A century ago, we were more culturally and artistically advanced. Magazines in the 1920s shined a very bright light on art and culture. One such magazine, albeit short lived, Art Lovers’ Magazine, is but one example of a cultural and artistic publication from 100 years ago when magazines ruled the media world. Here is its story:
The Audience
In case you are wondering how many artists and art students were there in the 1920s to support and sustain these magazines, the answer is simple: E.B. Hesser wrote in the first issue of ARTS MONTHLY PICTORIAL, “To the laymen, it is surprising how many people need this magazine in their daily word. Without exaggeration, we can point to the following figures: 24,000 photographers, 15,000 commercial artists, including theater lobby artists, 20,000 teachers of art in high and elementary schools, 3,000 advertising experts, 350 editorial and make up men on rotogravure sections of newspapers…”
He added, “All these in addition to thousands of advanced art students, and artists who are “live” enough to keep abreast of the newest compositional ideas. So it is easy to see that this magazine has a decided and distinct field to cover.”
Hesser was quick to add, “It should be regarded primarily as an art trade publication, but it is so edited that nothing therein should be offensive to a clean minded laymen.”
And Hesser was not alone defining his audience. MODERN ART AND STORIES identified itself as “A magazine devoted to the inspiration and technical development of the Graphic Arts. Published for the use of Artists and Art Students, not the general public.”
The same can be said about Paris Art magazine; “With this issue PARIS ART is introduced to art and camera students and all who are interested in the development of modern art.”
One has to wonder if the fact that those magazines are not aimed at the general public, with less than 65,000 possible population according to Hesser’s number, was just a ploy to avoid the troubles with the vice societies, the United States Postal Service, and The New York Daily newspaper that launched a crusade “to eliminate the art magazines from the newstands (sic) resulted in a tremendous increase of the sales of these magazines should prove that the majority of our readers look upon these magazines as a means toward aiding themselves,” wrote the editors of Art & Beauty magazine in that same issue of April 1927.
However, the leading organization that was after the art magazines and other publications they considered immoral was the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.
The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice
In the 1920s there was a non-governmental agency by the name of The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. The society was founded in 1873 to enforce laws for the “suppression of trade in and circulation of obscene literature, and illustrations, advertisements, and articles of indecent and immoral use, as it is or may be forbidden by the laws of the State of New York or of the United States.”
The society was a direct dissentient of the Young Men’s Christian Association and was spearheaded by Anthony Comstock, who served as the secretary of the society and as well as an agent and inspector for both the Society and the United States Postal Service. (nyhistory.org)
Upon Mr. Comstock death in 1915, John S. Sumner succeeded him in the role of secretary and an agent and inspector for both the Society and the United States Postal Service.
This society was chartered by the New York state legislature, “which granted its agents the powers of search, seizure, and arrest, and awarded the society half of all fines levied in resulting cases.” Encyclopedia of Censorship, New York: Facts on File, 2005. Page 522.
One documented case on how this Society acted in New York City in the 1920s can be found in a one page editorial that Samuel Roth wrote in the March 1927 issue of Beau magazine. Under the heading “MR. SUMNER and BEAU” Samuel Roth, the editor and publisher of the man’s magazine wrote, “Thursday morning, January 27th of this year, I received word from the organization which nurses the sales of TWO WORLDS MONTHLY (Roth’s other magazine) and BEAU nationally that the February issues of these periodicals, which had already been shipped out to all points domestic and foreign, would not be distributed for sale upon the news stands (sic) of New York City.”
“Upon inquiry, I learned that Mr. John Sumner, secretary of that charming body of people known as the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, had communicated with the local distributing agency, and had informed it that if certain advance information concerning the impending numbers of TWO WORLDS MONTHIY and BEAU was accurate he would take immediate action against any company that would dare to distribute them in New York City. The local agency had the alternative to refuse to distribute, which it did.”
Mr. Roth, with his lawyer, went to meet with Mr. Sumner. He brought with him copies of the magazines that he found out that Mr. Sumner have not seen or read. Mr. Roth told Mr. Sumner that the two magazines “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.”
Mr. Sumner promised Mr. Roth to look at the magazines overnight and would render a decision in the morning. “Came the dawn– and” Mr. Roth wrote, “confident and carefree, I went to see Mr. Sumner who very speedily dissipated my peace of mind. TWO WORLDS MONTHLY was quite alright, he said, 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 news stands dripping with nudes which any little boy may purchase for fifteen cents. No, he did not approve BEAU and if I dared to issue it of my own accord he would unfailingly prosecute me.”
It’s that very fragile line that separates nudity from lewdity that the art magazines had to maneuver their way with the Society and the United States Postal Service. That is the main reason the art magazines of the 1920s continued to emphasize that they are not for general public, but rather for artists and art students.
In the words of E. B. Hesser, the founder of ARTS Monthly Pictorial, he wrote, “The Magazine of Pictures for Artists and Art Students.” He added that the magazine “should be regarded primarily as an art trade publication, but it is so edited that nothing therein should be offensive to a clean minded layman.”
Unlike the rest of the art magazines, a new magazine appeared on the newsstands in January of 1925 with the name Art Lovers’ vowing to be completely different than the rest of the publications, yet it did not escape the wrath of Mr. Sumner of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. What follows is its story.
