Godey's
November, 2009
On Saturday afternoon we visited our favorite used book store, a rabbit warren of little rooms and jumbled shelves, with books stacked in every murky nook. Tucked away in a dusty corner, its spine almost too frayed to be read, was an old bound volume of Godey’s Lady’s Magazine, Volume V, for July through December, 1832—not rare or valuable, but a lot of fun to look through.
We’ve remarked before on the myopia of periodical publishing, a business that focuses only on the present: the current issue… the current budget… the current rate base. The past blurs and fades away. This is a shame, since magazine publishing has quite an interesting history, and, as someone once said, it’s possible to learn from the past.
But back to the weekend discovery. The Lady’s Magazine, published by Louis A.
Godey of
One historian has said that Godey’scontents ran the gamut
from mawkish, moralistic fiction to mawkish, moralistic poetry, but that's
cruel. Godey showcased many outstanding
writers over the years, including Hawthorne, Holmes, Longfellow, and Poe. Our volume contains a sketch by
Ultimately, it was fashion coverage that made the Lady’s Magazine's reputation. Godey realized that a picture’s worth a thousand words in the rag trade and his “embellishments,” which is what they called illustrations back then, really are priceless.
Each issue contained multiple engravings, and every third issue had a color picture. In those days, color graphics in magazines were practically unheard of, and Godey's color “reproduction technique” was interesting: he hired 150 women to tint the engravings by hand, using brushes and watercolors—almost like medieval illumination. For years it was customary for readers to cut out the colored engravings and frame them.
We held our breath while leafing through our discovery and were very gratified to discover that, after 177 years, one colored plate remains. The other is missing and presumed hanged, but frankly, we’re happy to bat .500.
In 1861 the magazine added what were called “extension plates,” which unfolded to double- or triple-width. We could mention that Playboy picked up this technique a century later… although somehow the reference seems to lack dignity.
The Lady’s Book had a
Hale was a formidable woman, a tireless advocate of women’s education, and especially for the training of women teachers and doctors. She’s personally responsible for Thanksgiving, which wasn’t made a national holiday until she persuaded President Lincoln in 1864. And in her spare time Hale wrote a few poems, among them “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
Godey’s was one of the most popular antebellum magazines, reaching 25,000 circulation in 1840, 62,500 in 1850, and a peak of 150,000 in 1860. In 1869 Rowell’s directory credited the Lady’s Book with circulation of 106,000, which made it one of the largest dozen or so American magazines.
Godey was the first publisher to become a millionaire, an achievement for which his readers can take almost full credit, since the pages of the antebellum Lady’s Book weren’t sullied by advertising. In those days ads were grouped together on paper covers, removed before issues were bound into a volume.
For many of its subscribers the Lady’s Book really was a book—a book delivered in installments over a period of months, but intended to be bound and saved. Like most of its contemporaries, Godey’s paginated by volume, so that the July issue begins on page one and the December issue ends on page 320. The last two pages are an index to the volume's six issues.
The magazine was laid out in two columns of small, agate type (which must have been a treat to read by candle or oil lamp), and produced as a 6 x 10 octavo, scrawny by the standards of today’s fashion magazines. It doesn’t have a “trim” size, because back then issues weren’t trimmed to size—the size of the publication was determined by the size of the sheet. Our weekend discovery was printed one side at a time, perhaps on a hand press, but more likely on a press powered by a horse or donkey. In the 1830s steam presses were practical only for the largest newspapers. Web and perfecting presses were decades away, barely dreamed of.
As we noted, Godey’s reached its peak circulation just before the Civil War, and after the war was eclipsed first by its Philadelphia rival, Peterson’s Magazine, and then by other, newer women’s magazines, such as the Ladies Home Journal. Such is the publishing business.
Godey died in 1878 and Hale passed to her reward the
following year. The magazine changed
hands a couple of times after that, moved to New York in 1892, and was
purchased in 1898 by Frank Munsey, where it became one in a rather large
company of publications that expired under his care. Munsey merged it into the Puritan, which
itself was merged into Argosy, which went on to become, of all things, a men’s
magazine.
