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:
“ART LOVERS’ MAGAZINE has a definite mission, as we have indicated in previous issues, and that is to popularize art and culture for readers who have no inclination to delve into technical publications.” Thus opens the editorial of issue 4 of the magazine.
The editors continue to differentiate Art Lovers’ magazine from the tens of titles that are out there on the marketplace, including their own sister magazine American Art Student and Commercial Artist “and other purely art periodicals, but in ART LOVERS’ MAGAZINE we offer the general public a high grade of fiction, a department of Health and Beauty for Milady and a few jokes, in addition to strictly art material.”
Art material that they started to count and include in the table of contents starting with issue 3. More than 60 illustrations issue 4 claims to contain as did issue 3.
Trying to stay one step ahead from the competition and curving a niche for itself separate from the many magazines out there (see chapter 1) the editors present their mission statement one more time stating, “Our purpose is to present cultural material in an attractive and entertaining form; but first, last and all the time we wish to emphasize the importance of captivating appreciation for the best in art, literature and drama.”
In addition to the mission statement, the editors justify the need of Art Lovers’ magazine. They write, “There was a definite demand for a magazine of this character, and the healthy growth of our subscription list and newsstand sales indicates that our influence is being felt. We are always glad to get suggestions and constructive criticism from our readers.”
To Courts We Go
However the magazine was not immune from the long hand of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. John S. Sumner, secretary of the society took Art Lovers’ newsstand distributors to court claiming that it was indecent. An article in The New York Times on May 30, 1925 under the headline “Magazine Sales Attacked In Court; Action Opens on Distribution of “Artists and Models” and “Art Lovers’ Magazine.” Indecent, Sumner says. Publications Defended as Giving Cheap Reproductions of Famous Paintings in Museums.”
The article in The Times went on to report, “Mr. Sumner admitted that the magazines presented reproductions of art from the Metropolitan and other museums and of life from Broadway revues. He asserted, however that exhibition in theatre or museum conferred no certificate of good character or any kind of legal approval on the thing exhibited. He argued that the concentration in cheap magazines of nudes from the stage and the gallery was prima facie evidence of the purpose of the publishers to cater to primitive impulses rather than to highly civilized ones.”
Mr. Sumner “charged that the art business had looked up so suddenly when the new methods were now putting out three different magazines, each entitled “Artists and Models.”
The defense lawyer “asked for time in which to prepare a brief. Magistrate Ryttenberg granted the motion and adjourned all the cases until he had time to consider the brief.”
“The lawyer said that the hanging of a picture in a museum did not give it any legal approval, but gave it a standing as art.”
The June 1925 issue of Hubbard Publications’ Cartoons and Movies magazine had this headline on page 18: “Art Lovers’ Magazine Wins Fight For the Freedom of the Press.”
John S. Sumner was not happy with the decision of the courts, so this time he decided to sue the magazine itself. Again the results were not to the likings of Mr. Sumner. An editorial in issue 8, dated August 1925, of the magazine said, “ART LOVERS’ MAGAZINE has just won another battle in the war for freedom of the press and decency in art, in opposition to unofficial censors who confuse nudity with lewdity.”
The editorial went on stating, “Charges that this publication violated Penal Code No. 1141 (i.e. contained so-called indecent and objectionable matter in text and illustrations) were filed by John S. Sumner, secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.
“The case went on trial before judges Herbert, Salmon and Herman in Court of Special Sessions, New York City, July 3. Mr. Sumner offered as evidence copies of the May number of ART LOVERS’ MAGAZINE, in which material he regarded as objectionable was carefully marked. The magazine, although officially accepted by the Post Office as mailable, and indorsed by leading artists and other notables, was regarded by the vice society as deleterious.”
Once in a blue moon you receive a magazine that you can’t put down until every page, every picture, every illustration is looked at, time after time, and it gives you the feeling of satisfaction, relief, and an emotional energy to continue enjoying life, the good life.
Like the Wind USA
Last month I received the first issue of the USA edition of the British magazine Like The Wind, and it was exactly what I wrote about in my first paragraph of this blog: beautiful, comforting, soothing, and all encompassing with every page I turned, and I did turn every single page from cover to cover. Mind you, I am not a runner…
I loved the magazine so much that I reached out to its co-founder Simon Freeman in the United Kingdom and requested an interview about this phenomenal magazine that just launched an American edition after launching a Japanese one two years ago, and are ready to launch a French and German editions later this year.
Simon was as passionate about the magazine, ink on paper, running and the human spirit that goes with it, and all things “Like The Wind,” as the magazine itself.
Simon Freeman
So please enjoy my interview with Simon and read all about the launch story of Like The Wind in the UK, Japan, and the USA.
But first the soundbites:
On what is Like The Wind selling: “what we are selling is 20 minutes with a cup of coffee, reading something not on a screen. That’s actually what we’re selling, is just a moment of calm, sitting with a print magazine, just taking a moment to relax and enjoy yourself.”
On the goal of the magazine: “We want to continue to create that sense of calm around the experience of reading the magazine.”
On the uniqueness of the USA edition: “The US edition now uses US spelling. And some of the stories that are in the US edition are unique only to that North American edition.”
On expending into global markets: “It’s about trying to kind of create a magazine that is as high quality and as enjoyable a reading experience as possible for a local audience.”
On his love for the magazine format: “I just love the format of a magazine. I love the fact you read a story. It’s done. You put it down. You don’t have to remember where you are. You pick it up the next time you read another story. I love the long form journalism. I love the way they feel in my hand.”
On the decision to launch the magazine: “Very famously in my world, (my wife Julie) said, we should give it a go. How hard can it be? And that was honestly how it started.”
On choosing the name Like The Wind: “We need a magazine that is evocative, and sort of inspirational. And I just remember we were just sat thinking about it, and Julie said, Like The Wind.”
