Mr. Magazine

Bo Sacks To Samir “Mr. Magazine™” Husni: “We Don’t Have The Capacity To Understand What This Technology Is Doing To Us And For Us.”

October 9, 2026

Interviewing Bo Sacks is unlike any other interview I have conducted over the years. Bo is more than a friend and colleague. He is a formidable magazine consultant whom, he and I, have shared many stages together debating the future of the magazine industry. He draws on years of work in the industry, and I draw on years of studying and teaching the magazine industry inside and out.

Bo Sacks (right) with Samir “Mr. Magazine™” Husni

Debating Bo was always fun and sharing the same stage with him was even more fun. That brings me to my first ever interview with him for my blog which reminded me of all the fun we had and still have serving this industry in every capacity we can.

His energy and dedication are evident in every answer he gave me. We talked future, and Bo is a master in that field; we talked AI, and without any doubts Bo has his take on AI and what technology can and can’t do to us and for us.

Bo just downsized his house that he shares with his wife Carol and hundreds of wine bottles and is still in the process of finalizing the move and adapting to the one-story home with no wine cellar.

We talked about the origin of “Heard on the Web,” the oldest e-newsletter since 1993; the story of its birth, its future and the role of what Bo refers to as “appointment journalism.” A very engaging interview to say the least, and for those of us who know Bo and Samir, I promise you that you will get a kick out of this interview and you will learn more than a thing or two about the man who changed from Bob Sacks to Bo Sacks.

So with any further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Bo Sacks, a man that needs no introduction to the magazine media folks here and beyond:

Samir Husni: My first question to you, what’s in it for you? Why do you do what you do?

Bo Sacks: The easy answer is, it’s payback. I’ve been mentored by some of the greatest production people of my previous generations. They were good to me, they taught me, they mentored me, and this is how I give back to the industry.

It was good to me, and I aim to continue to orchestrate, educate, have some fun occasionally, but it’s personal. I want to help the industry.

Samir Husni: Is there such a thing as production these days like it used to be when you were growing up in the magazine industry?

Bo Sacks: You know, I haven’t been press-side in the past five years.

I know that production is radically different and I’m toying with the idea or grappling with the idea that the skill set that I once had, of which I consider myself a master at, would probably not be applicable. I don’t know that I would, if I was 23 and had the skill set of my old self, I don’t know that I would be hirable. Why? Mostly because I don’t know the inner workings anymore.

I’m now a 40,000-foot guy in the industry. I don’t know exactly how to put a magazine to bed. I once knew it intimately.

Now I’m not so sure. I’m pretty sure that the production responsibilities are spread out through various departments and probably not one single source. But I don’t know that for a fact.

I can only surmise what’s going on.

Samir Husni: You’ve written a lot about AI and what AI is doing in the magazine industry. How do you view AI? A friend, a foe, neutral? Bo Sacks: Damocles sword is a two-sided sword.

It is both wonderful and amazing and horribly, the potential for horrible things is there as well as for positive things. How we orchestrate it remains to be seen. Publishers do not have a good history of adapting to new technology.

In fact, they’re terrible at it. But I see both sides. The funny thing is in, I think it was 2003, I was interviewed by Printing News, and I invented at the time the concept of a personal concierge, an electronic concierge, which I called e-me at the time in 2003.

What I was suggesting then is what we have now with Facebook’s Muse. They’re trying to recreate what I said in 2003, a personal concierge, where my concierge will call Samir’s concierge and set a date for us. We won’t be involved.

My concierge will talk to the doctor and make an appointment for me. I won’t be involved. You will probably remember to send my mother a birthday card.

It will probably facilitate bill paying. All this is what Muse is trying to do now. And I see that as both positive and negative for this to work.

It must know everything about you. This electronic me. Which means it must know about your mistress, your gambling, your food vulnerabilities.

It must know everything to be an adequate player. So, there’s danger in that.

Samir Husni: Do you think we’ve come a long way backwards or we’ve come a long way forward with AI or as the president likes to call it the Super Intelligence?

Bo Sacks: Well, I don’t know what you mean by going backwards.

To answer your question without knowing your full meaning. No, it’s this all-forward momentum. It can be good for the publishing industry.

I believe that heartily. It can also be negative for the publishing industry that we now have newspapers using it. Newspapers are creating articles, giving them human names, fake human names and projecting them as written by humans. That’s not good.

We need honesty. I use AI every day and I tell anybody who wants to know I’m dyslexic. I can’t spell. Grammar is not my friend. AI facilitates correcting my writing. I used to use my wife for that purpose because she was a copy editor.

I would write stuff. She would keep my voice, but correct the spelling, correct the grammar and do all the things a good editor would do. Now I have AI Carol who does the same functionality for me.

For me, it’s very positive.

Samir Husni: Didn’t we do that? I recall back in the 80s and 90s where we had a lot of movie posters with fake reviews on the posters and fake names. So that fakeness is not something new in our industry, is it?

Bo Sacks: There’s almost nothing new in this world.

Plagiarism is not new. Lying is not new. Manipulating databases is not new. None of this is new, but we’ve accelerated the possibilities. We’ve gone beyond human capacity. I think for us to understand what’s going on, we don’t have the capacity yet.

Maybe we will. Maybe we won’t. We don’t have the capacity to understand what this technology is doing to us and for us.

And what does it mean in the future? Will people read less? Because that’s the next thing that I’m worried about. Some of the data is that readership is down in books. And that concerns me.

But the flip side of that is thousands, millions of people read audiobooks, listen to audiobooks, podcasts. We still have methodologies to educate in more ways than we used to have. But I think the loss of tangible reading is a detriment to the development of a cohesive brain.

Samir Husni: Well, and this year so far, I’ve seen quite a few youth magazines, big, thick magazines coming for the young folks. I’ve seen a huge explosion in collecting Pokémon cards. You go to like places like Target or Walmart, and the lines are to the end of the street where people do buy tangible collector’s card. Why do you think that is taking place?

Bo Sacks: Well, let me stop you right there, because you’ve made a key word, collectible cards. That’s not the same thing as reading for education, reading for fun. It’s a completely different concept.

Collectability is about potential profit. Reading is about self-education.

Samir Husni: When I interviewed the CEO of Highlights for Children, he told me last year was the first year since COVID that they’ve seen a double-digit increase in their sales and their books and magazines.

You think there’s hope or you are giving up on hope for the future? Bo Sacks: You’re asking a perennial optimist if there’s hope. And the only answer is yes. I can’t imagine holding a negative thought on the future.

It’s just not in my gene pool. So yeah, I’m hopeful. Highlights for Children, great magazine, always has been meaningful to me.

My parents got it for me when I was four or five. And the joy of getting a magazine through the mail with my name on it was thrilling. In fact, the first time I saw my name in a masthead was equally thrilling.

There’s a certain permanence to finding your name printed on anything.

Samir Husni: One of the things that you and I have talked a lot about is the future of the magazine industry. And I used to always say there’s three people who can tell you the future, God, a fool, and Bo Sacks. So, tell me, what do you consider your most successful prediction and your least successful prediction?

Bo Sacks: I’ve been in the prediction market a long time. I do think what I mentioned earlier about my personal concierge 20 years ago, because the first time I wrote about it was 2000.

I wrote a Bo Sacks Speaks Out about it. And then again, I was interviewed in 2003. And we have it now. So, 20 years later, we have what I predicted in a personal concierge.

My least meaningful prediction, honestly, nothing comes to mind. I’m sure I made some boners. But I don’t know what they are at this moment. Everybody makes mistakes. I’m sure I did, too. I have been in the prophecy game a long time. Must have got a bunch of it wrong.

Samir Husni: In the span of this half century plus that you’ve been in this business, what do you consider is a moment that brought you the most inner satisfaction?

Bo Sacks: I think the momentous moment in my career, and for me and for my development was working for Ziff Davis when they put me on a team.

I wasn’t alone to figure out how to put diskettes into magazines, almost every magazine in the country. I didn’t know who AOL was. But I was sophisticated in binding and manufacturing.

And so, we figured it out as a team. They gave me a free house account, a whitelisted free house account. I was a publisher since 72.

We’re now talking about the 80s. Sending words over the phone blew my mind and intrigued me way back with the Hayes modem days. I sent an email to my college roommate who worked in the impact center at Time Inc.

That was the genesis of my newsletter. Had AOL not given me a free account, or if I did not have the experience of working with AOL to make those disks available, I think my career would have been completely different. There would be no newsletter today, if not for that fortuitous moment.

Samir Husni: If there’s anywhere somebody outside, they don’t know the origin of Bo Sacks newsletter. how did your name change from Bob to Bo?

Bo Sacks: There is a story. Well, first, there’s two stories or connected stories.

The first was at High Times magazine. I used to wear an Army Air Corps hat and a leather jacket with the fleece lining. And they called me Captain Bo.

I was in this centerfold of High Times magazine on our fifth anniversary issue. And in the centerfold, I was in the cockpit of a plane as Captain Bo. Then later, again, back to AOL, they would only let you have six or seven letters as your pen name.

Now it’s different. But then so I couldn’t do BobSacks at AOL.com. I had to be creative. And since I was already called Bo, I came up with Bo Sacks.

That unknowingly invented my brand. I didn’t intend to make a brand, but that’s what happened.

Samir Husni: You are dedicated to sending the newsletter, three emails every single day, except holidays and weekends. Why is that? Why the devotion of sending it out every day?

Bo Sacks: I can only say that I consider it a huge responsibility. I feel responsible to my readers. And you’re right about it going around the world at the same time.

And that’s something I call appointment journalism, which lots of other newsletters should pick up on. Mine always goes out at the exact same time, no matter where I am on the planet. Now it goes out at 12:05 am only because pre-automated email services, I stayed up every night till 12:05 am so that the email would have the current date when the receiver gets it.

Now I don’t need to do that anymore. I could automate it. But since I’ve trained the planet on when to expect it, I hold to that system.

Samir Husni: Are you getting any younger readership or all your readership is from our generation?

Bo Sacks: I don’t know exactly, but I think I get four or five new readers every day. I lose a few and I’ve culled my list as often as I can. I’m not sending dead weight.

But I’m down to about 12,000, give or take. And since there are new readers every day, I assume they’re on the younger bandwidth than older readers. Although I still have some readers I’ve had for 30 years.

You know, I’m thrilled that they’re still on the planet and triple thrilled that they still read me every day.

Samir Husni: Talking about the future, and God forbids, if something happens to you, what’s the future of the newsletter?

Bo Sacks: The newsletter? Yeah. I thought about that a lot. I think it dies with me. There’s so much of my personality embedded in the newsletter that I don’t think that can be repeated by anybody else. I’m happy to give someone a shot at it.

When I go, the newsletter goes with me. And that would be a great loss, he humbly says, to the industry. Because I provide an educational platform for early management, middle management, senior management.

I’m providing a service to the industry. And all the feedback says that my reaction is accurate.

Samir Husni: Have you ever had any problem with any entity telling you, you can’t send my article, you can’t do this? Or they’re happy that you are sending them?

Bo Sacks: The New York Times is one.

Just a few years ago, they had a lawyer call me up and said don’t do that. So, I don’t do that. Will read a New York Times article and then write an essay about what I have read, but not repeating The New York Times.

Adweek asked me not to. There was a publisher who asked me not to. This is five or 10 years ago.

He said, please don’t take our work. I said, fine. He lost his job.

His replacement called me up and said, how come you don’t take our stuff? It’s fun out there. Mostly people want the extra exposure. The authors want the extra exposure.

Most of the publications want the extra exposure. And those that don’t, I abide completely. I will not send it out if they don’t want me to.

Samir Husni: And what is Bo reading these days? What magazines do you get on your coffee table?

Bo Sacks: Let me answer that this way. Because of whom I am and what I do, I get dozens and dozens of magazines delivered to me free of charge, which I donate to the hospitals. Cannot read them all, but I like The Week. I like The Week a lot.

Samir Husni: We were talking off the record, and you mentioned that some magazines have now thousands of journalists contributing to their websites and other platforms. Do you call them journalists?

Bo Sacks: That’s a great question.

Let’s call them wannabe journalists. Some are and some aren’t. We can’t put them all in a single pool.

Some of them are all self-promotional. And some of the self-promotional articles are pretty good. Some aren’t. And most are biased to one way or another. But most writing carries with it an embedded bias.

Samir Husni: Do you agree with the statement, when I was in journalism school, I was told that when a journalist gives his or her opinion, he or she is no longer a journalist. Do you agree with that statement?

