It is not an oxymoron. A new PRINT magazine aimed at college kids by college kids. Yes, yes I know, but please keep on reading… University Link magazine describes itself as “an edgy, fun and socially conscious magazine written exclusively for college students by college students that informs and entertains.” When I heard of the newly launched monthly last April, I had to take a double take. A print magazine for college kids! Didn’t all the “media pundits” tell us that college kids are no longer interested in print, and if they are interested, than it is only in free print. So why on earth will someone, anyone, launch a new monthly magazine aimed at college kids and written by college kids and, to top it all, has the guts to charge for it $20.00 for 10 issues.
Well I took my questions to Ali Salomi the managing director and co-publisher of the Southern California based magazine and here’s what he had to say:
Samir Husni: A print magazine for college students? Isn’t this concept outdated? Some say college kids don’t use print anymore? Care to comment…
Ali Salomi: We don’t believe this concept is outdated. We have three years of research that we completed prior to launching this magazine that gave us enough confidence in welcoming the phrase “Print is Dead.” We found that other than local school papers, there really isn’t any print media aimed only at college students. We felt that by publishing a magazine that was edgy and entertaining and at the same time informative we would capture our readers’ attention.
We have street teams that are on college campuses everyday to sell subscriptions and to take surveys from students to find out what they want to read about. We wanted to design a magazine with the reader in mind and because we’re generating income with our subscriptions we’re not beholden to our advertisers for content. We keep the students and their interests first.
We charge the students $20 per year (10 issues) for our subscriptions and DO NOT publish any of our stories FREE on the web. We are the ONLY subscriber-based, college-magazine in Southern California.
With our first issue we had 12,000 subscribers, and our second 15,000. We are forecasting 20,000 subscribers by our September issue and 30,000 by year’s end. For a magazine that just launched (and the first we’ve published), these numbers are incredible. Our reader responses have been amazing and the flood of email from students asking to write for us is always nice as well. Students regularly report to our street team how nice it is to take a “break” from school and read the magazine between and sometimes even in class.
SH: Why is the magazine limited to Southern California and what are the expansion plans?
AS: The magazine is currently limited to Southern California. We did this for two reasons; one was to make sure that the voice of the magazine remains the voice of Southern California college students. It speaks to them in their own lingo and covers subjects within their own communities. We also wanted to assist student writers within the Southern California region. All our stories are written by college students. We are trying to give students a leg to stand on when they enter the world of journalism. By writing for our magazine they will gain hands-on experience while still in school.
The second reason we are only in Southern California is for our advertisers. There are many companies that are located in Southern California who don’t need a nationwide advertising campaign. By advertising in our magazine, they are able to hit a niche 18-24 year old demographic within their own region.
Our expansion plan is to cap off at 50,000 subscribers in Southern California then open up to another major market. Once in another major market, we will publish a magazine only for that area, i.e. University Link Magazine: Miami Edition, it will be a different magazine with different writers and different content. We will use student writers from that area. Our long-term goal is to target 10 major U.S. markets.
SH: What innovative things you consider yourself doing launching ULM?AS: We consider ourselves the first paid, subscriber-based magazine targeting college students; that is also written by college students. We will strive to keep our advertising costs low, so that local businesses can advertise in a high quality publication.
Best of all, starting in September, we will be launching our “Editor Internship Program.” This will be a 5-month internship program where we will select five students to work with University Link Magazine. During these five months, each student will be able to edit one of our next five issues with the other four interns learning and assisting. The five interns will be working directly with our Managing Editor, Taylor Van Arsdale, who has more than 15 years of editorial experience.
The covers above are those of the first and second issues of the magazine.
What if I tell you that the reinvention of Newsweek dates back to 1933. After I read all the media reports regarding the “reinvented and rethought NEWSWEEK” I decided to go into my archives and dig up the first issue of Newsweek dated Feb. 17, 1933. You can always learn about the future from looking (and hopefully) learning from the past.
I asked Pat Haegele, the first woman publisher in the history of the 124 year-old Good Housekeeping, few questions regarding the changes at the magazine. 
