What sells a magazine?

In a time when readers are addicted to social media and other collaborative platforms, it becomes an elephantine task for an editor, in particular, for a print magazine editor, to decide whether to follow journalistic ethics or diktats of publisher. That's perhaps the worst dilemma that most editors face every now and then. But the facts remain that if a product doesn't appeal to the readers, no journalistic ethics would save the entire tribe from the disaster in the offing – no business, no morality grounds. Thus an editor, irrespective of professional compulsion, tries to maintain a fine balance between journalism and business of journalism. And in more ways than one, the latter takes the precedence. Always. Taking sides, choosing popularity over abstract truth, and packaging a better product to wow readers become the priorities for an editor than engaging in a more intellectual muscle flexing show.

For a magazine, if the circulation largely depends on news-stand sell, the cover story becomes the single decisive factor to draw readers' attention. On an average over 50% of instant sells take place on the grounds of an exciting cover story. Many a times, I observe reader's psychology very explicitly while someone drops at a news-stand and hovers around to catch up with a trendy cover, and if that's damn good, the sell is done almost instantly, without even flipping the pages. What really drives a reader so high to go ga-ga over a cover? According to Ray Cave, the editorial director of Time Inc., the popularity of the subject in the target readers' mind drives the sell, irrespective of how frivolous it might look to a learned reader though. For example, a story on the private life of a popular actress weighs more than the story dealing with huge success of a political leader in social development front. Very few intellectual readers though would prefer to choose the latter, the mass selling would only follow the earlier story.

On a conclusive note, it's the conflicting nature of the story that triggers some curiosity in most readers' mind, and that becomes a fascination for the reader to delve into the unknown in detail, which generates an instant sell. Perhaps, that's the reason why many editors put maximum efforts on the cover story to run the business of journalism.