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Six Revolutions Chapter 4 p.4
by 顏靈 2011-02-25 02:36:57, 回應(0), 人氣(1421)
Magazines for the Fragmented Public

The magazine has set the pace for the VCR, postwar radio, and cable television in what it has done for its users: it has given them, more precisely than in the past, what they have wanted. And by doing this, it has fragmented them. A handful of general interest magazines still reach millions of readers, but thousands of specialty magazines each reach just thousands of readers; for example, the trade magazine Pizza and Pasta and the consumer magazine Living With Teenagers. The corner VCR shop also fragments its customers when it rents just what is wanted on Saturday night to a customer
who once went to the now shuttered downtown Bijou, which offered no choice of fare at all. Radio stations and cable television channels offer more and more choices.

All in all, information receivers use more media, but they share fewer media experiences with people they know. The global village looks more like the Tower of Babel. Among regularly scheduled mass
media, none are so fragmented as magazines.

English and Colonial Beginnings

In early eighteenth century England, the magazine was born out of the newspaper, just as the first newspapers were born a century earlier out of the newsletter and the pamphlet. The outspoken publisher of the first weekly periodical, The Review was, at the time of publication, either still
inside or just out of Newgate prison. He was Daniel Defoe, not yet the author of Robinson Crusoe. The Review was soon followed by The Tatler and The Spectator, filled with brilliant essays that are still read Modeled after those in England, the first American magazines, published by Benjamin
Franklin and rival Philadelphia printer Andrew Bradford, appeared in 1741. Most of these early magazines lasted for just a few issues due to insufficient funds to survive a start-up period, inadequate distribution facilities, and poor printing equipment. Unlike newspapers, no
postal service provisions were made for magazines, which not only meant higher costs, but in some instances left them undelivered because of cargo regarded as more important. At least one desperate Massachusetts publisher repeatedly offered to accept subscription payment in wood, cheese, pork, corn, or other produce. today.

The editor requests all those who are indebted to him for Newspapers and Magazines, to make payment. —Butter will be received for small sums, if brought within a few days.

Part of the problem that magazine publishers faced lay in a paucity of advertising and a consequent heavy dependence upon circulation receipts. Another problem was the price of an annual  subscription. It would have cost a farm laborer four or five days pay during the years before the American Revolution, and more afterward. Magazines were not for the poor. 

The American newspaper was a workman, sweaty, busy, and shirt-sleeved; the American
magazine was a gentleman, serious, sentimental, and sedate. 

Early American magazines, issued weekly, monthly, or quarterly, were about the size
of The Reader's Digest today, consisting of about 64 pages usually printed on a stiff,
rough, rag-based paper in the size of type found today in classified ads. The few illustrations
they contained were likely to be woodcuts, although the wealthier magazines afforded an occasional steel or copper engraving, especially if the publisher was himself an engraver. A single engraving
plate might have cost a publisher as much as the entire literary content of an issue.

Although the American magazines imitated their European, particularly their British counterparts, the New World lacked many elements necessary to put out a magazine of quality, notably competent
artists and dependable presses. As a result, what went out of the publisher's door was
often crudely fashioned.