Special-Interest Magazines David Abrahamson Northwestern University I. The Stage Is Set: Magazines in the Postwar Age of Consensus II. Made For a New World: The Rise of Special-Interest Magazines III. Magazines Transformed: Shaping and Reflecting the "Other 1960s" IV. An Economic and Sociocultural Product V. The Primacy of Editorial: Magazine Persona and Structure VI. Conclusion and Future Prospects GLOSSARY circulation The publishing business function responsible for identifying potential readers and, through both subscriptions and newsstand sales, selling the magazine to them. column A signed article by a prominent author, usually under contract and typically appearing in every issue. department The magazine structural elements usually found the front and back of the magazine. Devoted to shorter, more utilitarian subjects, they serve to "bookend" the publication's "well" (see feature below). editorial The generic term for all the non-business functions (e.g. writing, editing, art direction) responsible for producing the non-advertising content of the publication. feature The longer, more expansively illustrated editorial content typically found, in order of appearance, in the center or "well" of the magazine. general-interest magazine Periodical publications serving large, mass- market audiences with information of a broadly defined nature. special-interest magazine Periodicals targeted focusing on very specific topics and aimed at very specific readers. ABSTRACT SPECIAL-INTEREST MAGAZINES are a distinct, yet somewhat loosely defined, genre of periodical. Traditionally, they are perhaps best understood in contrast to the other principal genre of consumer publication, the general- interest (or mass-market) magazine. Special-interest magazines provide very specific information on a particular subject that will be of clear perceived value to a very distinct and self-selected audience of readers -- and are therefore particularly attractive as an advertising vehicle to clearly definable group of print advertisers. More particularly, the majority focus on leisure pursuits of one kind or another, often those pastimes and hobbies that evoke high levels of avocational passion and participatory commitment in the reader. Though one can trace the early beginnings of the special-interest form back to the late nineteenth century and a number outdoor and "sporting" magazines, it was not until the middle of the twentieth century, driven by a number of economic and sociocultural factors, that special-interest publications emerged as not only a successful, but indeed the dominant, genre of magazine. I. The Stage Is Set: Magazines in the Postwar Age of Consensus In the years 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. A notable aspect of the mass-magazine¹s mid-century "golden age" 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. Thus, it is likely that most Americans believed that changes for the better had occurred. Class and consumption, education, residence, and recreation were all affected and were reflected in the character of the American magazine. This character seemed to encourage Americans to embrace an expanded ethos of consumption. Spurred by the G.I. Bill, college enrollments soared. Meanwhile, where and how most Americans lived began to change. By the mid-1950s, 4,000 families a day were moving to the suburbs, and the national mobility rate increased by fifty percent. For the first time in the history of the world, a nation-state would contain more suburbanites than city dwellers or farmers. In addition, the advent of the eight-hour workday and five-day work week made possible a marked increase in both leisure time and interest in recreation. During the 1950s, personal expenditures for recreation rose by sixty-four percent, from $11.1 billion to $18.3 billion. Also during the same period, a variety of unique types of magazines emerged. In the shifting alignments of American demography and culture, publishers glimpsed new pools of readers and devised new magazine genres to serve them. For example, Reader's Digest spoke to America's faith in uplift and self- improvement. Time offered busy readers the news in brisk, capsulated form, and before long other newsweeklies were founded on similar formulae. Time's owners also oversaw the creation of three other important titles. In the depths of the Depression, Fortune was introduced to shore up the nation's shaken faith in the promise of market capitalism. Life, with its pioneering photojournalism, celebrated both the power of the visual image and the marvels of modernity --and was soon imitated by Look. With the 1954 founding of Sports Illustrated, the heightened role of sports in the national consciousness was accurately foretold. Nonetheless, many American families were overjoyed to bear the burden of increased leisure time. With work assured, the economy expanded, producing new jobs and new wealth; in turn, play, particularly with family and friends, took on a new importance. A subtle attitudinal shift on the part of many Americans was also discernible: "We were moving into an era," one observer commented, "where there was an entitlement to leisure." Inherent in this new consumer ethos, however, was a sense of conformity. It is clear that the 1950s 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. 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 magazines¹ success hinged on their capacity to reinforce the core, mainstream values of their time. In the view of some scholars of popular culture, the raison d'àtre of these general-interest magazines was the promotion of a mass culture, and an essential element in that process was a conformist, consensus-building dynamic.In the 15 years following 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." But as it turned out -- for both America and its magazines -- "forever" proved to be a surprisingly short span of time. II. Made For a New World: The Rise of Special-Interest Magazines During the 1960s, the American consumer magazine industry completed a major transformation: a shift away from general-interest mass-market publications toward more specialized magazines. 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. 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. Rubbing salt on the wounds of the magazines during this time 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. 