The first issue of Art Lovers’ magazine January 1925
A century ago, we were more culturally and artistically advanced. Magazines in the 1920s shined a very bright light on art and culture. One such magazine, albeit short lived, Art Lovers’ Magazine, is but one example of a cultural and artistic publication from 100 years ago when magazines ruled the media world. Here is its story:
Bringing God as the Defense Attorney
Under the headline “Tolerance” the editorial of Art Studio Life’s April 1926 stated, “In the Art field more than in any other may we find a wealth of beauty and inspiration that will soften life for everyone. WE do not claim that everything perpetrated in the name of Art is beautiful, but we do claim that nothing in true art can possibly offend any but those who, having tainted minds and questionable morals themselves, seek to smear the world with their personal tar of iniquity.”
The editorial concluded by stating, “They launch their attacks against all. In the name of religion, they seek to cover themselves by persecuting lovers of beauty. They purposely lose track of the fact that the greatest figure in history of the world was the incarnation of Tolerance, Christ. They seek to reform His world and His children, contrary to His Will.”
In another magazine, Art and Vanities, the editors didn’t stop at the necessity of nudity to the artist, but they went one step further bringing God into the equation of art and nudity. In the September 17, 1926 issue of Arts and Vanities, the editors wrote “In order to create beautiful statuary, soul stirring canvases, and monumental works, he must grasp the significance of each line in the human body. To him the human form spells perfection. No one can improve on the works of our Creator. We do not try. We seek only to understand and appreciate what he has given us in order that our lives and our hopes and aspirations may reach upward to the source of all good.”
And here is that powerful conclusion that sets the stage for all the nude art magazines of 1920s, “God was the first artist, he created plants, trees, animals, birds, and last but most beautiful, he created woman to adorn the universe. Man in order to elevate the ideals of his brother man endeavors to interpret these works for the Master. May we always do our share to help the artists in their struggle for the highest and most idealistic interpretations of Nature.”
In fact, Arts and Vanities went as far as placing a bible verse on its center spread of the October 17, 1926 issue that was displaying a picture of a half-naked woman. (Yes, there were centerfolds before Hugh Hefner’s Playboy of the 1950s, the only difference they were only one spread).
Arts and Vanities was not the only magazine using God as its defense attorney, Art and Life was doing the same. Art and Life’s motto was The Body Beautiful, The Mind Intellectual, and The Soul Intuitional. The editor wrote in the November 1925 issue, “This magazine stands consistently for the above program (their moto above). That the body may be beautiful it must be healthy, athletic, vibrant with life and action. The editor of this magazine believes that the nude body is inherently decent, the noblest work of the Creator, and those who look upon it as indecent, and to be hid from sight, have indecent minds; that nudeness and lewdness are in no way synonymous terms.”
In fact, earlier in the year, Art and Life magazine, raised the same topic in its July 1925 issue. In an editorial written by the magazine’s editor Guy Lockwood under the title “Concerning The Nude. What Is All The Fuss About?” He wrote “While we have strenuously defended the nude body as the highest work not only of art, but of the Creator, as well yet we are no more in favor of lewdness and real indecency than are those who are behind the movement to rid the news stands of objectionable publications.”
Lockwood added, “Real art magazines have endeavored to supply real needs in the line of figure study by publishing studies of the human body that give a knowledge of basic form and structure, proportions and action. These photographs or drawings, as the case may be, have necessarily often been nude, and Art and Life Magazine has published this kind of photographs and drawings, believing that in doing so this magazine was rendering a valuable assistance to real art advancement.”
Keep in mind that the aforementioned magazines were all in line with the tag line of Hesser’s magazine Arts Monthly Pictorial, “The Magazine of Pictures for Artists and Art Students.” A lot of these magazines did not accept subscriptions, “but Art Clubs or similar organizations may order twelve copies or more shipped by express each month, to be used for instructional purposes,” stated the masthead in ARTS Monthly Pictorial. Those art clubs and the newsstands were the major outlets of the art magazines of the 1920s.
A century ago, we were more culturally and artistically advanced. Magazines in the 1920s shined a very bright light on art and culture. One such magazine, albeit short lived, Art Lovers’ Magazine, is but one example of a cultural and artistic publication from 100 years ago when magazines ruled the media world. Here is its story:
Image generated by AI
Chapter 1
Setting the stage:
Justifying Nudity in the Art magazines of the 1920s
An editorial in the September 17, 1926, Arts and Vanities magazine sums the status of art and beauty magazines that were sprouting like mushrooms amid what was once called The Roaring Twenties. Besides the hundreds of mass titles, some of which are still published today, such as The New Yorker, Reader’s Digest, TIME, and Better Homes and Gardens, there was a host of specialized magazines aimed at Art Students and Artists. However, the irony of those magazines is, with few exceptions, are also sold on the newsstands, defying the laws and regulations of the many ethics and obscenity commissions that were set by the states to insure lewd and obscene material is neither distributed on the newsstands nor sent by mail.
One of the earliest art magazines of the 1920s was the Edwin Bower Hesser’s ARTS Monthly Pictorial that was founded in 1922. E. B. Hesser was a famous photographer in Hollywood, CA. He launched the magazine with tag line of, “The Magazine of Pictures for Artists and Art Students.”
“While primarily a magazine of art for artists in every line of creative endeavor – to whom its great value is obvious –” wrote E.B. Hesser in the editorial of the May 1925 issue. He continued, “the publication of “ARTS MONTHLY PICTORIAL” is based on an appeal that is shared by everyone – the appeal of pictures.”
He was quick to add, ““ARTS MONTHLY PICTORIAL” opens to everyone, everywhere, the gates leading to beauty and art, bringing to many a joy they have never had open to them before.”
Defending Nudity
Hesser concluded his editorial by stating, “ARTS will not be guided by prudery in the selection of its subjects. But nothing will ever be published in it which could not be safely shown to young people. The nude – long recognized as inseparable from art – will of course be represented in its pages, but always in such a delicate manner that the magazine may enter any enlightened home, promoting higher ideals and a truer understanding of art.”