Bo Sacks: So, you’re distinguishing between a columnist and a journalist?

Samir Husni: Yep.

Bo Sacks: It’s dicey.

I don’t think we can extract from good journalism an opinion. They must report what they see. Factually.

Then if they introduce some personal observations about the facts they just reported, I don’t have a problem with that.

Samir Husni: Before I ask you my last typical questions, is there any question I failed to ask Bo that I should ask him?

Bo Sacks: Probably a hundred.

I do want to bring up a topic you didn’t ask. I think about it a lot. When you and I first got into this industry, I think every single magazine had a very similar business model.

Whether you were Time Inc or High Times or Stitching & Quilting, you all had a very similar business model. Today, I don’t know what your current count is of how many magazines there are. I know 20 years ago, it was 7,000.

I don’t know what it is today, but I would put forth the proposition that every single one of those has a different business model. No two alike. There may be some similarities, but no two alike.

That’s a fascinating evolution. What does that mean to the future? There’ll be many, many more business plans as new technologies come out, as the skillset for those who are in publishing morph and change. The business plans will morph and change too.

And then early on, we discussed what our skillsets were. And as I made a case half an hour ago, I don’t think they need my skillset today, my nuts and bolts, understanding ink and water balance and blankets. I don’t think any of that is necessary.

I could be wrong, but I don’t think it’s necessary. And maybe not even an asset to be employable these days. Of this, I do not know, but I surmise that what I know is no longer fully necessary as a production person.

Samir Husni: Just a side question. Town & Country just celebrated 180 years of publishing. Scientific American celebrated last year 180 years of continuous publishing. What do you think give magazines like that the vitality to stay in business for 180 continuous years in this digital age?

Bo Sacks: Recognition of who they were, recognition of who they are, and a catering to the readership that wants what they can produce. Those two magazines are very specific and they’re catering to a readership that understands who they are and offers that readership the information that they, I would say, demand, not desire, but demand. If you can achieve that goal with any magazine, you’re in pretty good shape.

Samir Husni: Well, now for my typical last two questions. If I come to visit Bo one evening in his new small house, what do I catch him doing? Having a glass of wine, typing on his laptop, reading a book. Bo Sacks: So in my old house, I had about 600 or 700 bottles of wine in my wine cellar.

In my new house, I’ve pared it down to maybe 100 bottles, which are squirreled all over the house because I don’t have room for a wine cellar.

Samir Husni: Did you drink the other 500?

Bo Sacks: I gave one third to my daughter, one third to my son, and I’ve distributed among friends the rest. There’re probably still 50 bottles left in the house, which I’ll do something with.

But yeah, I’m still a wine drinker. I’m a bourbon drinker. And I would sit down with you, and we would sip on bourbon and solve the industry’s needs. Which is one day we should get together and do that, Samir.

Samir Husni: What keeps Bo up at night these days?

Bo Sacks: Well, here’s the secret.

I don’t worry about anything. I have never fretted or worried about anything. I have a unique skill set where I believe whatever obstacles I’m facing, there’s a way around it.

I always know that there’s a solution. It may not be readily available, but I believe in my heart, personal or professional, there’s always a solution. So, to answer your question, I don’t fret about anything.

Samir Husni: Thank and all the best on the move.

And in typical Bo’s style, here is the picture of the day…

Posted in Innovation in print, Inside the Great Minds of Magazine Makers, Magazine Power, News and Views, The Mr. Magazine™ Interview, Words of Wisdom | Leave a Comment »

Before Esquire & GQ, There Was Beau: The Man’s Magazine Of The 1920s… Defining Upscale & Sophisticated Audiences While Fighting Censorship… A Mr. Magazine™ Blast From The Past

October 7, 2026

Before there was Esquire magazine and before there was GQ: Gentlemen’s Quarterly, there was Beau, The Man’s Magazine; a beautiful, The New Yorker styled magazine that was born this month a century ago. The first issue of Beau arrived on the nation’s newsstands on October 1926. The magazine lasted one year and published seven issues from its initial issue until the last issue in October of 1927.

The magazine introduced itself as such,

“Beau addresses itself to those who live well, dine well, dress well, play well, read well, work well, sleep well and die well. It is distinctly a magazine for moderns, for epicureans, for sophisticates. It is written with masculine vigor and strength; for, though Beau professes itself the friend of the ladies, it regrets the almost exclusive attention paid by magazine editors to the feminine taste. So Beau declares itself a magazine dedicated to the male point of view, though willing, even anxious to welcome the ladies as readers.” (Beau, Volume One, Number One, October 1926)

The more I dig into the old magazines, the more I discover personalities and magazine makers that somehow during my studies of publishing history, and my professors’ teachings, were either marginalized or were not mentioned enough, in terms of the role they played in the American magazine industry.

One such publisher I’m discovering is Samuel Roth, who published at least five different magazines during his tenure from the 1920s all the way to the 1950s, including Two Worlds Monthly and one that really caught my attention, which he referred to as The Man’s Magazine, Beau. (See Mr. Roth’s concept for the magazine above). Beau, the first ever men’s magazine, was like all his other titles, very high-priced for that time period, 35 cents per issue followed by 50 cents an issue starting with issue 4. The annual subscription was $3.50. His reason for that was because he didn’t want his magazines to be bought by common folks. In fact, he would have preferred his magazines to be sold only to doctors, lawyers, and other upper-echelon professionals.

As he mentioned in one of his editorials, after his February 1927 issue was banned from distribution in New York City, his man’s magazine was devoted to the comforts and luxuries of living. His argument for that line of thinking was that he didn’t want common people to get “cheap thrills” from his magazine; it was for the sophisticated only. That he wasn’t appealing to the baser natures of mankind, but rather the more educated and elite of society.

What follows are some quotes that he wrote in an editorial from March 1927 after the February issue of Beau from that same year was banned from distribution in New York City, and the fascinating description of what the magazine was all about:

“Two Worlds Monthly and Beau are written and published for the sophisticated only, that neither by lewd pictures or lewd contents do we make appeal to the baser passions of mankind.”

“Two Worlds Monthly was quite alright, he said (he being, John Sumner, secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice), and we could go ahead distributing it immediately, but Beau, ah, that was a different story. It was absolutely unthinkable to let Beau go out on the harmless newsstands dripping with nudes, which any little boy may purchase for fifteen cents. No, said Mr. Sumner, he did not approve Beau and if I dared to issue it of my own accord he would unfailingly prosecute me.”

Here is a small excerpt from that March 1927 editorial:

“Here, cried my friends, is your opportunity for plenty of publicity — publicity that will create a vast demand for your magazines. But strange as it may seem, I did not follow their advice, I did not take the matter into court with Mr. Sumner. Such publicity I felt, would not bring many readers to Two Worlds Monthly and Beau, but not the sort of readers I want. Such publicity would bring me readers who look to magazines for filth whereas all we have to offer is wit, beauty, and gaiety. It would be taking an unfair advantage of the poor dubs.

But I want the readers of Beau to judge between myself and Mr. Sumner. Mr. Sumner characterizes as filth the famous suppressed Franklin letter To The Academy of Brussels, and the Paul Morand story Finding Your Woman in Paris, whereas I regard them as exquisite satirical compositions calculated to enrich the life of every man or woman capable of reading them.

What is more, I think the suppressed number of Beau probably the most beautiful copy of any magazine ever printed in America.

Samuel Roth”

I physically own every issue of Beau that caused this bit of controversy. Ironically, there is no nudity, such as Sumner speaks of with the description: “dripping with nudes.” But Samuel Roth is a gentleman from the past that made his mark known in the world of magazines, and nudity in his other titles was prevalent.

Needless to say, wit was a stronghold of Mr. Roth as evident with this little tidbit from the December 1926 issue of the magazine:

The entire collection of Beau magazine together with a host of thousands of other magazines from the golden era of magazine publishing can be found at Ellis Library at my alma mater The University of Missouri – Columbia. Click here to check the collection.

Until the next time…

Posted in A Launch Story..., From the Vault, Innovation in print, Magazine Power, New Launches, News and Views | Leave a Comment »

The Publishers’ Circle: “Publishers Have Almost Become Educators, Strategists & Marketers.” The Mr. Magazine™ Interview With Jon & Erin Westman, Founders & Creators.

October 1, 2026

The Publishers’ Circle, a new concept in meetings and helping magazine publishers, based on human interaction on a regular basis. Imagine visiting with your colleagues and experts at least once a week without having to wait six months or a year to go to a magazine conference to chat and interact. That concept was the idea behind Jon and Erin Westman’s creation of The Publishers’ Circle: a regular round-table style information, education, and just conversation among publishers from across the country.

Jon & Erin are the founders and publishers of Coastal Style magazine. They firmly believe in the importance of being relevant in the magazine publishing industry. I had the pleasure to chat with Jon and Erin about this new concept and the services it provides, and I have learned about this opportunity that is open to every magazine publisher whether consumer or business to business magazines. Having colleagues and experts at your disposal is indeed a marvelous idea in these challenging times of magazine publishing.

Sometimes it takes too long for an idea to be executed, but Jon and Erin did not waste their time mulling the idea, they made it real and open to other publishers to join, with open arms, their circle.

So without any further ado, please enjoy this Mr. Magazine™ Interview with Jon and Erin Westman, founders of The Publishers’ Circle:

Samir Husni: Give me the elevator pitch first for what’s The Publisher’s Circle?

Jon Westman: Sure, The Publishers’ Circle exists because when publishers like Erin and I go to conferences and we meet so many wonderful people and share ideas, when we inevitably go back to our home markets, that momentum dies very quickly. And we miss the connections. We miss the opportunity to network and generate ideas together.

I believe that that’s why conferences such as Niche have been so successful for so many years. We were missing that connection back in our home market. There are publications everywhere, but in our market, and I don’t think this is unique, the competitors don’t tend to play together very well in the sandbox, right? We’re very proprietary.

We are very much focused on what we can do to protect our brands and our revenue and keep our customers engaged with our brand and no one else really in our home markets. So, Samir, it was just that yearning for that connection beyond conference to conference and having to wait six, eight, 10, 12 months for the next time to see those people that can genuinely help us and help one another. Erin was behind saying, we need to create a model that can bring us together on a more frequent basis.

The Publishers’ Circle is a concept that we first took to Ryan Dohrn and said, Ryan, what do you think? I mean, as the leader of one of the largest independent publishing conferences in the country, what do you think? He said, I think it has tremendous merit. I would support it. We licensed his content and quickly became sponsors of Niche and realized that if he believes in the concept, we hope that his publishing partners would do the same.

It’s only been viable since April, and we don’t have that many publishers in the room, but what I can tell you, Samir, is every single member that’s a part of the community has seen tremendous benefit and value. So much so that we had two members in New Orleans, for this most recent Niche event, spoke on our behalf and said how much value and connection they receive every single week from the community that we’re building.

Samir Husni: Tell me, how does it work?

Jon Westman: We are built on a publishing platform called Circle. It’s a community platform to help build communities.

We can publish content in several different channels. It can be about sales management. It can be about revenue. It can be about digital revenue. It can be about even specific, hyper-specific content, such as a best of program or advertorial content. We have built out all these channels of content.

The first thing that we did, we went out and secured the endorsements of experts in every category that we could consider in the publishing space. What value could we bring to our members is the model that we took first. So, we know a publishing representative who sold for various large printers to publishers his entire career. And now he’s created a consultancy on his own. If a publisher needed to negotiate with their printer, or perhaps they didn’t even know how to negotiate with their printer, understand the latest postal regulations. We have an expert that a member can connect with one-on-one.

Ryan Dohrn is the foremost sales expert in the industry. He’s available to our members at the push of a button. He will give them 30 minutes complimentary of his time and help them advance an idea. Then if they want to engage him further, he will discount his services. And so will all our experts. But we also have AI experts in the community.

We have editorial experts. We have copy editing experts. We have paginating experts.

Any way that we felt we could bring value if a publisher is struggling in any area of their business, that’s what we tried to offer them first and foremost, a connection to an expert that they may not have already had. Then we have the content models available for them. It’s a library of content so that they can read, learn, test these concepts that have worked and haven’t worked for us.

We’ll post things that, hey, beware of this opportunity. It may sound great on the surface. We tried it and here’s the negative results that we experienced in the process.

We post all that content. The members are invited then. If you can imagine it, it’s almost a Zoom community with a Facebook community because of all these posting opportunities and sharing of content. Then it’s the library component where every single week we meet on a Zoom-like call for an hour. Every member comes in and we change topics weekly. It’s really a roundtable discussion for our members every single week to talk about what’s happening in their market.

