What Is A Magazine?
Before getting lost in Magazine, Arkansas, Tom Meagher fine-tunes a few definitions.
IT IS not so easy a question to answer, as we discovered while putting together this year's New York Review of Magazines. Can a Web site, for instance, be considered a legitimate magazine? Do NBC's infinite incarnations of "Dateline" qualify? Does a photocopied, self-produced fanzine measure up? Our research took us through a gauntlet of confounding interpretations. Internet search engines offered little help. Some searches produced dozens of definitions of the word "magazine," which derives from the French word magasin, meaning "storehouse," and from Arabic and Aramaic roots. To help you get out of the storeroom and into the sunshine of the magazine world, we humbly submit this grab bag of definitions.
Definitions: mag.a.zine (mag'e-zen', mag'e-zen') Noun
1. A periodic paperback publication aimed at a general, rather than scholarly, audience (University of Texas' Glossary of Library Terms). By this definition, nearly anything printed on paper can be considered a magazine, including the New York Post, the Weekly World News and those pesky Florida voting ballots. We found this to be too vague a definition. If, however, you are addicted to the tabloids, you ought to read Adam Pitluk's story.
2. According to the National Rifle Association's firearms glossary, a magazine is a spring-loaded container for bullet cartridges that allows a gun to be fired repeatedly without reloading. We won't be needing AK-4's here, but if that's your sort of thing, you can put Corey Pein in your crosshairs and read his review of Guns & Weapons for Law Enforcement.
3. A room or container used to store anything, especially military arms and provisions (Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary). For the high-concept interior decorators reading this, we can easily help you find a magazine that could be used to spiff up your shed, basement or supply closet. For design inspiration, turn to Rupal Parekh's review of a magazine that defies all of these definitions, Visionaire.
4. The compartment on the back of a camera that allows rolls of film to be fed through the exposure mechanism (The American Heritage Dictionary). Without the use of this kind of magazine, the pages you are reading would be just plain, typewritten text with a couple of stick figures drawn by hand to break up the monotony. We'd never have been able to display the stunning illustrations accompanying Karla Lightfoot's profile of artist Bob Grossman.
5. A city in western Arkansas with a population of 915 (U.S. Census Bureau). The 1.66-square-mile town sits about 125 miles northwest of Little Rock. Although we're sure i's a fine place to stop off on the drive between Fort Smith and Hot Springs, our expense account didn't permit a visit.
6. A television program that produces episodes on current events, including interviews and commentary (The American Heritage Dictionary). By this definition, not only does Dateline pass muster, but so does "Larry King Live" and "The O'Reilly Factor." Not feeling so smug and superior now, are you, Stone Phillips?
Even though we eliminated small towns
and film canisters from what the NYRM
considers magazines, we still found plenty
to write about. From a cover-design meeting
to a newsstand, we examined illustrations,
issues and people across the industry.
No matter how you envision a magazine,
you'll find it here—unless you're a fan of
Smith & Wesson. 