The city magazine idea can be traced back at least to the late nineteenth century when Colonel William Mann founded a publication called Town Topics in New York City.It contained gossip and general light news of interest to its society-minded audience.Ben L.Moon,“City Magazines,Past and Present,”Journalism Quarterly,47,711(Winter,1970).An even better prototype was developed in 1925 by Harold Ross,who said his New Yorker magazine would be a reflection in word and pictures of metropolitan life.It has provided that and more.Cartoons,profiles,plotless short stories,and other features have made the New Yorker difficult to classify.Nevertheless,offerings such as“Goings on about Town,”which lists theaters,movies,concerts,and myriad other activities,have become staples of most city magazines.Other city-oriented magazines were started with varying success in subsequent years before Edwin Self and a partner developed San Diego magazine in the late 1940s.San Diego has variously been described as a precursor to,or the beginning of,the modern city magazine movement which evolved in the 1960s.It has provided a successful model for more than 40 years,although many of the magazines started in those years have not shared its goal of providing an alternative voice to local monopoly newspapers.
Various factors converged to provide an impetus for the development of city magazines in the 1960s.After World War II,the nation's population expanded at a rapid rate and became increasingly concentrated in urban,and especially metropolitan areas.By 1960,70 percent of the population was urban and 63 percent was metropolitan.Many blacks were added to the melting pot of ethnic groups,and all struggled to meet the challenges produced by rapid growth and an accelerated tempo of technological and social change.Conflicts and tensions evolved as local governments created in the 18th and 19th centuries sought to accommodate rapidly changing needs and attitudes of the 20th.Many inner cities deteriorated as more affluent residents,often white,moved to the suburbs.For a complete look at population changes,see the U.S.Census Reports for 1960 and 1970.A good summary of the changes discussed here may be found in the“Cities and Urban Affairs”section,Britannica Book of the Year 1969,p.204.The human rights movement,the conflict in Southeast Asia,and other developments prompted social unrest and change.In addition,cities became increasingly competitive for business,industry,and tourism.
City magazines developed in response to these and other changes.Many such as Atlanta were started by chambers of commerce to promote business and tourism development.A few were developed to provide alternative voices,and some were started as survival manuals for city dwellers,usually upper middle class residents whose readership could attract advertising.Many were started to serve the growing number of affluent persons in the suburbs.It appears that few were started to address city problems as such,but some came to deal with these problems in their editorial content because the problems became of increasing concern to their target readers.Newsweek magazine suggested in 1968 that some city magazines were started in search of a shortcut to status.“Every red-blooded American city craves a symphony orchestra,a civic center,a major league baseball team and other monuments of civilization,”the magazine wrote.“But these days a city can take a shortcut to status with a city magazine.”“A Shortcut to Status,”Newsweek,September 2,1968,p.44.
Most of the nation's larger cities,and some smaller ones,became homes to one of the more than sixty diverse city and regional magazines published in the 1960s and 1970s.The primary reasons for their creation and continued existence differed at times,but some patterns had emerged by the late 1970s.David Shaw,who writes about the media for the Los Angeles Times,suggested in 1976 that city magazines had attracted a sophisticated status-conscious audience that buys new cars,stereo equipment,and fine clothes and is highly attractive to advertisers.He suggested that the audience was successful but not content,that it was concerned about achieving.“Crime,inflation,congestion and competition are the four horsemen of this audience's imminent apocalypse,”Shaw wrote.“City magazines cater to those concerns-telling their readers how to protect their homes against burglary,where to shop for bargains,how to beat rush-hour traffic,where to go for psychoanalysis,transcendental meditation or crash-dieting.”He said it seems that most persons read city magazines“either to learn how to cope with their environment or to enjoy,vicariously,the success that others more wealthy and fortunate than themselves have had in so doing.”David Shaw,“List Grows:Magazines of the Cities-a Success Story,”Los Angeles Times,April 5,1976,p.3.