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. Instead of selling paid circulation to advertisers, many publishers 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. But it can also be debated 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 reflectors and shapers of the widespread social consensus that defined postwar America until 1960, the mass-market magazines had great success with editorial personas that underscored the conformity of the age. Said Gilbert Maurer of Hearst, "Life, Look, and the Saturday Evening Post all had less than five percent newsstand sales. During their circulation run-ups in the 1960s, they clearly lost sight of what the American public wanted to read." As the mass-circulation publications suffered, the special interest magazines, which addressed 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. At least two other factors assisted special-interest magazine publishers in the 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. The more compelling their interest, the more likely they were to want to read more about it. Numerous newspapers and broadcasting companies saw the potential in special-interest magazine publishing as a result of these advantageous factors. Meanwhile, the companies that published mass magazines were forced out of the consumer magazine business. The rewards for success in the competition were considerable. During the 1960s, magazine circulation grew an average of almost ten percent annually, while revenues more than doubled and its profits increased more than fifteen times. 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 ability special-interest magazines possessed 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. 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. Victims of television's ascendancy and their own mismanagement, mass-audience magazines failed and a variety of specialized magazines flourished. The evolution of targeted marketing techniques and of publishing technology contributed to their development. By explicitly striving to serve the specific informational needs of particular niches, the magazine industry as a whole prospered. Trade and association magazines, for example, did notably well during this period, and by the 1990s there were more than 10,000 titles published regularly in the United States. Similarly, consumer magazines 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. This was the need that many of the specialized magazines served, and it was this yearning that largely defined what might be called "The Other 1960s." III. Magazines Transformed: Shaping and Reflecting the "Other 1960s" 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. Perhaps the repetitions of consensus and social discipline did not square with an economic system based on frivolous consumption. Indeed, within a few years, mainstream middle-class values would be disapprovingly characterized by some scholars and social critics as "a culture of narcissism." Another possibility is that, in reality, the widely reported harmony and somnolent uniformity of the 1950s was partly deceptive. Many intellectuals, writers, and artists, as well as others, found the conformity of the era painfully repressive. Whatever the nature of the 1950s, the turmoil of the 1960s ushered in social, political, and cultural change and represented a profound sociocultural value shift away from socially defined and toward self- defined organizing principles. It was apparent that sometime in the early 1960s, the communal values had been superseded, and the new ethos was an expression of the demand by many for expanded personal freedom and self- fulfillment. The commercial implications of this change in values did not go unnoticed. One result was a proliferation of discretionary activities and a new ethos: Maybe it wasn't wrong to indulge yourself. Maybe we had enough money to spend. 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. The fluid social circumstances of the late 1950s and early 1960s both allowed and even hastened the emphasis on self-fulfillment. Widespread economic security, a growing emphasis on youth¹s challenges to traditional sexual mores, the move by many families from urban neighborhoods to the anonymous suburbs, increases in educational opportunity and available leisure time, and a proliferation of print and broadcast media all contributed to the social change. By the 1960s, it was clear to many that a major boundary of social organization was crossed. One way to define that boundary was the emerging primacy of the individual. Indeed, it can be argued that there was a significant gender dimension to the concern with self during the period. Certainly one of the most evident expressions was male leisure interests: In the 1950s men used their avocational interests not only to fill the expanding amount of leisure time available to them, but also as a major source of personal identity. 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 was one of the seminal thinkers on the concept of self-development. In his early writings, he acknowledged 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. However, these critics of self-fulfillment too often seemed to consider only individualism¹s troubling effects while ignoring its vitality and effectiveness. Much of the criticism reflected a nostalgic interpretation of the past and a somewhat authoritarian view of social organization. Rather than injuring society's sense of community, a robust individualism may indeed have enriched some communal bonds because they were the product of informed individual choices, not externally imposed authority. Moreover, the new individualism was commendably democratic in nature. Across a large portion of the American social spectrum, the pursuit of self-fulfillment in some form was widely available. And as a personal goal, it became a genuine possibility open on various terms to all citizens. Other societal factors -- beyond a new assertion of individualism and an increasing concern for self-development -- 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. As they did with the case of individualism, critics 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. IV. An Economic and Sociocultural Product 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. 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. 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. 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. The realization of 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. The analyzing variable would also help the publishers select the right editorial voice of a proposed magazine, as well as both the kind of topics it should cover and the manner in which they should be addressed. At the same time, it would define what the correct readership for that publication would be. 