Mr. Magazine

“And how not to burn out at it, if you’re small, just one or two people, how do you keep it fresh? I think that is one of the big challenges with digital media. It reminds me of going to a sushi place, where they have these little rivers and they do their California rolls and put them on floating plates and you sort of grab the little bites as they go by; to me digital media often feels like that. It’s just not sustaining from a reader’s standpoint. And that was a lot of the impetus for wanting to do print, because the relationship between the reader and the words is different. It feels like it sates you and fills you up better.” Steve Casimiro

What do you do when you have 30 years of experience in outdoor magazines and you’ve been creating a successful online publication for six years, but you feel the need to allow that experience to develop in a more tactile and tangible way than the web? Why, you create a magazine of course.

In the spring of 2016, the online publication Adventure Journal will have a print component, Adventure Journal Quarterly. And in the words of founder, publisher and editor, Steve Casimiro, it’s something that was planned from the beginning, even before the first pixel was put into place. Steve added in a newsletter to his web audience that it needs no batteries and no internet connection. It won’t bug you to check your email or ask you to like it. It’s print, baby.

I spoke with Steve recently and we talked about the upcoming magazine that will bring Adventure Journal onto newsstands. Having worked extensively in print for most of his career, from Powder magazine to National Geographic Adventure, Steve knows and believes in the power and celebration of print. And with his business model of pre-selling issues until the actual magazine comes out, he can see the potential success already, having a robust subscription base almost immediately. And as an avid outdoor enthusiast himself, he’s certainly the man to bring adventure to a journal on a quarterly basis.

So, I hope you enjoy this entrepreneurial approach to magazine making from a man who has as much faith in and passion for the printed word as he does for the great outdoors he eloquently creates about. And now the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Steve Casimiro, Founder, Adventure Journal Quarterly.

But first, the sound-bites:

On why he had always intended for Adventure Journal to be in print and not just online: The idea for the magazine, Adventure Journal Quarterly, goes back a couple of decades. Like so many editors, I have a vision of what I want XYZ magazine to look like. I was the editor at Powder magazine and it was my job to bring my vision to that magazine, so terrific, I did that, and I also did it when we launched Bike magazine. My teams have always been passionate about the outdoors and adventure. And it’s something that my whole life has really revolved around since then. And my roots are in print. I started in newspapers, and I’ve been in print one way or another for about 30 years. So, it’s what I know. But the financial barriers to doing print, way back when I was originally thinking about this, were obviously too high.

On whether the future of magazine launching is being digital-only first and then discovering or coming to print later: I think the model is fantastic. This idea of building an audience and proving the concept through your lowest cost barrier; it’s just pragmatic, right? It makes sense. I was looking at print back in 2009; I’ve been looking at it all along. I had done all sorts of business plans before the Internet and during the early days, but the costs were just exorbitant. Even if you were to launch with a website and print at the same time, just trying to build your audience and sell; how were you going to do that?

On that “aha” moment that convinced him he could actually do the magazine: There wasn’t so much just a single “aha” moment because these are ideas that have been evolving for my entire career. I love being outside; I love having adventures; I love doing long, mountain bike rides and long trail runs and going Backcountry skiing; I love it for the pure physicality of it. Just the feeling that you get from these experiences, like Powder Skiing; on a deep powder day that physical sensation, there’s just nothing else like it.

On the biggest challenge or stumbling block that he’s had to face: The biggest challenge by far is getting enough appropriately well-written stories a day to get the traffic, to get the readers, to be able to get enough advertising to make a living. My guess is that most publishers are dealing with that in one form or another. All of the people that I know who are with relatively small shops like mine are struggling with it and the bigger ones are too, because how much is enough? And what’s the right amount and the right stories, especially if you have a relatively narrow focus, such as you’re just covering surfing or mountain biking?

On whether there’s a difference in seeing one’s name in print compared to seeing one’s name credited in digital: Well, anybody can post anything these days, right? What is the value of that? To see your name in a Tweet; well, everybody is a publisher now and everyone is a photographer. By virtue of that, it inevitably diminishes the value. If anybody can do it with one click; what is the value of that? In print though, magazines cost money to make; they cost a lot of money and once they’re done that’s it. It’s finite; it’s never going to be changed. So, that’s a luxury and a leery, right? But there is a specialness built into it.

