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Object Lessons

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By: Jeff Jarvis
Narrated by: Jeff Jarvis
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Bloomsbury presents Magazine, written and read by Jeff Jarvis.

Object Lessons is a series of short books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

For a century, magazines were the authors of culture and taste, of intelligence and policy — until they were overthrown by the voices of the public themselves online. Here is a tribute to all that magazines were, from their origins in London and on Ben Franklin’s press; through their boom — enabled by new technologies — as creators of a new media aesthetic and a new mass culture; into their opulent days in advertising-supported conglomerates; and finally to their fall at the hands of the internet. This tale is told through the experience of a magazine founder, the creator of Entertainment Weekly at Time Inc., who was also TV critic at TV Guide and People and finally an executive at Condé Nast trying to shepherd its magazines into the digital age.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.©2024 Jeff Jarvis (P)2025 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Aesthetics Anthropology Art & Literature Journalists, Editors & Publishers Literary History & Criticism Media Studies Philosophy Social Sciences
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Critic reviews

Few people have thought as hard or as well about magazines as Jeff Jarvis does. He describes Magazine as an elegy, and it's a beautiful one, but it's so much more—a love letter to the heyday of a glorious form, a roundhouse punch thrown at those who failed as its custodians, an elegant and insightful history of a medium, and a vivid, funny, unsparing memoir. It's a pleasure to read him, and a privilege to learn from him.
A starter, lover, student, and doubter of magazines, Jeff Jarvis is here to explain to us—in beautiful and entertaining prose—what the magazine was when it was great, and how the internet undid it, by wiring us together in a different way, and giving everyone a printing press. The call that magazines once answered is still heard, he argues. It is to ‘set the idea of community free from geography.'
Having devoted a chunk of my life to writing for and editing magazines, I wondered whether Jeff Jarvis’s smart little chronicle, Magazine, would feel like nostalgia or PTSD.

He opened so well, it ceased to matter.
This is an insightful, succinct history of a cherished institution and a vivid, often funny and unsparing tribute to a fast-faltering entertainment medium.
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