era preceding the postwar period began after World War I and ended in 1950s, and it might be termed a "golden age." Indeed, in the brief span of fifteen years between 1922 and 1937 a large variety of significant magazines were established, many, but not all, of which still flourish at century's end. These included Reader's Digest (founded 1922), Time (1923), Liberty (1924), the New Yorker (1925), Fortune (1930), Esquire (1933), Newsweek (1933), U.S. News (1933), Life (1936), and Look (1937). In the years immediately following World War II, America's magazine industry, led by the premier mass-market flagships, Life, Look, and the Saturday Evening Post, reflected the growing material assurance resulting from World War II. The result was a social transformation unmatched since the Industrial Revolution. As in that earlier reshaping of society, the engine of change was economic growth. In the fifteen years following the war, America's gross national product increased by 250 percent; consumption of personal services, 300 percent; and new construction, 900 percent. By 1960 per capita income was more than one third higher than even the boom year of 1945. [3] One notable aspect of this reshaping of society is the degree to which magazines came to serve as markers of the prevailing social realities. The United States emerged from the Depression and World War II posed on the cusp of unparalleled affluence; an unprecedented percentage of the population -- over two-thirds, by most measures -- would soon claim membership in an expanding middle class. As both a product of and a catalyst for this sociocultural transformation, general-interest publications, enjoyed a special place in American life. By helping to both define and reinforce the communal, consensual, and conformist values of postwar society, magazines became the dominant medium for the popular discourse of the nation. However, inherent in this new consumer ethos was a sense of conformity. It is clear that the immediate postwar years were a time of unusual consensus. A Social Ethic had replaced the Protestant Ethic, and "belongingness" had become all-important. Suburban families seemed animated by a need for community approval. "Friendliness" and "cooperation" were the watchwords, while most manifestations of personal eccentricity were discouraged. Central to this newfound Social Ethic was family life, which, with both its internal dynamics and external concerns, may have been one of the crucial social determinants of the era. The success and stability of the traditional nuclear family so closely associated with the 1950s may, in retrospect, have been something of a historical anomaly. The high marriage and birthrates and stable divorce rates of the period were clearly a departure from the long-term demographic trends. The annual birth rate continued to climb during most of the 1950s, peaking in 1957, more than a decade after World War II. [6] The resulting importance of the traditional family and the roles it encompassed were clearly defined. Regardless of its underlying causes, it is clear that, for the expanding middle class, the consensual imperatives of the 1950s were a central element of their Happy Days. And it was those same assumptions that the major mass-circulation magazines of the era operated under -- and underscored. The mass magazines of the period promoted the satisfied, unruffled view of the world. Life, for example, devoted an entire issue in the late 1950s to "The Good Life," arguing that by using their newfound affluence "to pursue true happiness, Americans can raise standards of excellence higher than anything in the world's past." Much of these magazines' success hinged on their capacity to reinforce the core, mainstream values of their time. In the years right after World War II, the dominance of the general- interest magazine seemed absolute, and both its advertising and editorial content reflected the consensual, communal spirit of the age. Because the mass-audience publications were predicated on a sense of national community, all had an editorial interest in perpetuating the status quo. The entire contents of virtually all of the general-interest magazines of the period reflected this faith in the status quo. One article in Look in early 1960 included the results of a poll that suggested that most Americans "naturally expect to go on enjoying their peaceable, plentiful existence right through the Sixties and maybe forever." [7] But as it turned out -- for both America and its magazines -- "forever" proved to be a surprisingly short span of time. Of the 1950s nine prominent mass magazines (Collier's, Ladies Home Journal, Liberty, Life, Look, Reader's Digest, Saturday Evening Post, Time, and Women's Home Companion), six had ceased publication by the early 1970s. Three principal causes led to these failures: competition from television, mismanagement by publishing companies, and an inability on the part of some of the publications to respond to fundamental sociocultural changes. For some publishing executives, the rise of television during the late 1950s and early 1960s helped make this time period one of difficulty. Most of the general magazines had circulation and advertising strategies based on competition with television. But because TV could create an audience at no cost, many magazines soon found their profit margins threatened. By the 1960s it was clear that television had become a glamorous medium for