We look back on Godey’s Lady’s Book and think, my, isn’t it quaint, look how times have changed, and so forth… but then again, maybe they haven’t. The formula that Godey and Hale followed—a blend of practical advice, entertainment, and illustrated fashion coverage—proved timeless, at least until TV and radio began to make inroads on reading for pleasure. Hale would certainly not be pleased to see sexual techniques promoted on the covers of today’s women’s magazines, and would probably be astonished at how many pictures and how few words are on the inside. But she’d recognize the blend and balance that the editors aim for. She could reasonably claim to have invented it.
A quick Web search will turn up lots of digitized Godey’s content, mostly the embellishments, and the entire run is available on microfilm and CD. But as we turned the pages of our Saturday discovery, we realized that a picture of a magazine isn’t quite the same thing as the magazine itself—the magazine is different than its image. There may be a small bit of instruction in that observation.
We’re also reminded how durable paper is… and we wonder which of today’s digital formats will still work 180 years from now.
Kids and Media
December, 2008
We rarely see stories in the media about the social effects of the media—and even rarer are stories that look at the issue in serious depth. This absence of coverage is a remarkable and ongoing phenomenon. We’ve commented elsewhere about how detached the media business is from academic media studies and scientific research. When it comes to reporting on how media affect society, the detachment looks more like a gaping abyss.
Our latest case in point is the release last month of research documenting the relationship between media exposure and a variety of unhealthy behaviors in children. Entitled Media + Child and Adolescent Health: A Systematic Review, the study clearly demonstrates that the more time kids spend with media, the more problems they develop in a variety of areas: obesity, academic achievement, sexual behavior, ADHD, and substance abuse.
This project is a meta-analysis, a review of 173 different research studies. According to its cosponsors, the National Institutes of Health and Common Sense Media (a nonpartisan advocacy group), these are “the best studies on media and child health published in the last 28 years.” Fully 80 percent of the studies reviewed found that increased exposure to media led to in unhealthy behavior. The research confirmed that the more time children spend with media, the more likely they are to develop unhealthy behavior. In the case of smoking, academic performance, and sexual behavior, multiple studies also found that media content could influence behavior, in both negative and positive ways.
We should note that the studies examined the nonadvertising content of television, film, digital media, music, and magazines. Heaven only knows what the results would have been if they had measured the effects of advertising.
What especially interests us is that several hundred experts conducting different studies across a two-decade span reached such a high level of consensus. Here at The Magazinist we’re neither statisticians nor sociologists, but it looks to us as if the conclusion is pretty much beyond debate. Yes, increased media exposure results in unhealthy behavior in children and adolescents.
Incidentally, the same thing holds true on the subject of violence in the media: increased exposure to media violence results in increasingly violent behavior in children. Mainstream media consistently treat this as an open question, despite the fact that medical professionals and social scientists reached consensus years ago. (The Media + Child survey didn’t include media violence in the areas it covered because so many other studies have already concluded that the connection is proved and that the case is closed.)
Given the amount of time that children spend with media, we could call the results of the Media + Child analysis a statement of the obvious. According to the study, the average American child spends 45 hours per week with media—more than six hours per day, day in and day out. That’s 28 hours more per week than the average kid spends with parents, and 15 hours more per week than the average kid spends at school. Violence? Obesity? Substance abuse? Considering the media bombardment our children receive, it’s not surprising to find a negative influence. It’s a small miracle that the country isn’t overrun by overweight, criminal teenage addicts… though that may be only a matter of time.
We don’t think mainstream media refuse to tackle this issue because they’re afraid to admit culpability. We think they refuse to tackle this issue because it’s hard to know what to do about it. To say that parents need to monitor their children’s media consumption is a staggering understatement. It’s also ridiculous, considering that parents are getting about one third as much time with their kids as the kids spend with media. But what’s the alternative? Any meaningful regulation would run hard up against the First Amendment. And it’s a long shot to imagine that the media are likely to change programming in response to media research.
But it may not be asking too much to say that covering the research would be a small step in the right direction. If this isn’t news, what is?
One last note. The Child + Media survey did not include either books or newspapers. We find it hard to believe that these influence kids’ behavior in the same way that TV or movies do. We suspect that time spent with either medium is likely to lead to healthier, not unhealthier behavior. And we think that if newspapers gave more coverage to the social effects of media, both the papers and their readers might benefit.
