Since my ten page term paper was about teen magazines, and many of you are as devoted teen mag readers as I am, I thought it might be fun to share some of my findings and hear your thoughts!
I grew up in a very small town in Missouri—and I don’t have any sisters—so it seems like I learned everything about everything from teen magazines. I first picked up an issue of Seventeen when I was 11, and I never looked back.
Since then, I have subscribed to Seventeen, Teen People, CosmoGirl, ELLEgirl, and Teen Vogue at varying points of my life. To me, those magazines were so much more than a monthly stack of glossy articles; they were a “how-to guide” to life as a teen. Now, only two teen magazines are left. In my lifetime, I've seen ELLEgirl, CosmoGirl, YM, Teen, Teen People, Jump, and Instyle's Your Look close. Seventeen and Teen Vogue, thankfully, remain.
+ As teens are finding new alternatives in other media, the teen magazine market is undergoing an adolescent crisis. - AP
+ When Hearst Magazines bought Seventeen magazine last spring, it asked Atoosa Rubenstein, the frizzy-haired editor of CosmoGirl, a Hearst guide to girls' empowerment, to rejuvenate the fading teenage publication. But after looking in the mirror, Ms. Rubenstein decided that another kind of editor would be needed to remake Seventeen, a much more conventional magazine than CosmoGirl. So she began by straightening her hair. "I felt like I wasn't fitting in at my own magazine. The old hair said, 'Hi, I'm a quirky, wacky girl, and I don't care what anybody thinks.' The new hair said, 'I have work to do.'" - NYT
+ At CosmoGirl, we focused a lot on a girl's spiritual development. At Seventeen, we are working on their wardrobe development... You can't grab teen girls by the arm and tell them you are going to teach them something new. It has to be gradual so that you don't freak them out. - NYT
+ "It's easy for people to fall back on a discussion of which medium is better, which medium has momentum," said Jane Grenier, associate publisher of Teen Vogue. "This age of visitor has been interacting with different media her whole life. A rich, integrated Web site is crucial — you can't live in this girl's world without it." - AdAge