On why the word run is not in any article title: “We work hard to not include the word run or running in the titles of any of the stories. So when people go to the contents, we don’t have the word run or running in the titles of any of the stories.”
On the usage of social media to advertise: “It’s ironic and interesting. The world that we live in today, outside of social media, it’s hard to imagine how you can reach people with a new title. It’s difficult to know.”
On the status of magazines today: “They’re not the center of culture anymore. They’re very peripheral. And people don’t go looking for them.”
On their unique selling point: “We are selling a product that encourages people to spend half an hour a week or an hour a week off their screens.”
On the difference between ink on paper and digital screens: “The screen is so flat, whatever screen you’re on, whether it’s a laptop or a phone or whatever, it’s just this two-dimensional surface, right? There’s no texture. I love the idea of embossing the cover or foil blocking or like trying to put in rougher paper or smoother paper, because what you’re doing is you’re activating a whole another sense, which is the feel of the thing in your hands.”
On using different types of paper in the magazine: “We put different types of paper in because we can, because it’s something that print allows you to do that digital doesn’t.”
On AI when it comes to content: “I don’t believe that AI has the capacity to be truly creative. So, when it comes to the art, the imagery, the words in the magazine, the editing, the sub editing, I feel that that’s got to be a human, because they bring a creative sensibility that a machine, at least currently, can’t replicate.
I want to read something that’s come from somebody’s heart. I want something that has come from their soul. And I need to know, I need to feel that it’s come from that.”
On going for a run: “It’s amazing, the feeling in your lungs when you finish and the fact that your legs are burning a little bit. It’s all very visceral and analogue. There’s no digital version of that.”
On the importance of diversity in the magazine: “I think there is a continual need and drive to diversify the voices that are telling stories about running.”
On what keeps him up at night these days: “We are pushing our business to the limits and that is causing a lot of financial stress.”
And now for the lightly edited Mr. Magazine™ Interview with Simon Freeman, Publisher and Editor in Chief, Like The Wind magazine:
Practicing what he preaches
Samir Husni: Congratulations first on the launch of the US edition of Like the Wind. I know that you’ve launched an edition in Japan and you’re getting ready to launch one in France and one in Germany, and you’ve been publishing the magazine in England for 12 years or so. Why this global expansion in print in a digital age?
Simon Freeman: Oh, that’s such a good question. It’s a two-part answer. The first part is that three years ago, my wife and I (Julie and I are the co-founders of Like The Wind), were approached by, by a book publisher to work on a book with them.
We said, yeah, absolutely. We love working on it. It was a great book.
It was good fun. What we didn’t understand is that with book publishing, the publisher will then sell the rights to different language versions of the book. We didn’t know that.
So there’s a German edition and a French edition. There’s an Italian edition of this book that we wrote, which is cool. Then, one day the publisher rang us and said, we are selling the rights to a Japanese publisher, but the Japanese publisher has asked whether he can be put in touch with you directly because he wants to talk to you about the magazine.
We were like, sure, sounds cool. So, we got on a call with this guy Mr. Kiyo Fujishiro. He said, I have this business where I translate English language running books into Japanese, which is fine, but I love the idea of a magazine because a magazine is a regular thing you do three, four times a year.
How many copies do you sell in Japan? he asked. We said, none, like 20 copies or something. It was like nothing. He said, could we talk about me buying the license to publish the magazine in Japanese? And in the end, the way things worked out, instead of paying us for the license, why don’t we go into a joint venture? So Kiyo basically takes the English language version, the PDF, and he picks the stories that he wants, he translates them.
Obviously, he’s got, when he started, 46 editions to go back through, none of which had been seen in Japan because we weren’t selling any copies. So, he just picks the stories that he wants, translates them into Japanese, and then he adds probably about 20-25% Japanese stories. That was how Japan started.
What the Japanese edition explained to us was that what we are selling is 20 minutes with a cup of coffee, reading something not on a screen. That’s what we’re selling, is just a moment of calm, sitting with a print magazine, just taking a moment to relax and enjoy yourself. So, the French and German editions that we’re launching this year are based on the same principle, which is, if you’re a native French-speaking person, reading a magazine in English is not as relaxing as reading the stories in French.
We want to continue to create that sense of calm around the experience of reading the magazine. The US edition is slightly different. Basically, it became apparent that printing all of the editions in the UK and then shipping to the US as our US audience was growing fast was, from a sustainability point of view, not great, and from a cost point of view, not great.
We reached a point where we were able to go to a printer in the US and say, well, can we afford to print the copies that we require for the US audience in the US? It will reduce our transport costs, it reduces the amount of time, it’s much better for the environment. So we’ve hit a number that’s allowed us to start working with a US printer. There is an element of the same idea, which is, because we’re doing two different PDFs, they don’t have to be the same.
The US edition now uses US spelling. And some of the stories that are in the US edition are unique only to that North American edition.And I’ll give you an example of why I think that’s important.
There’s a thing in US sport called NIL, Name Image Licensing. Outside of the US, no one knows what that is. It makes no sense at all.
So, if we’re writing a story about NIL, for everyone else in the world, we must explain what NIL is in the story. But the US audience, we don’t need to do that. So, it means that we can now slightly tailor the reading experience to the local audience.
And it’s the same the other way around, right? There might be, a concept that is commonly understood in France. But for the US audience, we need to just explain what it is a little bit because it’s foreign. It’s about trying to kind of create a magazine that is as high quality and as enjoyable a reading experience as possible for a local audience.
That’s why we’re doing it.
Samir Husni: What is the genesis of Like the Wind?
Simon Freeman: When we launched the magazine 12 years ago, I was much more a runner than I am now.
The media options in the UK at the time were very, what I would call, functional. So, the magazines that you could buy were full of training tips and nutrition articles and stuff like that. I already had a coach.
I was trying to break two and a half hours for the marathon. I was running 80, 90 miles a week. So, I felt like I didn’t need the advice in terms of how to run.
