History
The Ladies' Home Journal arose from a popular single-page supplement in the American magazine Tribune and Farmer titled Women at Home. Women at Home was written by Louisa Knapp Curtis, wife of the magazine's publisher Cyrus H. K. Curtis. After a year it became an independent publication with Knapp as editor for the first six years. Its original name was The Ladies Home Journal and Practical Housekeeper, but she dropped the last three words in 1886. It rapidly became the leading American magazine of its type, reaching a circulation of more than one million copies in ten years. At the turn of the 20th century, the magazine published the work of muckrakers and social reformers such as Jane Addams. In 1901 it published two articles highlighting the early architectural designs of Frank Lloyd Wright.
During World War II, it was a particularly favored venue of the government for messages intended for housewives.
The Journal, along with its major rivals, Better Homes and Gardens, Family Circle, Good Housekeeping, McCall's, Redbook and Woman's Day were long known as the "seven sisters". For decades, the Journal had the greatest circulation of this group, but it fell behind McCall's in 1961. In 1968, its circulation was 6.8 million compared to McCall's 8.5 million. That year, Curtis Publishing sold the Ladies' Home Journal, along with the magazine The American Home, to Downe Communications for $5.4 million in stock. Between 1969 and 1974 Downe was acquired by Charter Company, which sold the magazine to Family Media Inc., publishers of Health, in 1982 when the company decided to divest its publishing interests. In 1986, the Meredith Corporation acquired the magazine from Family Media for $96 million. By 1998, the Journal's circulation had dropped to 4.5 million.
The Ladies' Home Journal's low subscription rates, inclusion of advertising to off-set costs, and reliance on popular content contributed to the publication's success. This operating structure was adopted by men's magazines like McClure's and Munsey's roughly a decade after it had become the standard practice of American women's magazines. Scholars argue that women's magazines, like the Ladies' Home journal, pioneered these strategies "magazine revolution".
The magazine debuted an extensive visual and editorial redesign in its March 2012 issue. Photographer Brigitte Lacombe was hired to shoot cover photos, with Kate Winslet appearing on the first revamped issue. The Journal announced that portions of its editorial content would be crowdsourced from readers, who would be fairly compensated for their work. The arrangement was one of the first of its kind among major consumer magazines.
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—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
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