How Magazines Pick Cover Stories: Prestige, Data and the Newsstand

A magazine cover story is the piece an editor bets the month on. It gets the largest headline, the best photography and the only guaranteed glance from someone standing in a checkout line. According to Wikipedia's entry on magazines, appearance on the cover of a print magazine has historically been understood to convey a place of honor or distinction to the person or event featured — which is precisely why the decision is contested internally rather than made on merit alone. How magazines pick cover stories comes down to a negotiation among three groups: editors, who want work the publication can be proud of; circulation and advertising staff, who want whatever sells the most copies; and, increasingly, digital analytics teams, who want whatever gets clicked. The winner of that negotiation differs by title, and the difference is visible on the newsstand. The economics explain the tension.

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