But there were this whole bunch of magazines. Rouleur is a good example in cycling. There was another cycling magazine called The Ride Journal, which doesn’t exist anymore.
The Surfer’s Journal. And I was buying these magazines. And so my wife and I were running a route around the Mont Blanc called the TMB over three days.
One of the things we were talking about was Julie was saying to me, I see that you’re buying these surfing magazines and these cycling magazines, but you don’t cycle and you don’t surf. So why are you buying them? And I said, well, I just love the format of a magazine. I love the fact you read a story. It’s done. You put it down. You don’t have to remember where you are. You pick it up the next time you read another story. I love the long form journalism. I love the way they feel in my hand.
I was already at that point spending, goodness knows, 12, 13, 14 hours a day on a screen for work. So, I love the idea that when I wasn’t at work, I could just sit and read something in ink on paper. And Julie said to me, well, why does this magazine not exist in running? And I said, I don’t know.
Julie said, well, we should give it a go. Very famously in my world, she said, we should give it a go. How hard can it be? And that was honestly how it started.
We were doing that run around the Mont Blanc in the September, and we launched issue one the following February. We had no idea what we were doing. I remember Julie going on to Google and saying, how do you design a magazine? We quickly got support.
The team at Rouleur were amazing. They’re based in London. They invited us as soon as they saw what we were doing. They invited us down and said, how can we help? Is there any advice that you need? Other people helped quickly that we emailed them and said, we’re trying to launch this running magazine. How do we do it? So, it’s a nice community of people that are happy to support, especially if you’re making a magazine not in their sector. You know, I’m sure if we’ve been launching a cycling magazine, Rouleur might not have been quite as helpful.
Samir Husni: How did you choose the name Like The Wind?
Simon Freeman: We came up with the name, and again, all credit to Julie, she was the person that came up with the name. The reason we came up with the name was that we didn’t want it to have the word run or running in it. Because all the other magazines were Men’s Running, Women’s Running, Runner’s World, Running Fitness.
We’re like, we need a magazine that is evocative, and sort of inspirational. And I just remember we were just sat thinking about it, and Julie said, Like the Wind. Interestingly, we do sometimes get people who will send us a message and they say, I’ve just discovered Run Like The Wind magazine.
It’s not Run Like The Wind, it’s just Like the Wind. We work hard to not include the word run or running in the titles of any of the stories. So, when people go to the contents, we don’t have the word run or running in the titles of any of the stories.
Samir Husni: How was the reaction for the launch of the USA edition?
Simon Freeman: It’s been amazing. It’s been really, positive. We’re fortunate in that we’ve been selling the magazine in the US almost since issue one, so 12 and a half years ago.
We already had an audience. What’s been interesting is that launching a US specific edition has given us a good reason to talk about the magazine beyond there’s another edition coming out. We can explain why we’re doing it.
It feels as though we reached far beyond our existing audience of subscribers. It’s good. There’s also, which I think is true, an element of collecting.
You mentioned earlier that you had a collection of magazines with first editions. There’s lots of people who’ve discovered Like The Wind at issue 37. And you know that there’s an element in many of their minds that they’re like I want the full collection.
So, launching Like The Wind USA issue one has again given us this opportunity to say, you can start from issue one, you can build this collection with us over the next decade or whatever.
Samir Husni: I’ve noticed you’ve been using social media to advertise the magazine.
Simon Freeman: Yes, it’s ironic and interesting. The world that we live in today, outside of social media, it’s hard to imagine how you can reach people with a new title. It’s difficult to know.
Sometimes I think to myself, well, how did people advertise magazines before social media? I think what’s happened, and I love learning about magazines, I love all sources of information about magazines. I think people would discover magazines on newsstands, right? And that doesn’t really exist anymore, or not in any meaningful sense. So that source of reaching people doesn’t exist.
Magazines, they’re not the center of culture anymore. They’re very peripheral. And people don’t go looking for them.
So, it’s not like people, when I was younger, magazines meant so much to me that I would go and seek them out. I really want a magazine about whatever this topic that I’m interested in. That doesn’t seem to happen so much anymore.
So, unfortunately, well, not unfortunately, the reality is that what people do is they go online and they look for, they search for running stories. We need to make sure that when they look for running stories alongside YouTube videos and books and whatever else, Like The Wind magazine is featured. We are selling a product that encourages people to spend half an hour a week or an hour a week off their screens. And we’re using those screens to advertise the product. What can you do?
Samir Husni: I noticed in the first issue, you use two different types of paper, the matte and the glossy. The reason behind that?
Simon Freeman: Well, again, there’s two reasons, really. One is because the photos fit beautifully on gloss paper. But I think the matte paper has a nice feel. So, it’s like, it’s nice to just have the photos really ping. It gives you that wow, they look sharp on gloss paper. It feels nice to hold a magazine that’s got lots of matte material in it.
Maybe, the other side of it, is because we can, because the screen is so flat, whatever screen you’re on, whether it’s a laptop or a phone or whatever, it’s just this two-dimensional surface, right? There’s no texture. I love the idea of embossing the cover or foil blocking or like trying to put in rougher paper or smoother paper, because what you’re doing is you’re activating a whole another sense, which is the feel of the thing in your hands, which the screen just removes all of that. We put different types of paper in because we can, because it’s something that print allows you to do that digital doesn’t.
Samir Husni: Speaking of digital, do you ever use AI?
Simon Freeman: We do. We are judicious in our use of it. When I’m doing an interview, I’ll sometimes use an AI tool to transcribe the audio file. There are certain things that we’re using it for in the kind of operational side, the backend, like managing subscriptions and things like that.
There are ways that we can use AI to ensure that we are using the data that we need to ship people’s copies in a way that is secure, but faster than us going through a spreadsheet. AI is a phenomenal tool to do something where there are very clear rules and structures to follow. It does it fast.