SS: We consider ourselves recession-resilient. That’s the word we classify it as – recession-resilient. We believe that there is something going on that is wrong with the economy, but, at the end of the day, it impacts someone like Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant, or Madonna differently. Yesterday Madonna closed on a $40 million home. The very, very affluent, upper one percent of people we’ve always wanted to reach, still have money. They’re still going to buy nice cars. They’re still going to buy nice watches. They’re still going to buy these types of things. I personally believe that, because of this crazy economy, luxury is going to actually become more of what real luxury is. I was with one of the owners of Mercedes, and he was explaining that 40 percent of leases for the C-Series ended in repossession while the more-expensive S-Series only had eight percent repossessed. We’ve always hit our niche and that’s all. We’ve continued to hit our niche. Our niche is simple. In each market, we mail to homes with incomes in excess of $5 million. We hit the private fliers on over 10,000 private jet flights per month. We are in high-end hotels, high-end boutiques, and retail traffic stores. We feel that if we hit those three areas, then we’ve hit what we [call the] money in motion. Our strategy is not trying to hit someone who lived in a $6 million home three years ago, lost his business, and now he’s out—our advertisers don’t want to hit that guy. Our advertisers want to hit the guy that is living in a $6 million home now. We were able to hit him. Launching in San Francisco wasn’t easy at all. It was very hard and very costly, but, in a short period of time, we’ve built a brand with recognition. 
SS: To be honest with you, this economy was great in building our character. The last six or seven months it’s been hard. A lot of our competitors that were 800-pound gorillas and had a lot of money are now struggling or out of business. That is interesting, because six months ago, when I was speaking to advertisers, 100 magazines had classified themselves as luxury brands. Everyone was pitching to advertisers a lot of stuff that I felt was not possible. I used to tell that to advertisers. Now, those companies that claimed they were doing all these great things are out of business, because they weren’t doing those things. And I think given our brand more credibility. In this tough time, we can make it. Today my partner in the magazine secured a very large deal, a monumental deal for my magazine. We signed up to be guaranteed on 10,000 private jet flights a month in 13 major cities around the world. Whether you like it or not, someone that has the money to spend $75,000 to fly one way from L.A. to New York has to have money to buy watches, cars and so forth. And some of our advertisers, Rolls Royce, Cartier and East Coast Jewelers, are still getting amazing results. We just had a client who had an $8.5 million piece of property in Miami put an ad in my magazine. A gentleman on a Net Jet flight saw the magazine, loved the property, bought it sight unseen and paid 8.5 million dollars cash for the property, just through an advertisement in my magazine. This was all because the guy picked our magazine. He was from London. He had just been in Palm Beach on a business trip and wanted to buy that island because it was about 45 minutes away from Miami. I believe print works. I believe now, just like in all businesses, the best are going to survive and a lot will not, but print is by no means dead.
SS: That’s a very good question. I moved back to Miami to be with my ex-girlfriend. I wanted to get involved in real estate, but I didn’t want to actually sell real estate. I decided to launch a real estate magazine, that would promote listings over $2 million in Miami. I was a big fan of Ocean Drive magazine, the major player in Miami, but a lot of people that I knew weren’t really Ocean Drive readers. I believe that Ocean Drive and my magazine can complement each other. A lot of people when they launch magazines will fight and compete with the big guys. We always complemented them and said, “You should buy ads and read both my magazine and Ocean Drive.” We tried not to copy and do what everyone else does. We tried to build our own niche and brand. A lot of people argued with us and a lot of people thought we were crazy when we launched the magazine. We wouldn’t accept ads that we felt didn’t merit the attention of our readers. If you go look at most of the ads, they’re all name brands. We turn down at least 10 percent of the ads every month if we don’t feel they meet the criteria of our readers. It’s almost like a very high-end nightclub, where they don’t let a lot of people in, but the people they do let in are the quality names. I think that’s how we kind of built our brand. I saw a void in Miami, and I started the magazine and then I got involved with my partner, Kamal Hotchandani. He was able to take Haute Living to the next level. We then decided to build the publication in Miami for the next year, and then launch in New York. After success with New York, we launch Los Angeles, and then San Francisco this year. This has been a thought out process, for the past four years. 
SS: Niche Media is a fine organization. I’m a huge fan of Jason Binn and Jerry Powers. I think Jason Binn and Jerry Powers are the godfathers of luxury magazines. What they accomplished is amazing. Jason built his niche, and I think his brand is going to continue to build and go into cities. If I talked to any young publisher, I would tell them, the only way you’re going to make it happen is if you’re selling, building the edit, and distributing. The only reason Kamal and I built our brand is because we were the ones that got the amazing editorial content, that gave us credibility. You can’t buy the story. What people think is that they can get a million dollars, hire a big editor, hire a big sales guy and build a brand. You can’t. If I had to give advice to anybody, the advice is look at how Jerry Powers and Jason Binn build their business. They build it from scratch. When they launched Ocean Drive, they would put blood and sweat. They built everything on their own. I think anyone who wants to make it in publishing should do it on their own. You have to put blood and sweat into it, and you can’t hire somebody to make it successful. I believe if someone has a passion, they can make it happen. I believe a magazine is like a restaurant. Nine out of ten restaurants close within the year. The owner is what makes a restaurant successful. That’s my humble opinion. We’ve done well, and we’ve never tried to buy people to build it. 
Mr. Magazine 