The Size of Mr. Wanamaker's Organ
November, 2008
We had originally planned to use this space to write deep profundities, but were pleasantly sidetracked by news from what used to be Wanamaker’s department store in
John Wanamaker was a
Among Wanamaker’s talents was a gift for draping the shopping experience in grandeur and allure. His original store was replaced in 1911 by an even larger and more luxurious building with a majestic seven-story central atrium called the Grand Court, whose crowning touch was a gigantic pipe organ originally built for the 1904 St. Louis Fair. The behemoth filled 13 boxcars when it was shipped to
Although the organ came with 10,000 pipes, this was just chump change for Wanamaker’s. The company built an organ shop in the store’s attic and eventually installed 18,000 more pipes between 1911 and 1930, for a final total of 28,482.
The Grand Court Organ has attracted the attention of numerous musicians over the years, including soloists Charles Courboin, Louis Vierne, Nadia Boulanger, Marco Enrico Bossi, and Alfred Hollins. Marcel Dupré was inspired by the organ to compose his “Symphonie-Passion,” and in 1926 Joseph Jongen wrote his “Symphonie Concertante” for the Wanamaker organ. This piece was featured at the organ’s first post-restoration concert on September 27, 2008, along with Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue” in D Minor, Dupré's “Cortege and Litany for Organ and Orchestra,” and a fanfare by
The instrument has its own supporting organization, the Friends of the Wanamaker Organ, which has spearheaded preservation and promotion efforts. The organization produces a monthly radio show of Wanamaker organ recordings, streamed on the Internet at www.wrti.org , and a quarterly newsletter appropriately named The Stentor.
We’re told there’s an even bigger organ down the road in
Wanamaker himself really was a sort of mad genius, alternately a benevolent public servant and a greedy, self-interested tycoon. As Postmaster General he supervised the development of rural free delivery, an enormous benefit to farmers and other country residents, but at the same time was accused of making millions in boodle by awarding the contract for postal uniforms to a supplier in which he held an ownership interest.
Wanamaker is credited with two of marketing’s most famous maxims: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half,” and “The customer is always right.”
His stores remained in the family until 1978, when they were sold to Carter Hawley Hale, Inc. After various name changes and further consolidation they passed into the hands of the May Department Stores Company in 1995, and today the historic
The word civilization literally means “living in cities,” which is something that humans haven’t been doing very long in the overall scheme of things—roughly 6,000 years, or less than five percent of our existence as a species.
Writing is unnecessary in the absence of urban phenomena like laws and finance, so no one has turned up any writing that predates urbanization, and no one expects to. Civilization and writing are coextensive.
Within cultures writing is sometimes consecrated or ascribed power. But to say the Torah, Bible, and Koran are sacred doesn’t refer only to the contents—many of the faithful venerate the books themselves, the physical objects.
The idea that a book can speak for a religion or a culture is as old as writing. It was clear to Milton when he wrote, “Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God.”
If a book speaks for the culture in which it was written, its destruction can be both a lynching and a genocide, symbolically negating not just that “reasonable creature,” the author, but the society or religion to which the author belonged. Sadly, anything consecratable is desecratable. And far more human knowledge has been destroyed since we first became “civilized” than has been preserved.
The master of this subject is Fernando Baez, the national librarian of Argentina, whose remarkable book about bibliocide, A Universal History of the Destruction of Books, has just been published in the U.S. Most historians research culture through the surviving record. Baez does the opposite: he researches the writing that didn’t survive. His unique overview reviews in painful detail the enormous amount of writing destroyed over our six millenia of civilization.
It’s not a happy story. Between 1500 and 300 BC, more than 233 libraries in 51 Middle Eastern cities were destroyed. Of the 120 plays Sophocles wrote, only seven full plays survive. Euripides wrote 82 tragedies, of which only 18 survive. Baez tells us that, incredibly, at least 75 percent of the writing of ancient Greece has been lost.
Book burning is a constant in human history. The thread of destruction runs through the rise and fall of Rome, the dynasties of China, the expansion of Islam, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. When one culture dominates another, victory is often celebrated with a bonfire.
The record in recent decades is no more encouraging than that of the past. The Nazis are reviled for their massive book burnings, as are the communists of the Soviet Union and China, and the fascists of Italy and Spain. But revulsion didn’t prevent later bibliocausts on a similar scale. Well over one million books were purposely destroyed in the Bosnian conflict between 1991 and 1993.