So, if you say I need you to transcribe this piece of audio, there’s not a lot of art in that. You’re looking for as accurate a representation of that audio file as possible in words. And if you can do it in 60 seconds while you make a cup of tea, and then you come back and it’s ready, rather than spending four hours with it in your ears, trying to transcribe it.
That’s an efficiency. I don’t believe that AI has the capacity to be truly creative. So, when it comes to the art, the imagery, the words in the magazine, the editing, the sub editing, I feel that that’s got to be a human, because they bring a creative sensibility that a machine, at least currently, can’t replicate.
I want to read something that’s come from somebody’s heart. I want something that has come from their soul. And I need to know, I need to feel that it’s come from that.
The other thing, of course, is that what we are publishing stories about is an inherently analogue activity. You can’t AI going for a run. I went out with my brother-in-law this morning for a run along the lakeshore here in Switzerland, with the wind in our hair.
It’s amazing, the feeling in your lungs when you finish and the fact that your legs are burning a little bit. It’s all very visceral and analogue. There’s no digital version of that.
It makes sense then that as far as possible, the storytelling bit should be from humans. If you think about publishing in the broader sense, I think information and maybe news is more under threat because an AI agent can pull information together quickly, more efficiently, potentially, than a human writer. But if you’re publishing what we’re writing, what we’re publishing, which is not informational, it’s inspiration, it’s entertainment, it’s ideas and concepts. That’s got to be a person, in my opinion.
Samir Husni: If it’s not on the web, if it’s print only, AI cannot touch or steal it, or come close to it.
Simon Freeman: I totally agree. It’s part of the joy. There’s a joy and a frustration in things that are not ubiquitous. You can’t have it. I’m sorry. You have to literally buy a physical copy and wait for it to arrive.
It’s amazing, the feeling in your lungs when you finish and the fact that your legs are burning a little bit. It’s all very visceral and analogue. There’s no digital version of that.
We will always publish stories that are written by people, honestly. I think that’s entertainment. People don’t want to go to an art gallery to look at art that’s been created by a robot. People don’t want to go to a rock concert to listen to music that’s been created by these robots.
Art forms, writing, art, fine art, music, you want to know that there’s been a sweaty, fallible human being kind of behind it, because I think that’s why we indulge in it.
Samir Husni: Before I ask you my typical last questions, is there any question that I should ask you that I failed not to ask you?
Simon Freeman: I love asking that question. The question I would ask is, if I was asking myself this question is, how do we improve the storytelling that we’re doing in Like The Wind magazine? And to answer my own question, I think there is a continual need and drive to diversify the voices that are telling stories about running.
There’s this myth that running is this easily accessible, you just need a pair of shoes, and you can go for a run, and it’s not true. It’s really not true. I remember when we started, when I started gathering momentum, when we started the magazine, I was the editor originally, and it’s a complete joke because I didn’t know what I was doing, but I would be gathering stories, and you suddenly realize that if you are not an able-bodied, relatively wealthy white man, running is not universally accessible.
What we’re able to do with Like The Wind is to try and tell some of the stories of people for whom running is important, but it’s not ubiquitous. It’s not this easy thing. I remember there was a young man called Ahmed Arbery who was murdered whilst out on a run by some people who decided that he was running in the wrong place, and we had to respond to that, we had to do something about that. I was phoning friends of mine who are black and asking them about this sort of thing, and they were, the universality of their response, which is, it’s not safe for me to go running at night, or in this part of town, or whatever.
I was horrified, I mean, horrified. I was like, what are you talking about? Going out for a run? Surely, it’s just this universal human right. Or I remember talking to women, friends of mine, who would say, it’s annoying when the clocks change.
I remember saying to one of these women why? What’s the problem with the clocks changing? She said, well, I don’t feel safe running on my own after dark. I was like, that’s potentially half the human population. So, I think, the question I like being asked is, how do we make the magazine better? The answer is more diverse voices, more people who can share their experience of running.
I’ll tell you another quick story. We published 40 editions in 10 years, and the 41st edition, the first edition of our second decade, we decided that we would make it a women’s edition. So, we hired a woman called Amory Rowe, and she was the editor for that one edition. It was a fully female team, only female writers, only female illustrators, only female characters within the magazine.
We published this edition, and somebody wrote to us and said, I see that you’ve published this women’s only edition. Should I assume that there’ll be a men’s only edition in the future? And I was like, if we published only women’s stories for the next 500 editions, we would not even come close to rebalancing the lack of coverage that women’s sport gets in the media.
So, in our own tiny little way, I think that giving voice to, to be blunt, giving voice to not me is important. And it’s something that we’ve really focused on. It’s part of the editorial.
Samir Husni: My typical two last questions, if I come to visit you at your flat or your house one evening unannounced, what do I catch Simon doing? Reading a book, watching TV, having a glass of wine? How do you rewind the day?
Simon Freeman: I stopped drinking at the beginning of this year.
The best decision I ever made. I work too late. I’ll often at 9:30 or 10 o’clock, I’ll have to remind myself to switch off. I love reading books.
I’m currently reading Robert Caro’s autobiography of President Lyndon Johnson. That’s probably how I relax towards the end of the day. Political history is exciting.
I love reading about political history or I’ve always got a magazine. There’s always a magazine on the go, whatever different topics. That’s hopefully what you’d catch me doing. We don’t own a TV, so it wouldn’t be watching TV.
Samir Husni: What keeps Simon up at night these days?
Simon Freeman: We are pushing our business to the limits and that is causing a lot of financial stress. And it’s intentional, but it does mean that I will often wake up at two o’clock in the morning and pay for the next print bill or the next salary run or whatever else. It’s hard, making sure that the magazine or the business is financially secure.
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:
Dummy book cover designed using Chat GPT
The Philadelphia Ethical Culture Society
So, what are those societies that the Freeman Hubbard and Walter Hubbard were involved in? According to its website, www.phillyethics.org, The Philadelphia Ethical Culture Society is still active today and it is based on, “Ethical Humanism, a humanist, religious and educational movement, has nurtured religious humanism and contributed to progressive causes for well over a century. Founded in 1885, the Philadelphia Ethical Society is a member of the American Ethical Union.”
