Characteristics of Popular Magazines
| Characteristics | General Newspapers | Popular Magazines | Trade Publications | Scholarly Journals |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Examples |
- Wall Street Journal |
- Gourmet |
- Broadcasting & Cable - Business Week - Advertising Age - Computer World |
- Economic History Review - Journal of Educational Research Quarterly - Journal of Public Speaking |
| Appearance |
- Eye-catching headlines |
- Eye-catching |
- Glossy paper - Color graphics - Each issue starts with p.1 |
- Plain cover - Black/white graphics: tables, graphs - Each issue continues pagination from previous issue |
| Audience |
- General readership |
- General public, non-professionals |
- For members of a specific business, industry, or organization | - College educated - Researchers - Professionals - Professors - Students |
| Accountability |
- Standards set by newspaper editors/owners |
- Staff editors - No peer editing or expert review - May have short bibliographies or reference to other sources |
- Staff editors - No peer editing or expert review - May have short bibliographies - Varies from journal to journal |
- Articles are "peer reviewed" for accuracy - Expert evaluation often "blind" review (editors don't know who the author is) - Extensive documentation and references usually begins with a literature review |
| Authorship |
- Journalists |
- No credentials | - Journalists - Magazine writers - By-lines for some articles, many unsigned - No credentials - Staff writers - Contributing authors |
- Experts, professors - Articles written by contributing authors - Usually named with credentials and affiliation |
| Content |
- News |
- Personalities - News - General interest articles - Overview of a topic - Tend to be shorter than journal articles |
- Current industry trends - New products, topics, announcements - Organizational news - Forecasts - Employment and career information |
- Original research projects, theory, methodology - Responses to previously written articles - Tend to be lengthy, in-depth - Academic book reviews - Abstracts (summary of the article's contents) are included. |
| Language |
- Non-technical language for general public |
- Non-technical language | - Technical vocabulary - Laden with jargon |
- Academic, technica - Uses the language of the discipline |
| Advertising |
- Heavy |
- Heavy | - Moderate | - Few or none (usually scholarly presses) |
| Publisher |
- Commercial |
- Commercial | - Professional Associations | - Professional or Scholarly Associations, Societies, or Universities |
| Frequency |
- Daily |
- Weekly, Monthly | - Monthly, Quarterly | - Usually quarterly |