The blogoshpere is rapidly changing - and blogs are becoming more complicated , with more authors and more readers. Wordpress themes had to evlove for a multi author platform and the magazine style wordpress theme was the solution. They allow more information to be displayed on the home page of the blog and allow for easier browsing by your readership. You will be able to highlight key stories easier and get what really matters in front of your readers eyes. Many bloggers are changing to the magazine style wordpresss theme and its popularity is on the rise - so i thought i would post a collection of the best Free magazine sytle wordpress themes on the net. You can fin the themes here http://www.mfinch.ca/blog/10-of-the-best-magazine-style-wordpress-themes
They are okay. I tend to focus on Designer Portfolios and bookmark them and watch as they create new work. Magazine Themes can be a lot of work to set up if they have poor Admin on the Backend. There are some good designers that are not good at making the backend easy for end users.
Although the back ends are not the greatest some times they are still not terrible hard to work with if you have wordpress before. Its actual very little work to get one of theses themes up and running and it allows you to have a more professional looking site.