ABSTRACT
Kiplinger’s Personal Financemagazine, founded in 1947, was the first personal finance magazine and it helped establish a new genre of business journalism. Along with early pioneers Sylvia Porter, the first personal finance journalist, andthe product review and testing service Consumer Reports, the Kiplinger magazine was part of a journalistic movement to inform, protect, and empower consumers in the post-World War II consumer society. The magazine helped generations understand how to finance a home, save for the children’s college tuition, and build a retirement nest egg. The Kiplinger magazine, known for four decades as Changing Times, marked a new direction for a company whose foundational work involved providing advice and forecasts for business leaders to navigate Washington politics and policies. This foray into personal finance was tough, and the magazine struggled with editorial direction and lost millions of dollars for the first dozen years. The Kiplinger magazine eventually found its voice and mission in personal finance and launched related products and services to complement the magazine, such as an education service, a book series, tax software, and videos. Kiplinger Personal Financeinfluenced later titles, such as Money,and represented an attempt to serve consumers as an independent journalistic enterprise, willing to criticize powerful businesses when necessary.