On whether a high cover price and curated content only available in the printed magazine and not on its website is the only way for print magazines to survive into the future: I think it’s one way. It really depends on your scale. I think before it closed National Geographic Adventure had 675,000 in circulation. So that’s huge. If AJ Quarterly has 20 to 30,000, I think that’s very realistic, based on other similar quarterlies like Surfer’s Journal, which is now a bimonthly. I believe the publishing model for large circulation magazines is just going to be very tricky going forward. I think staying focused and well-connected to the reader and giving and asking the readers to take a stake in it; I think that’s the future of publishing.

On anything else he’d like to add: One thing that I’d like to say is what I keep trying to tell myself basically, and encouraging myself with is, one of the mistakes that I think magazines make and businesses in general is trying to be everything to everybody and chase after every possible dollar and not be willing to say, this is what we are; we’re going to be great for some people and we won’t be the thing for others, and being comfortable with that.

On what motivates him to get out of bed in the mornings: Taking my daughter to school. (Laughs) But seriously, I hate to say this because it really does sound pretentious, but I feel like I have a mission with Adventure Journal. Adventure Journal though to me feels like the most important and the best thing that I’ve ever done.

On what keeps him up at night: Just that there are too many things that I need to do myself around Adventure Journal. Aside from the occasional stabs of anxiety, where I just go, oh my, what have I done? (Laughs) Generally I don’t worry about anything. I have faith. What’s the worst that’s going to happen? The way that I’ve built it, it’s not going to lose life. If I didn’t sell a single copy, I wouldn’t lose money with the first issue. I could not be successful, but I’m not going to lose my shirt with it either. And I do have faith that it’s going to be successful. Already it is, based on two weeks of pre-selling.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ conversation with Steve Casimiro, Founder, Adventure Journal Quarterly.

Samir Husni: You started Adventure Journal online in 2009, but you’ve said that it was always your intention to be in print. Why?

Steve Casimiro: The idea for the magazine, Adventure Journal Quarterly, goes back a couple of decades. Like so many editors, I have a vision of what I want XYZ magazine to look like. I was the editor at Powder magazine and it was my job to bring my vision to that magazine, so terrific, I did that, and I also did it when we launched Bike magazine. My teams have always been passionate about the outdoors and adventure. And it’s something that my whole life has really revolved around since then.

So, I’ve really been a multi-sport, multi-adventure oriented person and so even as I was working at Ski magazine and Bike magazine, I’ve always wanted to share what I found out there and explore what I found out there through a broader outdoor magazine. So, I’ve wanted to do this for a long time. And of course, as a typical editor, I thought I could do it better and I had a different take on it. So, the seeds have always been there.

And my roots are in print. I started in newspapers, and I’ve been in print one way or another for about 30 years. So, it’s what I know. But the financial barriers to doing print, way back when I was originally thinking about this, were obviously too high.

In 2008, the folks that I was working with at National Geographic Adventure asked me to do some blogging, and I was kind of cynical about blogging. My thoughts were, really? But I said OK and then I found out right away that I loved it. I loved the direct interaction with readers. And of course with a magazine, if you really ticked somebody off, you mostly never heard from them. I mean you might sometimes get a few letters to the editor, but before the Internet, you never really heard from anybody. So, that loop back and forth, and I sort of mocked this idea in conversations with readers, but then I realized that was really what was going on there.

But I always felt like, and this was even before the boon in social media and Smartphones; I always felt that there was something radically different about the headspace of reading on a screen. It’s just different. It’s more distracting; I think the nature of electronics on its own changes how you view the words; forget about how your body actually reads something on paper versus an electronic device. I think the fact that somehow it’s kind of alive and dynamic changes how you feel about it.

And I always felt with any story, but especially the more thoughtful pieces, the more profuse and emotional pieces, you want to strip away the distractions and be able to immerse yourself, like when you get lost in a really good book, a page-turner.

