“Magazines are businesses, much like other companies. But there’s one big difference—they almost always get smaller, not bigger.”
So starts Ted Gioia’s recent article, The Death of the Magazine. It is an interesting look at the rise and fall of the industry that was once an integral part of America’s media landscape. He begins by showing how the annual revenue from some of America’s largest companies changed from 1960 to 2023: Exxon, increased 43-fold; Ford Motor, increased 33-fold, and so on.
Then, he asks readers to guess how the five most popular magazines from 1960 fared:
“In 1960 the magazines with the most circulation in the US were:
- Reader’s Digest (filed for bankruptcy in 2009 and 2013)
- Life (regular print editions ended in 2000)
- Ladies Home Journal (last print issue in 2016)
- Saturday Evening Post (still publishes 6 issues per year, but print circulation is down 95% from its peak)
- McCall’s (last print issue in 2002)”
He also looks at how magazines have stood the test of time compared to America’s movie industry. Quite simply, magazines were’s built to last. The article is much more than a look at the numbers. Where does good writing go? Does the death of magazines mean the death of journalism? A good read.