However, Hesser’s magazine was not the only one. There was a slew of art titles in the 1920s almost all claiming to be for artists and art students. Some of those magazines include, but not limited to,
All Arts & Photos Album
American Beauties
Art & Beauty
Art and Life
Art Classic
Art Inspirations
Art lovers’
Art Photos
Art Secrets
Art Studies
Art Studio Life
Art Visions
Artists and Models
Arts and Vanities
Arts, Fad, Modes
Fine Arts Quarterly
Modern Art & Stories
Modern Art Studies
Original Artists and Models
Paris Art
Real Art Studies
Sex Monthly
Tales of the Arts
The American Art Student and Commercial Artist
The World of Art
True Tales Of The ARTS
A sample of the art magazines on the newsstands of the 1920s
Almost without exception these magazines were not intended for the public, but rather for “Art Students, Art Lovers and Artists.” Some stated that they accept no subscriptions, so probably they were either sold on the newsstands or delivered by bulk to art schools and studios.
To clarify the point that the majority of these magazines were not aimed at the general public, the editors of Art and Vanities wrote, “The magazine is a strictly technical publication and aims to giver the artists the best art studies available. We know full well that for many artists, it is almost impossible to work directly from the model. This is due to the fact that models are demanding more for their time now, than heretofore, and also because the services of really good models are in demand at so many of our current Broadway productions.”
The following statement from Arts and Vanities applied to most of the art magazines that carried nudity within its pages. Art and Vanities “is not intended for general circulation. It is a text book for those who are striving to master the fundamental principles of Art.”
However, the magazine was very aware that non art students and artists are going to see the magazine, thus they wrote, “To those of the laity who glance through these pages, we must make one plea. Try to understand that this magazine is a text for artists. Perhaps you do not understand that nudity in art is as indispensable to art classes as food and drink to you. The nudity which you do not understand is fully revealed to the artist. To him, this expression of art is absolutely necessary. Without it he could do nothing.”
Art & Beauty magazine in its April 1927 issue wrote, “The studies in this magazine are photographs of paintings which appear in galleries the world over. They are pictures which any right thinking American citizen would be proud to exhibit in his home. They tend to acquaint young Americans with the fact that there is nothing mysterious or surreptitious about the nude and the sooner this is realized the sooner will there be an understanding of what is rank and what is beautiful.”
“This is a hard time to start a magazine. The country shaking like an old drunk. Who knows he has to give up the hoosh. Does not provide a climate of reason and ease that magazines thrive on. There is a recession.Magazines are collapsing left and right,” wrote Roger Black in his role as Editor of a magazine called AMERIKA in 1970.
Mr. Black was a student at the University of Chicago and editor of the students’ newspaper, The Maroon. AMERIKA was forced to change its name after the dummy issue was published and the first and only issue published was called PRINT PROJECT AMERIKA.
I reached out to Mr. Black to talk about the story of AMERIKA and to get an update on what he is up to these days. He told me that he’s “back actually doing a publication. And this is an urgent time for magazines and newspapers. We must find a way of keeping them going, keeping them independent.”
In fact, Roger Black wrote this week on his Facebook page under the heading “ROGER BLACK’S FAREWELL TOUR?” Join me at Big Bend Sentinel, where a team of innovative journalists is redefining local news. We’re testing two old ideas. In the video (that accompanied the post) watch for the key words: “fact” and “art.”
Mr. Black continued, “I started this tour in 1973 as art director of LA (1973). Now, as acting Art Director and non-profit chair, I’m back to weekly newspapers! The real work is done by a small energetic band of editors led by Rob D’Amico, Sam Karas, Mary Etherington, and Ariele Gentiles.”
He adds, “Can weekly newspapers survive and flourish? Can we hold onto local journalism?”
I reached out to Mr. Black to ask him about his original work on newspapers and magazines. I was mainly interested in the very first magazine, “AMERIKA” he edited while still a student at the university. Needless to say, he is a wealth of information and he has left his thumb print on many national and regional publication throughout his career. I hope you will enjoy this lightly edited conversation with a person who for years I called “a genius creative art director.”
Samir Husni: You ask Chat GPT about Roger Black and it tells you, “Very influential in magazine and newspaper design,” but no mention that you were an editor of a magazine back in 1970 while you were still a student at the University of Chicago.
Roger Black: Yes.
Samir Husni: And the magazine was called America with a K: AMERIKA
Roger Black: Well, that was the dummy. Later, it was PRINT PROJECT AMERIKA. There were only the dummy issue and the one and only first issue.
Samir Husni: So, tell me about your journey with AMERIKA.
Roger Black: AMERIKA was envisioned as Parade magazine (The Sunday newspaper supplement) for student newspapers.
In 1968, I was the editor of the Maroon, the student paper of the college at the University of Chicago. I must tell you, that was a very good year to be a student editor. And particularly in Chicago.
We had a lot of news. It was a big time for change. We started putting out a weekly magazine called Gray City Journal, which ultimately became its own publication.
So we started thinking that many student papers don’t have that kind of content. Harvard, Yale, and other elite schools do.
But in terms of magazine style, both entertainment and serious stuff, photojournalism and drawings, they didn’t really exist. If you go back and look at the 1960s’ student newspapers they were pretty dry.
A guy in the business school at the university, named Mark Brawerman, who is from California, came up with the idea.
A very sharp guy who just started school. He didn’t really have any business experience.
He thought that we could do this. One of the things that he did, and with my involvement, I thought it was a good idea, too, he started writing all the student newspaper editors and publishers saying, we have this idea.
