I've never heard "The magazine" used as a plural in this way, and Google Ngrams doesn't return any results. However the name of the publication, like the name of a company, is often used to mean the people behind the name. So one might say "The News Of The World were hacking phones", as one might say "Google are recruiting". Obviously this is not to imply that all staff at News Of The World were hacking phones!
(Interestingly, some groups are more likely than others to be referred to in the plural. E.g. people are far more likely to say "Google are" than "Facebook are", compared with "Google/Facebook is". Perhaps some companies are viewed subconsciously as pluralistic and others as more monolithic and homogeneous).
magazines
the plural?is
, but the Brits and Aussies often don't agree with us on this sort of thing.