History of regional magazines

The first publication which could be classed as a magazine was a German publication release in 1663 in Germany. These magazine were intended for an intellectual audience. The mane magazine didn’t appear until 1731 with the release of “Gentleman’s Magazine”. 

Back in the early days for magazines they were successful but the cost of printing outweighed the success of them. They could not produce any more than a hundred thousand issues at a time because the printing machine would not allow it. Distribution of these magazines was also a major problem as they found it difficult to move the large amount of magazines a great distance.

Due to William Randolph Hearst the magazine industry rocketed and evolved. Hearst owned many newspapers in America before expanding his business into making magazines. He started off publishing magazines such as Good Housekeeping and National Geographic.  Other important publications to the evolution of magazine include Conde Nast’s, Vogue magazine.

Fortune magazine, produced in the 20^th century, is known as the first magazine to be printed in full colour. Fortune magazine also invented photo-journalism. However due to the increased printing costs of producing these magazines Fortune started to lose money in 1948 they were forced to redesign. 

In the 1970’s the first celebrity magazines emerged. “People” magazine was first released in 1974. Since then celebrity magazines have become one of the best selling magazine genres of all time. This led to a boom in the production of magazines aimed at a female audience.

Some predicted the death of magazines like they did with newspapers. However even though the numbers of printed magazine have dropped due to people purchasing digital versions, there will always be the desire for printed magazines. This is because we often shape our lifestyles upon.



One lifestyle magazine which I looked at was Southern Living magazine. This magazine was first released in 1966 by the Progressive Farmer company. This company was then bought by Time Inc for $498 billion and is now the largest regional lifestyle magazine in the UK.