Sometimes we bring in the experts, sometimes it’s an open forum, and sometimes it’s a very poignant conversation around one topic. That’s really where our members have seen the most benefit is that weekly engagement. That was the preface of why we started the community ourselves. Staying connected, staying grounded, staying in the moment in the publishing business.

Because I think it can become its own dark hole, as you know, better than probably anybody else. You can be publishing on an island, and it can be very lonely. So that’s really what The Publishers’ Circle is in a nutshell.

I think the elevator, if I started my pitch on the ground floor, we’re in the pub, we’re in the penthouse by now. But I hope it all makes sense collectively and that you can understand the framework of it.

Erin joins our conversation…

Samir Husni: If a skeptic tells you, but I can ask AI anything and AI will give me the answers. Why do I need to be a member of The Publishers’ Circle? What do you tell them?

Jon Westman: I would tell them that if AI could publish, it would.

I don’t think that you will have the human personal connection and the experience and the in the trench knowledge that our members bring collectively. There are so many things that we all rely on AI and sometimes more so than we should. But it’s very clear on every single model that AI gets it wrong.

They’ll say that in every single instance. I think we all know from our own experience that that’s the case often. AI can be a tremendous partner in how we publish moving forward, but it doesn’t have the real-life experiences.

It’s not in the trenches. It’s not selling advertising. It’s not producing content. It doesn’t know our readers as well as it thinks it does at the same time. Erin, do you have anything you want to add to that?

Erin Westman: No, I think that was spot on. And it also doesn’t hire salespeople; it doesn’t help bring in revenue.

Another reason that The Publishers’ Circle is gaining momentum is because we talk very openly and honestly about the challenges, not only we experience in trying to engage new clients or generate revenue, but it’s the day-to-day struggles with our team, keeping them engaged, keeping them motivated, dealing with those inevitable workforce issues that everybody has. We can have a very open and honest dialogue about those and share the struggles and then welcome ideas that we may be able to implement daily and then issue to issue and year to year.

AI misses a human connection. The Publishers’ Circle is very about human connection and that’s why the Zooms and then catching up in a Niche conference or we hope to evolve into our own hybrid model of not so much a conference, but maybe a mini vacay with a conference model where in the mornings we connect and talk about topics. Then in the afternoon you can hit a round of golf, or you can go explore the town or wherever we are.

We’ll find something unique to do or you can have free time on your own. You don’t have to deal with the groups if we break up and to do things. The guys might go one way, and the ladies might go a different way.

That hybrid model seems to be what people are looking for. They don’t want to fly into a city anymore and sit in a conference room and no windows for two or three days. They don’t want to do that anymore.

Jon Westman: I think the human connection side is where AI is lacking.

Samir Husni: What are the three most important challenges magazines like yours and city and regional magazines that are distributed free are facing these days?

Jon Westman: Sure.

First and foremost, its relevancy related to revenue. There is so much competition from a print perspective today. The way that our advertisers think and all the opportunities that they’re being pitched to invest from a marketing perspective in their business challenges us magazine publishers to evolve.

And how do we remain relevant in their eyes and yet relevant so that we can produce results for them? I think for first and foremost, that is the biggest challenge we face today. And I, well, we did our poll of with publishers at the conference. The number one complaint that they have with salespeople.

Even if we could sell our own product 24/7 and a lot of us do, we can’t be cloned. AI cannot do that yet. We need professional, competent, engaging professionals to represent our brands and help us connect first and foremost with businesses.

If we can’t generate that connection, there’s no chance we’re going to secure their marketing investment. And then third, they must be willing to stay on the journey with each client. I think that’s the biggest challenge.

A lot of people look at this business as it could potentially, they could think it’s easy. They can go do it, but they’ll learn very quickly. It’s one of the most challenging positions in the professional workforce, I believe.

Samir Husni: How can I join the Circle? How can people become members?

Jon Westman: The first thing they would do is visit our website, thepublisherscircle.com and complete our brief yet, revealing application process. We ask some questions that publishers may not have been asked before. If you join our community, are you willing to participate fully? And what that means is share your P&L statements.

I don’t mean literally, but talk about how much revenue you’re generating, where you’re struggling. Are you willing to have open and honest conversations about your team and where those challenges truly lie? I think even in our day-to-day, we need to take a step back because we’re so focused on producing products. We must meet deadlines every month or bi-monthly.

In some cases, we have other projects and multiple publications in our stack that challenge us every single day to where blinders become inevitable. We hope that The Publishers’ Circle allows for a chance to take a step back and really analyze your complete process in how you’re generating revenue and staying relevant. That application process then, Samir, is then vetted.

That would be over the top. We quickly just see, are the answers from that publisher honest and realistic? And if so, we welcome them with open arms. We want to grow this community because that’s how we will all grow, is growing together.

Samir Husni: Is it open to all publishers?

Jon Westman: We quickly learned that in New Orleans at the Niche Leadership Summit, that we’ve been, most of our members are B2C. They’re Lifestyle Regional Publishers. However, we just welcomed our first B2B specific member without that B2B track yet.

That’s something that we will grow into and evolve very soon, is that B2C or B2B, a lot of our challenges remain consistent. We’re eager to learn from that side of publishing and help them accomplish their goals as well.

Samir Husni: And how do you differentiate between The Publishers’ Circle and other organizations that serve the magazine industry?

Erin Westman: Well, I think Niche exists largely because those organizations have some guidelines that don’t allow the Niche publishers access.

I think we’re gated in certain respects. In Coastal Style model, we are a complementary publication with rack distribution. And that’s a clear gate for certain organizations.

And that’s okay. There are many, many more publishers like us than there are that fit every single checkbox. The Publishers’ Circle right now is focused on meeting and helping those publishers.

Those organizations are well-established and they’ve done tremendously for their members. We’re trying to create a model that welcomes everyone else, if that is suitable.

We’re here to fill the gap for people who see things differently.

Samir Husni: If you and I are having this conversation a year from now, what would you tell me you’ve accomplished in 26-27?

Jon Westman: I would say that we’ve created a robust community.

I feel our community is robust now with 10 members, because of the quality of publisher and the action items that we talk about every single week. But let’s try to add some substance to the membership so that we can help that many more publishers. We would hope that to Erin’s vision, there are retreats in place so that we’re coming together in person more than we do currently.

And that’s the Niche model is a two time a year opportunity. We hope to do that two additional times so that we can be face to face and really connect and be together in those moments. I would also say that we have two clearly defined B2B and B2C spaces that have dozens of members that are connecting on weekly calls.

Erin Westman: They are connecting individually. We ultimately hope to have regional meetups so that our memberships can get together on their own. If they’re in the New England area, if they’re in the Mid-Atlantic, if they’re out West, and allow for that additional connection.

It’s really a model in our minds that we know can work. Our biggest challenge is getting the word out and sharing our mission and bringing publishers to the table to see what we’re doing and showing them the community that we built. And to have that spin off into a group for salespeople and all that.

Beyond just having leaders in the room, we know that sales leaders have different roles in our organizations and they need those same connections that publishers are enjoying inside the circle. We have another idea to where we would have a secondary membership model for sales leaders only so that they can connect.

They can share their war stories and their challenges and successes with others at publications across the country to spur community, generate ideas, and ultimately advance our publications. I just feel like it would engage the sales manager leader better than having a CEO or publisher come to them with revenue ideas and special section ideas that could generate revenue. Whereas if this leader was in their own group of other sales leaders across the country, I think it would be more energizing to their sales team when they’re presenting and they kind of feel like it’s their idea.

It helps to engage the leader, the sales leader or manager into their own group so that the owner, CEO, publisher isn’t always having to relay those messages.

Samir Husni: Is print the cornerstone of everything you’re doing or just print is another platform among so many other platforms?

Jon Westman: Well, that’s a great question. Print is first and foremost the platform, but we are not naive.

We’re not naive to know that we must evolve as publishers. And we share our successes. COVID changed a lot of things, obviously, in a lot of respects.

It forced us to evolve in the moment. We did not sell programmatic advertising prior to COVID. Today, it is a growing and purposeful channel of opportunity for our advertisers.

And it’s a purposeful revenue generator for our company. We know that publishers rely on that revenue, obviously, to advance their companies. And what we’ve learned is we try to share, again, both sides of the good and the bad inside The Publishers’ Circle.

We’ve experienced that. The challenges of convincing clients, businesses who aren’t clients, that what would we know about digital advertising? We are magazine publishers. Well, we’re evolving into marketers.

Erin Westman: There’s no difference in creating a print advertisement and getting it into the right demographics’ hands and encouraging them to do business with our clients. The digital environment is the same strategy, just executed differently. It’s understanding consumers.

That’s the bottom line. If we can target our messaging and our clients’ messaging, really, to the right demographic, in the right geographic location, with the right messaging, you’re always hoping. But that strategy is going to, by and large, obviously, spur conversation, spur action faster than not.

Jon Westman: We’ve evolved our own thinking and our own marketing messaging, for Coastal Style, to really check those boxes for clients. It’s not enough anymore to print a beautiful magazine with engaging content and put it in the right demographics’ hands. We must encourage that demographic and our faithful readers to do business with our clients.

It’s got to be more than hoping that they will. We must encourage them and give them easier access to our advertisers.

Samir Husni: How do you do that?

Jon Westman: Well, QR codes, first and foremost, used to be a luxury.

Now they’re a necessity. They must then lead to a purpose-driven landing page that is not only engaging, but aesthetically beautiful. Whatever that message is from that client, it must engage them seamlessly.

They must be connected to that message, that call to action. It cannot be, we’re going to talk, would you like a new deck at your home this spring to enjoy the outdoors? It must lead you to that client’s deck-purposed landing page with their call to action. If you take them and just drop them off at their website and hope that they find that deck call to action, it’s not going to happen.

So that connection is real. It must be made seamlessly. Now we are facilitators in that.

We will create the landing page for the client. It can’t be enough to count on the client to think that their online experience is going to be seamless for the client too. We’ve almost become educators, strategists, marketers, publishers.

Our hats are evolving just as quickly as marketing is evolving itself. Publishers who aren’t, they’re not doing their company a service and they’re certainly not doing their clients, they’re not offering them the best service that they can at the same time. We find that clients don’t understand the purpose of a website.

A lot of times they think I have a business, I have a website, I’m good. I said, what if you could hire an employee that would work for you 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year and never call out sick. And to hire this employee, you need an upfront expense of maybe 3,000, 6,000, 12,000, depending on the complexity that you need of this employee to perform.

And then maybe you only must pay the employee $3,000 a year to maintain the employee, but they are working for you at 11 PM, 5 AM and noon every single day, even on Saturday and Sunday. I said, would you hire this person? And they said, yes, absolutely. And I said, well, it’s called your website.

So, I said, why have you neglected it? And they said, I’ve never looked at it like that. I said, well, your website is not there to say a exists. Your website is there to sell the service that you’re selling before they ever pick up the phone to call you.

People don’t look at an ad today and call people. They don’t want to talk to people unless they’re already sold. Okay.

So where, how are you going to bridge the gap? And they just don’t look at it like that. I just, because a lot of business owners aren’t business owners. They were a bath installer that now thought, oh, I want to make the money that my boss is making.

So, I’m going to go out on my own and I’m going to do this myself. I’m already doing all the work. Well, they’re not doing all the work.

They’re not doing all the sales. They’re not doing the bookkeeping. They’re not doing the hiring and the firing.

They’re doing the labor portion. They don’t realize what it takes to run a business. Now in this market, we have all these one-day bath installers.

The market’s flooded with them. But at the end of the day, they’re not business owners.

They’re still just a bath installer. You sign your kid up for dance. Well, that dance studio is run by a dancer. Okay. It’s probably not run well. It’s disorganized. They wait till the last minute to order costumes. They wait till the last minute to tell you what time to show up for the Christmas parade to get in line and where to be.

And it’s stressful, as a parent and you’re just like, gosh, can’t this be done better? You’ve known every year you do Christmas parades. How, where was this last minute? Because they’re all just run by dancers and bath installers and people who just thought they wanted to just make more money. It would be easy.

That ultimately is a lot of what our business is consumed by, that’s who we’re selling to every day. And we’re not alone. So how do we educate these people?

Marketing and it’s very piecemealed and one person at a time, because what this person understands and this person doesn’t understand is different. You have to take it on a case-by-case basis. And it’s very much a boutique service. I would also say to that point that producing a magazine obviously is not the least expensive option available to professionals and professional marketers, professional businesses, from a marketing perspective, there are real costs.

