BlackNews.com - Black Magazines | African American Magazines

What Is A Black Magazine?
A Black magazine is a publication with articles and commentary that appeal to African Americans. The content is usually written in a way that most appeals to individuals that understand Black culture. In addition to relevant content, the magazines feature extensive images and photos to appropriately represent the audience being served.

Why Do They Exist?
Black magazines exist because many mainstream magazines do not discuss issues that are important to African Americans. Mainstream magazines rarely feature pictures of African Americans - something very important to any minority group. Many of the magazines were created in a time when discrimination and racism in the United States was prevalent.

African American Magazines are great tools to use by advertisers to better target their marketing campaigns. Knowing that all the readers of a magazine are Black, enables a marketer to develop a campaign that solely speaks to this audience - which, in turn, enhances the effectiveness of the ad. This type of marketing, often referred to as targeted marketing, is used by major corporations to target different groups of people based on ethnicity, age, sex, and other demographics.

How and When Did the First Ones Get Started?
The first Black magazine was the Negro Digest started by John Johnson in the 1940's. He later change the name to Jet Magazine, which is still in publication today. Johnson also started Ebony Magazine, and is credited for establishing the industry and for encouraging advertisers to support Black media. In the 1970's, Earl G. Graves started Black Enterprise Magazine which also continues to be published. In the 1980's, Essence Magazine was launched - and then hundreds of others followed.

How Many of Them Are There?
Many Black magazines come and go, but at any given time - there are about 200 different ones in circulation. Many are local and small, but there are quite a few that are nationally-distributed. They exist in the United States and Canada, and its not uncommon to hip-hop magazines in countries such as Russia and Japan. Also, in a recent documentary by Aron Ranen about the black hair care industry - it was revealed that black hair magazines are popular in Korea.

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