Would you be interested in taking it? And we’re going to print a prototype, and you can decide. That was the reason for the prototype; we had to get the circulation.
I was interested in design. I had started doing some publication work before I got to college. I had a wonderful teacher named Robert Gothard, a famous typographer, who did student, alumni magazines, and other publications for universities and colleges and did other things, too. He was a great designer.
So, I got interested. He was the first art director of Print magazine, for example. I was really interested in magazines from really as a young kid. My mother worked for magazines.
We had written all these people, and we got enough responses that if we could print 200,000, we could have distributed them.
So I started working on the prototype. And it’s funny because my girlfriend at the time is listed as the art director. I don’t even remember her name now.
There you go. The prototype cover came from Kent State. It was from an art student there who did this kind of Andy Warhol homage after the Kent State shooting. And there’s more stuff of that inside. Anyway, I thought I could be a designer.
I looked at a lot of magazines. How hard can it be? So, I did this issue, this prototype. And by some wild set of coincidences, Sam Antupit, who is a great art director, the art director of Esquire at that time.
George Lewis did the covers, but he did the inside. And it was beautiful. He was doing a special issue of Print Magazine about magazines.
And he put this in a box called Hopeful Upstarts. We realized we were going to leave Chicago and move operation to New York. So, I got to New York and I looked him up.
And we had gotten some funding. We were starting to sell ads. But I couldn’t find an art director.
That was the funny thing. There weren’t a lot of people, if you think about it, Rolling Stone and New York Magazine only started in 1967. And before that, there were art directors at Esquire or at Town and Country or the fashion magazines, and Holiday magazine.
There were certain kind of visual magazines that had art directors. But National Geographic didn’t have an art director. Life Magazine didn’t have an art director.
It was not really one of those job descriptions that people, their mom said, you can be an art director. No one, no one really was thinking about that. And I couldn’t find any.
But Sam had this fantastic studio on, I’m going to say, East 52nd Street in a brownstone building. Later, the previous Citicorp Village was built there. But he was doing a bunch of different magazines out of the studio or doing designs, and redesigns.
He had a famous magazine artist, Richard Hess, who was his partner in that. So, it was called Hess and Antupit.
It was the name of the studio. And they were on the top floor. I was totally blown away how great it all was.
He did have student aides from SVA or Pratt or Cooper Union students working part time or as interns for him. What he couldn’t really recommend any other kids to be art directors. I finally came back and asked him if he would do it.
And by some miracle he said yes. And agreed to our price, which included all the type setting, all the illustrations and photos, the whole art project. He said he would do it for a fixed price.
I probably lost my shirt on it. He took over in that first real estate number one. It was really the designer’s Hess and Antupit.
I got to be the editor. So that was fun.
Samir Husni: The dummy issue was called AMERIKA, and the first issue PRINT PROJECT AMERIKA, why did you change the name?
Roger Black: I’ll tell you the story why we changed the name.
We got a letter from the Catholic Church. They sent us an official letter saying that they have a magazine called America and we have the trademark, so you can’t use America even with changing the C to a K.
Of course, I knew even at age 20 that you can’t trademark a place name. You can’t put a trademark on America. So I wrote back saying, you can’t trademark a place name.
So, I’m ignoring their letter. They wrote back and said, well, how many lawyers do you have? Basically, I said, these people are going to give us a hard time. I’m going to just add a qualifier.
We added the phrase PRINT PROJECT AMERIKA. We made it more experimental, new media feeling.
Samir Husni: The State Department didn’t send you a letter saying we have a magazine aimed to the Soviet Union called America.
Roger Black: Well, their magazine was only circulating in Russia. And we weren’t going to Russia. They are not allowed to distribute it here.
Samir Husni: In this digital age, where do you see print role?
Roger Black: Print magazines had a very good run. I like to say it was a hundred-year run. If you look at the magazines, like the late 19th century, magazines that started running art, photo engraving had come in.
They were impressive. And then you had with the invention, of rotary presses and linotype typesetting and all that. Magazines followed the newspapers in increasing press runs.
So you had the concept of mass magazines. That whole business model kept morphing. Everyone forgets about this, you know, like in 1995, the commercial web appeared and everybody said, oh, everything’s over.
But I don’t think the commercial web was much more of a kick in the head than the television. And before that, there was a similar abrupt change with radio. The idea that entertainment could just sit in your chair and not have to think and just listen.
Magazines like The Saturday Evening Post were really hurt by that. Because that was their position, at home after they were reading entertaining stuff. But they survived and they adapted.
I think that the biggest challenge for a contemporary magazine, and that also includes online, is the attention span problem and the way that the kind of addiction to the constant scroll, just going vertically with dozens of different things that you’re barely aware of what it is. You stop on a cat or whatever you want to look at.
That has changed dramatically in the last 10 years. We didn’t even know about TikTok 10 years ago. And Facebook seems for people my age now.
All that keeps morphing. Instagram had its moment in the sun. And everything, everything is always moving. My feeling is that print offers a new kind of respite for that.
In the way that radio seemed like a respite for reading. Print, going back to reading, is a relief from that addictive scrolling that everyone’s doing. Or just that very short attention span, you look at one thing, you look at another thing, you look at another thing.
That kind of short attention span gets tiresome after a while. And why can’t I say that with any confidence? It’s because the long form media, like books or movies, are blasting ahead fun. I mean, movie says, the movie, the Hollywood studio business is once again in convulsions. With every year, there’s a headline that says, Hollywood is no longer the same. It will never be the same.
We don’t recognize it anymore. And they’ve been saying that since about 1920 since talkies came in. So that long form sitting in a movie theater or watching it on Netflix is a very compelling experience.