There are parameters, we check boxes, every magazine publisher does. In doing so, we need to command a higher dollar than a lot of our competition.

Erin Westman: Advertising in magazines is the most permanent media. It sticks around like magazines; newspapers get burned in fireplaces. Radio is gone. TV is gone. Social media is gone. Like, billboards you can drive. If you have a 30 minute commute, you drive past a lot of billboards every day. If I asked you when you got to your place of work, tell me three billboards you see, I bet you can only tell me one or two. You can’t even say three that you saw.

I’ve done it. I know because I’ve run these studies on people. I’ll give them a newspaper and I’ll say here, flip through this newspaper and tell them, let me know when you’re done and take your time. I’m not rushing.

I really want you to look at the newspaper and they get done. And I say, tell me two ads. They can’t do it because they’re not mindful in the moment.

It’s just mindless. It’s just flipping. But magazines are the most permanent media.

Samir Husni: Before I ask you my typical last two questions, is there any question I failed to ask you? I should ask you.

Jon Westman: I love that question because I use it all the time in my sales presentations. Uh, I would say no, I can’t think of anything.

Samir Husni: So, tell me, if I come unannounced to visit you one evening, what do I catch Jon and Erin doing? Having a glass of wine, watching Ole Miss football. I see you have a lot of football in this house.

Erin Westman: You will mostly find John working. He’ll stop for dinner. Then he’ll come back to work.

If there’s a game on, he will stop for the games, football games, sometimes hockey games. But we work a lot and especially with the kids gone now, one’s at Auburn, one’s at Ole Miss and, I don’t know, working on evolving. That’s what we’re working on all the time.

Jon Westman: Your visit would be welcomed. And we would pour a glass of wine and sit down and communicate. We’ll sit around the family room and get away from the computer and share stories.

Samir Husni: And what keeps you up at night these days?

Jon Westman: I sleep well. I’m awake most nights. It is the fear and drive because they’re combined to keep going. We have to generate revenue.

We must generate more revenue. That is the bottom-line costs today. The cost of producing a publication continues to rise beyond our control.

We’re challenged to make those line items make sense every single day issue by issue. We know we can’t charge more for advertising to match those escalations in the vendors that we ultimately have to work with.

So how do we do it? We need to evolve. We need to find realistic and viable ways for us to connect. I wouldn’t say new products because those have inherent challenges by themselves, but new opportunities that our clients see benefit in.

And that can keep us awake for nights on end. So that, brings us full circle into The Publishers Circle because those opportunities to have those conversations and to learn from other publishers, how they’re managing the same challenges, the same stresses, the same dynamics, and we can help one another. We can glean from one another and all of us connected in that way purposefully is designed to help us stay relevant, alive, and ultimately thrive.

Erin Westman: I’m going to piggyback what Jon said, I’m just going to word it a little bit differently. While we have challenges of rising costs, so does every single business that we’re trying to sell to. So, relevancy comes in because we must stay relevant enough for them to want to spend their hard-earned dollars in a time where that funnel is just getting smaller.

That is the big drive. How do we keep them, seeing what we’re doing as being relevant enough to stick with us?

Samir Husni: Thank you.

Posted in A Launch Story..., Innovation in print, Magazine Power, News and Views, The Mr. Magazine™ Interview | Leave a Comment »

The History Of Art Lovers’ Magazine 1925-1927. Nude Vs. Lewd, Mr. Magazine’s™ Latest Book

September 28, 2026

Why Nude Vs Lewd?

For more than five decades, I have studied magazines not merely as publications but as mirrors of the societies that produced them. Every issue, every editorial decision, every cover image, and every publisher’s promise tells a story about the culture and the people of its time.

Among the many forgotten titles that have crossed my desk, Art Lovers’ stands apart.

To order the book click here:

Published between 1925 and 1927 during the height of one of America’s magazine boom, Art Lovers’ occupied an unusual position in publishing history. At first glance, it appeared to be another art magazine featuring studies of the human form. A closer examination, however, reveals a publication that consistently argued for the educational and cultural value of art while drawing a sharp distinction between the nude and the lewd.

This book grew out of my fascination with that distinction, especially that the magazine was published by a company known for being a Bible publisher. The debates surrounding censorship, morality, artistic freedom, and public taste that surrounded Art Lovers’ nearly a century ago continue to resonate today. The magazine’s editors insisted that beauty and obscenity were not synonymous, and they defended the idea that context, purpose, and intent matter when judging artistic expression.

My goal in writing this book is not merely to recount the history of a single publication but to illuminate an overlooked chapter in the evolution of American magazines. Through editorials, court cases, publisher statements, contributor biographies, and the changing editorial direction of Art Lovers’, readers can observe the complex intersection of publishing, ethics, law, commerce, and culture during one of the most dynamic periods in media history.

The story also highlights the remarkable role played by the Hubbard publishing family, whose commitment to educational and cultural publishing produced a magazine that challenged conventional assumptions while insisting on high moral standards and artistic legitimacy.

Although this book focuses on the brief life of Art Lovers’ from January1925 to January1927, its larger subject is the enduring struggle over who decides what constitutes art and where society draws the line between appreciation and censorship. Those questions remain as relevant today as they were a century ago.

It is my hope that readers will come away with a deeper appreciation for the richness of magazine history and for the publishers, editors, artists, and writers who navigated the delicate boundary between public sensibility and creative freedom

Enjoy, let the fun begins.

Samir “Mr. Magazine™” Husni, Ph.D.

Posted in A Launch Story..., Art Lovers Magazine, Books and Links, From the Vault, Innovation in print, New Launches, News and Views, Nude Vs. Lewd | Leave a Comment »

Geezer Magazine: Mr. Magazine’s™ 2025 Magazine Launch of the Year

September 20, 2026

2025 was a tough year for me, physically speaking. I was recovering from a major diverticulitis operation that took place in July 2024 and required two follow up operations in October of 2025 and January 2026. Thankfully I am back to normal and back to my magazines and the new ones that I continued to collect and document during my illness.

So, enough about me, and let’s dive into the topic that should have been written about at the beginning of this year. But, as luck would have it, I was able to see, check and review more than one issue of the magazines that I selected as the New Magazine Launch of the Year and the first two runner ups…

Here is a reminder of the number of magazines launched since 2020:

Year Number of new magazines

2020 20

2021 122

2022 74

2023 71

2024 48

2025 71

And 2026 is looking good with a host of new magazines arriving at the marketplace.

The magazine that stood apart from the 71 new magazines of 2025 is Geezer that I am calling the 2025 Magazine Launch of the Year. A magazine that is not only entertaining, but also informative and educational for Generation X and beyond. The oversized magazine is like holding a billboard in your hands that you can’t put down. A trip through memory lane without forgetting the present times. Beautiful design and illustrations, with useful powerful content, sum what Geezer is all about. I had the pleasure of interviewing the founder and editor in chief of Geezer last month and we talked about every Geezer, from the generation to the magazine. Click here to read my interview with Laura LeBleu.

Of note are two other new magazines that are establishing themselves as powers to be in their fields: Art Bar and Southlands.

Art Bar identifies itself as “Your friend for the end of the world,” what every magazine should be. A quarterly that is “heavyweight print journal. Built to have a home on your coffee table.” Check it out here.

Southlands identifies itself as “Southlands is a media company celebrating the wild South in all its forms—and the diverse ways Southerners connect with the natural world. Our flagship product is our biannual print journal: two 140+-page issues each year, printed on high-quality stock in an oversized 9.5″×12″ format and designed to be kept, not tossed.” Check it out here.

I hope you will get the aforementioned magazines and see why a magazine is a “friend for the end of the world.” Here you have it; keep on launching magazines and I will keep on collecting them… Long live print.

All the best,

Samir “Mr. Magazine™” Husni, Ph.D.

Posted in Innovation in print, Magazine Power, New Launches, News and Views | 1 Comment »

Tom Martinelli, Publisher, new york by rail Magazine, On The Myth Of Print Is Dead. The Mr. Magazine™ Interview

September 13, 2026

Under the heading The Power of Print, Tom Matinelli, publisher of new york by rail magazine writes in the current issue, “I often hear people say print is dead. If I believed that, you wouldn’t be reading this 23-year-old print publication, the only Amtrak magazine remaining, first published in 2004 when magazines were more widely consumed…

“How has new york by rail lasted for nearly a quarter-century? Very simple. We continue to publish a high-quality magazine with appealing curated content aimed at fulfilling our mission of “inspiring readers to want to take an Amtrak trip” and New York State has continued their longstanding support of new york by rail.”

And Mr. Magazine™ can’t say but Amen to that. I was so intrigued by his editorial that I reached out to Tom and had a very lively conversation about the magazine, his believe that print is alive and well, and the changing climate of magazine publishing. The magazine is hard to put down once you pick it up and the content is like a call for action. You will have to take a train trip once you flip through the pages of the magazine. It is as much educational as informational and inspirational.

So without any further ado, please join me for this lively, slightly edited conversation with a man who firmly believes that print is alive and well:

Samir Husni: Tell me about that myth that print is dead that you tell your readers in the 23rd anniversary issue of new york by rail.

Tom Martinelli: It’s alive and well.

It’s certainly been scaled back, but the ones that have survived, they know their mission, they know their audience, and they’re able to serve their readership. For what I do anyway, with a lot of travel related magazines, I’m finding that the travel industry is still embracing print. It’s not the be all end all, because there’s obviously a lot of digital that goes along with it. It’s still part of their marketing efforts.

Samir Husni: What do you think print can offer that digital cannot offer in this field?

Tom Martinelli: Well, I think what print does is that it gives you what you don’t know, right? What print does is it exposes you to ideas, to things that you’re not familiar with.

Our mission is to try to inspire our readers to take a trip. We do that through the content. If we can do our job properly, then they’re going to want to learn more.

That’s where they go online. But you don’t know what you’re going to search for until you have a starting point. Otherwise, you’re just randomly putting things in.

I like to think of our magazines as lore pieces. We’re exposing you to something that we’re the experts. We’re giving you the best of what we feel will make a good trip.

Then, hopefully, you’ll want to know more. That’s where you can go online to dig down in terms of more specifics. You know, so many other magazines have teamed up with Amtrak, but did not have this longevity of 23 years going on.

Samir Husni: Why do you think is that?

Tom Martinelli: Well, I think we’re unique. Amtrak has had a magazine up until the pandemic. They first had a magazine that was called Arrive. It was serving the Northeast Corridor.

That was more for the business traveler to have an amenity. It was a very successful magazine with a celebrity on the cover. It was reaching an audience, corporate audience, from Boston to Washington.

They were promoting that corridor. They scrapped that and they went with a magazine called The National, that was going to promote the long-distance trains.

It was done very well. But when the pandemic hit, Amtrak had a policy to get rid of all the onboard magazines. So, The National was on board, and new york by rail was on board in New York State.

They decided to scrap it because they’re now going in a direction of carbon neutral. They don’t want paper. The magazine, the print magazine did not fit their environmentally friendly ethics.

That’s a mistake. But that’s the direction they went in. We’re in a unique situation in New York, because we’re part of what’s called state supported service.

The state of New York wants this magazine. So, they’re essentially telling Amtrak that we want to continue. Now, fortunately, just about all the distribution of the Amtrak magazine was on board the train.

And that has always been a big part of our distribution. But we have distribution outside of the train, at the train stations, we’re distributed in tourist information areas, we’re distributed at consumer shows, you can request it. So, when the pandemic hit, I was printing 150,000 copies.

I was told we can’t put it on the train. So, we cut the distribution in half. But we still put out 75,000 copies.

And it’s in demand. We try to catch people before they get on the train or after they get on the train, or when they’re looking for travel information. We’ve been consistent for 23 years; it’s been high quality.

We’ve won APEX awards for magazine excellence, 17 consecutive issues. And I would say years, but we combine during the pandemic, an annual into a biannual. So, the last 17 issues, starting with the 2008 issue have all won APEX awards for magazine excellence.

It’s been the consistency. We’ve adapted. Like I said, we had to cut down our distribution, we had to beef up our digital. But nonetheless, we’ve survived.

Samir Husni: It looks like you created a collector’s item. I read the story on the last page of the most recent issue of a person who was missing one issue from the series and was like, livid to get that copy. Tell me about that connectivity with your readers.

Tom Martinelli: We do have a tremendous connection with our readers. Like the one that we featured in the magazine, he’s collected every issue.

