Why are most magazines nowadays "dumbed down"?

Factual Questions
1

I mean, looking through old magazines, even from the '80s but especially before that there was way more text in the average magazine. I have a copy of Newsweek from 1965 at hand and it seems, although there are plenty of full page ads, that most pages are mainly text with small adverts. Lots of densely packed paragraphs.

Presumably this is a long term trend as older periodicals, say from the start of the 20th C. seem to have even more text. Do people just not like like reading text or why have magazines all become so hollowed out?

Of course there are exceptions but plenty of long lasting magazines have gone through this process. I’m not sure if there is a factual answer or whether my observation holds up to too much scrutiny, but if there is one I’d like to hear it!

2

Just an opinion until someone from the magazine industry shows up:

Did you compare the 1965 Newsweek to last week’s Newsweek to confirm your suspicion? If your observation is correct, note that you are talking about pop magazines (see for example, The Economist). The newspaper and magazine industry has been suffering from competition from other media, most recently the Internet. On the web, people with short attention spans can find a news bite or search for what they are specifically interested in. Why buy the whole cow when you just want the milk? Print media seem to be responding to this by more color, more graphics, and being easier to read, to become more of a fast-food diet. In Scientific American, they now summarize each big story with a few bullets, presumably for the reader who just wants to hit the bullets rather than read the story beginning to end. The Washington Post now takes up a lot of real estate on the front page with large color photos and fluff stories (often complained about to their ombudsman by the few more-serious readers left). I think this is probably reflective of an overall change in information culture.

3

Spot the trend?

How about the Scientific American issue for July 3, 1869?

4

On the newspaper side of it, I remember when USA Today debuted in 1982. It was widely disparaged for being dumbed down, overly garish, shallow, etc. Nowadays every newspaper resembles the USA Today.

5

Part of it is that there’s less advertising, so the magazines are thinner, although that’s not the same thing as dumbed down.

6

I once heard or read an interview with a print media insider. He addressed this issue.

It wasn’t just a matter of smarts, he said, but a matter of time. Sure, lots of people are dumb, and they don’t want to read an article that looks “hard” because it is long. But even very smart people just don’t have the time that people used to allot for news reading. The reading habits of the public have changed.

7

People expect more graphics now, and it is easier for publishers to integrate the images now than it was before widely-used computerized typesetting. (Back in the day, my father was head of in-plant printing and lithography for a fairly large corporation. It seems that everything he took days to produce back in the 70s can be done in an afternoon on MSWord nowadays.)

8

As Dave Foley’s character on a new sitcom said, “They’re trying to improve readership by appealing to people that don’t read.”

9

Every journalistic endeavour I’ve been involved with for the last 20 years has been emphasizing shorter stories, more graphical elements, and more “interactivity.”

At my current company, we’re being told that new readers (that is, freshly minted baby lawyers) don’t read any more, they just “browse,” so they’re likely to avoid long, dense, thorough pieces.

Whether that’s “dumbing down” I’ll leave to others to decide.

10

Former magazine editor checking in:

I think what would be a little closer to accurate would be “They are trying to generate revenue by selling ads that appeal to people who don’t read.”

I also think it depends on the magazine. Maybe 80% are special interest and cater to a very specific demographic. I worked freelance on a Florida fishing magazine once. At the initial meeting with the publishers to strategize editorial policy and whatnot, one of the partners said to me, “Um. You’re not going to be, like, a stickler for grammar rules, or anything, are you?” :dubious:

Which led me to wonder what, in fact, he thought he was paying me to do exactly, seeing as how that’s what an editor does.

Turns out, what he wanted was someone who would make the words look pretty, but nobody there was too concerned about facts, or accuracy, or grammar, really. I was a walking spellchecker and photo caption writer. They really didn’t even have that many articles about fishing. 65% of the content of the magazine consisted of large-breasted women in bikinis, on a boat, holding up a large fish. The other 35% was ads. T&A, fish, boats, and ads. The magazine was a raging success, but the writing was so horrible, I quit working with them on general principle, not that I have anything against fish, or T&A, or boats. I just wasn’t keen on compromising my editorial integrity.

I can think of a few publications where the writing and editing is substantial and significant. The Economist, and Scientific American come to mind. National Geographic. Actually, Mother Jones has some amazing writing in it. None of those magazines are targeted to the sound-bite-and-pix-only audience. There used to be good writing in Rolling Stone, but those articles have become fewer and further between to the point where I stopped subscribing years ago because I only found something substantial maybe once or twice a year. Seriously, after Hunter S. Thompson died, Rolling Stone should have just folded. P.J. O’Rourke just can’t carry that rag anymore. People don’t read, in general.

And now you also know why I’m not a magazine editor anymore. The good writing is now in the blogosphere and paper publications are going the way of the eight-track.

11

The Atlantic, Harper’s Monthly, and The New Yorker are among those specifically targeted at literate readers.

Also, several political opinion magazines from all points of view – The Nation, Reason, National Review, The New Republic – tend to be heavily text-based.

12

Those are all excellent examples. Made me think of the Utne Reader as well.

One can pick up a Writer’s Market in any bookstore and see the tens of thousands of publications out there. There’s a huge segment of the market dedicated to really great writing. There’s also a huge segment of the market dedicated to T&A and fish. :smiley:

13

Except for the ones that resemble tabloids!

14

That’s what EVERY magazine and newspaper looked like in the late 1800s. Packed to the margins with small text, and a few dull line drawings scattered about.

15

“Print is dead.” - Dr. Egon Spengler

16

Dense text isn’t always well-written or informative text. Generally, just because it looks like vegetables doesn’t mean it isn’t just green frosting.

17

I don’t think that O’Rourke is even involved with RS anymore. Matt Taibbi is probably the most visible writer for the magazine these days (entertaining enough, though he can get pretty shrill).