Redbook (print)

» see redbookmag.com as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the obit ~

i missed redbook entirely. it was the kind of us women's monthly that lived in supermarket checkout stacks in a country i had not lived in. at peak in the '70s the title had close to five million subscribers with editorial fiction from f. scott fitzgerald and toni morrison in its archive. either way, the object itself never landed on any turkish newsstand. by the time i was reading english fluently redbook was already inside the same slow print erosion that hit every women's-service monthly.

redbook launched in may 1903 as "the red book illustrated," a chicago publication started by three retail merchants who took the property together. the name simplified fast, first to "the red book magazine," then just redbook. the mccall corporation bought the title in 1929, renamed it, and ran it through the depression and postwar decades as a general-interest monthly with a fiction bench.

by 1950 redbook was over two million in circulation. anyway, under sey chassler, who edited from 1965 to 1981, the number climbed toward five million. chassler's tenure landed the magazine in the middle of the women's-service reset that shifted the fiction bench aside for practical-service coverage and relationship reporting. hearst bought redbook in 1982 from the charter company after norton simon's earlier acquisition unwound. anne mollegen smith took the editor chair the same year as the first woman in the role.

hearst held redbook as a women's-service monthly for the next quarter century. it competed against hearst's own good housekeeping on the same portfolio and against meredith's ladies' home journal on the newsstand. as with every women's-service title, the 2010s pulled the ad base down against digital lifestyle publishing at the same publisher. hearst decided to end the print rate base entirely with the november / december 2018 issue. after january 2019 the redbook name lived on redbookmag.com as a digital-only property under the good housekeeping team.

~ the rap sheet ~

~ the mccall era ~

the mccall corporation bought redbook in 1929 and held it through the depression, war, and postwar decades. the magazine ran a fiction bench that at various points printed jack london, sinclair lewis, f. scott fitzgerald, dashiell hammett and toni morrison. the general-interest positioning kept redbook one shelf over from the pure women's-service monthlies until sey chassler's editor run pulled it firmly into the women's-monthly rack in the mid-1960s. peak circulation under chassler was around 4.75 million. the magazine's mid-'70s slogan was "the magazine of the young mama."

~ the hearst decades ~

hearst bought redbook in 1982 from the charter company. anne mollegen smith took the editor chair as the first woman to run the title. through the 1980s and 1990s hearst repositioned redbook toward younger married women. the fiction bench thinned. relationship and health service coverage took the center pages. by the 2000s the print rate base was still respectable but the ad revenue per copy was falling against the same digital publishing that hearst itself was building at the corporate level.

~ the online-only pivot ~

in november 2018 hearst told the redbook staff the print magazine would end with the vol. 231, no. 4 issue (november / december 2018). after january '19 the property would live as a redbookmag.com editorial page under the good housekeeping team, with no separate print rate base and no separate ad-sales team. the pivot was announced as a repositioning rather than a full closure. either way, the print product died.

~ the long tail ~

still, the redbookmag.com property kept running under the good housekeeping team for several years and continued producing articles under the redbook editorial brand. the print magazine did not come back. the archive of jack london fiction and the sey chassler editor years survives mostly through university-library microfiche and private collector holdings. hearst's digital redbook is a different object than the 115-year print title that lived beside good housekeeping and ladies' home journal on the postwar us newsstand.

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