Journal (periodical)

“ Periodical literature (also called a periodical publication or simply a periodical) is a published work that appears in a new edition on a regular schedule. The most familiar examples are the newspaper, often published daily, or weekly; or the magazine, typically published weekly, monthly or as a quarterly. Other examples would be a newsletter, a literary journal or learned journal, or a yearbook. These examples are typically published and referenced by volume and issue. ”

“ In the United States each separate journal exercises but little authority, but the power of the periodical press is only second to that of the people. ”

“ The alternative and better form, especially where the periodical has a separate volume number sequence under each of the titles, is to enter both as if quite distinct publications, but with notes attached marking the connection, as
Weekly and monthly periodicals are sometimes the official organs of learned or scientific societies, in which case the name of the society becomes the entry word, as
Society of Arts, Journal of the. ”

“ Of all the serial publications of the day, it probably is the most serious, the most earnest, the least devoted to amusement, the least flippant, the least jocose,—and yet it has the face to show itself month after month to the world, with so absurd a misnomer! It is, as all who know the laws of modern literature are aware, a very serious thing to change the name of a periodical. ”

“ For periodicals—newspapers, magazines, reviews—are the Fools' Paradise of the commonplace, the mediocre, the orthodox, the respectable. As the strength of a chain must be measured by its weakest link, so the thought of a periodical must be measured by the thought of its most imbecile subscribers. ”

“ The oldest periodical of its type, it is yet, in each new volume, a new magazine, nor simply because it presents fresh subjects and new pictures, but also, and chiefly, because it steadily advances in the method itself of magazine-making. In a word, the MAGAZINE becomes more and more the faithful mirror of current life and movement. ”

“ But not only is journalism as a whole thus specialized; the process is going on within each newspaper-office. The work is more and more divided, as the journal grows in circulation, size, and variety of contents. ”

“ I mention no names, and the opinion may or may not be a just one; but it should be carefully weighed whether or not, or to what extent, the evaluations of such a periodical ought to be crystallized as it were: that is, taken from the periodical press and made part of a working library apparatus, to last for years.
Another periodical, an able magazine, which makes much of reviews is under the control of a strong body of men, but they stand for scarcely more than one line of thought among many lines. ”

“ It is amazing that a person with any pretensions to discernment should denounce newspapers as unfitted to form a part of a public library. The best newspapers of the time are sometimes the best books of the time. A first-class daily journal is an epitome of the world, recording the life and the deeds of men, their laws and their literature, their politics and religion, their social and criminal statistics, the progress of invention and of art, the revolutions of empires, and the latest results of science. ”

“ It has absorbed monthly magazines or forced publishers to resort to illustrations—to a sort of picture-book literature for grown-up children. It has driven the lumbering quarterlies into smaller fields and diminished their relative importance. The average citizen craves the news from a journal having the very dew of the morning and of the evening upon it. It must come to him damp and limp, bringing whatever is best at the smallest possible cost. The newspaper is the herald of the new era. ”

“ At times such journals as the Knickerbocker and Graham's, and even others less successful, boasted lists of contributors quite as distinguished as those which most later magazines have been able to show. It is true that in the last sixty years there has been great development in the arts of magazine editorship and of magazine authorship—the writing of articles especially adapted for publication in a periodical. ”

“ In analyzing a newspaper or magazine in order to determine the type of reader to which it appeals, the writer should consider the character of the subjects in its recent issues, and the point of view from which these subjects are presented. Every successful periodical has a distinct individuality, which may be regarded as an expression of the editor's idea of what his readers expect of his publication. To become a successful contributor to a periodical, a writer must catch the spirit that pervades its fiction and its editorials, as well as its special articles. ”

“ But we all love our dear common country better than all that belongs to district and climate; and so loving my country, and so being proud of its best fame and honor, its literary advancement, I was decidedly pleased with your periodical. The writing, the printing, the revision of the proofs, the ensemble, are all unquestionably creditable to you. I am too old and too much hackneyed in the style of periodicals to compliment. The Richmond Messenger gives respectable promise. Periodicals have to me a kind of physiognomy. Some look sickly and death-doomed from their birth. ”

“ They employ excellent talent when special topics are treated, and rise to occasions of war or other excitement through graphically written and highly illustrated articles. Indeed, one of their most impressive features is the high degree to which they have carried the art of illustration. Toward the close of the century, periodical literature has been greatly expanded and popularized by the introduction of the cheap magazine. ”

“ And the periodicals other than newspapers will excel our own in merit of every sort. They will be permanent, dignified and, above all, literary. For with the education of the people really carried to perfection, and with universal leisure, the result of improved social arrangements even more [83] than of improved mechanical processes, we shall have a demand for a really intelligent periodical literature, for really artistic illustrations, which will make it commercially possible to publish matter that only artificial endowment could support nowadays. ”

“ It is a well-known fact among successful magazine editors that their most striking successes have been made by material to which unknown names were attached, where the material was fresh, the approach new, the note different. That is what builds up a magazine; the reader learns to have confidence in what he finds in the periodical, whether it bears a famous name or not. ”

“ The design of the Publishers, in issuing this work, is to place within the reach of the great mass of the American people the unbounded treasures of the Periodical Literature of the present day. Periodicals enlist and absorb much of the literary talent, the creative genius, the scholarly accomplishment of the present age. The best writers, in all departments and in every nation, devote themselves mainly to the Reviews, Magazines, or Newspapers of the day. ”

