Serious Magazines Get Circulation Boost

“Concerned over terrorism, a looming war in Iraq, and a sputtering economy, magazine readers are showing a new gravitas, boosting the circulations of text-intensive, highbrow magazines such as the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s and the New Yorker. Serious magazines saw circulations soar in the second half of 2002, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The Atlantic Monthly, published 10 times a year, saw a 5.1 percent increase to 529,834, and single-copy sales spiked 52.4 percent, the second-largest percentage increase in newsstand sales for general-interest magazines behind celebrity suck-up Us Weekly.”