Mr. Magazine

A Mr. Magazine™ Musing…

Recently I published an anniversary commemoration blog for several magazines that had proven their “stuff” over the years. No surprise in my wonderful world of print there are more that need to be recognized. Was there ever any doubt?

So it is with the greatest of pleasure I salute the following titles on their anniversary milestones…may you celebrate many, many more!

Salute! And if you are celebrating an anniversary please send me a note, or better yet, an invite and I will be sure to include your magazine in a future Mr. Magazine™ Musing…

50 Years

50 Years

35 Years

35 Years

31 Years

30 Years

25 Years

10 Years

5 Years

A Mr. Magazine™ Musing…

Leave it to magazines to be the reflector of society and the voice of reasonable distraction, even during a heated, often raunchy, presidential election. As November 8th fast approaches, we face more of the same until the final vote has been cast and counted. More unconscionable attacks from both the Republican and Democratic nominees toward each other, more media opinions that leave us all wondering where unbiased journalism, or just journalism as we’ve learned it, disappeared to, and more confusion as to how this presidential election came apart at the seams so drastically.

Thankfully, there is a respite in magazines for all of us. Such as that age-old discussion that takes us back to the days when the only ballot that worried us and divided us was where we all stood on the issue of marijuana. Pot, cannabis, Mary Jane – whatever your generation called it or calls it, the industry is thriving and the magazines on the topic are flourishing.

I recently picked up one that stood its ground and stood out as that voice of reasonable distraction that we all need right now during this time of strained dissent in our country.

MG magazine’s October issue is not only beautifully executed and presented, but it puts the election focus back on something we can all “pleasantly” agree or disagree on: pot. MG has a clear mission and whether you agree or disagree with the smoking of the herb, the magazine knows where it stands. It’s not wishy-washy, nor does it throw demeaning epithets at other magazines and their definition of the cannabis world.

Kudos to MG for giving us a diversion from this ridiculously disruptive and appalling presidential election and throwing a little “pot” into the equation’s cauldron.

It’s nice to know some things never change; magazines will always reflect the current conditions of our society, and they never fail to inform, entertain and make us think.

Until the next Mr. Magazine™ musing…

A Mr. Magazine™ Musing…

When you consider that someone had to imagine Google, or the Internet, for that matter, you may wonder why I’m concerned. However, when sudden realization dawns in your gray matter, the way that it did in mine, about what kind of havoc having every piece of information you could possibly ask for at the touch of your fingertips could wreak on future generations, let alone our own, I think you’ll understand the validity of this discussion.

Let me start where Google, and cyberspace, cannot: the beginning.

When I travel abroad; I visit the newsstands first, then I visit a lot of museums in many different countries, and I’ve always been amazed by all of the beautiful and provocative paintings from famous artists such as Rembrandt and Diego Velázquez. These are paintings by some of the masters of the 17^th century. They had no digital images and no Internet, yet the paintings are so detailed. Though there were no pictures or other visuals to necessarily influence their work, their imaginations were so vivid and their research tactics so detailed they were able to visualize how history actually presented itself.

Fast forward to a time when we first had magazines in the U.S. Magazines like True Romance or True Story that would tell us tales of romance. The late Professor William Howard Taft at the University of Missouri-Columbia and author of “Magazines in the Eighties,” used to tell me while I was helping him collect data and magazines for his book, “but when that moment came and the couple retired to their boudoir, the bedroom door was slammed in your face and your imagination took over. Then Playboy magazine came along and flung the bedroom door open wide and invited us inside. Penthouse hit the scene with a shockingly blatant sweep of its scintillating hand and literally pulled the sheets from the couples’ bodies, showing us things we had only before imagined.” And if I may add, then the Internet came along and nothing was sacred anymore. Not even your imagination.

It was after pondering these intriguing points of fact that I began to formulate a question in my brain: when you have access to everything, both good and bad, what happens to your imagination?

After that initially disturbing self-inquiry, other questions began to hit in rapid succession: What’s going to happen to our future? What’s going to happen to the importance of research and study? Will we ever discover anything again if we have all-access at our fingertips? With a click of the mouse, we can answer any questions our brains can come up with in mere moments.

In previous years (translated: before Google and its cyber-relatives), if I wanted to know something I would go to the library and start digging through different books. And invariably, as I was searching through these things, looking for what I originally sought, I would be delightedly surprised to find something else that I did not know about, and in fact, had no idea that I even wanted to know about until discovering it. Are those types of moments gone forever?

