What is it about?
This study examines the history, importance, and uniqueness of the Reiman magazines, which featured food, crafts with a country flair, nostalgia, and birds and gardening. The analysis shows how an imagined community is formed, explicates taste cultivation, analyzes how narratives of hearth and home embodied in stories fostered a dialogue among readers and editors, examines how the magazines provided a site for identity formation, and reveals how resonant pastoral values were reified in the stories. The study conveys the ways in which, before the advent of the internet, the Reiman company excelled at creating a virtual community, as 80 percent of content was reader submitted. The qualitative analysis was based on responses from 109 submitters to a questionnaire about how they saw core values confirmed in the magazines.
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Why is it important?
The Reiman publications created a unique model, 80% of submissions were from readers, which fostered a relationship between the company and its subscribers. Taste of Home and Country Woman are particularly resonant in their fostering of narratives of hearth and home.
Perspectives
I met and interviewed Roy Reiman, who started his first magazine in his basement and created a company with 15 titles that was worth $800 million which was bought by Reader's Digest. I became fascinated by the unique model of subscriber-based, reader-submitted content, so then surveyed those who had submitted as to why. Submitters confirmed that they felt part of the "Reiman family," and saw their values reified in the pages of the various titles.
Prof. Sheila M Webb
Western Washington University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Creation of Community in Reiman Magazines: “By Us, for Us, About Us”, Journal of Magazine Media, September 2022, Project Muse,
DOI: 10.1353/jmm.2022.a902857.
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