advertising agencies at the expense of magazines. For mass marketers, TV held a promise even the largest magazine could not match: the power to create a nation of buyers. Everyone, it seemed, was watching the same thing. Even worse for magazines during this time, there were rapid improvements in broadcasting technology and reception quality. The advent of color television in the early 1960s meant that TV could present vivid images, which previously could only be displayed in magazines, which, as an advertising medium, now lost their last advantage. But the biggest trouble many mass magazines faced in the 1950s and 1960s came not from the TV, but from their own mistakes. It seems the principal miscalculation in the management strategy of many mass magazines in the 1950s and 1960s centered on an unrestrained belief in the wisdom of ever-increasing circulation. It was this unspoken business understanding, rather than any actual demand from the public, that helped drive the postwar circulation growth of the mass magazines. Selling advertising space to national manufacturers in order to promote the postwar expansion of the consumer economy proved extremely profitable to magazine publishers. The large advertising volumes allowed the mass magazines to make a profit from every additional unit of circulation, no matter what additional readers cost them to acquire and renew. [8] However, few observers at the time understood the degree to which many general-interest magazine publishers leveraged themselves to obtain these large circulations. The reason for this was that the fundamental economics of publishing rewarded the raising of a magazine's circulation and severely penalized its lowering. In the calculus of matching circulation guarantees to advertising rates, a decrease in circulation not only meant lost circulation revenue; publishers were also required to pay back a portion of the advertising income to compensate advertisers for the smaller audience for their ads. It is likely that publishers considered reducing circulation as nothing other than the very last resort. And it was this love of their large circulations that helped doom the mass magazines, which, despite the emergence of TV, elected to try to fight it on the new medium's own ground. It was a clear case of mismanagement. Many publishers, instead of selling paid circulation to advertisers, also began to sell "total readership," a number that assumed as many as three or four readers saw every copy of the publication. The basis of the claim was something called "syndicated research." Conducted by third-party firms hired by the magazine companies, these commercial surveys had as an unspoken but obvious objective the inflation of magazine readership numbers by including calculations for "pass-along" circulation. Yet, the mass-circulation magazines failed to meet the challenge of television's growing dominance. During the 1960s, TV's share of the national advertising expenditures more than doubled. In spite of this loss to TV, little evidence suggests publishers ever seriously questioned the prevailing gospel of ever-increasing circulation. For example, in 1969 Look's circulation briefly overtook Life's. To celebrate its accomplishment, Look placed an advertisement in the New York Times; the headline read: "Look is bigger than Life." Stung and eager to regain its former status, Life quickly bought the subscriber list of the Saturday Evening Post when it folded later that year. Months later, it was clear that former Post readers were not renewing subscriptions to Life, so the magazine had to spend more money to find new readers to maintain its enlarged rate base. In an attempt to keep up competition with television, mass magazines raised the prices they charged advertisers in addition to increasing their circulations by any means possible. Before long, the number of advertising pages in the mass magazines suffered a marked decline while the fundamental problem of artificially inflated circulations remained. Perhaps by that time it was far too late for most mass magazine executives to change course. [9] It can also be argued that it was the failure of these magazines to adapt with cultural changes in American society in the 1960s -- and not simply their evident economic and management considerations -- that caused much of the trouble experienced by many mass-market magazines in the 1960s. As the mass-circulation publications suffered, magazines addressing the specific interests of specific readers prospered. Between 1955 and 1965, the circulations of a wide variety of more targeted publications enjoyed significant growth. Several factors may have contributed to the specialization. Major advances in printing technology lowered costs. The computerization of typesetting and color-separation processes created reduced per-copy manufacturing costs. Large print runs were no longer necessary, so small circulation magazines for specialized audiences suddenly became more profitable. Despite the troubles of many large-circulation magazines, the total number of periodicals rose in the 1960s from 8,422 to 9,573 titles, and expenditures on periodicals increased from $2.1 billion to $3.4 billion. Thus, an assortment of magazines targeted at specific subjects flourished. A pair of additional factors assisted special-interest magazine publishers in the late 1950s and 1960s. First, although the loyalty of readers to newspapers had been declining since the 