Magazine Covers Are Not What They Used to Be

If you were a rock band in 1973, how would you know that you’d made it big? According to the chorus of Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show’s hit song of that year, recognition was properly acknowledged “when you get your picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone.”

Oh, how times have changed. The last time I visited Rolling Stone’s offices, the walls were lined with every cover it had ever published, an incredible galaxy. But the magazine’s agenda-setting swagger has dimmed over the years. Music culture has dramatically changed — and so too has the impact of magazine covers.

In the world of magazines, especially the celebrity “glossies,” there was a time when covers seemed like practically everything for their millions of readers and, of course, the stars and their stressed-out handlers. It would not be an overstatement to suggest they helped both illuminate and steer the cultural tastes of the day. Those of us in the business spent ridiculous amounts of energy concocting covers so compelling that only the most popcult-averse could resist buying copies. And now? Not so much. Not for celeb mags, not for any mags.

What happened? The explanations are simple. First, try finding a newsstand these days. They’ve mostly vanished. In New York City, where once there were about 1,300, that number has dwindled to around 350. When I was editor of a magazine for the magazine industry, we used to say that a cover had perhaps five seconds to capture a shopper’s eye at a crowded newsstand. So, their disappearance — which followed organically from the shuttering of thousands of print magazines over the last decade — means the surviving titles, starved for sales, must run lean. I mean to-the-bone lean. No more knockout covers that cost into the tens of thousands of dollars to make happen. Instead, while we still occasionally see sort-of-slammin’, kind-of-clever, but ultimately conventional covers, few dare to be great.

When was the last time you spotted a cover that jerked you to a halt? Be honest. Most are pretty safe and rely on readily available (read “inexpensive”) photography or software-generated art. Some barely try: all-type covers are commonplace because they don’t ding a publisher’s budget.

My fascination with covers began when I was a teenager. LIFE, Look, Sports Illustrated, and of course The Saturday Evening Post, which featured Norman Rockwell’s illustrations — those were magazines that seemed to hit home runs issue after issue. Along with hundreds of less notable others (New Times, Audience, Eros, Scanlan’s Monthly — all long gone), they filled cartons in my homes until they were destroyed in a flood. I was lucky a few years later to stumble upon a stash of Fortunes from the 1930s; their woodcut covers are regarded as among the most beautiful ever produced. Now, framed, three of them grace a wall in my office.

I no longer collect covers, but I appreciate the imagination and, yes, the privilege that goes into producing the most wonderful — and challenging — ones, then and now. As a for-instance, I recall once participating in a lengthy back-and-forth with Arnold Schwarzenegger about what he’d agree to for an ambitious cover concept. In the end, it was worth the aggravation with Arnie and his team. On newsstands, that cover screamed for attention.

But those were the glory days, as the saying goes. Sadly, they have largely moved on. Like a rolling stone.

In the March/April issue, Cable Neuhaus wrote about the boom in online newsletters.

This article is featured in the May/June 2025 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.