The American Scene; World of the Magazine

I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again. Good morning. An extremely varied and colorful aspect of the American scene is the world of the magazine. Drug stores, newspaper stands, railway and bus depots and even supermarkets display and sell a wide variety of magazines which appeal to almost every

interest, whether it's professional or personal. And because of an increasing use on the part of the public of all media of mass communications several changes have occurred in the world of magazines. And to help us understand these changes more fully, we're pleased to welcome this morning Mr. Kenneth M. Wiley, formerly with Popular Science Magazine and currently Supervisor of Publications for Armor Research Foundation and Illinois Institute of Technology and Mr. Ben Cartman, executive editor of Family Weekly Magazine. Gentlemen, perhaps to begin with, we might set the boundaries of this world of the magazine a little more distinctly, just what makes a certain publication of magazine. A magazine essentially is a collection of material designed to interest the particular audience for which the magazine is intended. How does this differ from a newspaper or for one thing a magazine

is able because of the schedules to go into greater depth in its coverage. It can give you the background that you can't get in a newspaper because of lack of time. It can give you in other words the news behind the news detail that isn't possible in a newspaper. I checked in the dictionary and it says that a magazine is a periodical publication issued not oftener than weekly. Is this qualification of a magazine? That would be generally true. I can't think of any magazine that does is issued it oftener than that. There were publications put out in the 17th and early 18th centuries that were called magazines before the name magazine was used. I think Edward Cave and his gentleman's magazine put out the first publication that was called a magazine. That was the publication that gave Dr. Samuel Johnson his probably periodical starting writing. At the other extreme there are some little magazines that don't

come out regularly but are imprinted at the will of the editor. Sometimes magazines are called books too aren't they? That is really just a slang expression. It isn't intended to infer that it is in any way a book. We talk about the book will come out at a certain time. That's right. It's just a colloquialism really. Well let's get into the objectives of the magazine today. What would you say they are? What is the purpose of the magazine? Well in my opinion a magazine has four basic objectives, the average magazine. And I'm talking now in terms of the general magazine intended for the large general audience. That is to inform, to entertain, to serve, and to inspire. Sometimes one article will do all four things. In other cases a single article will be designed for just one specific purpose. But basically this is the concept,

the editorial concept of most general magazines today. There have been different statements probably made at different times in the history of the magazine about what it should do. Harking back to the early beginnings again in the spectator which Addison and Steel got out. Certainly more familiar to you as to me. The statement was made that the in summation the statement was made that the magazine should provide a picture of a temperate, simple life that the magazine should encourage. Its readers to overcome pretence and fakery in their lives and so forth. There was somewhat of a moral tone to this. When was this magazine put out? Well this would have been, I think that the spectator and the tattler were put out very early in 1860, 17, 4, 10, 1 in that period. Well has this moral consideration changed?

Well there is one. There is still a moral consideration in magazines being published today. But today I think the objects have changed considerably with the changing times. I think editors today feel that the public, the reading public wants to be informed. They want to know what is going on. They want to know the things that they can't get in the daily press. They want the background. Because of the nature of the age in which we are living, I think more than ever before. There is this insatiable thirst for knowledge and information. And because of this, your magazines today have gone overboard almost in the direction of informative material. Whereas in the past they were largely, or quite a number of them, were largely intended to entertain. There is a greater emphasis today on the informative type of

article rather than the entertainment factor. What do you think caused this change from entertainment? I think largely the nature, as I say, the nature of the times we are living in. The criticals, we are living in a cold war. Everybody knows this. And it is a time that calls for serious thought and serious consideration. People are aware of this. And they want to know what is happening and what is going on. They feel that they are all personally involved and personally concerned in it. One trend that in addition to the ones you mentioned that I have noticed is the tendency. When I came across this statement about the spectator, it struck me that about living a simple life, that the honest life, and if that is an expression. And the reason, of course, that this was made about the spectator was that the material was written by men of intellectual stature. And so forth, and they considered themselves

leaders of the community, and they wanted to lead the community. But it struck me that in this statement there was a contrast with what I see. And this is probably a very subjective viewpoint. You correct me, Ben, if you agree with it. It seems to me that a lot of publications, and probably the biggest publications now, tend to want their readers to strike somewhat of a pose. People want them to strike the pose of being very materially successful, whether they are or not. We see certain terms that are used in the promotion of magazines, picturing their readers as people who set the standards for the community. The standards being the cars they own, the houses they live in, and the kind of stylish clothing they wear. This gets us into the matter of the advertising. I know exactly the type of campaign you're talking about, the image that the magazines are attempting to get across to the great general public. Well,