1950s, magazine readership, especially among the young, continued to climb steadily. Second, rather than compete with the time individuals spent reading, it appeared that leisure activities merely whetted the appetite of many for more printed information about their avocational pursuits. Moreover, these special-interest magazines held the two requirements that continue to be essential for long-term success in magazine publishing: (a) specific information in a specific form that can be expected to appeal to a definable segment of readers; (b) a group of manufacturers or distributors with the means and willingness to advertise their products and services to those readers. The perceived level of reader commitment to a magazine's subject remains one of the most important aspects of the first requirement. Because they dealt with a single product or activity that was fundamental not only to the editorial material but also to the bulk of advertising, specialized magazines could deliver a specific, highly defined audience to their advertisers. Most successful special-interest magazines relied on a simple editorial formula that supported these requirements. The basic tenets concerning editorial content included: an unremitting focus on nonfiction rather than fiction; product rather than "people" articles; a participatory rather than vicarious approach to all subjects; and a high degree of technical complexity. All of this was designed to attract the specific kinds of deeply committed readers, whom potential advertisers would find attractive. The unique capacity of special-interest magazines to deliver finely targeted audiences to advertisers coincided with two major transformations in consumer marketing. First, many postwar brands of consumer goods had become well established by 1960. As a result, the goal of much national advertising began to shift from image creation and brand recognition to more closely fought contests of market share. One implication of this was that advertising had to appeal to more knowledgeable customers than in the immediate postwar years. At the same time, advances in computer technology, as well as reductions in its price, led to a second trend: the evolution of proprietary research in market segmentation by lifestyle, attitudes, and behavior. Specificity of audiences came to be accepted by the ad agencies. The result of this coincidence was a revolutionary shift in marketing psychology: from inventing a product and then finding customers for it to first studying one's customers and then making what they wanted. Soon new research techniques were developed to study not just the demographics of audiences, but their psychographics. By using more revealing variables such as education level, residential zip code, and occupational status, customer characteristics could be far more sharply defined. Thanks to narrowly focused marketing, special-interest magazines in the 1960s raised dramatically their advertising rates, sometimes more than tripling them during the decade. This price of advertising is expressed in terms of "cost per thousand" (cpm) readers. For magazines, the cost is that of a black-and-white advertisement, one full page in size; for television, a thirty-second commercial. At the beginning of the 1960s, the cpm's of the special-interest magazines, though three times larger than network TV's, were still below those of newsmagazines such as Time and Newsweek. By the end of the decade, their cpm advertising rates were twice those of the newsweeklies, and eight times the size of television's.[12] Such rapid increases in the cpm of these special-interest magazines illustrate the dramatic transformation of the consumer magazine industry, which was virtually complete by the end of the 1960s -- and continues in force even today. Victims of television's ascendancy and their own mismanagement, mass-audience magazines failed and a variety of specialized magazines flourished. Using the "narrow-casting" model, trade and association magazines, for example, have done notably well, and by the turn of the century there were more than 10,000 titles published regularly in the United States. Similarly, consumer magazines have flourished. Yet in a broader sense, the special-interest magazines in the 1960s owe some of their success to several concurrent sociocultural changes in the national consciousness. Many Americans, it seemed, wanted to pursue new means of self-expression, to devote themselves to new, more individualistic interests, perhaps to reinvent themselves. As the personal income of Americans rose seventy percent during the 1960s, there was ample evidence of a soaring individualistic interest in leisure pursuits, not least of which was the flowering of specialized magazines designed to serve and develop those very interests. Less apparent, however, were the underlying sociocultural influences that may have shaped the trend. Individualism in various forms had long been a central aspect of American society. It can be argued that the somewhat self-indulgent individualism that emerged in 1960s had, at least in part, its origins in the social conformity of the 1950s. By the "Me Decade" of the 1970s, some observers were seriously concerned by the ostentatious loss of austerity in the American ethos. At a minimum, this new individualistic, less consensual outlook represented a conflict of values. America was rediscovering itself, and one rediscovery was that we were not a homogeneous