With the dependence and importance that we put on the Internet each and every day, are we significantly damaging our interpretative and cognitive research and study skills? It is a most legitimate question, and one that is disturbing when we consider the weight of our online presence.

Baroness Susan Greenfield is a British scientist, writer, broadcaster and speaker. Greenfield is Senior Research Fellow at Lincoln College, Oxford University, and was Professor of Synaptic Pharmacology. She is also interested in the neuroscience of consciousness and the impact of technology on the brain. In an article she wrote for The Guardian, titled “We are at risk of losing our imagination,” she makes a startling comparison:

When you read a book, the author usually takes you by the hand and you travel from the beginning to the middle to the end in a continuous narrative of interconnected steps. It may not be a journey with which you agree, or one that you enjoy, but none the less, as you turn the pages, one train of thought succeeds the last in a logical fashion. We can then compare one narrative with another and, in so doing, start to build up a conceptual framework that enables us to evaluate further journeys, which, in turn, will influence our individualized framework. We can place an isolated fact in a context that gives it significance. So, traditional education has enabled us to turn information into knowledge.

 Now imagine there is no robust conceptual framework. You are sitting in front of a multimedia presentation where you are unable, because you have not had the experience of many different intellectual journeys, to evaluate what is flashing up on the screen. The most immediate reaction would be to place a premium on the most obvious feature, the immediate sensory content, the “yuk” and “wow” factor.

You would be having an experience rather than learning. The sounds and sights of a fast-moving multimedia presentation displace any time for reflection, or any idiosyncratic or imaginative connections we might make as we turn the pages, and then stare at a wall to reflect upon them.

So, today, are folks turning information into knowledge without the proper conceptual framework? And what about the creative side of things for all of us? What about our imaginations? If we can’t imagine the outcome, if we always have the answers to each and every question at our fingertips; how do we weave dreams and fantasize about “Somewhere over the Rainbow” when we can find out with a click that it doesn’t exist?

These are questions that are impactful because they’re relative to our futures and the futures of our children and grandchildren. These are questions that we should all ask ourselves whenever we tell one of those impressionable minds to pull up a seat at the computer and ask Google.

Until next time…

See you at the library or better yet at the newsstands…

A few weeks ago I used the very secret combination to my very beloved vault of classic “new” magazines to begin this “The Way We Were” journey. It has been an extremely eye-opening experience. To say that there is much to be learned from these masters of journalism and creativity would be an understatement.

In Part 3, I wanted to share some very important points of interest from these classic first editions with you, and a few comparisons I’ve made between yesterday and the magazine media world in which we live today.

Show magazine Vol. 1, No. 1, launched in September 1952 and was ad free. It was a small sized magazine, able to fit into a gentleman’s pocket (thus the name pocket-sized magazine), and featured the famous burlesque exotic dancer and men’s magazine model of the late 1940s through the early 1960s on its cover. The intro reads:

Show is a magazine of excitement. Most of it comes from the world of entertainment – the hush of a Broadway first night, the antics of a TV comedian. Some comes from the way people live – in small, sleepy towns; on the champagne-splattered sand of the Riviera. Wherever people enjoy life with zest and abandon, this is Show.

This magazine promises you an experience with that description. I mean, if the words chosen and the order in which they were placed doesn’t conjure up an escape unlike any you have felt in a long time then you’ve definitely been staring at pixels too long. THIS is an experience and this magazine is an experience maker. Tangible and completely palpable; Show is a magazine that could teach us all some very important “new” adjectives just from the intro alone.

American Cavalcade was first published in May 1937 and was totally ad free as well. The title alone brings an image of a procession or a parade to mind. A procession of great “fiction, facts and features,” with fascinating photos and illustrations. Its editor, Thomas B. Costain took the entire back page of the first issue to define his idea of what a magazine is, and oddly enough, things haven’t changed too much in that respect over the years:

It is the firm conviction of the publishers and the editors of Cavalcade that all material presented in magazines today should be brief and swift; that fiction should be conceived and written in the vivid lengths which O. Henry employed and in which Kipling and De Maupassant told their finest tales; that articles, always more vital and interesting when concerned with events and people, should tread closely on the heels of news.

