I.

Introduction

Periodicals, publications released on a regular basis that may include news, feature articles, poems, fictional stories, or other types of writing. Many periodicals also include photographs and drawings. Periodicals that are aimed at a general audience, such as weekly news roundups or monthly special-interest publications, are also called magazines. Those with a more narrow audience, such as publications of scholarly organizations, can be termed journals. While newspapers are periodicals, the term generally has come to refer to publications other than dailies.

Historically, most periodicals have differed from newspapers in their format, publication schedule, and content. Most newspapers deal with the news of the day and are issued on pulp paper with relatively large, unbound pages. By contrast, other types of periodicals focus on more specialized material, and when they deal with news they tend to do so in the form of summaries or commentaries. For centuries these periodicals generally have been printed on finer paper than newspapers, with smaller bound pages, and issued at intervals longer than a day (weekly, every two weeks, monthly, quarterly, or even annually).

In the 1990s, with the growth of the Internet, publishers began to release newspapers and other periodicals online. This development blurred the line between the two forms because the general format and design of online newspapers and periodicals are similar, and the publication schedules of both forms became more flexible. For example, many newspaper publishers update their online versions throughout the day, and some online periodicals do the same. Despite these technological changes, the two forms’ differing emphasis in choice of content remains a distinguishing factor.