When I first learned of this assignment, I was very interested as to what a magazine looked like from so long ago. I chose the Time edition from April 7, 1924, for my magazine to examine that was popular during the early twentieth century. It had never really occurred to me that Time magazine had been around for so long, and I was interested in seeing the differences between the old edition and the modern edition. However, I realized that in order to perform an accurate and fair comparison, I needed to look at a current edition also. For my current edition I used the Time magazine from September 26, 2011.
Upon first examining both issues I noticed many differences starting with the appearances of the two magazines. The cover of the older Time has a headshot of a prominent figure that is featured in the magazine with a title and a four word tag line about the article, while the modern issue places a picture of a prominent article, not necessarily a person, and also names another article. The older Time magazine does not give credit to the author of any of the articles. On the other hand, the author of the cover story is on the cover, and each article throughout the magazine also credits an author. Another difference that stands out is the amount of pictures and graphics throughout the magazines. The older Time only includes small pictures of people throughout the magazine, with about one on every page. The magazine is almost entirely text in a block format that is very structured. The current issue has very few pages of full text, if any. There are various graphics such as graphs, charts, scenery, diagrams, and just about any other kind of graphic that you can think of. I think the reason for this dramatic change is the difference between readers. Modern readers get distracted from plain text and need these pictures in order to retain attention. Another reason probably involves the availability of the news. In the early twentieth century, Time was probably one of the few sources of news, both national and international, so there was little it had to do to keep followers. Nowadays, Time competes with a number of other magazines, in addition to daily news on TV and even news on the internet.
Another major difference between the two editions is the method of advertising.
The advertising in the early twentieth century was largely text based with occasionally a small picture of the advertising. Most of the ads are small and off on the side of the page, as opposed to full-page ads that are common in today’s magazine. Most of the ads are those that seem to be targeting a businessman, such as hats, briefcases, golf balls, and newspapers among others. One advertisement in this issue that was especially intriguing for me was one advertising Life. I thought it was peculiar that there was an advertisement for one of its competitors in the magazine. The ad is in the form of almost an article in itself: it begins with five small paragraphs explaining why one should subscribe to the modern magazine Life, follows that up with an offer of ten weeks of issues for $1, and concludes with another paragraphing asking what good would that single dollar do you if it was not sent to Life. Most articles follow a similar format with one or two paragraphs explaining what the ad is advertising and why one should buy it or subscribe to it often including something to mail back to the company with an address. Advertisements today are extremely different; they often take up at least an entire page and have very flashy pictures with little text actually advertising the product except for a phone number and website.
Another noticeable difference is the actual content of the articles. The older magazine focuses on actual facts, and lists them as such with little extra or personal opinion. Conversely, the modern magazine’s articles are much longer and often include a lot of “fluff” rather than strictly facts. An example of the older magazines type of writing is seen in the first section. The heading is “National Affairs” with a sub-heading of “The Presidency”. This section has about seven bullet points on what the president did this week. Each bullet stated what President Coolidge did in a sentence or two before moving onto the next point. This style is seen throughout the magazine with an occasional article that is a few paragraphs long, but the articles never exceed one page.
Overall, by comparing the magazines I was able to see how the presentation of the news has changed over the years. Although they present the materials differently, both eras still cover the same kind of topics.
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