The influence of the society is evident in a letter dated August 15, 1925 that Freeman H. Hubbard, in his other role at Hubbard Publications, associate editor of The American Art Student and Commercial Artist, wrote to the National Association for Advancement of Colored People. In the letter he wrote, “When I was a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts some years ago, there was one student who was debarred from a traveling scholarship solely (the rest of us believed) on account of his Negro blood. As an artist he ranked very high.”
He continued, “Although I am not a Negro, the incident made me so bitter against race prejudice, and I determined that I would do all I could to break down such prejudice”
Freeman Hubbard goes on offering the association the opportunity to send him any relevant news, stories, and the full details of the literature and art contest conducted by “The Crisis” the association’s magazine. He promised that he “would probably publish the first, second and third best illustrations submitted in the contest, in this magazine, provided you send them.”
The Philadelphia Law and Order Society
The Philadelphia Law and Order Society was founded in 1881 and was a temperance and Sabbath observance organization. It campaigned for the enforcement of the liquor laws in Philadelphia, the proper observance of the Sabbath, and against “white slavery” (prostitution). It claimed in 1917 to have reduced the number of saloons and similar establishments in Philadelphia from 6,000 to 1,910.
The Rev. Walter Hubbard, the son of one of the founders of Hubbard Publishing Company, was an active member of the society according to the editorial in issue 3 of Art Lovers’ magazine. He was also an active preacher and lecturer in the Pennsylvania Anti-Saloon League, according to the same editorial.
The Pennsylvania Anti-Saloon League
And the Pennsylvania Anti-Saloon League was founded in 1895 and in 1920 was a powerful organization advocating for prohibition, and working to ban the production, sale, and transportation of alcohol. This was part of a larger nationwide effort, that started in Oberlin, Ohio on May 24, 1893, and culminated in the passage of the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act. The ban was later repealed by the 21st Amendment in 1933.
So as you see both Hubbard’s were involved in ethical, moral, religious and humanitarian issues even before they worked at Art Lovers’ magazine. However, their background left a great influence on the magazine and its direction.
Beautiful vs. Salacious
The editorial of the third issue of the magazine, dated March 1925, opens with the following: “ART LOVERS’ MAGAZINE is in thorough sympathy with the nation-wide movement to suppress salacious and crime-inciting literature, and particularly to keep it out of the hands of the young.”
“The iron hand of the law cannot deal too strongly with the fly-by-night printers and publishers who pander to the vices of youth.” The editorial continues. It goes on to state, “The Hubbard publications have consistently held this position since 1868, when the Hubbard Publishing Company was founded.”
It adds, “We mention these facts because we take great pride in the traditions of the Hubbard publications. We are proud also of the family ties connecting us with the late Elbert Hubbard (he died in 1915) and his son, Elbert Hubbard II, and we lose no opportunity to speak well of the Roycroft publications of East Aurora, N.Y.”
An article in the same issue by R. G. Ingersoll titled “Art and Morality,” the author writes, “There is an infinite difference between the nude and the naked, between the natural and the undressed. In the presence of the pure, unconscious nude, nothing can be more contemptible that those forms in which are the hints and suggestions of drapery, the pretense of exposure, and the failure to conceal. The undressed is vulgar – the nude is pure.”
A mixed bag of ironies
So taking into consideration the facts about the original Hubbard Publications as a Bible publisher, and the fact that the son of one of the founders is a reverend and a preacher, and the editor is a member of an ethical society, it comes to no surprise to read in issue 3 of the magazine the fact that in “reiterating our support of the “clean books” crusade, we wish to make clear, as Elbert Hubbard once pointed out, that there is a difference between lewdity and nudity, despite the similar pronunciation of those two words. Failure to grasp this distinction has led to misdirected effort on the part of some reformers with whom we are otherwise in hearty accord.”
The irony is, Elbert Hubbard was convicted in 1913 on one count of “circulating “objectionable” or “obscene” matter in violation of the postal laws.” He was later pardoned by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914.
Freeman H. Hubbard refers in his third issue editorial to a new bill introduced by Senator Love of the New York State Legislature. The bill introduced to the legislatures would “class a publication as obscene on the basis of any excerpt from it.” Freeman argued, “In other words, condemn an entire book or magazine by separating a sentence or paragraph from its context, instead of judging the publication as a whole.”
He continued, in the signed editorial, “if the Love measure were passed it would make publishers of the Holy Bible, Shakespeare and many other classics liable to prosecution, in addition to publishers of the best art and medical works.”
However, he was quick to note, “Of course, the purveyors of indecent literature would be the hardest hit, but our point is that no publisher could feel safe from the possible attacks of shyster lawyers, blackmailers, and cranks of all kinds.”
His ethics and morals are quick to appear in his last paragraph of the editorial, “By all means, let’s war on the vice and immorality that masquerades under the name of literature, but we dare not surrender the freedom of the legitimate press to a clique of self-appointed censors and overzealous reformers.”
He concludes, “Literature and art are heritages too precious to be shackled by the forces which should be directed entirely against their enemies.”
To sum his views, nudity is art, lewdity is obscene and there is a big difference between the two as you will see in the coming issues of Art Lovers’ magazine.
The magazine continued its growth journey and achieved a print run of 150,000 print run with issue 3, an increase of 25,000 than issue 2.
And Senator Love’s bill did not come to a vote.
Stay tuned for more of the history of Art Lovers’ magazine 1925-1927.
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:
Chapter 2, Part 2
Art Lovers’ Volume 1, Number 3
The Hubbard Connection
A lot has been written about Elbert Hubbard the founder of the Roycroft handicraft community of the late 19th century and early 20th century. The same can be said about Freeman H. Hubbard who was appointed editor of Art Lovers’ magazine commencing with the second issue of the magazine. However, all the current references about Freeman Hubbard are in his association as an author and editor of Railroad magazine from 1930 until its demise in 1979.