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. V. The Primacy of Editorial: Magazine Persona and Structure These 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. Above all, 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. When comparing the magazine¹s persona to the characteristics of its average reader, the magazine¹s 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. Editorial structure represents the second major concept used to define the character of specialized magazines. 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. Most of the special-interest magazines relied on three basic structural elements: columns, departments, and features. Columns, usually placed at the beginning of an issue, were used to represent a variety of viewpoints that the readers would find either instructive or entertaining. Rarely more than one typeset page (approximately one thousand words) in length, columns were regarded as the vehicle for argument and opinion. Because of the personal nature of their perspectives, a small photograph or illustration of their authors accompanied the columns. The editor-in-chief authored the first column in most special-interest magazines. Often an "editorial" addressing a contemporary social, political, regulatory, or economic issue, the editor's columns were usually given a title that suggested both the writer's authority and the particular leisure activity of the publication. Such columns in the automotive magazines were titled "Driver's Seat," "At The Wheel," and "On Track." The editor's column was typically followed by three or four other columns, usually written by senior editorial staff members or contributing editors. Certain archetypes were often represented. One might be the kindly, wistful voice of nostalgia, whose role was to explore the traditions of the sport. Another younger columnist might explore the excitement of the avocation's technological frontier. A third might be concerned with the formal competitive aspects of the sport: tournaments, regattas, races, etc. The celebrity figure was a last category of columnist. Often what that figure had to say may have been less important than the fact that s/he was saying it in the magazine. For the automotive or motorcycle magazines, the "star" columnist may have been a championship race driver or a prominent industry figure. In most cases, the celebrity columnist's by-line would appear over two kinds of columns. The first contained more general insights and opinions concerning "the state of the sport." The second, more frequently employed, focused on helpful hints on better technique and performance. Reader questions to the celebrity often were encouraged; the column made possible dialogue between The Star and Everyman. Departments represented the second key structural element utilized by special- interest magazines. Positioned both in the front of the magazine after the columns and in the back of the publication, departments principally served a utilitarian function, providing "service" and "how-to" information. An important department in most magazines was the "Letters to the Editor" section. The Letters section was typically viewed as the proper vehicle for reader corrections, rebuttals, and disputes, and was considered an important reflection of reader involvement. Few specialized magazines responded in any great detail to the readers' comments, preferring to allow the readers to have the last word. The News section was another department used by special-interest magazines. Given the extended production lead times (often three months or more) under which most monthly magazines operated, the "news" supplied in these sections was often somewhat stale. The principal sources for the information were specialized industry publications, professional newsletters, and daily newspapers. Once a month the staff member would assemble the items, rewriting them in summary form for inclusion in the News section. New products were often the subject of another department. Major items of equipment were rarely treated in the New Product section, because the readers would expect a more comprehensive feature-length evaluation. As a result, the New Products department often focused on less important accessory and after- market items. Another popular department used the question-and-answer format to elicit and address reader concerns. Many of these columns offered technical advice on maintenance and repair. In addition, a calendar describing upcoming events represented the final department. Typically placed at the very end of the publication, these events calendars solicited listings from collectors groups, hobby associations, and sanctioning organizations. Features were the third, and perhaps most important, structural element used by special-interest magazines. Most magazines tried to include at least six features. As a rule, feature subjects lent themselves to longer (four or more pages) and more illustratively expansive treatment, placed in the "feature well," after the columns before the closing departments. The "lead" feature was also the subject highlighted on that particular issue's cover. Additional features were likely to be mentioned in secondary headlines (called "coverlines" or "cover blurbs") on the cover. Three fundamental themes were emphasized in the features in special-interest magazines: product evaluations, personal performance, and "destination" articles. Equipment germane to the magazine¹s focus were evaluated by specific quantitative means, which the magazines devised themselves. Some of the publications developed their own proprietary instrumentation with which to conduct the required tests. Each issue included at least one feature writing up the results of those evaluations. In the automotive and motorcycle fields, the features were titled "road tests." The tennis, golf, photography and hi- fidelity publications referred to them as "lab reports" or "equipment tests." The format most often employed for these evaluations included a feature story of 2,500 to 3,500 words discussing in some detail the attributes of the product under consideration, a large number of photographs fully identifying the product, and a "data panel" laying out the products' specifications and performance results. A variant on the basic product was the "comparison test." Similar products that competed in a single market segment would be tested against each other. The larger comparison tests would typically conclude with a rank-ordering of all the products under consideration. The goal of the tests was to provide the readers with a knowledgeable opinion about the "best" item of equipment within the given category. The second major feature theme, improved or enhanced performance, was addressed in the special-interest magazines in several