Magazine of the Week

Welcome back everyone, and happy Thanksgiving!

In honor of the American holiday of pies, we give you the piefest that is Better Homes & Gardens this month. Wait, yes, you’re supposed to be considering your blessings all week and then eat with your loved ones to celebrate them! We want you to do that, too, and later this week the post will be more on the history of Thanksgiving, which is also closely related to the world of magazines. But you can also get cool pie recipes to play with over the weekend.

 

Better Homes & Gardens (or BHG, as they abbreviate it), is published 12 times a year, by the Meredith Women’s Corporation, and is named after the magazine’s founder, Edwin Meredith. Meredith began his career working on his grandfather’s newspaper, The Farmer’s Tribune. His work on this paper raised his visability with the Iowa farmers, encouraging him to try politics. After failing at both a run for U.S. senate and governor, President Woodrow Wilson appointed him to several posts in his cabinet. Meredith began BHG in 1922, after he stepped down as the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.

 

 

 

It is one of the “Seven Sisters”, a group of popular American women’s magazines aimed primarily at homemakers. The fourth-best-selling magazine in the U.S. market, it addresses cooking, gardening, crafts, healthy living, decorating, and entertaining. We have access to all of these electronically through ProQuest’s Women’s Magazine Archive:

https://libproxy.fitsuny.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/wma?accountid=27253

 

Meredith has become a big media powerhouse, and publishes such popular titles as Martha Stewart Living, Rachel Ray Everyday, and Parents Magazine, to name just a few. They also own numerous local television stations throughout the southern and midwestern United States. Most recently, they are currently negotiating to buy Time, Inc.:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/15/business/media/koch-brothers-time-meredith.html

What’s interesting is that BH&G has really stepped up their game in the last few years. They have taken to heart the competition of bloggers and the newer titles in the genre.

 

 

 

The ads may have remained a combination of pharmaceuticals and food producers, but the editorial content is attractively photographed, creative, and current. Not to mention that BH&G has always been the title aimed at the affordable good life, and that sense of style-with-thrift continues.

http://www.bhg.com/

 

 

For more on the various food-related titles we subscribe to, take a look at this post from last year:

Holiday Tastes

 

 

 

Better Homes and Gardens.