Archive Report
Archive Report
The Crowded Marketplace
From American Health and Working Mother to American Photographer and Food & Wine, The Guide to Good Taste, there are now more magazines published in the United States than ever before—11,090 at last count. Publishers have rushed to serve special interests, especially those of affluent young Americans, whose spending habits are reflected in publications devoted solely to jogging, gourmet cooking or other “upscale” pursuits.
“The proliferation of special interest magazines and departmentalization of general purpose magazines to reach these special interests,” William F. Gorog, president of the Magazine Publishers Association, has noted, “has been a phenomenon of the last 10 years.”1 The ultimate significance of the phenomenon is unclear. It may be that the fragmenting of American magazines bespeaks a fragmenting of American ...