“ Had they read much of the fiction appearing in the leading periodicals during current and recent years, they would have learned at least two facts about it:
1. Much—yes, most—of the fiction printed during recent years in our standard periodicals (even in those printing only fiction as “body matter”) , has been highly didactic or educational in character.
2. The periodical fiction published in our leading magazines and weeklies has taught our people lessons in morals, in politics, in political economy, in social, domestic and industrial life. ”

“ With the printing press to produce, the curiosity of man to demand, and his vanity and greed—if not also his genius and ambition—to supply, the book is in all probability pretty safe. In the forms and varieties of this periodical publication we have seen some interesting changes. [Pg 450] As might have been expected, the tendency has been for the intervals of publication to be shortened—for the quarterly to give way as the fashionable form to the monthly, the monthly to the weekly, the weekly to the daily. ”

“ Books are not often issued periodically, and, if so, their periodicity IS NOT AN ELEMENT OF THEIR CHARACTER. the reason why books of the riverside Literature Series are issued periodically is too palpable to require comment or explanation. It is sufficient to observe that, in our opinion, the fact that a publication is issued at stated intervals, under a collective name, does not necessarily make it a periodical. ”

“ The librarian who desires to make the management of his library in the highest degree successful, must give special attention to the important field of periodical literature. More and more, as the years roll on, the periodical becomes the successful rival of the book in the claim for public attention. Indeed, we hear now and then, denunciations of the ever-swelling flood of magazines and newspapers, as tending to drive out the book. Readers, we are told, are seduced from solid and improving reading, by the mass of daily, weekly, and monthly periodicals which lie in wait for them on every hand. ”

“ It was said to be an article of a solemn description; and report magnified the periodical into the Quarterly Review. So he became one who wrote for the English Press. It was felt that he was a man of letters; it was assumed that he was on terms of familiar correspondence with all the chief literary men of the day. ”

“ If, after an evening spent in looking over the old magazines which form the subject of the next few chapters, you can turn to the current weeklies and monthlies, and feel absolutely certain that we are better than our fathers, it augurs either a very wisely selected purchase from the crowded bookstall, which, at each railway station as the first of the month approaches, has its hundreds of rival magazines, or else that it would be wiser to spend still more time over the old periodicals until a certain 'divine dissatisfaction' was aroused towards the average illustrated periodical of to-day. ”

“ A Catalogue of Scientific and Technical Periodicals (1665 to 1882) . Together with Chronological Tables and a Library Check-List. By Henry Carrington Bolton. Washington: Published by the Smithsonian Institution. Pp. 776.
The mass of periodical literature has become stupendous; and the real importance it has attained is hardly less striking than its magnitude. The literature in some departments embodied in periodicals has nearly overtaken in value that which has been collected in books, and in the present course and tendencies of publication bids fair, before long, to pass it. ”

“ It must be clearly understood that first magazine publication is not here referred to. The only periodical issue of a book that can rank with book issue is that in parts, according to which the text of a novel made its appearance in monthly or weekly sections, separately wrappered, under its own title and unaccompanied by any extraneous matter save advertisements. ”

“ It is but a slight exaggeration to say that the periodical rapidly swallowed up all other forms of literature, to this extent and in this sense, that there is hardly a single one of these forms capital performance in which has not at one time or another formed part of the stuff of periodicals, and has not by them been first introduced to the world. ”

“ The story is a good one if the reader will suspend his sense of realism sufficiently to enjoy it. But in its purport [Pg 148] to be a true account of an arrest and a trial of certain persons, it makes one doubt first the story, then the newspaper that printed it, and finally newspapers in general. And so develops one of the main causes of criticism of the modern newspaper. A reporter must resolve to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. A journal loses its power the moment it is wrong. ”

“ The journalism of the century can boast no more indefatigable and brilliant pen than his, nor did any journal of his day occupy a more commanding place amid the discussions incident to the Civil War and subsequent periods of reconstruction. ”

“ A periodical, as ordinarily understood, is a publication appearing at stated intervals, each number of which contains a variety of original articles by different authors, devoted either to general literature or some special branch of learning or to a special class of subjects. ”

“ The periodical—it may almost for shortness' sake be said the newspaper—not only became infinitely multiplied, but it gradually absorbed almost every department, or a share of almost every department, into itself. Very large numbers of the best as well as of the worst novels themselves have originally appeared in periodicals; not a very small proportion of the most noteworthy nineteenth century poetry has had the same origin; it may almost be said that all the best work in essay, whether critical, meditative, or miscellaneous, has thus been ushered into the world. ”

“ How different is the working of the great brain-engine above stairs! Here man rubs against man, jealousy and discontent and favoritism do what they can to clog the machinery; and the more one knows about the inner197 life of a newspaper-office, the more the wonder grows that the newspaper of to-day approximates so closely to the highest journalistic ideal. You may find flaws, gentle reader, in what your favorite journal says, but its typographical make-up is always perfect. ”

“ There is scarcely anything more entertaining and instructive than a leisurely look over an old newspaper file. A newspaper of any age is an attraction, and the current newspaper something more, for it is now a necessity. But the next place to it in point of interest is perhaps due to the journal half a century, or two-thirds of a century old. It introduces us, if we be youthful, to the habits of our grandsires ”