Leading independent poetry magazine in Britain
History
Let’s start by defining what a magazine is – it is a printed periodical. A journal is one of the main media, influencing public opinion by shaping it in accordance with the interests of certain social classes, political parties and organisations. The term “magazine” is derived from the French word journal, which appeared in the name of the first magazines in French, when the magazine was not yet completely separated from the newspaper. Glossy, illustrated magazines are among the print media. They occupy an intermediate position in the media industry between newspapers and books, which defines their specificity. It lies in the fact that originally, from their inception, the end of the 19th century, magazines were meant to fill the gap between newspapers and “serious”, “intellectual” books.
On the pages of magazines entertainment information (fashionable news, advertisement of goods and services) alternates with materials on history, art, cultural heritage which are available to mass readers by form and content. The second peculiarity of a magazine as a media product is its “targeting”, its orientation towards a certain group of readers. The target audience of glossy magazines is allocated according to a certain attribute of the potential reader: gender (male/female), professional affiliation (magazine for accountants, teachers of physics and mathematics, etc.), place of residence (urban/rural area), etc. As the third specific characteristic of a magazine we can point out the design of the publication. Unlike newspapers and books, in which text prevails, while pictures, photographs, cartoons, etc. are only illustrations of the text, in a magazine, the visual and verbal components coexist as equal parts of the whole. Before examining the gender representations in illustrated magazines, let us consider the history of their emergence.
The first magazines, containing reviews of literary novelties, books on philosophy, achievements of natural sciences, were published in Europe in the late 17th – early 18th centuries. For example, in 1665 ‘Journal des savants’ was published in France. The first quarter of the 18th century in England, the journals Tatler and Spectator. Then, at the beginning of the 19th century, this type of media appeared in the United States; one of the first and most successful magazines was “Godey’s Lady’s Book” (1830). The rapid development of the glossy magazines industry was due primarily to the general process of development of bourgeois culture, modernization of printing technology, significant expansion of the distribution area of printed products, decreasing delivery time of issues, lowering the cost of publications, widening of readership through more general content of publications. These and other changes affecting the production and sales process have turned magazines into the most popular, accessible, mass media type. The “golden age” of the glossy magazine industry was the 1920s to 1950s when several media giants were founded such as “Time” (1923), “New Yorker” (1925), the first men’s magazine “Esquire” was launched; circulation steadily increased and the quality of illustrations improved, making magazines more attractive for both advertisers and the readership than radio. However, the rapid spread of public television, its great visual impact on the audience had a negative impact on the market of illustrated publications, magazines began to lose to television in the competition for advertisers and consumers of media products.
Overcoming the crisis situation required magazine owners to change their publishing policy. On the one hand, innovations concerned subscription terms and costs (e.g. the price of a six-month subscription was lower than that of a yearly subscription), optimisation of retail sales of individual issues, etc. On the other hand, studies of the magazine’s readership were launched and attempts were made to ‘draw’ a portrait of a typical reader: sex, age, profession, marital status, place of residence, etc. Such studies allowed publications to become more target-oriented, more specialized, oriented towards a certain segment of the media market, and increase their economic and communicative efficiency. The change in publishing policy and the expansion of publication distribution channels made magazines more attractive in the eyes of advertisers, as they provided almost “direct” access to the target audience for the advertised product or service.