Readers are proud of the fact that our magazine celebrates the area. I put a positive twist on taking the train throughout New York and into Connecticut, Vermont and Canada. There are people who follow it regularly, and they’re proud of it, you know, so they collect it. This particular person was missing one issue.

The consistency of the magazine, they know that they expect it, they know it’s going to be good quality, there’s going to be great content in there. They’re proud of it, they feel like it’s their magazine. So, that why I’m publishing it.

Samir Husni: If you are to duplicate this magazine for another state, which one will it be?

Tom Martinelli: I’ve had discussions with other states. The pandemic changed a lot. I was having some discussions, and because of the Amtrak policy, I think what the states would like is to have an onboard magazine. Amtrak right now doesn’t want to do that. So, they feel like that’s the biggest value for producing a magazine like this. And because Amtrak is not condoning that, but I have had, I’m in discussions with other states like Connecticut, and Maine.

I’ve had inquiries from Pennsylvania and California. This is different, because a lot of the states are now digital oriented, and they feel like they need to be active on social media, they need to be doing digital marketing. They don’t always see this as a primary marketing tool.

I’m hoping to get back on the train at some point as an onboard magazine again. But it’s a challenge. Other states see what I’m doing. And they’re very much aware of it. I will continue to have those discussions, and I would love to do another magazine for another state.

I think this is definitely replicable. But whether the print is going to fit into their model is the big question.

Samir Husni: In this age of AI, where does the trust factor play in the role of a edited, curated print product?

Tom Martinelli: Well, that’s a good question.

I try not to cut corners. So, I take a publishing approach to putting this magazine out, we sit down, we develop a line, a calendar. And we talk about the articles. We have writers that they get assigned these articles. I make that investment.

With AI, it’s a great tool to do research or to provide ideas. But at the end of the day, you really need to curate your content very closely.

AI has not been out taking trips. The difference is that some of our writers are writing first person experience articles about a trip they’ve taken. And that AI can’t do that.

They might try to replicate it, but they’re not taking the trip. So, there’s a difference in terms of that, particularly the first person experience articles. That it’s certainly something to be aware of.

That’s what differentiates us, is that readers see that this is all curated by someone who knows what it’s like to travel by train throughout our service area.

Samir Husni: And, pun intended, has your trip for those 23 years have been a trip in a rose garden, or you had some mountains you had to climb?

Tom Martinelli: No, we’ve had a lot of mountains that we’ve had to climb. I’ve been very resilient in terms of getting through, there were times when Amtrak maybe looked at this, maybe it didn’t fit. There were certainly challenges along the way particularly the pandemic, it set us back, we had to combine two issues, two years’ worth of content.

We lost a lot of revenue. But we persevered. We kept on doing what we’re doing. We also found things that complement the print magazine. This magazine would not have survived 23 years without a digital component.

You have to understand that I don’t get paid any money from Amtrak.

They help with the distribution cost and they do some limited marketing. But aside from that, I have to generate the revenue. I have a large printing bill.

I make that investment. We have to provide a value proposition to our advertisers. And we’ve been able to do that.

I built a brand that is very well respected. It’s award winning. A lot of my advertisers want to be part of that, because of what I’ve created. There certainly have been challenges along the way because it’s an annual. How do you make an annual viable? Right. I think that’s where the digital comes in. I’m a content company, but my roots are in publishing. I started in city and regional magazines. I’m a content company, and I’m developing content. We’re pushing it out through a lot of different mediums, including a print magazine, which is the cornerstone.

It’s like a hub and spoke, there’s a lot of spokes to pushing out that content. And if we weren’t pushing the content out various ways to get the brand out there. We do a weekly newsletter, 52 weeks a year. So, we’re pushing out timely content, a lot of it’s from the print magazine, right? We have a website, very active website that has almost 2000 pages of content.

We’re active on social media. So, the brand has to stay active, you can’t just do an annual magazine and expect people to pick it up. This is not like a subscription base magazine. The brand has to be active.

That’s what I’ve been able to do to; continue to be viable.

Samir Husni: Is there a question that I need to ask you I didn’t ask you so far. You would like me to ask?

Tom Martinelli: I guess a question would be like, what’s an example to show how powerful print is? And that talks about my letter in the current issue. I’m going to tell a story, and it’s a true story about the relevance of a print magazine.

There is a woman, Hope Henshey, she lives in Tennessee, and she was on a USA Amtrak, USA rail pass. So that means you get to go to 10 different places via Amtrak. She was traveling across the country.

She was coming up through New York, she was in New York City, and was heading up towards Albany. During that train ride, she was so inspired by the beauty of the area and the cities along the train stops, that when she got to Albany where she planned to go, and then from there, she was going to go to Milwaukee and Chicago and back to Atlanta. She went up to the train station in Albany, she had a small layover, she picked up new york by rail.

As a result of picking up the magazine, she did not go to Chicago and Milwaukee. She changed her itinerary based on some articles in the magazine; she had been planning everything through Google and online.

She went to four cities in one day, she went from Albany to Hudson, based on an article in the magazine. And she spent her time in Hudson, got back on the train and went to Poughkeepsie. Based on an article in the magazine, she planned out her trip, went down to New York City, and then she went back to Atlanta.

What did this print magazine do? It just opened up her eyes, she changed her itinerary based on the magazine. Now, as a result of that, she ultimately reached out to me, we had a common friend. And she’s my editor at large.

She’s now making video content, but it’s all based on the magazine. We decided we want to tell her story. Now that really is our primary content on social media. And she’s done about 75 reels over the last year. And it’s getting tremendous engagement.

We changed our digital platforms, when we were on social media, we weren’t connecting the magazine to our content, some of it was about the magazine, but some of it was just about things that were timely, go take the train to this event. We changed as soon as I started working with this woman. It was so obvious, I don’t know why I didn’t do it earlier. But now I said, I want you to let me send you some magazines, when you’re doing this content, these reels, I want you to hold up the magazine, I want you to refer to it, I want you to say that it was the magazine that inspired you to find this.

Now you can request a copy of the magazine, or you can follow us on social media. It’s coming full circle; we’re finding a relevant way of promoting the print magazine on social media. It took me 22 years to have that revelation.

Why did she reach out to me? Well, I was at a conference in Arizona.

And there was a gentleman who gave a presentation on car free Arizona. And I started talking to him, well, maybe we could do car free New York. Well, she’s one of these people that is all about sustainability and traveling without a car.

She reached out to him said, I was in New York, I came across this magazine. And he said that you need to reach out to Tom Martinelli. He’s the publisher.

And she did. And it’s been one of the best ways for me to stay relevant. Sometimes you don’t know how you’re going to do it. But we now if you go to our Instagram, New York by Rail, Instagram, you’ll find a lot of great content that starts from the magazine. That’s a testament to how to use the print and the digital in a way they complement each other.

Samir Husni: If you and I are having this conversation, two years from now, you’re celebrating a quarter century of publishing. What would you tell me you’ve accomplished?

Tom Martinelli: What I’ve accomplished is that I’ve been the authority on planning and taking a trip by Amtrak, through our service area. I’ve accomplished the fact that I’ve added a lot of credibility to taking the train as an alternative way of getting to a destination. I’ve kept it going.

Not only kept it going, I’m like a fine wine. Every magazine has gotten better. That’s a testament to the quality and content of the magazine. I’m constantly searching for ways to remain vibrant and relevant. I’ve been able to do that. I told you we’ve won 17 consecutive issues’ awards of magazine excellence from APEX.

But I really believe like the last issue is our best one. And the one before that was the second best. Part of it is my team, so I’ve found a way to continue to adapt. I’m not part of a big publishing company. I’m working differently now. And I’m trying to embrace, the times, but a lot of it has to do with the team.

Working with Richard Perez-Feria has been my editor in chief for four years now, and Kathleen Gates is my art director. The two of them have elevated the magazine that people say this is like a national magazine.

I’m the only Amtrak magazine left. There’s something to be said for that. It just comes down to quality.

You don’t survive if you don’t have something that people want to pick up. People want to pick up this magazine. I found, you know, the ways to be able to do that. I’ve persevered.

Samir Husni: Tell me, if I come to visit you one evening unannounced, what do I catch Tom doing? Having a glass of fine wine, watching TV, reading a book?

Tom Martinelli: Well, it depends what time of year you come in, you visit now, I watch a lot of baseball games at night.

I like to play my vinyl collection. I like to golf, so I might be coming back after a round of golf. I live about an hour and a half north of New York City in the Hudson Valley. I also like just chilling and hanging out in my yard in my property. Those are probably some of the things that you’d find me doing.

Samir Husni: And what keeps you up at night these days?

Tom Martinelli: What keeps me up at night is trying to stay relevant, as I’ve been doing this for a long time.

I want to stay active, I’m trying not to work as much as I used to work, I want to have a life, I want to have balance. I’m at a point in my life, as I enter the twilight of my career, that I still want to continue doing quality work, but I don’t want to put as much time in. So, I’m constantly thinking about how I stay relevant, and how I can do things more efficiently.

I don’t want to retire per se, I want to keep on going. But I’m a lot more focused.

Samir Husni: Thank you so much and congratulations on 23 successful years of ink on paper.

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Emon Hassan: Creating Cinema & Movies In Print: emonome Zine. The Mr. Magazine™ Interview

September 3, 2026

Once in a blue moon, you meet someone who shares your background, your love to everything and anything print, even your zodiac, and the permanence of what we create, cherish and adore: magazines.”

Emon Hassan, Founder and Publisher *emonome*

That person is no other than Emon Hassan, the founder and publisher of the two plus years old zine emonome. A beautiful 40-pages zine that tells a different photographic story every issue. Emon is a filmmaker, a photographer and a musician, but his latest creativity is manifesting itself, monthly, in emonome, the zine that he started in 2024 and is going strong into its third year…

When I asked him about how he fell in love with print, his answers brought back memories of yours truly scribbling and creating his own magazines as a child growing up in Lebanon before going to college and before journalism and storytelling became my career and profession.

Emon told me, “I think back to my first ever published thing, as a teenager, I wrote a short story that I hand-wrote into notebook paper. And then I bound it with staples and put a cover.

My distribution was I give it to the first person, and it’s their job to read it and decide who they should give it to. And then at some point, it made its way back to me. I only recently realized that’s kind of the model I’m still doing in that sense.”

What a lovely testimony to the power of print and the art of storytelling. As you read this interview you will find more about the essence of storytelling, print, and the genius work of creating movies and films on paper from the opening credits to the end… a complete cinema in 40 pages…

So, without any further ado, please enjoy this lightly edited interview with Emon Hassan, founder and publisher of emonome.

Samir Husni: My first question to you is you’re a filmmaker, you’re a photographer, a musician. Why did you decide to do an ink on paper magazine in this digital age?

Emon Hassan: Well, I’ll tell you the story that leads up to that. So in 2005, I had a short film that was included in a film festival in New York City.

And one of the organizers said we don’t have a big promotion available. So why don’t you start a blog and promote your film? I launched that blog and I called it Emonome because I liked the name. It’s a palindrome.

It’s perfect as a Pisces. I started blogging, trying to promote the film. But I really got into what the blog stood for in terms of its open endedness, in terms of information that comes to me.

Then what I saw, the idea was that anything that influences me, that I read or listen to, I’ll blog about it. If that inspires me to create something, I will also blog about it. I liked that it didn’t have an ending.

It could go in any number of directions. I did that for years and that helped me navigate the landscape, online landscape that led me to many opportunities, including about six years later, starting as a photojournalist for The New York Times. In the 2010s, I got very busy with my photojournalism and short documentary work for various platforms.

It was an accidental turn of events, which was very fortunate. I didn’t do a whole lot of blogging. Around the end of 2020, I was thinking of how I should think about the new decade, because every decade I think, what can change? What should I do next? How are things changing? I noticed that the online work had been so saturated and with social media and everything, I was trying to figure out where my work as a photographer, my personal work lived.

The more I looked at online, the more I felt like that I would have my stories and work be done up to a point. After that, it would be off to people who would decide if there was worth publishing or worth telling. I did not like that because it was affecting how I did my stories.

In 2024, I launched my self-published first photography and poetry book as an e-book. Once the e-book came out, most of the people who are on my mailing list said, this is great, but how are you going to sign an e-book? You should do a print book, then we’ll talk. A couple of months later, I launched a print book and the process itself was quite illuminating in terms of how I felt seeing a physical thing in my hands and how those garnered responses from people who bought it.