 It is our conviction also that periodical readers are being surfeited with opinion, with argument, with analysis of conditions and debate of trends. It is not our aim to be too serious, nor is it our intent to instruct or uplift the over-instructed and too vehemently uplifted public. We shall be content if we succeed in diverting and entertaining the readers who are kind enough to venture along with us.

The opportunity to tell stories in this length will, we are sure, create a new school of writers, and will be welcomed by established authors as well. Certainly nothing could be more gratifying than the avidity with which the leaders in the fiction field today have accepted the length. Our numbers, we are proud to say, will teem with the best names in the magazine world, with writers whose technique has been developed to such a high peak of perfection that their product has the strength and the richness of old wine.

We are equally proud to say that this old wine will be presented in the most modern of bottles. Our art editors have developed a method of presentation, which, we believe, is arrestingly new.

 In today’s digital age, brief and to the point has become the catch phase in all media forms; short, newsy articles have become the mainstay for websites, mobile and even print at times. The long, flowing articles once relished by many magazines, were replaced by word counts that would embarrass and shame Truman Capote. But thankfully, in print, long form is returning and the art of storytelling using diversion and entertainment is being carried on, as we realize daily how important our escape from the short, new lengths we refer to today as notifications really is.

Ken Magazine was launched on April 7, 1938. It was a large format magazine that was political in nature and a bit controversial for its time. Ernest Hemingway was a contributor for the short-lived magazine that was published every two weeks on Thursdays. Hemingway was also contracted to be an editor for the magazine, but didn’t seem to be in a hurry to fulfill that job duty. In fact, by the time the first issue actually hit newsstands, there was this disclaimer in the magazine:

“If he sees eye to eye with us on Ken, we would like to have him as an editor. If not, he will remain as a contributor until he is fired or quits.”

It seems Hemingway insisted on the disclaimer and the magazine obliged, as Hemingway was a bit skeptical about Ken’s political leanings. Either way this was a magazine that’s first issue said a lot about both the content of the magazine and the content of one journalist’s character.

These points of interest from the past  are made to rejuvenate today’s innovators and creators of magazines by reminding them of a few of our own discoverers; the Christopher Columbus’s, if you will, of the world of magazine media. The entrepreneurs and the risk-takers of the past were no different than those of the 21st century, except for maybe the lessons they learned. And now, we are the ones learning.

Until next time when we open the Mr. Magazine™ classic “new” magazine vault…

The Business Week:  No. 1

“THE BUSINESS WEEK herewith makes its first appearance — on a great plan, with a high ambition. Its ambition is to become indispensable — no less — to the business man of America.  Its plan, we trust, shows forth in its pages.”

“Swiftly, intelligently, tersely, it tells the week’s business news, and the news of business. The distinction is not fine-spun. Business news impinges upon business from outside — news of the tariff, of the reparations settlement, of crops. New of business originates within business — news of developments in management technic, of improved production process, and (outstanding these days) of changes in marketing methods.”

“The whole story of the week is set forth in compact limits, a study in the fine art of saving the reader’s time. Nothing irrelevant is included; nothing really important is omitted.”

“You will find THE BUSINESS WEEK always has a point of view, and usually a strong opinion. Both of which it does not hesitate to express.

You may find a little humor somewhere, if you look sharp.

And all the way through, we hope, you will discover it is possible to write sanely and intelligently of business without being pompous or ponderous.

We hope you will miss those vague but solemn generalities about business that pass so often for deep wisdom.”

The New Yorker: Vol. 1, No. 1

Advisory editors: Ralph Barton, Marc Connelly, Rea Irvin, George S. Kaufman, Alice Duer Miller, Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott

“One of the first things you do in starting a magazine, after you have got the notion to do it and, as our advertising friends say, sold your associates on the idea, is to rent an office and the next thing you do is get a telephone.”

“THE NEW YORKER starts with a declaration of serious purpose but with a concomitant declaration that it will not be too serous in executing it. It hopes to reflect metropolitan life, to keep up with events and affairs of the day, to be gay, humorous, satirical but to be more than a jester.”

“It will publish facts that it will have to go behind the scenes to get, but it will not deal in scandal nor sensation for the  sake of sensation.”

“It will conscientiously to keep its readers informed of what is going on in the fields in which they are most interested. It has announced that it is not edited for the old lady in  Dubuque. By this it means that it is not of that group of publications engaged in tapping the Great Buying Power of the North American steppe region by trading mirrors and colored beads in the form of our best brands of hokum.”