Although Art Lovers’ magazine was published by Art Publications, Inc. in New York City, its covers touted that it is a Hubbard Publication starting with issue 4. The president of the company was Walter W. Hubbard and the associate editor of the magazine was the “Rev. Walter Warren Hubbard, the son of one the founders of Hubbard Publishing Company” that was founded in Philadelphia, PA in 1868 by Alfred H. Hubbard and Frank W. Judd as the Hubbard Brothers and was renamed the Hubbard Publishing Company in 1893 according to the 19th Century Juvenile Series last revision on Feb. 24, 2025.
The original Hubbard Publishing Company was, “a subscription publishing house” and “a well-known Bible publisher,” according to the source.
One early indication of the relationship between Art Lovers’ magazine and Hubbard Publications is the reference to Art Lovers’ in a Feb. 1925 article about the photographer James Wallace Pondelicek in Hubbard’s The American Art Student and Commercial Artist magazine. “Without a doubt, James Wallace Pondelicek, photographer and artist, ranks among the few pictorial photographers of America whose work merits the highest honors. As a figure photographer he is a master,” the editors wrote.
They continued, “Of late Mr. Pondelicek, whose work has appeared in the columns of this, and of Art Lovers’ Magazine, has been going in for advertisement illustration. We hope to persuade him, at some time in the near future, to contribute an article, helpful and technical, based on his experiences along that line.”
With the second issue of the magazine, the Hubbard connection became more obvious. In addition to Walter W. Hubbard and Freeman H Hubbard, the magazine announced the appointment of “the Rev. Walter W. Hubbard, of the Philadelphia Law and Order Society and of the Pennsylvania Anti-Saloon League as associate editor with this issue.”
Between the credentials of Freeman H Hubbard and the Rev. Walter W. Hubbard, you will think Art Lovers’ is more of moral, religious magazine. Read how Freeman was introduced when they announced him as editor of the magazine, “The publishers of ART LOVERS’ MAGAZINE announce the appointment of Freeman H. Hubbard, A.B., as editor, effective with this issue.”
“Mr. Hubbard was a scholarship winner at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts…In addition, he is well known as a writer of short stories…Mr. Hubbard is recognized as an authority on ethics, having recently received the award of the Philadelphia Ethical Culture Society for the best statement of the meaning of the ethical movement.”
The editorial added, “His connection with ART LOVERS’ Magazine, therefore, is assurance that it will be kept to a high moral standard without losing any of its attractiveness.”
As for the Rev. Water W. Hubbard, the associate editor of the magazine is introduced in issue 3 as, “The son of one of the founders of the Hubbard Publishing Company—the Rev. Walter Warren Hubbard, of the Philadelphia Law and Order Society, widely known preacher and lecturer for the Pennsylvania Anti-Saloon League…”
In fact the Reverand Water Warren Hubbard had a story in issue 3 of the magazine titled, “Three Red Sweaters and a Canary Bird.” Another Hubbard also wrote for the magazine; Henry D. Hubbard, the assistant director of Bureau of Standards, Washington, D. C.: He wrote about “Ther Motion Pictures of Tomorrow.”
Yet, one more Hubbard is also included in the third issue of Art Lovers’ magazine. Hesketh Hubbard, “eminent British artist, has assembled a collection of two hundred and thirty-two prints by ninety-seven contemporary British artists, which arrived in this country recently for exhibition, during March, at the Brooklyn Museum, and later in other museums and galleries in this country.”
The publishers of Art Lovers’ magazine were also proud of their relationship with the late “Elbert Hubbard and his son, Elbert Hubbard II, and we lose no opportunity to speak well of the Roycroft publications of East Aurora, N.Y.”
At least 30 new magazines were launched in the first five months of 2026. Those who know me, know that my definition of a magazine is, “If it is not ink on paper, it is NOT a magazine.” Feel free to call those digital platforms anything you want, except a magazine. We never called television radio with pictures.
This leads me to a great editorial written by the editor of the new magazine Rap Central Station. An oversized publication measuring 12X12 inches and refers to itself as a MAGPAPER. The editor writes in the second issue of the magazine, and I quote, “Scrolling ain’t reading. Texting ain’t writing. That line hit even harder after the response to the debut issue of Rap Central Station earlier this year. What we didn’t expect – but we fully respect – is how fast the magazine is becoming a collector’s item. That tells us something important: people still need tangible culture. Something you can hold. Something that doesn’t disappear with a swipe.”
The editor continues, “I’m not gonna front I h’ve been inspired with stories of 2 fledgling magazine publishers from 75 years ago. John Johnson with JET EBONY and Hugh Hefner from Playboy. Both ironically from Chicago. They had visions against insurmountable odds.”
So, what is this magazine that was inspired by two of our great magazine publishers of the last century. The editor writes, “We are an art magazine first. Then artist – driven storytelling. Then music—charted with intention. We believe artists should write their own reviews. Nobody listens harder than the creator. That’s the innovation. That’s how you reverse some of the damage done to hip-hop by speed, neglect, and surface-level coverage. This magazine slows the culture down—so it can breathe again.”
And all what Mr. Magazine™ can say to that is Amen! Let’s slow the culture down a bit, so we can all breathe again.
Nikki Simpson is on a “one woman’s adventure” to help and support independent magazines worldwide. Nikki sees the future of magazines in those independent titles that are being published worldwide on “a daily basis.”
She founded the International Magazine Center specifically for that purpose. She writes about the Center, “My baby is the International Magazine Center – a membership organization supporting independent publishers and freelancers working in magazines. We focus on teams between 1 and 10 people, most of which are owner-run.”