I was thinking about things I could do that were on a regular basis. I still liked the idea of a deadline because doing newspaper work for about 10 years, it really made me work my best. My partner, who’s also my editor, she said, you’ve always liked blogging. Why don’t you do it as a zine? It was instantly, I saw that, this is it. It’s print form. I can do zines and I don’t have to follow certain rules, either for myself or in terms of perception of what a zine should be.

I decided to launch a zine. Before even the first zine came out, I knew it was going to be monthly because if it wasn’t monthly, then I would probably never do it again. Because it was monthly, it had me thinking a certain way.

That’s how it started as a print because I felt that the audience that were coming to me because of print were the people that I wanted to relate to all along. It was sort of a very refined process that connected us through print.

Samir Husni: Did anybody tell you, Emon, are you out of your mind? What are you thinking doing print in the 21st century?

Emon Hassan: I don’t think they told me directly.

I would read stuff that would make it seem. But I thought that people tend to say something but want something different. So, it was because I thought nobody wanted print is why I did the first book as an e-book.

I will quickly tell that you should do it as a print book because we need to feel the book and the photographs. That’s what made me think that don’t go by what the industry chatter. Go by what people are directly telling you.

Samir Husni: With your pictures, with your photography, did you find a big difference between when it was only digital to when you start making prints and selling prints and signing?

Emon Hassan: Yes. I think when I started to do it in the book form where, you start at page one and then end at page 40, I started to look at photography very differently and I started to think storytelling because it was the idea that the book is probably the only technology that you never had to explain to people. They all know that it will start here and will end here.

Whatever you put in between is totally left to the imagination. Once I started doing it in print and it was in the book form, I was able to channel my filmmaker brain into it and tell stories in a way that would weave through. You know where it began and where it ended.

There’s the opening image. There’s the closing image. I was able to do a lot within the constraints, if you will, of the cover and the back cover.

Samir Husni: Have you ever thought a book or a magazine is like a movie? There’s a beginning and there’s an end?

Emon Hassan: Yes. I see the zines as a cinema in the print form for me, the way I approach it. Yes, I do. That was a big part in designing and crafting every issue.

Samir Husni: If somebody comes to you and say, what’s the power of print today?

Emon Hassan: I think I’ve always believed that even through the height of digital is that the longevity of the paper form, the print form is something that will outlive me.

With digital, people approach it as something that can be discarded. The power of print is in its permanence.

There’s something about the print version, which is that you hand it over to somebody or passit around or pass it down aspect of it is to me is something I think about because you read something and you say, I really love this. You should read it and it goes around. The power of it, in other words, is it’s also the longevity of it.

From a photographer point of view, I know exactly how that photograph will be seen by everybody. If I were to do it in digital, it all depends on if your computer is color calibrated or if it’s like a certain definition, you will see a different picture than I do. That will translate differently in terms of the storytelling.

In the print form, if I’m in charge of seeing how the print works, then I know whatever I see is what anyone will see out there.

Samir Husni: What role does AI play, if any, in your photography?

Emon Hassan: No, not in my photography, because I feel like it will never equal to the way I think. It’s not like I haven’t played with AI, but it gets boring very quickly because all it’s doing is rehashing what others think are great photographs, which I may not agree with. For me, having honed my craft repeatedly it’s 10, 20 times easier for me to come up with original ideas or respond to something. Photography is responding to a situation that I’m in. And there’s nothing in AI could do that.

Now there are certain technologies available in the apps that you use to edit them. And more companies are integrating them with or without our consent, like denoising or that sort of thing. I tend not to use them anymore.

I used to use it when you have manual like denoise. I feel like, if I took a picture a certain time and it has this noise, then that’s the story. I don’t need to make it look more perfect because perfection is not what I’m going for.

Samir Husni: Excellent. Tell me, before I ask you my typical questions, since you started the zine, have it been like a walk in a rose garden or did you have some challenge?

Emon Hassan: No, it’s not been. Well, first, I think it goes to one of your original questions was, and on top of that is the perception of what a zine should be or where zine is.

I’ve gotten a question if it’s so polished, can it be called a zine anymore? My response to that is I don’t look at the zine as the form of it. I look at zine as a decision I’ve made against something or to stand up to something, which is the publishing empire that decides whose story is important to tell or not. To make it polished is my decision as a photographer and as a publisher to say that this is my product, it’s zine, but the zine is more like, that’s my punk rock.

I chose it a certain way. I would say that’s my zine is a serious endeavor. Most people don’t make a second issue of a zine.

I’ve done 24 already, 25 coming out soon. I am into it for good. There were challenges in terms of printing and such. I don’t think that’s unique to just zines. I think any business will face those challenges. But I think perception of what a zine should be and how seriously or not seriously should be taken.

It’s something that I don’t deal with as much, but I know it’s in the back of people’s minds, but that’s shifting now.

Samir Husni: Emonome is not cheap. You’re charging $15 an issue.

Emon Hassan: I would say it’s on par with what it should be. And as it came to consensus once I had the original back and forth with people, that I figured that was appropriate for that.

Based on how much time I spend, all that must come into consideration. There is one thing too, when people think zines should be free. I don’t believe that at all, because why am I doing it if I don’t consider it as a serious business?

Samir Husni: Tell me, if I come one evening, unannounced to your house, what do I catch Emon doing? Watching TV, reading a book, looking at pictures?

Emon Hassan: It’s all those things. I’m constantly, thinking about storytelling…different storytelling.

It will either be reading a book or listening to an audio book or looking at a video about certain things. Always trying to learn how I can do it better. I’ll read books for inspiration, either photo books or just fiction, anything that has to do with storytelling told a certain way. It doesn’t matter. I don’t discriminate against any type of storytelling. I want to learn. I’ll let it sort of wash over me.

Sometimes I’ll won’t do any of that. I’ll just listen to music for a few days and be like, none of that. No nonfiction enters my world. It’s just going to be fiction or music or just silence sometimes.

Samir Husni: I read that you were a guitar instructor.

Emon Hassan: I used to be in the early two thousand when I was playing music in New York. That was my main source of income, to play cover in cover bands. I had an original guitar duo.

During that time, I was also teaching guitar and I was doing great. I had a bunch of students.

Samir Husni: Then you moved from sound to vision.

Emon Hassan: Sound came as a way from vision. I was always like ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be a filmmaker, but I didn’t know what a filmmaker was. I didn’t know that you wrote your films.

I thought you just were there when it happened and you captured it. When I was 14 or 15, my mom bought me a guitar because she didn’t want me to go play in the sun outside. She didn’t know that I would really take to it.

So it was, it was sort of parallel. I knew they were not related in any way, but I knew from very early on that, no matter how many different things you do, they’re all going to help you to be a better storyteller.

The more input you have from different fields, it’s only going to help you as a storyteller, not to take anything away from it.

Samir Husni: My typical last question, what keeps him on up at night these days?

Emon Hassan: It’s probably very different reason that most people will give you. I’m up at night in the anticipation of the things I can’t wait to get to in the morning.

So I’ll go to bed thinking I can’t wait for this night to be over so I can get up and get to doing what I do, my routine. A lot of people stay up at night thinking about what their industry, their work and everything is going. But I’ve kind of lived it in my head, some years ago, of where things might be going. So, that doesn’t keep me up.

What keeps me up is if I’ve done my best that day and if I could have done any better and I’ll just quickly calibrate and be like, in the morning, I’ll wake up and I’ll try to do a little better.

Samir Husni: Thank you and all the best.

To learn more or to subscribe to the beautiful zine emonome click here.

Posted in A Launch Story..., Innovation in print, Magazine Power, New Launches, News and Views, The Mr. Magazine™ Interview | Leave a Comment »

Let’s Talk SEX… That’s SEX Monthly Magazine Circ. September 1926. The Mr. Magazine™ Vault

August 31, 2026

A century ago, yes, you read that right, 100 years ago on this day, a new magazine appeared on the nation’s newsstands. Its name, a three-letter-word and in all caps, breaking every taboo that was out there, and calling it what it is: SEX. A new monthly magazine for the masses from Dawn Publishing Co., Inc., at 17 West 60^th Street, New York, N.Y.

The magazine was “for sale only on news-stands or in quantities of twenty or more – Express prepaid.” SEX Monthly Magazine was soliciting “articles dealing in a constructive and wholesome way with sex problems and photographic studies.” Its editorial policy stated that “SEX, will include reprints of outstanding articles on sex from current magazines, also heretofore unpublished articles, romantic poems and from time to time fiction stories.”

In the first issue, and every issue that followed, SEX Monthly Magazine included what it referred to as “Our Platform.”

The Platform

“Prevailing ignorance, prejudice, and hysteria concerning sex cause widespread misery, error and unhappiness.

We oppose the conspiracy of silence on the subject of sex because not ignorance but understanding will safeguard morals and happiness.

Likewise we oppose the conspiracy of shame whereby the beautiful and God-ordained fact of sex has been made to appear horrible and vile.”

The magazine went on stating, “We oppose the conspiracy of repression because psychoanalysis has clearly shown that to repress an impulse does not kill it but produces nervousness, morbidness, depression, shame, a sense of inferiority, sickness and insanity.

When rationalized, frankly faced and understood, sex energy may be sublimated and used up in constructive activities leading to splendid achievement.”

A call for tolerance and a solution

“Conventions, customs and morals change from place to place and from time to time. Those who fail to accept any particular set of standards should not be condemned if they are sincere, considerate and constructive.

Marriage is the safest solution of the sex problem but now largely fails thru ignorance of sex laws and technique. The problem of happy marriage should be studied and discussed.

The human bod is not immortal but beautiful and should be reverenced, appreciated and enjoyed. The nude in art may be beautifully and spiritually presented.”

Identifying the Problem

“Promiscuous sex relationship leads to restless discontent, interferes with success, destroys happiness and endangers health and is not to be advocated as a solution.

Free love as generally conceived is virtually synonymous with promiscuity and hence will probably fail as a solution for the sex problem.

Yet love must be free and spontaneous – there is no worse immorality than to compel a man and a woman to live together when they do not love each other.”

Justifying the magazine

“We are in the midst of an almost universal revolt against the fading sex taboos and puritanic sex repression. This revolt needs to be guided in safe and sane channels. Excesses and extremes breed anarchy. Sex must be rationalized, studied, controlled and wisely directed.

This magazine proposed to supply sane, sound and clean discussion of this subject more important to human health happiness and advancement than any other social problem.

Our program does not condone the salacious, suggestive, morbid sensationalism so current in certain contemporary magazines and daily papers. We propose to face truth bravely, frankly, constructively, hoping to make a real contribution to social good.”

Troubles with law enforcement but not the law

With all its good intentions of being a magazine to supply sane, sound and clean information about sex, some law enforcement officials were not happy with the magazine. Such an example is the police chief in no other than Des Moines, Iowa.

In the November issue of the magazine, the editors wrote under the heading, SEX VINDICATED, “The spirit, objective, and character of this great human magazine has been called in question in but one city in America namely Des Moines, Iowa. In that great metropolis of the Middle-West, the chief of police beholding a magazine called SEX, and laboring under the ancient delusion that anything connected with sex must be nasty, immoral, and obscene, blushed for shame, called out the reserve squad, and raided the unsuspecting and unoffending wholesale newsdealer, Louis Hyman, confiscated all copies of SEX available and arrested the dealer on a charge of selling obscene literature and pictures.”

SEX Monthly Magazine went to court and, “The case was tried before Municipal Judge, the Honorable Herman Zench, who dismissed the complaint, ruling that neither the text nor the pictures in SEX constituted obscene literature. The pictures were commended in the decision as being an example of pure and unoffensive art.

This good news, reassuring the publishers of SEX that sanity has replaced unthinking prejudice come just as we are going to press.”

A brief success story: The new and improved SEX

The magazine was launched in the small size of 6.5 X 10.25 inches, but an announcement in the November issue of 1926 read, “DUE to the unprecedented and overwhelming public approval of our efforts to create a sane, constructive, modern magazine treating in a helpful and wholesome manner with the subject more important to human wealth, happiness, and welfare than any other interest of life, namely

SEX

the publishers take pleasure in announcing that the December issue of SEX MAGAZINE will appear in a new and superbly beautiful form. Next month you may look for SEX among the larger magazines. The size will be enlarged to 8 X 11. Finest paper will be used. Only pictures that can be found in no other magazine will appear – and these pictures will be the most magnificent art studies procurable! Articles by world renowned scholars! A department of Physical Culture—Exercises for health and beauty—Styles—A department of personal advice on problems of Love, Marriage, and Sex, and other features which will make SEX the livest, most helpful, most illuminating, most interesting and most beautiful magazine in America. A gorgeous four color cover, and thirty fascinating art pictures worth framing. A dollar magazine and no advance in price.

