There are more than nineteen thousand magazine titles in the United States. But the largest and most profitable magazines are typically owned by some of the biggest media corporations. Time Warner, for example, counts People Time, Sports Illustrated, In Style, FORTUNE, Southern Living, and Real Simple among its holdings. Even niche magazines that seem small are often controlled by chains. Supermarket tabloids like Star, the National Enquirer, and Globe are all owned by Florida-based American Media, which also publishes Shape, Muscle & Fitness, Men's Fitness, Fit Pregnancy, and Flex.
High revenue magazines, especially those focusing on fashion, fitness, and lifestyle, can also shamelessly break down the firewall between the editorial and business departments. "Fluff" story copy serves as a promotional background for cosmetic, clothing, and gadget advertisements. Digital retouching makes every model and celebrity look thinner or more muscular, and always blemish free. This altered view of their "perfection" becomes our ever hopeful aspiration, spurring us to purchase the advertised products. Yet, the huge number of magazine titles means that magazines span a huge range of activities and thought. Each magazine sustains a community, although some may think of readers more as consumers, while others view them as citizens and several hundred new launches each year bring new voices to the marketplace and search for their own community to serve.
So there is the glitzy, commercial world of the big magazine industry with Time's Person of the year, the latest Cosmo girl, and the band on the cover of Rolling Stone. But the long list of smaller magazines, like Multinational Monitor, Edutopia, and E-The Environmental Magazine, account for the majority of magazine titles and the broad, democratic spectrum of communities that are their readers.
First point, too much summary. 9 points.
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