I spent some time browsing the official website of Esquire (magazine). Esquire already has had a prominent place in American publication since it began in 1933, and it has featured some of America’s most famous writers including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tim O’Brien, and Tom Wolfe. I wondered how its readership has changed. I assume the magazine has often been considered “classy” but in what sense of the term, through the years? How has it changed and evolved to keep up its prestige and popularity?
October 1933; September 2011
The website seems to have all the bells and whistles of other websites of mass media. The cutout advertisements of the early 20th century in the magazine have become video commercials on the website. In fact, there are more than just commercials. I was rather amused to see that Esquire’s website features minute-length videos of models and actresses stretching and smiling in blankets and bikinis. That’s classy. The thought of posting such a video link on this blog makes me blush.
The website is also very visually appealing in many other ways. The website is divided among the usual topics of the original men’s magazine – women, food, style, politics, and more – with several, several articles. In fact, there are so many links to articles and blogs that I can’t think of the website as a magazine “issue.” How often do writers have to publish for this? Can it be that they must work faster for the website than for the magazine? Or perhaps the magazine and the website mirror each other more than I can imagine. And yet, for all the glamour of pictures, ads, and incisive articles, it seems that concepts of a magazine easily lend themselves to online publication, so perhaps evolution is as steady as it is rapid.
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