actually, what they are doing is trying to get this image across to Madison Avenue, and the advertising agencies, and the advertisers themselves, by convincing them that their particular readers are well -informed, well -heeled, they have the money to buy the good cars and the luxury items. And to a certain extent, this is true because they do surveys pretty regularly, from which they get all the information they really need about their particular readers. Do magazines attempt to reach a particular audience? Oh, every magazine in order to be successful has to know its audience intimately and relate everything that appears in the magazine to this audience. I know in the case of Family Weekly, which is distributed in non -metropolitan cities, we get a great deal of unsolicited freelance material that is perfectly good magazine material. But it's entirely wrong for our audience because they deal

with problems which are essentially big city problems. The matter of moving, for instance, how to make your moving easier on moving day. Well, we know that 75 % of our readers live in one family homes, and that about 60 % of them own their homes. So moving is not a problem. It is in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, but not in these small communities. This illustrates the importance of reader identification of relating what appears in the magazine to its audience. And this is the first function of a magazine editor to know his audience intimately enough so that he knows what will or what will not interest him or have direct application. But don't some magazines attempt for a general audience? Well, this is true in the general audience, too. You still have a very specific audience. Now, magazines in their surveys will break down the readership into educational levels, income levels,

age groups. They know exactly what percentage of the readers are teenagers, for instance. What percentage falls into the 20 to 30 age group? They have all of this information. How much the average earning is, how much the, how many two family cars? They can even tell you how many of the readers have cats or dogs as pets. We know this to be a fact. And from all of this, they can, they, they get a picture. And again, let's get back to the word image. They have an image of their audience, and they know it pretty closely what their interests are. They have to literally construct a kind of sociological, if I may use the term microcosm. A little rural, break it down as if, as if their audience were a given country or a community or a nation. That's it, exactly. They differentiate it according to age, sex, interest, and so on and so forth. Some magazines attempt to appeal to a general audience. Let's say a new magazine coming out. And then it would have to survey and find out exactly what audience actually is reaching.

Well, if they're appealing when a new magazine has started, it generally has an audience in mind. I mean, it is planned to fill a specific need. And then it is slanted specifically. Let's say, for instance, that somebody wants to start another fan magazine in the entertainment field, either records, movies, TV. They would be aiming, of course, largely for your teenage audience. And so the material in it would be slanted directly to teenage interests. And a magazine to be successful, if a magazine is going to get off the ground, it has to have a pretty clear idea of what audience it's trying to get. It can't be said then or all that. No, that's right. If you make it too general, it won't appeal to anybody. And you miss an audience completely. Probably the only, excuse me, that interrupts you down. Probably the only attempt that I know of, correct me if you know of another one, to actually evaluate the editorial content of publications, of magazines, in terms of

whether it's a good advertising risk or not, that is to evaluate it for advertisers, that was made by, I believe, the head of one of the large New York Chicago ad and public relations agency, Marc Stellar, Ricardo Gephard and Reed, I believe. And he proposed 13 tests or questions, let's say that an editor could be asked about at his magazine, which resulted in answers which enable an advertiser, an agency, or a firm itself, to decide whether this was a good magazine to advertise in. And there was an emphasis in these 13 questions on whether the editor had a very clear cut, well -defined picture of who he was writing to every time he sat down with typewriter. The advertisers, incidentally, are very much interested in more than just their ads. They take a very close interest in the editorial content of the publications they

go into. And they want to make sure that the magazine is doing an effective job in reaching the audience that they want to reach. And they know, too, that a shoddy magazine in which the editorial content is second or third rate is not going to be an effective medium for them. You can look at the magazines you can pick up on any newsstand, you'll see this, the magazines that are filled with ads for household remedies and small, that's right, self -help, Madison. And you can name a few of these, some of which were at one time very, very powerful and great men. That's right. Have no clear cut editorial reason for living is what it amounts to. That's right. Well, let's get into the area of editorial policies. What are the trends in this area? Well, again, again, we'll get back to what I said earlier. The trends are away from entertainment. I don't mean entirely, but a greater emphasis on the informative, the

self -help, the service type of article, and less emphasis on the purely entertainment type of content. Now, by entertainment, I don't mean necessarily articles dealing with people in the entertainment field. I mean, humor departments, cartoons, jokes, things of that sort, or light humorous articles that are intended simply to entertain. But largely today, the emphasis is for the service type, which will teach people how to do something better, give them shortcuts. It can be anything from how to give a home haircut to how to build your own patio or how to make your own fitted sheets, anything that will teach the person how to do things for himself, and maybe how to make your food dollar go farther. The service type of article, which is related directly to the needs of the reader.