In 2003 the UN sent Baez to survey damage to Iraq’s libraries, and he found that America takes a back seat to no one when it comes to turning paper into ash. At the start of the war, Iraq’s national library (including the national archives) was bombed, then shelled, then looted at least twice while left unguarded. More than 10 million books and documents were lost, many of which were irreplacable. Of course, similar scenes unfolded at universities and libraries throughout the country.
Since writing is a tool that extends human minds and memory, the destruction of writing is forcible ignorance, mandated forgetfulness, the destruction of civilization itself. It’s interesting to consider how close to the surface savagery lies, as humans repeatedly demonstrate. And it’s interesting to ponder how insignificant the squabbles between afficianados of print and digital technology really are, given our capacity for destruction on a far greater scale, and our record of accomplishment.
Check for Baez’s book at your local bookstore or library. But act quickly.
Baez, Fernando
A Universal History of the Destruction of Books, From Ancient Sumer to Modern Iraq
Atlas and Co.
New York, 2008
Here’s something to pause and consider as we debate technology’s impact on media. The Wall Street Journal has found a 23,000-circulation daily newspaper which is written by hand. Since its founding in 1927, the Chennai, India Musalman has relied on katibs, or scribes, to write its contents in a graceful, flowing Urdu script called Nastaliq. The katibs write in ink using reed quills, just like the ancient Greeks. And to relieve the suspense: no, they don’t handwrite all 23,000 copies. The original handwritten pages are photographed and then printed. So technically speaking, it’s only the composing technique that dates back to the days of papyrus. But still..! Apparently the subtle beauties of Nastaliq script can’t quite be duplicated by type. A local truck driver described calligraphy’s appeal: “We get a personal touch when the newspaper is written by hand.” Of course, the news was written by hand for centuries before printing was developed. Handwritten newsletters were fairly common among merchants in medieval In We suspect that the quality of penmanship rises in inverse proportion to the difficulty of writing. The elegant, legibile cursive that our forebears achieved with goose quills and steel pens is virtually a lost art, as quaint as the horesedrawn carriage. We’re guessing that the quality of contents is related to the writing instrument, too. You have to think harder when you can’t erase a mistake. It may be that the Musalman is written just a little better than its competitors, given the high cost of correcting the galleys. More here.
Circulation Directories
September 12, 2008
But for decades before ABC and the other auditing bureaus came along, a different system kept publishers honest. In the 19th century the watchdogs of circulation were two advertising agencies: George P. Rowell and Co. and N.W Ayer and Sons. These agencies compiled directories which became the Bibles of circulation—the place advertisers turned to find out how many readers a publication really had.
The original idea was George Rowell’s. His agency took pride in having the latest information on (and recent copies of) every newspaper in the United States and Canada. Producing this information in directory form was a logical step, and the first edition of Rowell’s American Newspaper Directory appeared in 1869.
The 1869 directory’s 358 pages offer a fascinating look at American publishing and marketing in the Civil War era. The main section of the directory listed newspapers and magazines by city and state, providing a thumbnail sketch of contents, contact information, and circulation. Other sections listed what used to be called “class” periodicals—magazines dedicated to special interests, like business, science, or agriculture. The directory also listed magazines and newspapers with more than 5,000, 10,000, and 20,000 circulation.
Eighty-three magazines and newspapers made it into that rarified 20,000 section in 1869. The largest of all was the weekly edition of Pomeroy’s Democrat (a New York City newspaper) with 275,000 circulation. Here are the next five, in descending order:
-New York Weekly: 200,000
-New York Tribune: 190,000
-Peterson’s Ladies Magazine: 140,000
-American Agriculturist: 116,000
-Harper’s Magazine: 112,000
It’s interesting to ponder the survival rate of this small group. The Tribune is still in business, as is the International Herald-Tribune, and both American Agriculturist (founded in 1842) and Harper’s (1850) are still going strong. The New York Weekly is no longer published, but the firm of its founders, Street and Smith, lives on as a unit of American City Business Journals. Sadly, Pomeroy’s Democrat is dead as Marley’s ghost, and Peterson’s (1842) was bought and closed by Frank Munsey in 1898. RIP to them both.
