The future of magazines (a 1979 snapshot)
I wrote this in 1979, in the original version of this article (published first in a pamphlet at the University of California at Berkeley, and then in CoEvolution Quarterly):
For every Little Review or Poetry with a lasting reputation, hundreds of small press magazines appear and disappear with little impact on the culture. By the 70s, the little magazine scene had blossomed into a widespread renaissance: national organizations, bookfairs, distribution networks, reviewers and federal grants. Like early magazine, most little magazines carry almost no advertising. They rarely sell enough copies to make a profit; other income comes from donations and selling the correspondence of prominent contributors. The act of publishing and editing a small magazine is exhilarating and consumes all of an editor's spare time. Most of that time is drained by circulation - getting people to acknowledge the magazine exists. Few large distributors carry the small press.
Small press magazines are often judged against commercial ones, even though they have different goals and expectations. Next to the slicks, most literary magazines look - amateurish. Or else inbred: part of the carefully constructed, literary-critical establishment. For the consumer, there isn't that much reason to look through the hundreds on the shelves of large bookstores. This is changing as small new magazines are trying to reach a less insulated audience, but it still almost impossible to be noticed on a scale large enough to insure economical survival.
Magazines may bloom most dramatically where alternatives are most needed - in local communities and corporate house organs. Those company and regional magazines which experiment with in-depth reporting, and alternative graphic styles which don't parrot the slicks, seem to latch onto a real, otherwise unspoken demand.
One or two magazine historians suggest that with increasing computerization, magazines will individually directed to subscribers. A reader with interests and habits on file will receive one magazine with his/her name on it, and articles and ads tailored to his/her life - what movies are playing in the neighborhood, what the relatives are doing, and fully personalized daily horoscopes. More likely, computers will break down the structure of the print media. Once magazines, newspapers and books start to come in over the home terminal, or the terminal down at the corner computer center, then the boundaries between them won't be necessary; they'll merge into a steady flow of information, stories, opinions, pictures, design, photographs. You might never have to stop reading: like Homer Price's donut machine, the terminal will type out the stories, and the photo-typesetter will click, buzz and release the photocopied pages, and printouts will pile high in the recycling centers. If input channels are kept open, advertisers may lose their hold on the magazines, and designers will have to develop another new language to give visual personality to a flowing, undivided stream.
For the future of magazines, as I see them today, please follow this link. (The Future of Format article.)
