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Why are magazine covers so fixated on “lists”? Was there some junk psychologist long ago who once told a magazine editor somewhere that “lists sell magazines better,” and therefore as a result it’s just been passed down as gospel in J-schools ever since?
Personally I find “lists” tacky, and even borderline insulting.
Lists are an easy way to deliver content. A ‘proper’ article would require overarching coherency and development: similarly to how an academic essay needs to ‘flow’ properly.
A list doesn’t need this.
It’s also easier to write 30 small articles than one big one because each of the small ones don’t require any deep analysis: a big article does.
Lists may also make it look as though you’re delivering a lot of information.
“This season’s hottest games” might be about three cool games. “This season’s Top 35 games” lets you know (or at least assume long enough to open the magazine) that the issue is a wealth of knowledge about the season’s hottest games.
Of course, there might be only one line written about each game but at least you cracked open the cover.
It’s lazy writing. Easy to create a list, add in some supporting text, and you have an article. Lists can also be controversial (because of an implied ranking or inclusion/exclusion on the list) and that helps to sell magazines.
The local weekly press celebrated an anniversary a while back, and some of the original journalists wrote about how things were in the early days. One thing that they all mentioned was that they were paid by the line, so they did a lot of lists.
Because it’s exciting!
And lists
Take up more space
With less content
Than articles -
And dimwitted staffers
Who majored in advertising
Instead of journalism
Can write them!
Anybody know if this lists were a common feature of magazines prior to the publications of the three (?) volumes of the Book of Lists (going by memory, here) in the 1970s? Or did that start things off?
At least two of the [presumably fictional] list titles in the OP could easily have come from Cosmo, and their rationale for printing lists seems to be “we can print the same three every month and nobody will ever notice!”
Oh, hell yes. “Service magazines” (titles like Good Housekeeping, Better Homes and Gardens, etc.) figured out more than a century ago that nice, compact lists drew readers in. Which story would you rather read: “Digging out of the horror that is your life” or “Five ways to a healthier, happier you.”
Modern service journalism (and its fascination with lists) is generally credited to publisher Clay Felker and the debut of New York magazine in 1968.
Magazines care about their readers. Readers want and demand lists. They sell for the same reason Powerpoint does. People can understand bullet points better than prose.
That’s not junk psychology. It’s true and it’s powerful. Lists are not for writers; they are for readers.
You absolutely need to understand this, because if you don’t you’re missing one of the basic tenets of all modern communication theory and practice.
Here’s a variation on the same principle: most magazines today crowd their covers with lots and lots of words, indicating the range of stories inside. These are lists, substitutes for the table of contents, which work better on the outside than making people pick up the magazine and search for the ToC. Wonderful images, bare on the page, used to sell magazines. They don’t work as well. Some magazines can get away with not using them - weeklies have a different audience and Newsweek and the New Yorker can use just pictures - but compare the iconic Esquire covers of the 1960s to those of today.
Bullet points are distilled essence of advertising. They are omnipresent because they’re omnipotent. Magazine covers have only one purpose: to sell on newsstands. Magazine interiors have only one purpose: to sell the next issue as well. Everything else is secondary. That’s why you’ll see more and more lists.
All that goes double for the Internet. Sites want to sell advertising. The more pages to an article, the more advertising you’re exposed to. Lists, with one item per page, keep people on the site, clicking their way through pages of advertising.
By 2023, every web site will be nothing but a series of lists.