And people enjoy it. It’s still, there is a business model in the same way that music kind of changes business model from the time of the record business. Movies are too, but also books.
It’s very interesting to me to see things like the eBooks for the digital side, but also bookstores are coming back. There are new bookstores everywhere. And there are very niche bookstores.
Bookstores about cooking or bookstores about architecture. All over the place. It’s fairly like Marfa, Texas, where I am right now, it’s just a few thousand people, right? It has an extremely good bookstore that also has a quite a good art collection.
Now, Marfa may be a special town, they just finished a new library or a big addition to this little library in Marathon, Texas. Population 400. And every time I’ve been by it, it’s full.
A lot of kids. Why is that? Because there’s something very pleasant about holding a book and reading it. And getting it, one of the advantages that books have and movies have over the endless internet is that you finish the book.
I’ve read the magazine. I’m done. I finished The New Yorker.
Almost nobody can say that online. There is a real feeling of accomplishment. And of course, The New Yorker’s secret that Howard Gossage, the advertising man, pointed out when he was doing their advertising.
The cartoons in The New Yorker are the guilt reliever. Because you can go, page all the way through, get a few chuckles. You might read a talk piece or one or two other things.
And then you sit the magazine down and somebody says, and you mentioned something that you saw in The New Yorker. I read it in The New Yorker. I read The New Yorker every week.
That’s a definite feeling of accomplishment. From a psychological point of view, there is satisfaction that comes from the phenomenon of the edition. This is a magazine.
This is the September issue of our magazine. Or this week’s magazine. Whatever.
And the same thing. You get to feel like you finished it. You go through it.
The online newspapers, you never finish. The digital crowd is very surprised that people like the PDF replicas of newspapers. Like The Dallas Morning News now presents that first.
If you go to their website, you get the replica first. Then you get the actual website. Because people know how that navigates.
They know where their stuff is. Everything’s in a familiar place. And things like PressReader made it increasingly easy to read on different devices.
The feeling about sessions, session time, completing an edition, very important. I think that magazines, in the same way that I think anthology, television like 60 Minutes will go on despite everything else. Now we still must work on the business model.
The numbers are much smaller than they used to be. We’re not doing mass magazine. But I think that quite a few people, we see people getting in and surviving.
And it’s delightful.
Samir Husni: Mr. Black, if someone comes to you and says, I want to start a new magazine, what do you tell them?
Roger Black: I really ask them, who’s your reader? I think it all starts with the reader.
Who is it you’re trying to talk to? Have you talked to them? You communicate with them. And I think that’s the way that we all got in the media have gotten in trouble over the years, is that we think that we’re the media. And it’s a two-way thing.
Reading is interactive. And I continue to find, maybe it’s because of my extreme age, I find reading the most effective kind of communication. It’s faster, it’s cheaper, and it’s inexpensive, as opposed to a video that you do on TikTok or YouTube.
That’s an effort. It’s a production. Maybe we don’t have a TV station like we used to.
And we’re relying a lot on Apple and the others to fix our video for us. But I think that having a group of people just writing, taking pictures and putting them together into a magazine, is very low cost compared to what the big guys are trying to do. And I think you can, if you make it good.
If you connect with the reader, it can work. And it doesn’t have to be high art. It doesn’t have to be the kind of level of journalism you’d expect in The New York Times or something else.
But if it can be good and readable, and is hitting a chord that people like, I think you can make it. One example you mentioned, Arena, the Santa Fe magazine, which is two old, French, encrusted print guys. One, John Miller, worked with me.
Owen Lipstein, somewhat controversial publisher from New York, who was the publisher of Smart Magazine, which I did in the late 90s with Terry McDonnell, only 13 issues ever published. Anyway, they got the idea of doing a big fat real estate magazine in Santa Fe, which of course, people in Marfa would say that Santa Fe is a real concoction of the real estate salespeople, which it may or may not be. But what they did to get the content, because they didn’t have a huge budget, and none of this stuff, no one is paying what Vanity Fair is paying.
I don’t think even Vanity Fair’s paying what they used to pay. But what John Miller, the editor there, and designer, did was to just do a lot of interviews. He had video, and some of the interviews were trimmed to just be the answers.
It was like a first-person article. Sometimes they would have a lot of pictures of their home, or they would go there. Sometimes it was just pick up what they could provide, the decorator, the designers, pictures of the house or whatever, or their potters, and they had stuff on their website.
Just thinking about it carefully and making it interesting with interesting people.
Basically, it’s all about the people in magazines. So you start with the reader, but then you give them stories about people to read.
That’s basically the core of every good magazine.
Samir Husni: Before I ask you my typical two last questions, is there any question I failed to ask you you’d like me to ask?
Roger Black: I sort of expected you to say, why are you still doing this? Which is funny, I don’t know what else I would do. It’s like somebody says, why do you have this place in Texas out in the desert? And my answer is, I can’t think of anything, any other place I’d rather be.
I can’t think of anything else I would rather do than try to work with typography. We have Type Network, I’m chairman of Type Network, and we’re doing a wonderful collaboration with 100, more than 100 type designers and type founders with special custom design projects. Some of it is consulting, and some of it is type design.
I’m not a type designer, but I can connect them to the market. It’s a very small operation, but quite fun. I want to keep working.
My father worked till he was 80. And then, even later, he said, I never should have quit. So, the next question is, what are you doing now? As well as Type Network, I’ve come out to Marfa, and I’ve taken over by starting a new non-profit with Don Gardner from Austin, and Gonzalo Garcia Bautista from Mexico City.
