User:Allyalleycats/sandbox

The early monthly magazines offered some current news but were mainly filled with vignettes, poems, history, political events, and social issues. Unlike newspapers, they were more of a monthly record of current events along with entertaining stories, poems, and pictures. The first periodicals to branch out from news were Harper’s and The Atlantic, which focused on fostering the arts. Despite being among the first mass media outlets to venture from the bible, periodicals still remained rooted in the naturalized class and gender system held by European and American society.

The development of the magazines showed an increase in literary criticism and political debate, moving towards more opinionated pieces from the objective newspapers. The increased time between prints and the greater amount of space to write provided a forum for public arguments by scholars and critical observers.