And even in 2009, I felt like that experience was better delivered and better expressed in print. And of course, as time has gone on, and we’re all carrying around phones and we’re consuming more media online, I think those words of magnitude have never been truer.

Samir Husni: One of the things that you’ve said is that you used the web; you used online to build both the readership and the advertising. Did that work as well as you expected it to? You’ve now been offering subscriptions to the print edition, Adventure Journal Quarterly, for two weeks and you’re limiting the ads to 12 pages out of 124. Is this the future trend of launching magazines, because we’ve seen others doing it; Tablet magazine came about the same way and just a lot of digital-only entities lately are either discovering print or coming to print; is this the future of magazine launching?

Steve Casimiro: I think the model is fantastic. This idea of building an audience and proving the concept through your lowest cost barrier; it’s just pragmatic, right? It makes sense. I was looking at print back in 2009; I’ve been looking at it all along. I had done all sorts of business plans before the Internet and during the early days, but the costs were just exorbitant. Even if you were to launch with a website and print at the same time, just trying to build your audience and sell; how were you going to do that?

A magazine, especially one that is about exploring a culture or a subculture, really relies on the emotional and conceptual connection with the reader. They have to get it, especially when it’s a culture made up of enthusiasts, which one of the things that’s interesting about Adventure Journal is that in the outdoor space, traditionally you had a pretty hardcore focus.

Enthusiast magazines, like the ones that I was at, Powder and Bike, were truly enthusiast. And then you had more general interest ones like National Geographic Adventure and Outside magazine. The enthusiast folks tend to have a lot of credibility with the hardest core outdoor people and the broader ones, because of the broader audience, tended not to.

And what I tried to do with Adventure Journal and why I think it’s been successful is that we’re able to cover a lot of different topics and a lot of different sports, from environmental stuff to personal experiences and endurance sports like Ultra Running.

And the audience, according to a reader’s survey, is tremendously active and they’re not just armchair adventurers; they’re people who are actually doing it. And the reason is that there’s this curiosity about the world and this open-heartedness about it to see where adventure might take you is at the heart of what Adventure Journal is all about.

So, for any kind of publication that resonates with the reader around something that’s very defiant, that’s something that’s critically important, and digital lets you test that. It lets you test it with just some elbow grease. And when you can have a website up in 10 minutes for about $8; it doesn’t really take that much to test it. In 2009 if someone had handed me one or two million dollars, or whatever it would take to start this magazine from scratch, I would have done it exactly the same way. It reduces your risk and if you do well it builds a reader loyalty and a reader comfort.

You asked me about expectations; it’s been really difficult for me to know what essentially I have with this. On the one hand, Adventure Journal has around 300,000 uniques per month and that’s a lot of people. And the social media reach is around 200,000, so for any given blast that I put out there, that’s a lot of people.

On the other hand, Adventure Journal has never really had any kind of commerce platform; we’ve sold a few prints here and there, but people aren’t used to spending money with it. People are also, despite the rise of crowdfunding, just not used to subscribing to a publication that doesn’t technically exist yet, that hasn’t been produced.

There are a lot of variables there and a lot of uncertainty. I put it out there and I thought are we going to get everybody I know and that’s it? (Laughs) But the response was actually ahead of my expectations. When it actually comes out in late March or early April, I think things should accelerate fairly dramatically, hopefully exponentially, but at this point I’m really excited. There seems to be a tremendous amount of good will in the relationships with Adventure Journal and people are eager to see something like this because the idea is different from anything that’s out there.

Samir Husni: When you came up with the idea for Adventure Journal; at that moment of conception, what was the precise “aha” moment that convinced you it could be done?

Steve Casimiro: There wasn’t so much just a single “aha” moment because these are ideas that have been evolving for my entire career. I love being outside; I love having adventures; I love doing long, mountain bike rides and long trail runs and going Backcountry skiing; I love it for the pure physicality of it. Just the feeling that you get from these experiences, like Powder Skiing; on a deep powder day that physical sensation, there’s just nothing else like it.