We have started a non-profit, and we are now publishing this paper, which you can go to at BigBenSentinel.com. You can join and get the PDF, or we’ll mail it to you. For 60 bucks, we’ll mail it to you.
Folks, that price is going up, so act now.
Samir Husni: If I come unannounced to your house…
Roger Black: In Marfa, now? Well, it’s a marathon. I also hang out in Florida. We’re still repairing from the hurricane last year.
And I have an apartment with my husband in Oslo, Norway. So, I kind of am nicely balanced.
Samir Husni: So, if I come unannounced one evening, what do I catch Roger Black doing to rewind from a busy day?
Roger Black: Reading. I’m still old-fashioned.
Samir Husni: And what keeps you up at night?
Roger Black: I don’t stay up at night. I am a great sleeper.
I don’t know why. I go to bed early. I go to bed by 11 or so.
In the old days, I’d stay up late. My peace of mind results from, as you get older, you realize you must let things go and become balanced, or you’re always anxious. The other thing that helps me, has helped me in my whole life, is I have a colossally developed ego.
It doesn’t occur to me until years later that I could be wrong. It’s like later people point out, that was a complete disaster. And I say you’re right.
I was completely unaware of that at the time. And I still, you know, it’s like I tried to do that thing, Screensaver, I thought we could do a technology solution for reading digitally. And it turned out that it didn’t work beautifully.
It turned out that the publishers didn’t have a business model for that. So, I do find myself waking up sometimes and thinking about those things. But I go right back to sleep.
I’m not what you’d call a troubled old man.
Samir Husni: Thank you. Take care. Have a great day.
I have always been an advocate for a strong editorial letter in the first issue of any magazine. It is essential to introduce the magazine to your audience and to ensure the fact that they understand its mission statement and the role it is going to play in their life. Magazines that launch without such an introduction, to me, are a sign of laziness and lack of care of their audience.
What follows is the launch editorial of Digest Of Treatment that its first issue appeared on the nation’s newsstands in July 1937 and was aimed mainly at doctors. Under the heading “We Begin,” the editorial went on to say, “First issues, to almost everyone, are an exciting curiosity. To the collectors, they have intrinsic value; to the critics, they have a dissecting table value; and to the editors, authors, and publishers, they have a deep sentimental value.”
It continued, “Our purpose in presenting a monthly periodical, “Digest of Treatment,” free from any suggestion of advertising bias, is three-fold: first, to bring to the practitioner, in brief form, the newer developments in the technic of treatment; second, to stimulate an interest in the worthwhile current medical literature today; and third, to bring to those physicians who have become defined as specialists, a well-rounded viewpoint regarding branches of medicine other than their own.”
The editorial added, “Each month, Medical Editors, every one a clinical practitioner, carefully select, from over two hundred journals, material to be condensed. In their selections they choose both the favorable and unfavorable reports, realizing that the physician is keenly interested in the unbiased evaluation of the therapy he contemplates trying. The digests and condensations, selected and made by men of clinical experience, fill a need expressed by physicians many times.”
Digest of Treatment continued, “No physician engaged in practice has available the complete current literature of the medical profession, nor does he have the time to look over thoroughly more than three or four periodicals. The presentation of outstanding articles in this convenient form, “Digest of Treatment,” saves the practitioner many hours of research.”
The editorial concluded by stating that, “The editors will always welcome suggestions and criticisms from their fellow workers. They invite a hearty participation in the enterprise through which they serve the interests of medicine. All communications will find a receptive ear.”
It’s a known fact that the average sell-through (number of copies sold from the copies sent to the newsstands) is at best 30% and at its worst less then 20%. That is to say that from every ten magazines sent to the newsstands, only 2 or 3 magazines are sold, and the rest are returned to “the shredder.” You will say, this is a lot of waste in this environmentally conscience world we live in.
However, it is also known that if you reduce the number of copies you place on the newsstands, you will reduce the number of copies you will sell. This dilemma is not new; it dates back as far as magazines were placed on the newsstands.
So how do we solve this problem? One solution comes from the United States government: No returns are accepted. Yes, that was the solution of the issue of returns in 1918, more than a century ago.
In an editorial titled “Roycroft on News Stands” dated September 19, 1918, in the October 1918 issue of Roycroft magazine, the editors wrote, “We have always tried to give ROYCROFT a very thorough distribution on all the News Stands throughout the country, and in doing so, of course, have had to be generous in the matter of returns from the dealers.”
The editorial continues, “The Government now asks all publishers to restrict these returns. This means that practically every News Dealer will order only such quantities of ROYCROFT as he has advance orders for. He cannot take chances on being stuck with a bunch of unsold copies. There should be no unsold copies, anyway, but occasionally there are.”
The editors came up with a solution to this problem by suggesting to “all readers of ROYCROFT who have been purchasing the Magazine on the News Stands, that it will be necessary for them to order the Magazine – NOW—from their dealer, or else they may be unable to get it on the Stand.”
Another option the editors offered the readers of Roycroft magazine, “If, for any reason you would rather not place a definite order with your local News Dealer, send in your subscription to us. This will insure your getting the Magazine every month.”
The editorial ends up with a plug about the magazine, “ROYCROFT will present to its readers a series of articles each month, touching upon vital things and viewed from the unusual standpoint. It will continue to be of vital interest, and we want you with us for all time.”
So, here you have it, a solution from 1918 only preserved in print where history comes alive on every page of the printed magazine. Print preserves history and history needs print to be preserved.
To find out more of the golden olden gems from magazines please visit the Samir Husni Magazine Collection at The University of Missouri-Columbia by clicking here.
