Magazines

Magazines: Class Discussion Response #2

• Magazines were invented by Benjamin Franklin, who made the first magazine, General Magazine.
• Magazines were the 1st national medium and national publications with national advertising, a national audience, and the creation of a national identity.
• National advertising was great for business.
• People became famous from their publications in magazines.
• Magazines are cheaper than books.
• They create something for everyone to talk about; rich, middle-class, and some poor alike read magazines.
• Magazines spread literacy all across the world as more and more people began to read them.
• Magazines were the first to do long-form, investigative journalism.
• They were the first to have personality profiles.
• First to have photojournalism.

All these points above and all the effects that have come from magazines are some that I would have never thought about before we had this lesson. I had always thought of magazines as a form of entertainment, but I learned from this lesson that at one time magazines focused more on elitist things instead of populist things. The fact that magazines have helped/benefited and continue to do so for our country in so many ways, from spreading literacy to broadening the field of journalism, simply amazes me. In fact, I didn't even know that magazines were beneficial until we had this lesson.