Magazine

Magazine (pronounced mag-uh-zeen)

(1) A publication that is issued periodically, usually bound in a paper cover, and typically contains essays, stories, poems, etc., by many writers, and often photographs and drawings, frequently specializing in a particular subject or area, as hobbies, news, or sports.

(2) A room or place for keeping gunpowder and other explosives, as in a fort or on a warship.

(3) A building or place for keeping military stores, as arms, ammunition, or provisions.

(4) A metal receptacle for a number of bullets or cartridges, inserted into certain types of automatic and semi-automatic weapons which, when empty, is removed and replaced by a full receptacle in order to continue firing.

(5) In broad or narrowcast media (radio, TV, social etc), a production consisting of several, usually short, segments in which various subjects are examined, usually in greater detail than on a regular newscast.  In the jargon of the industry: the magazine format.

(6) A device for continuously recharging a handling system, stove or boiler with solid fuel.

(7) A storehouse or warehouse (now rare).

(8) A collection of war munitions.

(9) A rack for automatically feeding a number of slides through a projector.

(10) In film-stock photography, an alternative name for cartridge.

(11) A city regarded as a marketing centre (archaic).

1581: From the Middle French magasin (warehouse, store), from the Italian magazzino (storehouse), from the Arabic مَخَازِن‎ (makhāzin) (plural of مَخْزَن‎ (makhzan) (storehouse)) noun of place from خَزَنَ‎ (khazana) (to store, to stock, to lay up); from the same Arabic source came the Spanish almacén (warehouse) and it's an example of European languages borrowing from an Arabic in plural form to create a singular form.  The original Arabic plural مخازن (maxāzin) was from the singular noun مخزن (maxzan) (storehouse; depot; shop).  A magazinette was  a small or short magazine (in the sense of a periodic publication), based on the notion of a novella or operetta.  Such things do still exist but the term has fallen from use.  In the early days of the commercial availability of semi-automatic firearms, at least one manufacturer did label those used with handguns "magazinette", the idea being they were a small version of the "magazines" supplied with larger weapons but the four syllable suggestion seems almost instantly to have been replaced by "clip".  The informal noun describing the industry publishing magazines was magazineland.  Magazine, magaziner & magazinette are nouns and magazinelike (and magazine-like) is an adjective (magazinesque seems to be non-standard); the noun plural is magazines.

Lindsay Lohan, Vogue magazine (Spanish edition), August 2009.

The original general sense of “storehouse” is almost obsolete except for military purposes and in naval history, magazines feature frequently because their detonation (usually as a result of attack but sometimes accidents too) was often the cause of ships being sunk, often with a high death-toll.  As used to describe books figuratively as “storehouses of information”, the form emerged circa 1640, the first application to a "periodical journal" was the Gentleman's Magazine in 1731.  Over the years magazines have appeared in a variety of formats with paper stock of different sizes and quality and have been as small as a single sheet or have run to hundreds of pages.  Although high-end publications were often lavish, it was only after the 1970s that the use of glossy paper became the industry standard after for years often appearing only on covers.  In the West, the the 1970s, 1980s & 1990s were the golden decades for magazines (and newspapers), the general trend of rising prosperity and the attractiveness of the medium to advertisers meaning growth of the sector was assured and the ease with which new entrants could appear was enhanced by the rise of desktop publishing, meaning entire editions could be composed with equipment which cost a tiny faction of what was required even a generation earlier.  There was churn because many came and went and the periodic recessions claimed some but during those decades the trend was more and not less.

The early days of the internet, when most interactions happened on desktops or laptops appears to have had little effect on the industry and may even have stimulated demand but it was in the early 2010s the near simultaneous arrival at scale of bandwidth, social media and smartphones which created a vicious cycle of (1) increasing volumes of content moving from established publishers to social media & (2) the advertising revenue following the viewers who followed the content.  The decade was littered with publications which either moved on-line or folded entirely but nothing compared with the sudden hit in 2020-2021 of the COVID-19 pandemic when titles which had for a generation or more been staples of the industry ceased to be.  However, some subsequently were revived and what seems to have happened is that many non-specialist titles (such as fashion magazines) have been re-invented as niche players designed to appeal to a small market with the interests and disposable income (the famous A1 & A2 demographic) which will attract advertisers.  A kind of pre-packaging of the audiences micro-marketers crave, this segment of the magazine business can be compared with narrowcasting and for some, the glossy magazine is something desirable and just another form of technology albeit one which can be a more pleasant and more convenient way to consume content and prices has risen so such things can also be flaunted as a status symbol, the sense of exclusivity sometimes not wholly illusory because some titles do restrict certain content to their print editions.  In the West, it's unlikely the glossies will ever again be the mass-market force they once were but as the revival of vinyl records demonstrated, where ongoing demand exists for something technically obsolete, provided a business model can be found profitably to provide supply, niches can survive and thrive.                        

The Economist's editors' choice of the ten covers which seemed best to define 2016.  At the time, 2016 seemed a ghastly year but worse was to come. 

However, being something that looks like a glossy magazine and sits in the shop on the shelf with other magazines does not guarantee that it is a magazine.  The English weekly The Economist (published since 1843) certainly ticks all the boxes for the criteria of what most people would think constitutes a magazine yet it has always described itself as a "newspaper".  That probably seems strange to many given the structure and nature of the content is more closely aligned with other specialist publications labelled "magazines" than with almost all "newspapers".  The explanation is relates to the the way the word "newspaper" was understood in 1843 and until 1971 it was printed in a broadsheet format (the change to the modern form in no way affecting editorial content).  Just to add some typically Economistesque precision, the editor in 2016 clarified the position further by explaining "perfect-bound" publications (the binding process used) were in 1843 called "newspapers".  If that sounds a highly technical point, so it should because economics remains, by definition and habit, the publication's meat & drink and economics is a technical business.  Whether it is or can ever be a science is one of those amusing arguments in which minds are never changed.

The Economist is renowned also for its cartoons and the dry, occasionally sardonic captions which accompany the photographs and illustrations used lend color or context to articles.  A rough guide to hell appeared on the cover of the 2012 Christmas double issue (December 2012).  Theologically dubious, as a piece predictive of the decade ahead, it proved remarkably prescient.

Politically, The Economist is best classified as belonging to "the fiscally conservative, socially liberal faction of the rational centre-right" and one perhaps surprising quirk revealed in a survey conducted by a US university was the high number of readers who turn first to the weekly obituary, the subjects of which are an eclectic lot: In addition to the expected popes, politicians & potentates, criminals, Cassanovas & courtesans and musicians, mandarins & megalomaniacs (there's some overlap with other categories), there are lives recorded which might otherwise be forgotten such as the man who spent decades gathering and storing all the typefaces used by the world's typewriters.  Nor are non-humans neglected, Alex the African Grey (science's best known parrot) & Benson (England's best-loved fish), both granted the valedictories they doubtlessly deserved.