nation. The shift during the 1960s to more individually defined values had a number of interesting societal implications. As large numbers of middle-class Americans attained the means and time to devote themselves to more private pursuits, many of the traditional notions of self, community, consumption, leisure, and class underwent significant change. Undoubtedly, a number of factors caused the increasing importance of personal life. Widespread affluence raised many Americans' living standards, extended educational opportunity, increased the time available for leisure activities, and facilitated occupational, geographical, and social mobility. As many people began to place an increasing premium on their time, traditional forms of sociability and community were eroded and diminished. In a way, this newfound focus on self could have been viewed as an appropriate response to a widespread liberal scholarly distaste for the 1950s. The new, less conformist values, however, were not lacking in academic critics. The threat of individualism to society's essential coherence had long been a concern of sociologists. Karl Marx, one of the seminal thinkers on the concept of self-development, acknowledged in his early writings that all social laws are, by definition, repressive. In his view, it was essential that people be free to develop their own potential, and he presented the argument that mankind would, if unoppressed by class, create a harmonious society through "natural love." Also, Emile Durkheim, one of the founders of modern sociology, argued that people must have strict social rules to limit their desires, restrain their emotions, and give their lives meaning. Similarly, the sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies wrote of the transition from warm, family- centered community relationships (Gemeinschaft) to a colder, more modern Gesellschaft where each individual is isolated by himself. To Tönnies and other loss-of-community theorists, modernization, urbanization, social mobility, and the decline of traditional beliefs were a clear sign of communal decay. [15] Beyond a new assertion of individualism and an increasing concern for self-development -- other societal factors reinforced the growing interest in the leisure activities, which formed the core subjects of the special-interest magazines in the 1960s. The leisure accomplishments of many Americans came to define their social station. As the social theorist Pierre Bourdieu wrote, "Cultural consumption predisposed, consciously and deliberately or not, to fulfill a social function of legitimating social differences." Key to the development of this focus on leisure was the wide variety of avocational outlets. If one didn't like tennis, there was always golf. If skiing seemed too dangerous, perhaps photography would be a better fit. The multiplicity of participation within each pastime was also appealing. One result of this diversity was that full "status satisfaction" was within the reach of a large number of individuals. Critics, as with the case of individualism, were quick to deride the rise in leisure consumption. It may have been distressing that the aristocratic image of avocations such as tennis, golf, or equestrian riding persisted long after the material conditions of access were no longer quite so exclusionary. Large numbers of middle-class Americans in the 1960s nevertheless did seem to want to reinvent themselves. Most important, there is little evidence suggesting that the impulse was either deeply political or genuinely separatist. Rather, it could best be viewed as a value shift toward an amplified, personalized version of affluence-enabled consumption and social mobility. And this same impulse insured the profits of the magazines that successfully focused on those interests. Therefore, the shift toward individually defined values in the early 1960s can be seen as the culmination of fifteen years of postwar changes in the affluence, class structure, consumption ethos, education levels, residential patterns, and leisure time enjoyed by American society. How this in turn translated into increasingly passionate readers of special-interest magazines hinged on the confluence between readers' deeper needs and magazines' ability to fulfill them. [16] Changes in the advertising business helped to achieve this confluence by contributing to the magazines' success. Before the 1960s, most consumer advertising was deliberately aimed at the largest possible mass audience and so contained little intelligence and no humor. Then William Bernbach, the creative head of the Doyle Dane Bernbach agency, launched the Volkswagen "Bug" car campaigns. One result of the revolution was that many important advertising agencies sought out the smaller accounts of special-interest advertisers, willingly trading less commission income for greater creative freedom. Perhaps one side effect of the decline in traditional values in the 1960s meant that work no longer defined many Americans. One's occupation as a traditional status symbol was no longer enough. As a result, many sought a sense of social differentiation through their leisure activities. Forged from the postwar rise in affluence and social mobility was also an apparent class or status element in this equation. The central questions became: "Who am I? What is my status? How do I think others perceive me?" Historically, certain ritualistic practices have been the province of a