I am holding in my hands a copy of Life magazine from March 26, 1925. Yes, you read that right, a copy of a magazine published 100 years ago. The magazine feels, looks, and reads like many magazines published today. A nice cover, good content, plenty of illustrations, and a promise for the future, “While there is Life There’s Hope.” And hope is what I see and feel every time I pick up a copy of a magazine from a century or two ago.
Print is permanent. A magazine, once printed, is permanent. You can’t change a thing, not even a comma. There is no backspace or delete button. What you see is what you get: yesterday, today, and tomorrow. You can own it and you can proudly say it is mine. That sense of ownership satisfies the human need in all of us to own things, lots of things (Just look at your house or apartment and see how many things you have, even those you do not need).
Flipping through the pages of this issue of Life, I am transformed to a simpler, calmer world where, I can “select colors and upholstery,” for my “custom Cadillac,” or enjoy my Wrigley’s chewing gum “after every meal.”
I am also reading the prize winner’s answer to the question, “Is Democracy a Success?” H.W. Davis won the $50 prize for the following answer: “ Democracy is a rip-roaring success. If you don’t believe so, say out loud that it isn’t – and run for your life. Democracy pats the greatest number of people on the back and makes the most promises. Of course it seldom delivers. But what of that? We live and are made happy by promise, not performance.
And happiness is success, for all that anybody has been able to prove to the contrary. Ergo, democracy is a success.
There! The pup has his tail in his teeth.”
So, here you have it. I am reading and flipping the pages of a magazine from 100 years ago, exactly like I read and flip the pages of a magazine from March 26, 2025. I wonder if I can say the same thing about any of my digital devices? Heck, I can’t even use my camcorder from 20 years ago, yet I can look at my printed pictures from 50 years ago.
Long live print and long live permeance. Print will be here long after I am gone, the same it was here long before I was born.
One final note, there is nothing permanent about digital, even a PDF can be changed and altered. You can’t do that to a magazine. It is permanent.
Enough of that, I have some reading to do…the first issue of Art Lovers magazine from January 1925…To be continued.
PS: If you want to journey through thousands of magazines from yesteryears, check The Samir Husni’s Magazine Collection at my Alma Mater The University of Missouri-Columbia here.
Magazine making is an art. It was, is, and always will be. However, there is great art, mediocre art and just plain bad ugly art. To each its own. Continuing my journey into the magazines from years gone by, let alone a century, I happened to come across the first issue of Horizon magazine from September 1958. It is a hard back that is encyclopedic in look and content.
The editors wrote in the foreword (two full pages) to the first issue: “We take for our title the word horizon because it is here, where earth and sky meet, that one may observe those jagged interruptions in the landscape that are the words of man: the squat mud houses of ancient Sumer;” The editors continued, “the gleaming statuary of the isles of Greece; the stately sky line of Venice when “she did hold the gorgeous East in fee”; a perfect bridge in Peking; our own soaring, protean civilization; all that moved Milton to write that
Towered Cities please us then,
And the busie humm of men.
I wonder if today’s reader would need a translation of the above. Remember, this is just part of the foreword of the magazine. The editors continue, “Culture, the concern of this new magazine, is both achievement and dream, a work of hands and a movement of the spirit, the special property of man since the great miracle of the Sixth Day – since Darwin’s hairy quadruped dropped from his tree and (how many millennia later?) first lifted up his gaze to seek something beyond mere food and drink.”
If that’s not enough of pure excellent prose, read on and say how magazines were made and how they were meant to be. The editors of Horizon continued, “ Culture is art and ideas, past and present, taken in sum as a guide to life. It is history too, the science which Dionysius tells us is “philosophy teaching by examples,” with philosophy suspended between the I-believe of theology and the I-know of science.”
The editors added, “ This magazine in any case is commenced in the belief that some better guide than now exist in America is needed to the house of culture, with all its thousands of rooms.” In conclusion, the editors wrote, “We invite all those whose interests lie in this broad field, whether as contributors or readers, to join us in this venture.”
When was the last time you read something like this? Something that makes the magazine a piece of art to keep and collect? Are the magazines of today worth keeping? Are they a “better guide than” what exists in America today? You be the judge and the jury.
Would love to read your comments. As always keep in mind that if you would like to take a dive into the “oldies but goldies” magazines of the past, feel free to reach to John Henry at the Specia Collections division of The University of Missouri Libraries and ask for the Samir Husni Magazine Collection.
That is two Eye magazines. One from the days before I was born, and the other when I was a 13-year-old teenager. However the two Eyes have a lot in common and few good lessons to learn if you ever thought or think of going into the magazine business. And by magazine, I mean the ink on paper publication that is published on some regular frequency.
So without any further ado, here are the lessons I have found in those two Eyes that are still applicable in the year 2024, some 75 years after the first EYE was born:
Lesson number 1: Magazine publishing is not for the faint of heart. In 1949 when the first EYE ( Martin Goodman, publisher and Carlton Brown, editor) was published, magazines were the only mass medium available to the public nationwide. This EYE was first published in May 1949 with the tag line “People and Pictures.” The editors wrote in the first letter to the readers, “Starting a new magazine is as exhilarating as jumping into a mountain pool – and as filled with suspense. You hold your breath, take the plunge, and hope for the best.”
In March of 1968 editor Susan Szekely, wrote in the first issue of the Eye published by the Hearst Corporation (Helen Gurley Brown was the supervising editor), “ To get off the ground, EYE went high in the sky. For our first issue, we sent a host of venturesome journalists aloft. Among the most unruffled was Yale graduate Peter Swerdloff who set off casually to hitchhike around the country by air. Although he makes it look easy, Peter was no slouch. Where he succeeded, another writer had failed, returning home in disgrace with a toe stubbed during a forced landing.”