WATCH FOR THE IMPROVED SEX Only twenty-five cents at all stands.”

The end is near

With the new size and the success of the magazine, did not last long. From December 1926 to June 1928 the magazine struggled to publish on a regular monthly frequency. The Monthly Magazine disappeared from the cover leaving only the name SEX, albeit the masthead continued to state, “SEX, a monthly magazine.” Starting in 1927 the magazine appeared every other month. The last known issue of the magazine was the June 1928 that carried a Vol. II, No. 9.

The end was biblical in nature. The lead cover story was a sermon given by the Morsemere Methodist Episcopal Church, the minister, Rev. George Maychin Stockdale, B.D., M.A., on “The Companionate Marriage,” with special reference to Judge Ben B. Lindsey’s book by that name. After reading from John 8: 1-11, Mr. Stockdale took as text Jesus’ words to the woman taken in adultery as reported in John 8:11, “Neither do I condemn thee.””

The entire sermon was published in the magazine under the title, “SEX TOLERANCE Advocated in Methodist Pulpit,” and it took five and half illustrated pages of The Madgalen from different famous religious paintings.

It has been a century ago, yet I wish I can say that things have changed for the better. I feel we have progressed backwards when it comes to culture, art, ethics, tolerance, and morality.

Posted in A Launch Story..., A Mr. Magazine™ Musing, From the Vault, Magazine Power, New Launches, News and Views | Leave a Comment »

TAG: An Interactive Print Magazine For Children. The Mr. Magazine™ Interview with Anthony Deptula, Founder and Editor-in-chief

August 23, 2026

TAG you are it, and a new interactive ink on paper magazine is born. The brainchild of an illustrator, artist, and storyteller, Anthony Deptula, with the help of his nine-year-old son, Hugo, came up with the idea of creating an interactive print publication after seeing the lack of kids’ interactivity on You Tube due to COPPA (The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) regulations.

His love for drawing started as a kid in kindergarten. He started drawing at a very young age and continued to this day with creative stints at Disney Interactive, Maker Studios, You Tube, and now Netflix. With TAG, he wanted to curate and create something big—literally big (approximately 11 X 15)—that kids can interact with, draw on, tear apart, erase, make paper airplanes from, and do whatever their minds and imagination call for. In short, he succeeded in creating a magazine whose tagline (pun intended) says, “No parents allowed,” but is very much welcomed by parents who love for kids to have some screen free time.

Anthony has two issues under his belt and is now working on issues 3 and 4. Recently, TAG became available on Etsy. A post on LinkedIn said, “If Etsy is your jam, you can now grab Issue # 1 of TAG over there. TAG is a screen-free kids magazine for drawing, comics, creative writing, and generally making stuff.”

On a personal note, I may add that, in addition to Highlights and High Five, my grandkids are now receiving TAG, the magazine. I hope that those who have kids or grandkids in elementary or middle school, will consider getting them some screen-free time with interactive TAG. Click here to get a subscription to the magazine.

And now, without any further ado, here is the lightly edited interview with Anthony Deptula, founder and editor-in-chief of TAG, the magazine:

Anthony Deptula, founder, TAG, the magazine

Samir Husni: Congratulations on the new magazine.

Anthony Deptula: Thank you.

Samir Husni: You must be out of your mind to start an ink on paper magazine in this digital age.

Anthony Deptula: Yeah, I don’t know if I’m out of my mind or just nostalgic or understanding that parents want less screen time for kids.

Samir Husni: Your tagline, pun intended, is a creative magazine made of paper. Is it describing the obvious or?

Anthony Deptula: One thing that I’ve figured out as we’re just getting started here, kids didn’t really know what magazines were. And a lot of parents had to explain to them what it was, which is kind of wild to me.

It’s tongue in cheek, trying to be funny, made of paper. I like that it’s made of paper, for me, it’s tangible. Everything is so fleeting today. I like that it’s a piece of paper and kids can draw on it. Kids can have it delivered to their house or where they live, their apartment. That’s exciting to receive something and get something is still exciting for kids.

Amazon proves that; every day, getting something from Amazon, being able to order it, kids still like getting packages and getting something in the mail.

Samir Husni: You say no parents allowed. How are you marketing the magazine?

Anthony Deptula: One parent submitted some art. And I was, okay, that’s interesting. It was pretty good.

Kids love that. Kids really love that. We have a little different style than competitors. We’re a little baby magazine, but we’re a little more punk, as you can tell. We’re a little more comic book based, graphic novel based. And the style is black and white. It’s all over the place. To answer your question in marketing, grassroots, we’re working with partners. One of the interesting things that we’re doing are pop-ups.

For issue number two, we did a partnership with an ice-skating rink, and we worked with a young nine-year-old, hopeful Olympian, in Charlie Roost. She was the model in the ice-skating spread. We’re giving away free ads as well to like-minded partners.

If you look at issue one, those are all free ads in the back. Those partners are like-minded community partners, and they’re pushing it out for me on social, on their newsletters, in person. That way, we’re just growing.

We have no funding. It’s sort of growing grassroots. The more people that know about it, the better it is, because then we get to exist.

Samir Husni: Go back with me to that aha moment. When did you get the idea, and how was TAG born?

Anthony Deptula: I grew up in Steubenville, Ohio. My dad worked at Weirton Steel in West Virginia. In Weirton, at our home we had old calendars, the desktop calendars. I would draw on them.

I would make comics with my best friend who was in kindergarten. I was in first grade. I always loved drawing.

In 1998 the United States introduced COPPA (The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act). YouTube took away comments from kids, because of COPPA. Very safe, very smart. Totally agree with it.

But I think kids lost this interactivity. I helped make a few YouTube shows, one with GoldieBlox. I was an executive producer, which had 60 million views. And another, I was working at Maker Studios as an exec and helped shepherd the idea that had 300 million views.

That was all core curriculum on YouTube, first and second grade. The kids were so engaged and so interested and excited. I just thought, if every page is almost a partnership, if every page is interactive because magazines have had that sort submissions for years. That why TAG is big. I like how big it is.

Kids love the size. It’s not precious. You can tear it up, you can make it papier mache, you can turn it into a paper airplane, and you can erase it. Kids today lost their youth voice. I thought this would be an interesting way to reimagine a magazine where every page is interactive.

On every page, they get a chance to put their comic, their graphic novel, a story that they want to tell and really help them create content that they like, because a lot of content that is created for kids, they don’t like. So, TAG is a little bit of an old Nickelodeon style; to let the kids decide.

Samir Husni: Tell me a bit about your background. You must have a unique background to do this.

Anthony Deptula: I’m from a working-class family, moved to LA and I’ve worked in television. I did comedy in LA.

I had a feature film that I wrote, produced, and acted in at Sundance. I became an executive and started making a lot of kids’ content working for Makers’ Studio, Disney, GoldieBlox, Female Empowerment Toy Company, and Slumberkins. I have a lot of toy clients right now.

I’ve never made a magazine. But I wanted to draw again. I literally just wanted to draw again. People seem to be responding. We’re starting to do wholesale sales.

We’re starting to get into brick and mortars. We have subscriptions, which is great. My background is creative. I have a creative background. I love artists. A lot of the artists that I’ve worked with over the years are in the magazine. Those artists have worked at Disney, Cartoon Network. You know, I also like fine art, which is one of my favorite pages in the spread. We don’t talk down to kids.

Samir Husni: Who is the audience you are trying to reach? I know it is children, but can you be more specific?

Anthony Deptula: The age range is wild, Samir.

I would say first to eighth grade. It’s a very wide range of kids that are loving this thing. I think because of the rise of Captain Underpants and Wings of Fire, all these graphic novel books, kids that are just older are still into comics and drawing and storytelling.

I have a unique perspective. I had a lot of people tell me not to do this, and I didn’t listen. It’s very hard.

Samir Husni: You chose illustrations over photography. Why? Do you think as a creative person, people connect more to illustrations than photography?

Anthony Deptula: There’s some photos, like 1% photos, but. I wanted to draw again. And issue number two, a young woman from Maine, submitted a photo of a bay with a little building. She was thankful publishing it.

There’s also a photo of a sculpture that a young man did, which I thought was cool. I like all the different styles, and I like that we’re a lot different than our competitors. I get to work with the different artists on different spreads, and I think that illustration is what kids like.

Samir Husni: The question I like to ask folks who launch new magazines is, during this six-month period since you launched TAG, was it a walk in a rose garden, or you had quite a bit of challenges? And if you did, how did you overcome them?

Anthony Deptula: Sure. I’m still in them. The challenges are mainly of getting more subscriptions. We’re not like a legacy brand that’s been around for a long time, and everyone’s kids love it. The wild thing is the feedback everyone says, “this is going to be huge.”

I go, okay. I’m kind of one person with a bunch of freelancers in my basement, and I hope it will be huge. But I’m just trying to overcome the problems, because there are issues starting any sort of business. Trying to find the format of it all is interesting.

I had a lot of people that helped me. Two schools where I brought in the prototype of the magazine, I called, Tag-Ins, just separated sheets of paper. I took these to the schools to get started and schools started filling these out. That was generating content for me.

I was trying to sell these as separate. You got to buy these, and then you got to buy the magazine. Everyone’s like, what are you talking about? And that’s when I decided, oh, I just have it in my head. I have to tell people how this works. Here’s the fairy tale, you fill it out, it becomes this. Here’s time machine one.

Then here’s the people, the kids that talked about history and the folks that they wanted to meet. When you have an idea as a creative, it’s hard to translate sometimes until you prototype it and you put it into the world, and then you start learning. A couple of school principles, a lot of kids, friends and family really helped me understand how to assemble the magazine, to explain it, because it’s a little different.

Samir Husni: Give me your elevator pitch. If somebody met you on the street said, Anthony, what’s TAG?

Anthony Deptula: I say it’s an interactive paper magazine where kids fill out to become the published artists and writers.

Samir Husni: Before I ask you my typical last two questions, is there any question I should ask you I did not ask you?

Anthony Deptula: I would say I’m from Ohio, so I was influenced by Highlights.

There’re a lot of people that tell me it reminds them of Highlights, and some of them don’t even know Highlights still exists, which is interesting to me. I grew up with Highlights. My uncle worked for a sister company of Highlights on the education side, and I feel there’s a real need out there, and all the work that they’ve done over the years inspired me to try to give it my own shot, which is kind of wild to say: I’m going to become a publisher, but people seem to be responding.

I would say the magazines from the past have helped me in the curation, and of making it creative. Even Eastbay or MAD Magazine, or Sports Illustrated for Kids, and The Onion, great magazines that are still printing. Tangible is important to me, and I appreciate, the past publishers that have been around a long time. The great part about not knowing how to run a magazine is I get to invent different spreads that have never been invented or bring those spreads back to life.

For example, the blank black page in issue number two or the kid in issue one erasing the comic. It really made me upset at first, but then I was like, oh, that’s actually a good idea. I’m going to make a blank page so kids can do their own art on it.

I love the big palette. I wanted to be different from Highlights. I wanted to be different from the Ranger Ricks of the world that are serving and been helping kids for a long time, and that’s, hopefully, why Tag feels a little different.

The Tag team is great, too. I have a lot of great young artists, and they bring a lot of energy to this project where they just jumped on board with me. I am also working with a local printer in Tecumseh, Michigan. They’ve been supportive as well. They’ve been around a hundred years, and excited to have a new mag.

Samir Husni: My typical last two questions, if I come to visit Anthony in the evening, unannounced, what do I catch you doing? Reading a book, illustrating, having a glass of wine?

Anthony Deptula: I usually watch Dune, the movie. So, there’s Dune one, part one and two.

Or I’ll play soccer with my son. He’s nine. He helped me with the magazine.

His name’s Hugo. So, if you can mention him, he won’t give me grief.

Hugo helped me with Tag, he helped me create it. Or, I’ll be on the porch with my wife: She’s reading. We got a new puppy.

I work 24-7 because of my job. Netflix is my day job. They’re a client. So, I’m always working.

Samir Husni: And what keeps you up at night these days?

Anthony Deptula: I sleep well. I don’t know. My sprinkler, something’s going on with my sprinklers. They keep shutting off. So, I think I got to fix that.

Samir Husni: Thank you so much and best of luck. You are it.