ways. In each avocational subject area, a specific problem likely to confront many participants would be identified. Often cast as utilitarian "how-to" pieces and accompanied by explicit photographs or illustrations, many articles carried the bylines of prominent figures and well-known authorities in the sport, thus adding to the credibility of both the advice offered and the magazines themselves. Stories focusing on interesting places in which to pursue one's chosen leisure activity were the third major feature theme. Called "destination articles," they not only described the attractions of the location (complete with attractive color photography), but also offered specific guidance on how to travel there. The apparent waning interest in fiction was a noticeable aspect of features in special-interest magazines in the 1960s. Although both the short story and longer fiction had long been a favored staple in magazines, by the late 1950s it was clear that they were falling from editorial favor. Throughout the 1960s, fewer and fewer magazines elected to publish fiction of any kind. The editor-in-chief of the special-interest magazine was left with the heavy responsibility of effectively developing their special-interest magazine's editorial persona and structure. Editorial expenses typically represented approximately ten percent of a magazine's total costs. (Advertising sales costs also accounted for ten percent of the total expenditures, circulation represented twenty percent, and manufacturing/distribution consumed fifty percent; the remaining ten percent was attributable to general administrative and overhead costs.) Within the editorial budget overseen by the editor, five major categories of expenditure were represented. Salaries and benefits for full-time staff members typically accounted for fifty percent. The second largest item, often called "manuscripts and illustrations" and totaling twenty percent of the editorial budget, was used to pay free-lance writers, photographers, and illustrators. Three additional categories -- editorial travel and entertainment costs, office operations such as supplies, and special graphic and photography expenses -- each accounted for ten percent. As these numbers suggest, the area of greatest concern to most editors was the "salaries and benefits" category. The customary staffing formula called for one full-time editorial employee for every seven pages of editorial matter in the issue. More important than the number of people, however, was the subject- area knowledge and expertise they could bring to the publication. Often unschooled in the traditional tenets of journalism, many special-interest magazine staffers found it difficult to set aside a "fan mentality," which, it can be argued, predisposed many to a less critical view of their subject matter. It was important for each magazine to develop a trusted stable of regular free-lance contributors, typically paid between five and fifty cents per word for their efforts. 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 magazine¹s 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 magazine¹s 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. VI. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE PROSPECTS In conclusion, in the 1960s the American magazine industry underwent a profound transformation, characterized by two central trends: the decline of 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. Ample evidence suggests that economic factors within the magazine publishing industry partly provided the impetus for this transformation. Beginning in the late 1950s, television posed a growing threat to the general-interest magazines' principal source of revenue. By the early 1970s, many of the publications had been forced to cease publication. Meanwhile, other industry changes in the 1960s favored the rise of smaller, specialized publications, such as advances in printing technology and the advent of a philosophy of "targeted" marketing by major consumer-goods manufacturers. 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 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. Less concerned with aspirations for political and social justice, America was animated instead by an ardent desire for personal fulfillment, defined by new notions of identity and individualism, and leisure consumption and competence. This value reorientation in American life provided the societal context from which special-interest magazines arose. And for the millions of readers of special-interest magazines in the 1960s, the decade¹s quest may have been not for new types of magazines, but for new expressions of individuality and of self-fulfillment. Therefore, by explicitly striving to serve the specific informational needs of particular niches, the magazine industry as a whole prospered. Trade magazines, for example, did notably well during this period, and by the 1990s there were more than 10,000 titles published regularly in the United States. Similarly, consumer magazines flourished. Which brings us to the present and, hence, the future. It is now clear that the fractionalization and proliferation that began in the early 1960s continue 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). The U.S. magazine industry is at present quite healthy and profitable, with more than $13 billion in annual advertising income and $9 billion in circulation revenue. If magazines can continue in the online world to serve distinct niches of the population faithfully, then they will survive as a viable media form in the future. 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 late 1990s, it was clear that much of the innovation in these ³new media² 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. The historic adaptability of the magazine form will serve it exceedingly well in the future. Despite its inherent unknown, one this is certain about magazines in the future: They will both capitalize on and transcend their own recent history. BIBLIOGRAPHY Abrahamson, David. Magazine-Made America: The Cultural Transformation of the Postwar Periodical. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1996. Compaine, Benjamin M. Consumer Magazines at the Crossroads: A Study of General and Special Interest Magazines. 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The Life Cycle of Magazines: A Historical Study of the Decline and Fall of the General Interest Mass Audience Magazine in the United States During the Period 1946-1972. Uithoorn, The Netherlands: Graduate Press, 1977. Wood, James Playsted. Magazines in the United States. New York: Roland Press, 1971. Copyright 2001 David Abrahamson. All rights reserved. 2