Why Do We Read Magazines?

Why do we read magazines? What is behind the allure of buying, owning and reading magazines? There are, of course, many answers to this question. But if we are truly honest with ourselves, we might be able to turn the tide of our businesses or, at the very least, start a process of self-analysis that leads eventually to psychological and financial recoveries. Some college professors will tell you that it is the form of the product-—rather than its substance—that maintains its hold on the public. I suppose that might be true for some magazine readers. Printed products do have a historic experiential hold on some of the reading public. But is that really it? Is it really the paper substrate and physical form that is the key to our ongoing and future success? And so I am back to the question I asked: Why do people actually read magazines? The answer: to learn and to enjoy. That is the motivation behind most, if not all, reading adventures. We read to further our knowledge and to enjoy the experience. Sometimes, the learning is forced upon us by a job or by a school, or sometimes it’s just the need for that innate pleasure of discovering something new. Other times, we read solely for pleasure—the pure joy of wandering through a good writer’s brain. The great syntax road of discovery, where page by page you can unearth damn near anything that humans have accomplished, deduced, uncovered or invented. Reading is one of the best indicators of exactly who the human race is. We can’t help ourselves. As a race of beings, we have a fundamental need to know things. We are driven to explore and attempt to understand, whether it is the spiritual whys, or the scientific hows. It has always been that way. It will always be that way. So, the reasons we read magazines are much the same as why we read anything. We read to learn and to enjoy. Books teach and educate, and magazines can do the same. Magazines contain the same things as books—words and pictures. Some magazines have fewer pictures than some books, and some have more. Why do The Atlantic and The New Yorker sometimes have more words than a good book? The answer is embedded in the design and function of those magazines. However brilliant the writing and the research is, the actual product of a magazine is usually designed to be a temporary and inexpensive distribution vehicle. Books are usually meant to have some permanence, and magazines by and large are meant to be periodic and disposable. I would add that a magazine is like a dear, old friend who comes to visit you on a regular basis. This friend, perhaps considered a mentor, has traveled extensively since you last saw each other and has lots of new ideas, based on the theme of your continued and ongoing dialogue. Why do we read magazines? To learn what we don’t know, to affirm what we do know and to revel in the joy of exploration. And so the big debate currently raging about the future form and physical structure of these magazines is meaningless without the understanding of why. Once that simple question has grounded us, the path to the future of the magazine business is clear. None of the reasons I have discussed are based in any way on a substrate. It is our job as magazines to be a friend and a mentor to our friend, the reader. If we are invited to enter that reader’s house on paper, we will do so. If we are invited to travel on a stream of electrons to continue the dialogue, we had best be prepared to do that, too. At the end of the day, it is our continued ability to provide the comfort of informed, meaningful dialogue and knowledge that is important, and very little else. Bob Sacks (aka BoSacks) is a printing/publishing industry consultant and president of The Precision Media Group (BoSacks.com). He is also the co-founder of the research company mediaIDEAS (MediaIdeas.net), and publisher and editor of a daily international e-newsletter, Heard on the Web. Sacks has held posts as director of manufacturing and distribution, senior sales manager (paper), chief of operations, pressman, circulator, and almost every other job this industry has to offer.

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Why Do We Read Magazines?

Robert M. Sacks

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Robert M. Sacks