Aging Gracefully
By Rupal Parekh
Dozens of magazine titles launch and fold each year, but there are always a few magazines that know how to change with the times. Here, NYRM gives respect to its elders.
Billboard Magazine:
“CHART-TOPPER” would be an unfamiliar
term if not for Billboard magazine. Strangely
enough, the Bible of the music industry was
once all about carnivals and circuses, and its
ten-by-fourteen-inch pages were filled with
ads for pinball machines instead of CDs.
When the magazine was founded in 1894,
there was a “the” in front of Billboard and The
Billboard was “The World’s Foremost
Amusement Weekly.”
It took almost fifty years for the magazine
to expand its music coverage to a point where
other topics could be spun off into a separate
publication called Amusement Business (still
around today). On July 20, 1940, Billboard
ran its first music popularity chart, and artists
since have vied to make its weekly lists.
Highlights for Children:
IN June 1946, the motto “Fun With a
Purpose” appeared on the first issue of
Highlights for Children, put together in one
month’s time in a tiny Honesdale,
Pennsylvania office. Retired doctor Garry
Cleveland Myers and his wife, Caroline Clark
Myers, couldn’t sell all 20,000 copies of the
first run of their new magazine. A three-year
subscription of thirty issues cost $8.50.
Nearly six decades later, the magazine’s editorial
offices haven’t left town (but they have
moved to a sprawling pre-Civil War mansion)
and Highlights for Children is still a family-run
publication.
The numbers, however, haven’t remained
quite so humble. With some three million
subscribers, it has the highest circulation of
any children’s publication in the world today.
The Myerses came up with the idea of placing
it in doctors’ and dentists’ offices—the habitat
many of us still associate with Highlights
for Children.
Back then, the cover treatments consisted of
nothing more than two-color geometric patterns.
During the 1980s, the magazine started
using busy cover illustrations and splashed
bright, sunny colors across each page.
Highlights for Children has, however, stuck
to its guns on its no-advertisements policy.
U.S. News & World Report:
THIS newsweekly’s mouthful of a name was
born out of the 1948 merger of two publications
owned by columnist David Lawrence:
the United States News, a sixteen-page bulletin
about the federal government; and World
Report, an international news magazine. The
first issue of U.S. News & World Report sold for
15 cents.
Within ten years, circulation reached 1 million.
Decades after movies and television went
color, U.S. News & World Report’s pages were
still black-and-white. Only after New York
Daily News publisher Mortimer Zuckerman
purchased the magazine in 1984 did it go
full-color and begin to rival fellow newsweeklies
Time and Newsweek.
The current Dodger-blue cover logo was
adopted in 1990, and informational graphics,
like 3D explainers, now accompany stories
in every issue. Over the last two decades,
U.S. News & World Report carved out a niche
for itself with special issues on health, science,
finance and education.
Good Housekeeping:
THE first issue of Good Housekeeping was
released on May 2, 1885, with thirty-two
pages and a drab green cover. Editor Clark W.
Bryan aimed to “produce and perpetuate perfection—
or as near unto perfection as may be
attained in the household.”
In 1909, the magazine’s symbol of consumer
assurance, the Good Housekeeping Seal, was
created. If any product bearing the insignia
proves defective within two years of purchase,
the magazine will replace the product or
refund the price. Along with the consumer
reviews, recipes and beauty tips, Good
Housekeeping also served as a forum for some
of the best American writers and illustrators.
By 1966, readership had grown to 5.5 million.
The magazine began its departure from
hand-rendered drawings on the covers during
the 1970s. Frolicking children were swapped
for Farrah Fawcett and Jaclyn Smith, and
Good Housekeeping covers still feature television
and movie actresses.
The magazine didn’t hire its first female editor
in chief till 1994, when Ellen Levine was
appointed to the post. Good Housekeeping in
the 21st century is geared to the working
mother. Articles like “How To Get In And
Out of a Car” (March 1946) have been supplanted
by “How to Land Your Part Time
Dream Job” (November 2003) and “The
Golden Rules of E-mail Etiquette” (May
2003).
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