Quality and Opinion Magazines

Christopher H. Sterling

Magazines directed toward and appealing to an educated and cultured minority have always been a part of the American journalism scene. These so-called quality titles (a term referring to the level of both their content and readership) typically serve elite cultural, business, and political leaders (sometimes snidely dubbed “the chattering classes”) and enjoy a greater impact than their limited circulation might suggest. Most of these magazines of comment and opinion tend to focus on either political and economic issues or literary pursuits, though many include both. often, long-serving editors have in the past given such magazines much of their image and social role, though more recently their editors have not played such a visible role. The first American magazines published in the late eighteenth century were directed to the educated and cultured minority that ran the business, social, and political life of the colonies and then the new nation. The ...

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