Magazine Deathwatch: Now Its The Saturday Evening Post

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On the occasion of its 205th anniversary of publication The Saturday Evening Post announced that the January/February 2027 edition of the magazine will be the last print issue.

The magazine’s January issue will be its last in print the president and publisher. In a letter to the Post’s 50,000 subscribers in the most recent issue, she attributed the decision to a combination of “rising production costs, declining advertising revenue and shifting reader habits.”

The historic magazine will continue online with new original and classic material.

The magazine, which was ubiquitous during the mid-20th Century, made its name during the last for carrying famous fiction and glorious cover art.

The Saturday Evening Post history of the magazine notes that the first issue was published on Aug. 4, 1821 as a weekly newspaper. About 125 years ago Cyrus Curtis took over and the newspaper became more of a general interest magazine for men. A struggling magazine.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Von Tress said, the cost of editing, printing, and delivering a single copy was between 20 and 40 cents. Yet Curtis was charging only a nickel per copy. The only way he could stay in business was to make advertising revenue cover nearly all the costs of publishing. In the 1900s, this was a new concept. The modern advertising industry was just beginning, and few were aware of how much money would eventually flow into ad budgets. Until that time, very few, if any, magazines had enough advertising to make any serious contribution to operational costs. Curtis foresaw that advertising would support big media.

The Saturday Evening Post advertising success reached its apex with the Dec. 9, 1929 issue.

That issue had a cover by Norman Rockwell, who at that time was slowly replacing J. C. Leyendecker as the favored cover artist for the magazine. Former or future comic strip artists were among the illustrators who drew covers for the magazine: Neysa McMein, Clayton Knight, W. H. D. Koerner, Paul Bransom, Grace Gebbie Wiederseim,andMarcus Hamilton (yes, the Dennis the Menace daily cartoonist) whose covers are sampled at The Saturday Evening Post Artwork Archives.

Naturally we must noted that The Saturday Evening Post was one of top go-to magazines for single panel cartoonists. A who’s who of magazine cartoonists appeared in its pages, far too many to list here, and some comic characters like Ted Key’s Hazel, Marge’s Little Lulu, Carl Anderson’s Henry, and, in a roundabout way, Mort Walker’s Beetle Bailey got their start in the magazine.

For a sampling go to The Saturday Evening Post‘s weekly Cartoon Collections where the greats that contributed are showcased. Also check out Mike Lynch‘s Saturday Evening Post Scrapbook of cartoons.

More about the life and death of the print Saturday Evening Post at The Philadelphia Inquirer (or here); also Business Standard (or here) carries the story.