Magazines
Part IV
The Top Magazines,
Historic Chronology
 The top-20 U.S. magazines by circulation at the beginning of 2010 are listed below.
Some of the magazines are free, others
are by subscription. The date listed (when available) is when the magazine
was founded. Also noted is the publisher.
You might be surprised that some
magazines you've never heard of are in this top-20 list.
1 AARP The Magazine,
24,371,637 1958, AARP
2 AARP Bulletin, 24,042,603 1960, AARP
3 The Costco Connection, 8,112,420, Costco
4 Better Homes And Gardens, 7,621,786 1922, Meredith
Corporation
5 Reader's Digest, 7,099,558 1922, The
Reader's Digest Association
6 Food & Family, 5,261,003 2000, Kraft
Foods/Meredith Corporation
7 Good Housekeeping, 4,652,904 1885, Hearst
Corporation
8 National Geographic, 4,495,931 1888, National
Geographic Society
9 Woman's Day, 3,966,414 1931, Hachette
Filipacchi Media U.S. (Lagardère)
10 Ladies' Home Journal, 33,858,773 1883, Meredith
Corporation
11
Family Circle, . 3,823,253 1932, Meredith
Corporation
12 Game Informer, 3,805,038 1991, GameStop
13 People, 3,613,902 1974 Time Inc. (Time Warner)
14 Time, 3,329,429 1923, Time Inc. (Time Warner)
15 Taste of Home, 3,215,228 1993, Reiman
Publications/The Reader's Digest Association
16 Sports Illustrated, 3,201,524 1954, Time Inc.
(Time Warner)
17 Cosmopolitan, 3,001,894 1886, Hearst
Corporation
18 Prevention, 2,900,193 1950, Rodale Inc.
19 Southern Living, 2,855,973 1966, Southern
Progress Corporation/Time Inc. (Time Warner)
20 Via, 2,767,064, American Automobile
Association
The chart below lists 12 key periods in the history of magazines.
| 1741 |
First Magazine Published in America
|
| 1800s |
Rapid magazine growth due to increased literacy and decline in postage rates for magazines
|
| 1893 |
McLure's magazine starts "muckraking" in mass circulation magazines
|
| 1922 |
Time becomes first weekly newsmagazine
|
| 1936 |
Life becomes first picture magazine; launches photojournalism
|
| 1941-1945 |
Life graphically documents the progress of World War II with weekly photos
|
| 1950s |
Television results in major drop in magazine ad revenue and circulation
|
| 1969 |
Saturday Evening Post, which was one of the first and most successful general interest magazines, ceases publication
|
| 1970 |
Specialized magazines start a boom in niche magazines that continues today
|
| 1972 |
Life magazine stops publication as a monthly; Ms magazine launched
|
| 1990s |
Magazines begin publishing on the Internet
|
| 2000s |
Zines (Internet magazines) published by thousands of home-based publishers
|
And finally, here are Internet links to a few popular magazines and resources:
.
|
