Magazines and Their Functions

Magazines are something that people in the world read everyday.  A magazine should never be confused with a newspaper and there are three factors that distinguish the difference between them.  A magazine offers a more long-form writing.  This is instead of having shot clips of a story in a newspaper.  Another factor is published on a regular basis.  Magazines are published on a monthly basis and sometimes a weekly basis, on the other hand, Newspapers are published everyday for people to read.  Finally, magazines are published on a better paper than Newspapers are because they are meant to be kept longer.  In society Magazines are very important because they offer things that a newspaper cannot.  Magazines serve specific functions to society such as, surveillance, correlation, entertainment, and marketing goods and services.  Another way that magazines separate themselves form newspapers is how specific they are.  Magazines most of the time are related to one thing such as sports.  Magazines such as Sports Illustrated and ESPN the magazine are examples of this.  Newspapers however discuss many different topics throughout their daily news.  Magazines offer a wide range of stories not just related to sports.  There are magazines such as, People which talk about the starts in Hollywood and entertainment news.  Another reason that magazines can offer more than newspapers, has to do with the paper they are printed on.  Because the paper is better in magazines, it allows them to use pictures to attract the audience.  I think that magazines are very important to society and are needed so that people can obtain certain information that would not be printed in a newspaper.  I do not believe that magazines will ever be taken off the market and replaced with online material either.  Magazines offer the feeling of holding something in your hand and reading it which I believe is important to society.  The functions of a magazine such as longer stories are important because it allows the reader to obtain a full story instead of a few sentences that may have been printed in a newspaper.  Something of importance involving magazines is that they have a defined audience.  This is extremely important because it allows magazines to sell in stores.  Certain people want certain information about topics that interest them and magazines offer that to those readers.  The six keys can be applied in this situation.

Six Keys

1. Product- Magazines

2. Technology/Platform- Paper, Pictures

3. Industry- Sports, Fashion

4. Money- Subscription Fee

5. Law and Government- Tarnish Government reputation at times 

6. Audience- Readers to specific topics

Michael Petrone