Ben, we were talking a little earlier about this matter of personal journalism. And I wonder if this emphasis on the self -help or the service article, let's put it that way. Isn't partly because the publications, the magazines don't, for the most part, have the strong personal identification that they used to in days past, when a boy, for example, took youth's companion or opened a boat road for boys magazine. He knew who was editing it, because the editor had a column or a ran regular editorials. And he read the fiction and the articles, was less concerned with receiving more or less an anonymous piece of writing, and more concerned with what this particular publication, this body of paper and printing had to say to him, rather than receiving more or less an anonymous flyer, which told him how to do certain things and build

certain things. He wanted to be entertained. Well, today there are some very strong editors. I don't think the day of the personal editor is gone by any means, but I think they deliberately try to stay in the background. And they want to make the magazine an objective organ. Most magazines today do not take a position. The European magazines do. They are, of course, in the minority. There are some very definitely new republic, the nation, the magazines like that, which take a position. But most magazines feel that the newspapers do a pretty good job of this. Every person today reads at least one newspaper in which they can get the point of view and the opinion, the editorializing. And in a magazine they try to give the reader the information as objectively as possible. And I think for this reason

perhaps that there may be a feeling that we don't have the age of personal journalism like in the days of Ross. But isn't it a sad thing that many of these magazines which do take the stand today are the magazines with the least advertising, for example? Well, I don't think that's entirely true because life magazine for example with an enormous circulation, the Saturday evening post has an editor, each of them have an editorial page. And they do take a position on the page. This is rare. Most general magazines do not have an editorial page. That is really a department of a newspaper as such. Well, another area where an editor is in charge is in the layout of a magazine, is that true? Well, yes, in conjunction with the art director working very closely together. It is actually the function of the art director to do the actual layout. But he consults with the editor to make sure that the article is given the

best possible display, that the best art treatment is used, that the best pictorial treatment is used. This is another one of the trends I think in the magazine field today. The greater emphasis on better illustration and more illustration, both the art and the photography, and also a much greater emphasis on the use of color and very fine color. Color reproduction is improving all the time. And we know from surveys we have made that the readers would like color on every page and with every article. Of course, it isn't possible because of press limitations and costs. But color and good color gives a tremendous shot in the arm to any magazine. It makes it much more readable. And also the better use of photographs and the use of better photographs. As we get into greater use of prolific graphic and wrote of the viewer offset process, we're going to see more use of illustrations and color. That's right. Because it can be done more economically than with the traditional letter press. Letter press, that's right. Are the number of magazines increasing? I would leave that to

you. I would judge that they are checking some statistics. I noticed that there are, let's say, several hundred more. There were several hundred more last year than there were ten years ago. That is in 58th and in 48th. There are now about 7 ,000 periodicals in this country that could be called magazines. Of course, that includes can house organs. That's very true. Trade magazines, control distribution magazines. These are not new stand magazines or subscription magazines. And the reason for this tremendous increase is probably because of the increase in business. And every many organizations which ten years ago did not have a house organ. They do have today. But I think in your general magazines, the magazines you see on the newsstand, there probably has not been a very great increase. Of course, you always see new magazines on the stand every month. But these are one -shot. Many

of them are just one -shots or magazines that may last for two or three issues and then disappear. There are always new magazines being launched, which never get off the ground. But you're really established magazines, I think, are the same ones that you had ten years ago, with maybe a few exceptions. You mentioned trade magazines and general magazines. What is the difference between these? Well, trade magazines are magazines that are intended to get news of a particular trade or industry to the people interested in that particular field. For instance, there are magazines on home maintenance and repair lumber, rock products. These are trade magazines that are circulated within the trade restaurant magazines. Well, they are distributed to restaurant owners and managers, people in the restaurant business. They're becoming more, to an extent, they're becoming more specific all the time. Yes, as a matter of fact, they're broken down within a trade to a little, even a small segment of the trade to get to a special audience. An interesting example is in the aeronautics field