Posted in A Launch Story..., Innovation in print, Magazine Power, New Launches, News and Views, The Mr. Magazine™ Interview | Leave a Comment »

A Geezer Launches Geezer Magazine: The Mr. Magazine™ Interview With Laura LeBleu, Founder & Editor-in-Chief

August 16, 2026

It takes a geezer to start Geezer magazine—and that’s exactly what Laura LeBleu did: a 100% handcrafted magazine content and AI-free.

*Laura LeBleu, Founding Editor, Geezer magazine*

The founder and editor-in-chief of Geezer comes from a theater background, not the publishing world. Frustrated by the lack of anything to read that truly spoke to her needs, interests, and stage of life, Laura found inspiration in an unlikely place: the shower. That’s where the idea for Geezer, a magazine created for herself and the Gen X community, was born.

The result is a beautiful, oversized publication that combines a trip down memory lane with a thoughtful look at the issues and concerns facing Gen X today. Laura is the first to proudly admit that she’s a geezer, and she hopes Geezer will eventually grow into a media organization that gives geezers across the country a place to connect, come together, and enjoy this stage of life.

Knowing just how large and diverse the Gen X community is, Laura is determined to keep Geezer independent and focused on its very specific audience, with no desire to turn it into a mass-market publication. It’s a smart move for a woman who is quick to tell you she has no traditional business background and instead comes from a life deeply rooted in the theater world.

I had the opportunity to chat with Laura about the birth of Geezer, its content and audience, and even the distinctive experience of holding such a substantial magazine in your hands. It was a delightful conversation, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed conducting it.

So, without any further ado, here is my lightly edited interview with Laura LeBleu, founder and editor-in-chief, Geezer magazine:

Samir Husni: Thank you for sending me the first issue. It was like a time machine.

Laura LeBleu: Oh, indeed. I’m glad you got it. Hopefully you enjoyed it.

Samir Husni: Yes, I did. Please tell me about the idea of Geezer.
Laura LeBlue: Geezer magazine was created from my realization that there was no one talking to Gen X in the way that I wanted to be talked to. The actual story is that I was in the shower and I had the idea, and I knew I wanted it to be a print magazine. I knew I wanted it to be called Geezer.

So, the name Geezer is from a focus group of one. That’s my brain. I was just thinking about it.

The only equivalent that we have right now is AARP. When I got my first AARP flyer, I set it on fire. I thought this isn’t the conversation, how dare you come to me? There are probably other people who are feeling this way.

To me, it seemed there was a desire to have a print magazine that addressed the issues of midlife in the way that AARP couldn’t, honestly, because of who they are. They’re mostly a marketing and lobbying organization. So, I thought, well, I’ll do it. Why not? Someone’s going to, it might as well be me.

Samir Husni: And you did a beautiful job in an oversize, 11 by 15 print publication…

Laura LeBleu: I was inspired by Mountain Gazette magazine, which is slightly larger, as you probably know.

I thought if I’m going to do anything, I wanted it to have impact. I wanted to have a visceral feel when you held it. And I also wanted to make it easy on the eyes.

Samir Husni: Why did you decide on print in this digital age?

Laura LeBleu: I tend to zig where everyone else is zagging. And I’ve been thinking a lot about where we are as a society in relationship to technology.

I personally could feel myself overwhelmed with digital information. I call it the empty calories of digital content, that it feels like you’re force fed. It leaves you feeling bloated but never satisfied.

Print, to me, is the antidote to all of that. Print is amazing, and I’m sure you’ve experienced this. I will give Geezer to someone, and they’ll hold it in their hands, and I see their shoulders drop. They will take a breath.

There’s something about print that grounds you and calms your nervous system in the exact opposite. It’s the opposite of what all the barrage of digital content does to us. I was very adamant that this be a print magazine, and that we don’t share all our content online.

I will share some stories, obviously I want people to know what’s in the magazine, they should know that if they’re to plunk down 120 bucks a year for it. I feel print deserves its own special space in the world. These stories deserve to be experienced in print.

Samir Husni: One of the folks commented on my interview with the CEO of Highlights for Children, he said, “digital is brain drain, print is brain gain.”

Laura LeBleu: It’s innervating. It really is, isn’t it? That’s why when people pick up the magazine, it feels the opposite. It feels nourishing. It feels like it makes you stop and focus on what’s in your hands, what’s right in front of you.

From the response I’m getting, I’m not the only one who feels this way. People are really beginning to understand what I’m doing with this magazine.

Samir Husni: Your editorials read as if you are reliving your memories. You’re sharing your journal or your diary?

Laura LeBleu: Well, I would say so. I’ve thought a lot about this as far as the editorial mix goes and what our focus is. I never want to over-rotate into nostalgia.

I don’t want it to feel like we’re all just looking back and talking about when we were drinking out of the water hose, and our parents were off smoking their cool menthol cigarettes while we were playing with fireworks. I don’t want it to rotate too far into that. But I feel we must.

We also must acknowledge that we’re in midlife, we’re looking back and we’re examining what our experiences were growing up. That is a nostalgic portion of the Geezer editorial mix.

The other portion, 60 to 65 percent of the magazine, is about the issues that we’re facing today as we go through middle age, as we’re entering our 50s and our early 60s. That’s where the larger stories are going to come from; the nonfiction narrative and the more reported pieces are going to dig into.

Samir Husni: You have two issues under your belt, and the third issue is on its way. Tell me about this journey.

Laura LeBleu: We almost have a full year of Geezers out because we publish tri-annually.

The third issue is at the printers right now waiting for the paper to be delivered. I refuse to print on anything other than Sustana, which is 30 percent recycled. I love this paper. It’s got a great texture to it. It’s 80 pounds, heavy and not slick. It feels a little bit tactile, a little bit rougher. That is very much the Geezer ethos. That is how I approach everything in this magazine. We are not slick and we are a little rough around the edges. But I feel that’s a very Gen X sensibility.

Samir Husni: Has it been a walk in the rose garden?

Laura LeBleu: It’s been the hardest thing I have ever undertaken in my entire life, Samir. And it’s also been the most fulfilling journey I’ve ever been on, creatively speaking.

I wrote an article on Substack called This Might Not Work. I don’t know if you saw that, but I break down some of the economics of creating a print magazine, all the dumb mistakes I made, super rookie mistakes, because I’m not a business mastermind. I just had this idea.

I come from a theater background. I have this, hey, kids, we got a barn, let’s put on a show, outlook on life. That’s how I approached Geezer to get the ball rolling and just to crank it out and create something.

The biggest challenges have been financial. We’re up to almost 500 annual subscribers. The first one came out last November. So, from what I can tell, as far as industry goes, that’s quite good.

Making the magazine is the fun part. The hard part is all the business that goes into it. I honestly feel like I’m running this thing and putting it together by bubble gum, hopes, and dreams.

I’m trying to get my business foundations more solid so that I don’t have to worry about how is our subscription? How is our circulation being managed? Right now, I’m working on moving to SimpleCirc so that I have a more bespoke way of managing all of that. But that’s even hard. I hate all the buttons that you must push in software platforms.

I know I can do it. But I would so much rather focus on creating the stories and working with the writers. I’ve come to accept my position as an entrepreneur and a businessperson. So, today after I talked to you, all I’m doing is working on the update of our website to get it refreshed so that it reflects the magazine a little bit more. Those are the challenges. I’m committed to seeing another year of Geezer through and hopefully we’ll get the subscribership that will allow us to be sustainable. I’m a cockeyed optimist. I do believe that the way people are responding now, if we were going to get that critical mass, and I truly believe that that this magazine is going to start to take off.

Samir Husni: When that first issue landed in your hands, what was your feeling?

Laura LeBleu: Oh, my gosh, I’m a mom, I do have a wonderful 16-year-old son. Second to him being born, having this magazine in my hands was the greatest thrill.

I’m sure you’ve heard this from many magazine founders; there’s nothing like holding something in your hands that is a true expression of you and your editorial vision. Some background, I I’ve been writing for other people for 25 years, I’ve been creating for other people and spending my creative energy on other people’s needs. To finally have something that was an expression of my own creative vision, and to have it in your hands, and to be able to know that no one can take that away from you. There’s nothing more exciting. It really is an elation beyond belief.

Samir Husni: If you and I are having this discussion in July or August of 2027, what would you tell me Laura have accomplished in that year?

Laura LeBleu: Well, first and foremost, I would hope that we have hit a subscriber base that allows me to sustain the magazine, and to pay myself someday. But I also am, as Arjun Basu says, and I am a huge fan of his, I was listening to a podcast he was on recently. And he said, “Listen, you’re not a magazine, you’re a media, you’re a media organization.”

I’ve been working on how to expand that, how to expand myself as a media entity, and how to create the community that I want to create. So, this time in two years, if I’ve created a community of people who can connect with each other, can come together over, with this magazine as the nucleus of the, of the community, but also, you know, to have it expand into people getting together having Geezer gathers, hopefully doing a podcast with the people who are featured in the magazine, that would be amazing. I would also love to have a business partner to work with, who can help me expand on these visions I have, that’s something I’m missing right now, because it’s just me at this point.

Samir Husni: If people want to order back issues, are they available? Laura LeBleu: I have back issues of number one. So that’s available for purchase on our website. It’s Geezermagazine.com. And I’ll be releasing back issues of number two, next week. Issue number three will be out, hopefully in the mail at the end of next week.

Samir Husni: I must ask about the name Geezer…

Laura LeBleu: It’s funny, the name Geezer, I thought it was hilarious. I’m like, that’s a funny, it’s just a funny word. It evokes different things. For Gen X, it was very tongue in cheek, because I feel like we’re not geezers at all.

It had that Gen X ironic twist. People have written me and said, “I’m in my 60s or 70s. Can I still write for you?” And my answer is unequivocally yes.

We are what we are. If the issue is something that focuses on and resonates with Gen X. It’s a wide tent that I’m trying to create here. The editorial vision for Geezer is that it doesn’t look, smell, taste, sound, or read like anything else you’ve ever picked up. I really wanted to make something that felt completely like the metaphor. Like that creature in the woods that you think you know, but you’re not quite sure. You must pick it up to see what’s in there to get it.

Samir Husni: Is there any question I’m supposed to ask you I didn’t ask you?

Laura LeBleu: Oh, goodness gracious. We’ve covered the basics for sure. Let’s see, what else would I want to answer, who is your audience? I would say that Geezer is not for everyone. It’s for the people who recognize it immediately. Although it’s Gen X, we’re not trying to focus on a mass market.

It does resonate strongly with the people who had the eye for what, what I’m creating. I hope people love it.

The one thing that I would want to tell you is how one of the greatest and most wonderful surprises of entering the world of independent magazines is the support, the kindness, and the reaching out of people within the community that I’ve received. So, it’s been unfailingly positive.

I do feel I’ve stumbled into this wonderful world where we really do want to see each other succeed. I’ve been so lucky to make connections with different publishers, new writers. That for me has been the greatest surprise I’m most grateful for. I’m part of something bigger now and that keeps me going.

Samir Husni: If I come to visit you one day, unannounced, what do I catch Laura doing in the evening watching TV, reading a book, having a glass of wine?

Laura LeBleu: Often, you’ll catch me in the theater. I’m either directing or volunteering. I live in a little town in California, but we have an amazing art scene up here. In fact, a lot of artists and actors from New York or San Francisco, when they’re done with the big city, they come here.

We have this really thriving art scene and I’m involved in a theater company here. You’ll probably not see me. I don’t sit and watch a lot of TV. Otherwise, I’ll be reading or out on the trails running. I need to, that’s the only way I can balance my brain is by is by physical activity. I don’t really drink wine anymore. A good book is always a good thing. I have 79 unread books on my nightstand. I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t have a few unread books on their nightstand is waiting to go.

Samir Husni: My typical last question, what keeps you up at night these days?

Laura LeBleu: Besides the general state of our world, it’s how to make Geezer successful. Right now, that’s about creating those business foundations I was talking about.

A lot of things that keep me up are like I needed to respond to that email where someone pitched a story to me, that slipped through the cracks. I don’t want people to feel like I’m not there and paying attention.

But when you are a one person publishing band, it’s difficult to keep up with all the communication. My brain will wake me up around three in the morning. This is not theoretical. This is literal. I’m kept up by wanting to make sure that I’m giving everyone who loves Geezer, who wants to write for Geezer, the attention that they deserve when they reach out to me.

Samir Husni: Thank you. I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me. Best of luck.

Posted in A Launch Story..., Innovation in print, Magazine Power, New Launches, News and Views, The Mr. Magazine™ Interview | Leave a Comment »

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