For the first time since establishing the Center, Nikki is bringing her workshops to the United States on June 12 and 13. Titled “Magazine Are Here For Good,” the conference will take place in Portland, Oregon, and will run workshops on circulation, membership and publishing among other subjects.
I reached out to Nikki via Zoom and asked her about the International Magazine Center, and the Magazines Are Here For Good conference. What follows is my interview with Nikki Simpson, founder of the Internation Magazine Center in Edinburgh, Scotland.
But first, the soundbites:
On her goal with the IMC:“What I wanted to do was support independent publishers, teams of between one and ten in a company, because those were the people who were isolated and not just during the pandemic but all the time.”
On the total number of members in IMC: “We’ve got about 190 members and they’re all over the world. 80% of them I suppose are in the UK for obvious reasons but we’re expanding all the time and picking up new members in America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and we’ve got a couple in Amsterdam.”
On why a conference in the United States: “I’ve been wanting to run an event in America for a while.”
On why Portland, Oregon: “I thought well if everything’s happening in New York then what’s happening on the other side of town? And so Portland seemed like a good place…”
On the role of digital in magazine publishing: “I always feel digital publishing is the add-on, it’s the way that people can access information if they can’t afford to pay for the (magazine).”
On her hopes for the Magazine Are Here For Good conference: “To meet people who are working in publishing basically.”
On what keeps her up at night: “Falling asleep on the couch usually trying desperately to do the hard sudoku and just getting nowhere. I’m getting pretty good at sleeping…”
And now for the lightly edited interview with Nikki Simpson, founder of the International Magazine Center in Edinburgh, Scottland.
Samir Husni: My first question to you, tell me a little bit about this whole one woman’s adventure creating an International Magazine Center.
Nikki Simpson: Yeah, I love the way you put that one woman’s adventure. I suppose that’s exactly what it is really.
I used to work for a magazine publisher years ago and that’s where I fell in love with magazines. Then I went to work for PPA, which is the National Association for Magazine Publishers in the UK, and I was there for about four and a half years. I had a great time but there were elements of it that I found difficult, and I wanted to run my own thing, but didn’t feel that I could. Then I had a kid. He’s nine now, so I had him and when I came back, I just thought I really want to work for myself because if something’s going to drag me away from my son in this moment, my little baby, then it needs to be something that I really love.
But while I’d been at PPA I had this idea to open a physical building dedicated to magazines and that was what the original idea was. We were kind of trying to think about ways to attract people to come and live and work in Scotland and work in magazines obviously. When I left PPA and I had my child, I came back and thought I want to really spend time on that and see what comes of it. It is not a physical building in any way at all apart from this office that I’m sitting in, but what’s come of it is an international membership for magazine publishers. When I first started that, like the first two years, I couldn’t really quite find my niche because I was still talking to all the PPA members I knew in Scotland and nobody was used to communicating by video so it was difficult to run events internationally and then of course the pandemic hit and that’s when everything changed for me.
I realized that what I wanted to do was support independent publishers, teams of between one and ten in a company, because those were the people who were isolated and not just during the pandemic but all the time. I had people coming to me who had been publishing for five, ten years and say, “do you know any other publishers” and I’m like “oh yeah I know a few.” They thought they were the anomaly, they thought they were the one crazy person in town. So, now we’ve got about 190 members and they’re all over the world. 80% of them I suppose are in the UK for obvious reasons but we’re expanding all the time and picking up new members in America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and we’ve got a couple in Amsterdam and it’s just basically where I spend my time is where we tend to be able to pick up members and I love it.
Samir Husni: I see that you are coming to the States and you are doing the first conference or workshop in Portland, Oregon June 12 and 13. Why Portland and why did you decide to start with the States as your first international venture?
Nikki Simpson: That’s a good question. I think specifically Portland because I’ve been having conversations with a friend called Megan, Megan Schertler, I don’t know if you know her, she does a blog called In Real Life Media and she’s a massive print advocate, runs her own consultancy and so on.
Anyway, I’ve been talking to her a lot about events in the US and how most of them were happening in New York. She’d just been involved with a New York event, Mag Culture were running annual events in New York, and I knew of course that being New York there’s going to be hundreds of events going on full stop. The way I approach things in Scotland is I run maybe one event in London a year because everything happens in London in the UK.
So, for me it’s much nicer to run things locally in either Scotland or we run a regular Manchester event as well. I felt the same way about America. I thought well if everything’s happening in New York then what’s happening on the other side of town? And so Portland seemed like a good place, Megan introduced me to somebody who runs a magazine shop there and it looked like there was lots of great independent titles in the area. Then I heard that Broccoli was based in Portland and then one of my members, it turns out, Kitchen Table magazine, they’re in Portland as well. I thought well this is brilliant, all signs lead to Portland.
And then why the US in general? I don’t know, I’ve been wanting to run an event in America for a while. I think, I mean interestingly I’ve been speaking to quite a few people about this and they kind of said why are you coming to America now? This feels like not the best time for it and I kind of feel like well maybe, but if you know if everybody feels that way then maybe I should go against the grain a little bit and go well maybe what people need now is support right and that’s my job is to support independent publishers so why would I, why would I steer clear of that when something bad’s happening you know or something is controversial is happening depending on which way you look at things. I would much rather come and say well, I’m here to help and support you if you want it.
Samir Husni: You say magazines are here for good, I say we are going to have magazines as long as we have human beings.
Nikki Simpson: Yes, I am absolutely 100% on the same page with you on that. One the independent titles specifically are having a bit of a moment now, but I feel like that moment has been building for so long.
When I first started working in magazines, I’ve been working in magazines for about four or five years by that point, and I remember we did this exhibition on magazine publishing, and it was curated by Jeremy Leslie at Mag Culture. It was a fabulous exhibition and it was all these amazing new titles but I mean you could have chosen another 50 different titles, it was just those ones that he happened to choose and so I feel like that was when people really started to go oh okay there’s an alternative to mass media and there’s an alternative to the rhetoric around mass media and print is dying and so on. I just can’t bear that sentence, print is dead, print is dying, I’m like really, really, do you want to meet some of my members?