during, well, up and two, and including the Second World War, we had a number of outstanding aeronautical trade magazines. And since the war, they've gradually, you might say, atomized until we have magazines on special aspects of rocket and missile propulsion. Well, this is true also in your general magazines, however. There are lots of women's magazines. Yet each woman's magazine is designed for a particular woman's audience. You have charm for the career girl. You have seventeen for the teenager. You have ladies' home journal for the older housewife. There was even one magazine, which is no longer an existence. Today's woman, which was designed specifically for the young housewife between the ages of 25 and 35, and Harper's special interests. I say between these ages, because she would be the housewife with young children. And her interests would revolve around the house and school age children. And so this pinpointing up to a specific audience within an audience

is done even in your general magazines as well as your trades. Is this a new development or has this always been? No, I think this has pretty much always been the case. It may have been done even to a greater extent among the general magazines. You notice it, looking through lists of old magazines, that there was a time when there were many more, you might say, regional magazines. That is, there was a time when general interest magazines were published in St. Louis and in Cleveland and in many centers, whereas now the business is becoming more and more centralized, almost totally so in New York. Of course, yes, it is, that's true. But these regional magazines, you refer to, they still exist, but in a different form. What would they be? They are now in the form of individually edited Sunday supplements. Oh, yes. Now, your St. Louis Postispatch, your Philadelphia Inquirer, Minneapolis start, a lot of the magazines throughout the country have their own supplements, many of them in addition to one of the big syndicated supplements. And so they have this localized,

regional material that they can bring to their readers in the same way. But do you suppose it's true that they couldn't stay alive financially if they weren't incorporated in one of the princesses? Well, that's quite true because some of them, I know, do not carry enough advertising to pay the printing costs, but they are considered an important part of the Sunday newspaper of the Sunday package. When did supplements start coming out? That's a hard one, I think. I think the first nationally syndicated supplement is about 35 years old. That would be this week. No, wait, wait, I'll take that back. The American weekly, the first supplement came first. But in those days, it was a butcher paper magazine with a lot of crime and horror and blood and guts. What are the major supplements? Well, there are the four, five nationally syndicated supplements today. American Weekly, this week, Parade, Family Weekly, and Suburbia today, which is a new

supplement. It's a sister publication, The Family Weekly, distributed in the middle and upper income suburbs. That is just about a year old. Is there a trend in the magazine world as there seems to be anyway in the newspaper world of consolidating several publications under one editor or one manager? Certainly. Well, there are any number of publishing houses which publish a number of magazines, but usually they have individual editors and individual staffs. There will be just a joint ownership. There are these street and smith publications, which were just sold to CardiNast and there are the Hillman publications and the faucet, purse, any number like that. But they do all have individual staffs and usually even individual publishers, even time -life fortune. They all have their own staffs. And in Trade Magazine, the McGraw Hill publishing company is a good example. It's very fun. Each magazine has its own publisher who, in fact, is, well, what is he? He's a manager. Well, he's the overall supervisor

of all the departments, the business, the circulation, the editorial. He's supposed to coordinate all of their activities. And he's responsible to the, he's responsible to your, in a case like that, your board of directors. Well, this consolidation, is this a trend or is this just a natural... I wouldn't really call it consolidation because there haven't been many consolidations of magazines. The only one I can think of in recent years was every woman's and family circle to change star magazines, which combined and are now being distributed under the title of every woman's family circle. In other words, that's a physical consolidation of the publication in one cover. What happens generally when a magazine goes out of business, for example, like when Collier's suspended publication, some of the features in departments are sold to other publications. Look magazine took over a couple of them. But I can't think of any consolidation where other than this one I've mentioned where a couple of magazines have suddenly merged. Well, would you call the buying

of Tide by Printer Zink? Well, no, they bought it and put it out of existence. And one or two of its features. But this happens from time to time. A magazine will buy another magazine just to kill it. It may be a competitor in some way. I think it was the Curtis people who bought that magazine published by Camper's, or a household magazine. In fact, it was called Household. Well, thank you very much, gentlemen, for this very interesting discussion this morning. Our discussion has indicated that many changes have occurred in the world of the magazine. Magazines are still an important part of the American scene, but perhaps in a different manner than in the past. Nonfiction material is increasing in popularity. Pictures are becoming more and more important. And color is being used more extensively. And as movies and radio and television and newspapers have grown, magazines have found it necessary to alter their role in society. And magazines

have also modified and developed new techniques to maintain and increase their circulation. But for whatever reason, the fact that changes have occurred is a strong indication that the world of the magazine is still a very healthy and very lively world. Good morning for the American scene. Thank you.