Magazines

Today we had a discussion about magazines. I found the concept incredibly intriguing. I had no idea that magazines were so old. I knew that newspapers dated all the way back to the 18th century and even further but I didn't know that this was true of magazines. To me, a magazine is bigger than a newspaper but smaller than your average novel with glossy pages and a glossy cover, which made me believe that they were not very old.

The discussion was very fascinating because the way Miller explained what was inside of the magazine reminded me of what is inside of the literary magazine, One Blue Wall. Miller explained that in old magazines there was serialized fiction, children and adults fiction, personality profiles, and investigative articles. In later years when we could print photos, photo journalism was introduced. All of these things are included in One Blue Wall. I think that magazines today should revert to the original content of magazines. Whenever I see a magazine I can't help but think "I would never read that, it's full of gossip and garbage," which would not be true if we reverted to the original content of magazines. I think that it would be really cool if we continued to do serialized fiction in magazines today.

Another part of the discussion I really found interesting was when we talked about how it gave people a reason to be literate. I completely agreed with this. It's interesting how many conversations you have a day about things you read about or saw on the news or read in a book. This would definitely give people a reason to read so that they can be part of the conversation and not be left out. I know that what really got me to start reading was hearing people talk about books in and out of school and give amazing reviews and have long and drawn out conversations about an article or book.