Both magazines took calculated risks and knew that magazine publishing, even in the 40s and 60s of the last century was not for the faint of heart.
Lesson number 2: Plea for help from the audience.
Without your readers, the magazine is not going anywhere. Readers input is essential. EYE of 1949 offered readers money for the best letters about the first issue. “We want this to be a magazine that you will like – whoever you are, wherever you live. To help us make it that, we want you to write us letters telling us what you like and don’t like in this first issue, and what you’d like to see in future issue,” the editors wrote. They continued, ‘We’ll mail checks for $10 each to the ten people who write us the best letters about EYE – the letters that will help us most in making this the kind of magazine you – and we – want it to be.”
Hearst’s eye was more on the wishful side of things with the audience. “May you be as high on EYE as we had to be to do it,” wrote the editor.
Lesson number 3: Great content was and will always be king and queen.
The importance of good quality content is as important as it was in 1949. For magazine content goes beyond good writing to include good photography, design, and the art of packaging a coherent and pleasing publication both for the eye (pun intended) and the brain. “The publishers and editors of EYE, have no misgivings about this first issue. We’ve packed it with what seem to us the best photographs to be found,” EYE’s editors wrote, “plus two full-length articles that we believe are worth anyone’s reading time.” The editors were humble enough to admit, “But our judgment, unless it’s backed by our readers’ approval, is worthless.”
As for the May 1968 Hearst’s eye, the editor wrote, after paragraphs of introducing the writers and photographer for the volume 1, number 1 issue, “EYE promises more of the same—hip young writers, photographers and artists (and a few oldies and goldies) covering the pop scene, the political and social controversies of the day, sports and travel (Spartanburg, South Carolnia?) and the latest fashion news—with each future issue.”
Publishing a magazine, a good magazine still depends on those three premises stated above. Recognizing it is not for the faint of heart, engaging your audience from the very beginning, and providing excellent content that can’t be found any other place.
If you would like to take a dive into the “oldies but goldies” magazines of the past, feel free to reach to John Henry at the Special Collections division of The University of Missouri Libraries and ask for the Samir Husni Magazine Collection
A great magazine founder and publisher died yesterday July 10, 2023. Phyllis Hoffman DePiano died yesterday leaving her publishing company, Hoffman Media (the little engine that could), to her twin sons who loved, adored, and worked with their mom. In 2017 Phyllis and her two sons spoke at one of my magazine conferences and my friend Linda Ruth was able to sum and write up their presentation. What follows is a tribute to a great lady and her story.
Phyllis Hoffman DePiano presents with son’s Brian Hart Hoffman and Eric Hoffman
In publishing, founder Phyllis Hoffman began, there are no rules, no manual on how to be a successful publisher. “When we started in 1983 I was clueless,” she told the audience. “I knew that needlework was huge; I knew there were not magazines. And that was pretty much all I knew.” Hoffman was laughed out of every printer but one. They had no concept of direct mail. “What we did was printed up little brochures for shipowners to put into customer bags, inviting the people to be a charter subscriber. We went to Atlantic Media show with nothing but a single poster. We knew our break-even—it would be 3500 subscribers, paid in full up front, and that’s how many we got for the first issue. So we knew we could go one year.” Additional subscribers began to trickle in, till one day, Phyllis remembered, that she went to the post office with her two-year old sons, and the box was empty. Her heart sank—until the postal clerk invited her to retrieve the sacks of mail in the back, too much to fit into her box. By end of first year they had 100,000 subscribers, a 95% renewal rate—and they were turning down advertisers. That’s right—with a 68 page magazine, 70% content, 30% advertising, there just wasn’t room in the book.
Brian Hoffman, one of the two-year-olds at the post office that day in 1983 and now a co-president of the company, took up the story with Southern Lady magazine, Hoffman’s first magazine to branch out from craft to lifestyle. “Our company’s growth has followed our conversation with our customers,” he explained. “We listen to what they want, what they need, and then we work to give it to them.” An important lesson that Brian shared was to be patient. “Creativity is important, and it’s exciting,” he said. “But don’t change for the sake of change. Readers don’t feel the need for constant change; they are looking to you for consistency, to give them what they need and love. It’s easy to get off course, but listening to your readers will put you back on.” Creativity is important, innovation is important, but Brian emphasized the need for creative constraint as well, and for listening to the readers and acknowledging what they want. “Put your content out there. You’ll soon know if it’s a success,” he said. “The readers will tell you.”
Eric Hoffman—the other twin boy, the other co-president—wound up with advice to the students in the audience. “I asked my young children what they would advise,” he said. “Be patient. Try hard. Work as a team. Help each other figure things out. It’s good advice,” he said. “Here at the ACT Experience, we’re a team, and we’re figuring out some big problems.” The lessons that Hoffman Media can bring include a belief and dedication to quality, in circulation, in editorial, in product, in audience. Hoffman runs each of its revenue streams as stand-alone profit centers—each has to make sense on its own, each must be a strong component of the whole. “The gimmicks built into the magazine business have caused a lot of problems,” he said. “We don’t give stuff away. Not to our subscribers, not to our advertisers. We work with our advertisers and prospects—the ones we believe belong in the mags. Just because they spend money doesn’t mean they belong with us. It keeps our business focused.” It is this focus, this understanding that they cant be all things to all people, that has guided Hoffman Media to a double-digit growth in a down market.
“This is an amazing business,” Eric finished. “All the dot coms are jealous of what we do. This is what we want to be doing 30 years from now.”
Mr. Magazine 