Hasta La Creative!

Can this magazine be saved? Unfortunately, no. Ladies’ Home Journal, America’s oldest women’s magazine, will cease monthly publishing with its July issue. A spokesman for its owner, Meredith Corporation, said the 131-year-old title will totter on as a newsstand-only quarterly.

What a sad ending for the publication that was once considered America’s premier women’s magazine. Launched in 1883 by Cyrus Curtis, who also started The Saturday Evening Post, LHJ developed out of the popular women’s page in Curtis’s first publication, a periodical for farmers. His wife was the first editor, and the second, a Dutch immigrant named Edward Bok, was the editorial genius who transformed the Journal into a mass magazine for millions.

Early in the 20th century Bok had great insight about what would interest “modern” readers. In every issue he featured the celebrities of the day, including Civil War generals, actresses, presidents and members of the British royal family. He also crusaded against popular patent medicines, distillations of alcohol and opium, which addicted many middle-class women at the time. And he wrote shockingly straightforward editorials warning women about sexual diseases such as syphilis.

Continue reading at AdAge.com