The Press and the Public Sphere: Magazine Entrepreneurs in Antebellum America

How has access to the public sphere been affected by the rise of mass media? We address this question by studying magazines in America from the eighteenth century, when all periodicals had small circulations, to the mid-nineteenth century, when many reached mass audiences. Specifically, we investigate how the social positions of those who founded new magazines changed over this period. Previous research is divided on whether the rise of mass media made it more difficult for non-elites and industry outsiders to launch new magazines by creating large and powerful publishing houses, or made it easier by fostering acceptance of magazines as legitimate cultural products and improving access to resources needed for publishing. Using Goodman’s (1972) modification of multiple regression for the analysis of categorical data, we examine whether magazine founders were increasingly drawn from social elite and from inside publishing, or from an increasingly broad swath of society. We find that magazine publishing was originally restricted to industry insiders, elite professionals, and the highly educated, but after the rise of mass media, most founders came from outside publishing and more were of middling stature – mostly small-town doctors and clergy without college degrees. We also find that magazines founded by industry insiders remained concentrated in the major publishing centers, while magazines founded by outsiders became geographically dispersed.