society's elite. It was also important that many of the leisure pastimes contained their own cultural, symbolic, and historical associations. In addition, education framed yet another dimension of class in the 1960s. The huge increases in postwar college enrollments soon resulted in unimagined social mobility for many Americans. For new first-generation graduates from the more elite colleges, life possibilities were expanded well beyond the social stations of their parents. As they entered adulthood, many would use their recreational interests -- and their enthusiastic readership of magazines devoted to them -- to confirm their new standing. At the same time, the rise in education levels itself was clearly associated with increased magazine readership. [17] Beyond education, the rise of the suburbs and the beginnings of change in patterns of family association and structure contributed to a decline of both traditional neighborhoods and social rituals; the result was a widely felt loss of a sense of belonging. Many of the burgeoning leisure pursuits, however, clearly had strong communitarian aspects that may have formed the basis of some of their appeal. In this context, the special-interest magazines may have served not only as the small town's newspaper but also as an essential element in the coherence and an important validator of these communities' very existence. [18] Achieving the publishing companies' goal of accurately segmenting the potential audiences centered to a great degree on their ability to produce successful magazines that would speak to these audiences' needs and desires. The key to this process was known by a number of terms, but the most descriptive was "the analyzing variable." It would determine, within a given recreational field and with an eye toward existing competing publications, exactly what kind of magazine should be produced for exactly what segment of a potential audience. In the late 1950s, determining the analyzing variable for a given special-interest field was a largely intuitive process carried out by the senior executives at the publishing companies. More refined techniques of demographic and marketing analysis did not yet exist, and many of the deliberations were, by today's business standards, quite informal. In retrospect, however, the somewhat ad hoc nature of the decision-making process, did not seem to be a disadvantage. Indeed, more institutionalized efforts by publishers to create and test new magazine concepts that appeared in the late 1970s and early 1980s often produced less successful results. The special-interest magazines used a unique editorial formula to attract the definable segments of the population that would be potential readers. Unlike strategies the general-interest magazines employed to compete with television for advertising dollars, specialized magazines were "editorially driven." Two key concepts were used to define the editorial character and positioning of special-interest magazines: persona and structure. One of the unique aspects of the magazine form itself was that most magazines possessed individual editorial personalities. Often termed the "editorial persona," it was the voice through which the publication spoke to its readers, and it set the tone for the entire editorial content. Most importantly, however, the paramount quality of the specialized magazine was an essential enthusiasm for its subject matter. Readers had to feel that their devotion to and reverence for a specific avocation was reflected in the particular magazine's perspective. Because one of the central motivations for readership was the audience's need for advice, assistance, and instruction, it was essential that the editorial persona of each special- interest magazine be a practical authority on the publication's subject. Furthermore, it was important that they be able to offer their advice in a tutorial manner. The preferred approach was to offer sophisticated treatments of complex subjects aimed at the expert enthusiasts who represented the publications' core readerships, while at the same time including a few articles that would meet the needs of entry-level readers. The goal was to assist in the education of the novices so that, through their loyal long-term readership of the magazines, they too would become experts. And when comparing the magazine's persona to the characteristics of its average reader, the magazine's persona was older, better educated, more affluent, more widely traveled, and more sophisticated. Thus, the editorial persona was ideally suited for the role of guide, counselor, friend, and adviser -- the essence of its function. The second major concept used to define the character of specialized magazines is editorial structure. Most editors believed that the most effective way to organize the editorial contents of their magazines was a blend of the expected (that which would remain constant and could be looked forward to by the readers) and the unexpected (that which extended the readers' knowledge or exceeded their expectations). Thus, the organization of the magazines served as a constant for readers. The actual articles themselves were the unexpected surprise. As a result, although there were different stories in each issue, the kinds of articles, reflective of the underlying editorial structure, varied little. [22] Circulation and Advertising were the two principal sources of revenue for the specialized magazine. Subscriptions