Samir Husni: My definition of what a magazine is, “if it’s not income paper it’s not a magazine.” We never called television, radio with pictures, we called it television, why can’t we call those digital platforms some name besides magazine?
Nikki Simpson: Another name for it, that’s a good question.
I’ve got a friend who, well one of my members and friend, up until recently she was a digital publisher only and every time she’d come to my conference she’d say to me afterwards Nikki there’s lots of digital publishers out there who are doing great things too and I’m like I’ll think about that. Now she’s just started publishing in print as well and she absolutely loves it and her readers absolutely love it as well. I always feel digital publishing is the add-on, it’s the way that people can access information if they can’t afford to pay for the £30 or $30 in postage. But it’s not the place where people enjoy reading, it’s not the place where people go oh happy days my digital magazine has arrived. It’s just like oh okay well I need to read it, or I should read it or I can read it because I couldn’t afford the print version or whatever but it’s not everybody’s first choice, is it?
Samir Husni: I just picked up the first two issues of a new magazine from the UK, it’s a rap magazine called Rap Central Station, it’s an oversized rap music magazine and in one of their introductions they write, “scrolling ain’t reading. Texting ain’t writing,” which is amazing. So, what are your hopes for this conference in Portland?
Nikki Simpson: To meet people who are working in publishing basically. We’ve got two workshops in the afternoon so I’m running a workshop on how to turn your magazine into a membership and then Joe Berger, a circulation consultant, is running a circulation health check for people. So, people can come along with their magazines and talk about their circulation.
Then we’ve got an evening social event where we’ve got Anja Charbonneau coming from Broccoli magazine and Brett Warnock from Kitchen Table magazine and the whole event is being sponsored by Neesh who are the company that are connecting publishers direct to retailers as opposed to going through a distributor so they’re going to be talking as well and then the following day on Saturday we’ve got a how to launch a magazine workshop for people who aren’t really actually working in magazines at the moment but who want to.
The idea is just to meet new publishers and to help support people. I’ve never been to Portland. In fact, I’ve never been to America so I’m excited to meet new people and to find new ways and approaches of publishing.
Samir Husni: before I ask my typical last questions, is there anything I failed to ask you about the International Magazine Center and about the Magazines Are Here For Good conference?
Nikki Simpson: That’s a big question. As for the Magazines Are Here For Good conference, anybody that’s coming just don’t forget to bring your magazines. For the International Magazine Center, we run a whole series of training courses and events now. I counted it up the other day I’m running 57 events this year albeit three of them are recurring events but 57 events and they’re all tailored for independent publishers. What else can you say? It’s a welcoming community I’m very non-hierarchical a lot of the events that I run are more about peer-to-peer learning.
Our conference is like the people that I invite to come and speak at it are a real range of people so we have people who aren’t even in the market yet, like they’re still students and they’ve maybe you know produced a magazine as a part of their course right through to you know CEOs of major companies, so we try to really cover the spectrum there and I think that’s really important to for people to feel recognized it’s when you have that focus of teams of one and ten people. Huge problems come from that, usually through lack of confidence , so like the majority of my members are teams of one and two people in a team, or you get one person and then they work with three or four freelancers, which means that they’re not sure about whether they’re doing things correctly or where to focus their attention because they’re doing absolutely everything in their business.
You get that kind of moment of inertia when you have too many decisions to make, so it’s difficult for them to move their businesses. That’s something that we help with.
Samir Husni: My two typical last questions are personal questions: If I come to visit Nikki one evening unannounced what do I catch her doing, reading, cooking, taking care of her child?
Nikki Simpson: Now gardening. We’ve got a big garden, and we stuck our garden through Chat GPT and we’re in the middle of building a dry-stone wall and then putting down you know making it split level and all this kind of thing. I do a lot of swimming in my spare time I go to two different swimming classes now a week and I just want to work my way up to be able to do long distance sea swimming. That’s what I’m aiming for or even just a bit of scuba diving that would be nice.
Samir Husni: My final question is what keeps you up at night?
Nikki Simpson: Falling asleep on the couch usually trying desperately to do the hard sudoku and just getting nowhere. I’m getting pretty good at sleeping, what tends to keep me up I often work late so that I can communicate with people over time zones but I think what keeps me awake at night is when I haven’t worked out in my head what the worst case scenario is because once I’ve discovered what the worst case scenario is, I can go okay, and so that will look like what it looks and that’s okay.
But if I haven’t done that yet, I’m going oh my god it needs 300 people to come to my event and how am I going to get them, that kind of a hamster wheel in my head.
Samir Husni: Thank you and good luck on your Magazines Are Here For Good conference June 12 and 13 in Portland, Oregon.
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:
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.”
I gauge my believe in the status of print on the fall and rise of new magazines. Please note that I did not say future of print but rather status. As long as we have humans we are going to have print. End of discussion. And for those who know me and know my writings and analysis know that. “It is only a magazine if it is ink on paper: i.e. print.”
So it should come to no surprise when I tell you I was delighted when the post office delivered to my mailbox the first issue of Hoffman’s Media The Supper Club with Lydia Menzies. The same happened on Christmas Eve when the first issue of the magazine dedicated to the late chef Anthony Bourdain Roads & Kingdom landed in my mailbox.
Those two magazines were but two from a total of 69 new magazines that were launched in 2025, a number that showed an upward move compared with 2024 as the chart below shows.
Of note among the launches are Art Bar, Bonnie Christine’s Pattern magazine, Southlands, Outlander, Permanent Record, The Street, and Heartbeat.
An Editor’s Note: Starting next week, I will start publishing a book-in-a-blog about the status of magazines in general a century ago and one specific magazine that changed the status of Art magazines in the 1920s. So, stay tuned.
“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.
Mr. Magazine 