Ironically, the largest periodical in the country didn’t accept advertising and thus wasn’t listed in Rowell’s directory. This was the New York Ledger, a highly popular story paper that often sold more than 300,000 copies per issue.
Rowell had the directory market to himself for about 10 years. Then N. W. Ayer, another pioneering agency, launched a competitive directory, the American Newspaper Annual, run more or less on the same principle as Rowell’s. The two directories were merged in 1910 and published by Ayer into the 1980s. After a couple of ownership changes the directory ended up in the hands of Gale Research and is still produced as the Gale Directory of Publications and Broadcast Media.
Back in the 19th century, directory publishers didn’t have access to publishers’ records, but they did have a variety of ways to verify circulation claims. One was to query the local postmaster for information. Another was to use population data from the Census Department. And when a publisher “swore” to a claim, the directories usually published it.
The directories sold advertising to newspaper and magazine publishers. It was rumored that you’d receive a more generous circulation estimate in the Rowell directory if you advertised.
Using information from the directory, the Rowell agency developed what came to be known as a “list system,” which allowed a publisher to place ads in a “list” or network of newspapers. This broadened advertising reach at a time when practically all media were local… and brought advertisers one step closer to acquiring a nationwide voice.
These old directories aren’t as rare as you might think—many used bookstores get copies from time to time, and Bookfinder is a great way to track down one or two if you’re curious. A special spot in heaven is reserved for the saints who digitized some of the oldest and most interesting. Click here for .pdfs. They’re well worth a look.
The First Phone Book
September 6, 2008
Sometimes items that were once just the commonplace stuff of everyday life assume great historical significance. Take for example, the telephone directory that Christie’s auctioned earlier this year. There’s nothing special about a phone book… unless it happens to be the world’s first.
The country’s earliest telephone exchange was established in New Haven CT in 1878 with 391 subscribers. The only surviving copy of the first directory went on the auction block in June. It included a listing of local businesses as well as residences. This would make it the first yellow pages… although we’re guessing that every page is pretty yellow by now.
New communication technologies tend to raise hopes and expectations. The telegraph was expected to usher in an era of understanding and peace among nations. Radio was expected to revolutionize education. There was a fair amount of similar tripe served in the early days of the Internet, too, as we recall.
Speaking with someone on the other side of the city through a small device must have inspired awe in 1878… and probably still would, if the extraordinary didn’t grow ordinary so quickly. It’s cool when an artifact like the world’s first phone book surfaces. It reminds us how easily we become jaded with the most incredible human advances, and how meaningful even the most ephemeral objects can become.
More here.
Spring Breezes in October
October 7, 2007
How unusual to see two different news articles, each with the same valuable lesson, popping up on the same day. It almost feels like the blooms of spring or something.
Today’s New York Times contains a story describing the benefits that several large American newspapers are experiencing as they reduce circulation. The point: “Many papers have decided certain readers are not worth the expense involved in finding, serving and keeping them.”
And from Chicago, Ad Age reports that Playboy will reduce its rate base by 13 percent in January and simultaneously expand the amount of free content it offers online. The circulation will decline from 3 million to 2.6 million, a volume of paid readers slightly smaller than the population of Chicago but much larger than the population of Houston.
As these coinciding stories demonstrate, at least a few publishers have discovered that reducing circulation can be the first step toward better health… and that overextended circulation serves no more purpose than an inflated ego.
The invisible hand of the market will guide a reasonable publisher to the right decision just about every time. Playboy and the newspapers alike are making a pragmatic adjustment. They’re seeking the most profitable balance between revenue and expense in print while embracing their increasing online opportunities enthusiastically.
When your author was cutting his teeth as a circulator, one of his mentors said, “Circulation is just a commodity—with enough money you can buy all you want.” When the commodity is priced beyond its likelihood of providing a profitable return, a smart publisher stops paying for it.
And somewhere deep in their hearts (even if they won’t admit it to salespeople), advertisers know that readers who cost too much to acquire aren’t good prospects for their brands. Both articles describe advertiser support; neither contains advertiser criticism.
What times!—that a few sensible business decisions should look so refreshing. Perhaps what’s appealing is that these publishers aren’t responding to the admonitions of pundits, amateurs, or the over-opinionated. They’re reviewing source evaluations, asking for the judgment of their sales teams, and doing the right thing because it’s the profitable thing.
Fresh air and a warm breeze!