Monday, January 17, 2005
Men's magazines
Men's magazines have broken a lot of ground.
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When I began my writing career in the 1970s, I wrote for what were then termed “men’s magazines.” At the time, the men’s magazines were a source of real, dependable income, and, unlike the “prestige” magazines, they paid on time, which was a comfort to landlords, utility companies, and other bill collectors who were less impressed by “prestige” than timeliness.--H. Williams
Knight Publications, who put out ADAM, PLAYERS, FILM WORLD, PRIME, CHOICE, KNIGHT and a host of other titles, had been the first company to publish Stephen King, among the first American companies to publish environmental “wacko” Jacques Costeau, and regularly published writers (often under pen names) of the order of John D. MacDonald, Norman Spinrad, Harlan Ellison, Richard Armour, Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Silverberg, and many, many more. I did a lot of writing for them.
There was, inevitably, the question: how can you write for those HORRIBLE publications? This question, also inevitably, came from someone who never had actually READ one of those publications, and who were, literally, judging the books by their covers. So, one kept one’s paycheck writing to oneself, and, if asked, pointed to the “prestige” publications one was writing for, such as the LOS ANGELES TIMES, The HERALD-EXAMINER, NEW WEST MAGAZINE, LOS ANGELES MAGAZINE, et al.
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For good and sufficient reasons, such magazines lie outside the journalistic mainstream, and their articles don't show up in databases used by journalists. But such magazines do publish creditable investigative journalism, often on "macho" topics like crime, drugs, and espionage....The fringe status of such magazines also tends to make their editors see themselves as civil libertarians and political anti-establishmentarians -- and gives them less to lose. As a result, they often print what other mass-circulation publications won't...--Namebase
# posted by Brandon : 9:22 AM
