Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

For a century, magazines were the authors of culture and taste, of intelligence and policy — until they were overthrown by the voices of the public themselves online. Here is a tribute to all that magazines were, from their origins in London and on Ben Franklin’s press; through their boom — enabled by new technologies — as creators of a new media aesthetic and a new mass culture; into their opulent days in advertising-supported conglomerates; and finally to their fall at the hands of the internet. This tale is told through the experience of a magazine founder, the creator of Entertainment Weekly at Time Inc., who was also TV critic at TV Guide and People and finally an executive at Condé Nast trying to shepherd its magazines into the digital age.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

Few people have thought as hard or as well about magazines as Jeff Jarvis does. He describes Magazine as an elegy, and it's a beautiful one, but it's so much more—a love letter to the heyday of a glorious form, a roundhouse punch thrown at those who failed as its custodians, an elegant and insightful history of a medium, and a vivid, funny, unsparing memoir. It's a pleasure to read him, and a privilege to learn from him. * Mark Harris, journalist and author of Mike Nichols: A Life (2021) *
A starter, lover, student, and doubter of magazines, Jeff Jarvis is here to explain to us—in beautiful and entertaining prose—what the magazine was when it was great, and how the internet undid it, by wiring us together in a different way, and giving everyone a printing press. The call that magazines once answered is still heard, he argues. It is to ‘set the idea of community free from geography.' * Jay Rosen, Associate Professor of Journalism, New York University, USA *

Having devoted a chunk of my life to writing for and editing magazines, I wondered whether Jeff Jarvis’s smart little chronicle, Magazine, would feel like nostalgia or PTSD.

He opened so well, it ceased to matter.

Jeff Jarvis is Leonard Tow Professor of Journalism Innovation and Director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, USA, where he created new degrees in Social Journalism, Entrepreneurial Journalism, and News Innovation. He is the Creator and Founding Manager Editor of Entertainment Weekly and has been a media columnist at The Guardian, TV Critic and Development Editor at TV Guide, Associate Publisher and Sunday Editor at the New York Daily News, TV Critic and Associate Editor at People, and columnist and editor at the San Francisco Examiner and the Chicago Tribune. He is the author of four books, including, including Geeks Bearing Gifts: Imagining New Futures for News (2014), Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live (2011), and What Would Google Do? (2009).