represented seventy-five percent of the circulation of most special-interest magazines; the remaining twenty-five percent were single-copy sales. To drive circulation by promoting their magazines to new readers, many publishers purchased lists of names and addresses. These specialized magazines were the perfect place for manufacturers and distributors of "generic" products directly related to the publications' areas of interest to advertise, and, logically these distributors bought most of the advertising space in the special-interest magazines. Calculated on the customary basis of "cost-per-thousand," the specialized magazines typically charged higher advertising rates than either general-interest publications, television, or radio. The advertisers, however, realized that their ads would be viewed by a concentrated group of potential customers, and therefore regarded the special-interest magazines as a good buy. While the advertising departments focused on manufacturers of products related to the magazine's focus area, the circulation departments aimed to optimize per-issue profit while simultaneously ensuring that the magazine was read by the number of readers that the advertisers had been promised would see their ads. Achieving this precise circulation goal was "meeting the guaranteed rate base." In the view of most circulation directors, the key to optimal circulation profitability lay in fine-tuning the number of readers over the course of the year so that the audited circulation proved to be exactly at, or just above, the previously guaranteed rate base. This was accomplished by balancing reader demand with both the subscription and newsstand prices. In contrast to that of Circulation, the ethos in the Advertising departments of most special-interest magazines centered not on difficult calculations of profitability, but on the straightforward and tangible objective of increasing the total number of advertising pages sold. Despite their conflicting goals and objectives, in most cases the circulation and advertising departments of special-interest magazines both made substantial contributions to their companies' income statements. Meanwhile, because of the close relationship between the magazine's advertisers and the editorial content on their products, tension often existed between Editorial and Advertising. An absolute "church and state" division between a magazine's journalistic and business efforts was not the norm. Beyond technological advancements or economic situations, more focused editorial methods helped the success of the specialized magazine. Through their choices of editorial subjects, the publishing companies of these magazines consciously worked to target their specialized magazines at definable groups of readers. Publishers who concentrated their efforts on specialized magazines in the 1960s enjoyed significant advantages in both circulation and advertising income. Still, it can be argued that, independent of any economic or editorial shift in the magazine industry, the decline of large general-interest publications and the rise of smaller, special-interest magazines during the 1950w and 1960s were evidence of more general sociocultural changes in American society. In this view, the mass-audience magazines of the 1950s such as Life, Look, and the Saturday Evening Post reinforced the broad consensus and conformist ideology of the first fifteen years following World War II. But with the arrival of the 1960s, the social consensus of 1950s American society began to fractionate. And by explicitly striving to serve the specific informational needs of particular niches, the magazine industry as a whole prospered in the half-century following World War II. Which brings us to the present and, hence, the future. It is now clear that the fractionalization and proliferation that began in the 1950s and 1960s continues to be defining aspects of magazine publishing today. More than 2,000 consumer titles are currently available, and 900 new titles are launched every year (though few of these start-ups actually succeed). Two significant and interrelated consequences arise from the dominantly niche-building nature of the industry, and they will play an important role in determining the future of the magazine form in the decades to come. One is driven by the emerging economic realities of the medium; the other, by the new technological possibilities that magazine publishers, with their expertise at editing for and marketing to specific audiences, are uniquely positioned to take advantage of. The U.S. magazine industry is at present relatively healthy and profitable, with more than $13 billion in annual advertising income and $9 billion in circulation revenue. But, in large measure the result of the dominant fractionization-and-proliferation paradigm, significant business issues, particularly in the realm of circulation, exist -- and are likely to influence the future course of the industry. For example, the costs of building or maintaining circulation are increasing. Magazines with paid circulations rely heavily on the buying of lists of prospective subscribers and mailing offers to them. But the response rates to promotional subscription mailings have been declining for the last few years. As a consequence, publishers have to spend more to maintain their "rate bases"-the levels of circulation promised to advertisers. With newsstands more crowded with more titles, single-copy sales