Towards a history of news magazines in Portugal

Magazines go beyond news, they create communities and become witnesses to living in society, capturing the spirit of each particular time. Despite its potential as object of analysis across several fields of knowledge, this segment of press remains understudied, even in the area of History of Journalism, which favours newspapers.

Cardoso, C. R., Azevedo, C., & Sousa, J. P. (2022). Para uma História das Revistas de Informação Geral em Portugal.

Towards a history of news magazines in Portugal therefore fills an almost empty space, one that oscillates between scarcity and dispersion. For the first time, a comprehensive volume is published that systematically and chronologically describes and characterizes the phenomenon of the general-interest magazine in Portugal. From the first publications, in the mid-18th century, to today’s newsmagazines, the four chapters follow the four political regimes, as determined by the research project that frames this book — Monarchy; 1stRepublic; Dictatorship and Estado Novo; and Democracy. As indicated by the title, this work does not claim to be “the history”, but rather a starting point which will allow many other studies on magazines to be developed, from case studies to more complex comparative studies, always with the same goal in mind: to cast light on the specificities and wealth of this object, contributing to its consolidation as an autonomous field of knowledge.