have also become more difficult, and publishers have occasionally gone to great lengths to try to increase them. Consolidation among magazine wholesalers, who control the nation's newsstands and used to number in the hundreds, has left just over 50 in business today. As a result, the wholesalers' bargaining position with magazine publishers has strengthened considerably, and publishers' share of the income from newsstand sales has declined from an average of 45 percent of the cover price to 37 percent. All of which suggests why the potential represented by the World Wide Web may offer commercially attractive possibilities for the future of the magazine. Tremendous advances in both computer and communications technology have made possible newly efficient ways of distributing greater quantities of needed information. By the early 2000s, it was clear that much of the innovation in these "new media" areas would be led by magazine firms. In the main, the reason for this has been the fortuitous convergence between the strengths (and needs) of the magazine industry and the emerging directions in which the Web seems to be evolving. It appears that the historic adaptability of the magazine form will serve it exceedingly well in the future. The basic strategic model of "narrow- casting"-serving the specific information needs of specific audiences for whom advertisers will pay a premium-will certainly continue to prevail. In large part due to their skill in applying this niche-driven economic model, successful magazine publishers will remain at the forefront of World Wide Web development, providing on-line information derived from, yet not identical to, that contained in their printed versions. Despite its inherent unknown, one this is certain about magazines in the future: They will both capitalize on and transcend their own recent history. ENDNOTES: 1. The Saturday Evening Post folded in 1969, Look in 1971, and the original weekly Life in 1972. Collier's, once a significant mass-circulation rival, had ceased publication in 1956, but its demise was largely unrelated to television. See Hollis Alpert, "What Killed Collier's?" Saturday Review, 11 May 1957, pp. 9-11. See also Otto Friedrich, Decline and Fall (New York: Harper & Row, 1970); James Playstead Wood, The Curtis Magazines (New York: Ronald Press, 1971); John Kobler, Luce: His Time, Life and Fortune (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968); Theodore H. White, The View from the Fortieth Floor (New York: Avon, 1968); and Robert T. Elson, Curtis Prendergast, and Goeffrey Colvin, The World of Time, Inc: The Intimate History of a Publishing Enterprise, 1923-1980, 3 vols. (New York: Antheneum, 1986). 2. For a provocative analysis of the economic determinants that are often unconsidered in popular culture studies, see Paul David Nord, "An Economic Perspective on Formula in Popular Culture," Journal of American Culture 3 (Spring 1980): pp. 17-31. Edward Jay Epstein, News From Nowhere (New York: Vintage Books, 1974) and Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly (2nd ed.; Boston: Beacon Press, 1987) are two of the more useful works of structural media criticism. 3. Recent scholarship on postwar social and political change has produced a number of insightful surveys. See William Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Godfrey Hodgson, America in Our Time: From World War II to Nixon, What Happened and Why (New York: Vintage Books, 1976); and James Gilbert, Another Chance: Postwar America, 1945-1985 (2nd ed.; Chicago: Dorsey Press, 1986). For opposing views of the era, Patrick Diggins, The Proud Decades: America in War and Peace, 1941-1960 (New York: Norton, 1988); William L. O'Neill, American High: The Years of Confidence, 1945-1960 (New York: Free Press, 1986); and John Brooks, The Great Leap: The Past Twenty-Five Years in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1966) may be contrasted with Marty Jezer, The Dark Ages: Life in the United States, 1945-1960 (Boston: South End Press, 1982) and Carl N. Degler, Affluence and Anxiety, 1945-Present (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, 1968). 4. Large social generalizations often leave important minorities unconsidered. Interesting historical scholarship on the postwar African- American experience includes Gerald David Jaynes and Robin M. Williams, Jr., eds., A Common Destiny: Black and American Society (Washington: National Academy Press, 1989); Reynolds Farley, Blacks and Whites: Narrowing the Gap? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984) and The Color Line and the Quality of Life in America (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1987), a census monograph; and Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America (New York: Knopf, 1991). A view of black magazine publishing can be found in the autobiography of the founder of Ebony, John H. Johnson with Lerone Bennett, Jr., Succeeding Against the Odds (New York: Warner Books, 1989). 5. William Ziff (Chairman of Ziff-Davis Publishing), interview by author, 8 February 1991, Manalapan, FL, 5 March 1991 and 12 March 1991, New York, tape recording. For a survey of American avocations, see Foster Rhea Dulles, A History of Recreation: America Learns To Play (2nd ed.; NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1965). See also Robert Coughlin, "A $40 Billion Bill Just for Fun," Life, 28 December 1959, pp. 69-70, 73-74; "Recreation in the Age of Automation," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 313 (Sep. 1957); and U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract (1970), pp. 205-207. 6. Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life (New York: Free Press, 1988), p. 178; Andrew J. Cherlin, Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 34-35. 7. William Atwood, "How America Feels," Look, 5 January 1960, p. 11. 8. See R. Krishnan and L.C. Soley, "Controlling Magazine Circulation," Journal of Advertising Research 27.4 (August/September 1987): pp. 17-23. 9. See "Look Is Bigger Than Life," (advert.) New York Times, 31 May 1969, p.32. See also Stephen Holder, "The Death of the Saturday Evening Post, 1960-1970: A Popular Culture Phenomenon," in Russell B. Nye, ed., New Dimensions in Popular Culture (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1972), pp. 78-89; and Michael Mooney, "The Death of the Saturday Evening Post," The Atlantic Monthly, November 1969, pp. 73-75. 10. See John P. Robinson, "The Changing Reading Habits of the American Public," Journal of Communication 30.1 (Winter 1980): pp. 141-152; and George F. McEvoy and Cynthia S. Vincent, "Who Reads and Why?" Journal of Communication 30.1 (Winter1980): pp. 134-140. 11. Permission from the Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, a closely held private firm, to review company financial operating statements from this historical period is gratefully acknowledged. 12. Stanley R. Greenfield, interview by author, 19 December 1990, New York. 13. See J. Hector St. John Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer (New York: Fox, Duffield, 1904) and Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Richard D. Heffner (New York: New American Library, 1956). Allen J. Matusow, The Unraveling of America (New York: Harper &Row, 1984), p. 306. See also Christopher Lasch, Culture of Narcissism: American Life in the Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: Norton, 1977). 14. Joseph Veroff, Elizabeth Douran, and Richard Kulka, The Inner American: A Self-Portrait from 1957 to 1976 (New York: Basic Books, 1981), p. 529. Other observers have commented on a historic American affinity for the "homely virtues of persistence, initiative, self-reliance, and independence" dating back to Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac; see Alex Inkeles, "Continuity and Change in the American National Character," in Seymour Martin Lipset, ed., The Third Century: America as a Post-Industrial Society (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University, 1979), 398. An astute observer of the New World, Alexis de Tocqueville noted the American "habit of always considering themselves as standing alone"; see Tocqueville, Democracy, p. 44. 15. See Emile Durkkeim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology, trans. John A. Spaulding and George Simpson (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1951); Ferdinand Tînnies, Fundamental Concepts of Sociology (Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft), trans. Charles P. Loomis (New York: American Book, 1940), p. 38. For an excellent rebuttal of the loss-of-community argument, see Claude S. Fischer, Networks and Places: Social Relations in the Urban Setting (New York: Free Press, 1977) and To Dwell Among Friends: Personal Networks in Town and City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); both these works document the vitality of specialized subcultures and voluntary associations. 16. The best quantitative comparative study of prosperity's sociocultural effects is George Katona, Burkhard Strumpel, and Ernest Zahn, Aspirations and Affluence: Comparative Studies in the United States and Western Europe (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1971). 17. For an incisive consideration of the role of education in the American class structure, see G. William Domhoff, The Powers That Be: Processes of Ruling-Class Domination in America (New York: Random House, 1978); and Leonard Silk and Mark Silk, The American Establishment (New York: Basic Books, 1980). 18. Bourdieu, Distinction, p. 217; Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood, The World of Goods (New York: Basic Books, 1979), p. 75. 19. William Parkman Rankin, The Evolution of the Business Management of Selected General Consumer Magazines (New York: Praeger, 1984). For a further analysis of circulation considerations, see Charles O. Bennett, Integrity in a Changing World (Chicago: Mobium Press, 1989) and Facts Without Opinion: First Fifty Years of the Audit Bureau of Circulation (Chicago: Audit Bureau of Circulation, 1965). Additional case study material can be found in Frank A. Bennack, The Hearst Corporation (New York: Newcomen Society of U.S., 1987) and C. Robertson Trowbridge, Yankee Publishing, Inc.: Fifty Years of Preserving New England's Culture While Extending Its Influence (New York: Newcomen Society of U.S., 1986). 20. Furman Hebb, interview by author, 1 February 1991, New York. 21. William Phillips, interview by author, 15 March 1991, New York. 22. Amy Janello and Brennon Jones, The American Magazine (New York: Harry Abrams, 1991), p. 7. Note: One useful way to visualize the "editorial structure" of any publication is simply to think of its "Table of Contents" page. See also Seymour Lieberman, How and Why People Buy Magazines (Port Washington: Publishers Clearing House, 1977). Copyright 2001 David Abrahamson. All rights reserved.