But what I’ve tried to do through my whole career is explore the emotional and intellectual angle of that, such as what does it feel like, not just physically, but what does it do to your spirit and your heart and your head as you go through these experiences and you have doubts and fears and you overcome them?

So, these are all of the things that I have wrestled with and shared. And my commitment to wanting to do this has really come through my work with National Geographic Adventure, which is a fantastic magazine that still lives online, but the print version was shut down in 2009. NGA was a terrific book; John Rasmus was the editor and he’s a brilliant guy and has guided a number of magazines, Outside, Men’s Journal and then launching NGA, but it was always by the numbers. And because it was a part of a big organization and was expected to produce, it needed to have a very large circulation and so it relied on traditional ideas about package stories, etc. And it did a lot of great reporting, but I’m more interested in the emotional and intellectual and what these experiences mean.

Part of my excitement about blogging in 2008 and before Adventure Journal became what it is today was having a place where I could test those ideas and see if people really wanted to read that kind of stuff. Do people really want to hear about it?

For example, I wrote this piece about cleaning out my garage. I was doing a year purge and getting rid of things that we no longer needed, stuff that we’d had when my kids were little and I wrote this piece about finding all of these things. I found things we’d bought my daughter when we used to take her surfing when she was very little, maybe three or four years old. And so what are those feelings that come out when you come across things that reflect your life and your children growing up; how do you deal with those feelings?

Most commercial outdoor magazines don’t want those kinds of stories. They’re not interested in that because they’re not easily pleated or they don’t really work as a newsstand blurb or a cover graphic.

In 2009, NGA was struggling and everything was getting bad with the economy and advertising was going away; it was a really tough time. So, you could really see the writing on the wall in 2009. I could see National Geographic pulling the plug on NGA and of course, I asked myself what was I going to do next?

At that point, I was maybe doing one post a day on Adventure Journal and I started thinking that maybe that was the next step. People seemed to like it. I didn’t know how everything was going to work, but I knew the editorial and I was getting resonance and traction from the editorial.

Samir Husni: Since you started the blog in 2009; what has been your biggest challenge or stumbling block and how have you been able to overcome it?

Steve Casimiro: The biggest challenge by far is getting enough appropriately well-written stories a day to get the traffic, to get the readers, to be able to get enough advertising to make a living. My guess is that most publishers are dealing with that in one form or another. All of the people that I know who are with relatively small shops like mine are struggling with it and the bigger ones are too, because how much is enough? And what’s the right amount and the right stories, especially if you have a relatively narrow focus, such as you’re just covering surfing or mountain biking? At what point are you doing so many stories that your editorial has been sliced so thin that it doesn’t have the kind of impact it once did?

If you’re model is based on six or seven stories a day and you cover one sport; at what point do people say, you know what, that’s just not that interesting? So, I think that’s a challenge.

And also how not to burn out at it, if you’re small, just one or two people, how do you keep it fresh? I think that is one of the big challenges with digital media. It reminds me of going to a sushi place, where they have these little rivers and they do their California rolls and put them on floating plates and you sort of grab the little bites as they go by; to me digital media often feels like that. It’s just not sustaining from a reader’s standpoint.

And that was a lot of the impetus for wanting to do print, because the relationship between the reader and the words is different. It feels like it sates you and fills you up better. And what I’ve found is that the really ambitious pieces that I’ve done; the longer pieces; the deeper and more nuanced pieces, they just don’t get the number of readers that they deserve. To be blunt, they don’t pay for themselves financially.

And they also don’t pay for themselves emotionally and creatively, because the people that I’m working with, the writers and the photographers; nobody is getting rich in our world. People are doing this because they’re super passionate about it. They love it and so they’re really invested in the stories that they’re writing and the photograph projects that they’re doing. And they want people to see them and sometimes the more ambitious stuff just doesn’t work online. So, I think that’s a big challenge as well.

You know when The New York Times won the Pulitzer for “Snow Fall,” for a lot of people that was an incentive for them to do something similar, the potential seemed to be there, but when you’re a small publisher trying to do that; man…(Laughs), you’re going to lose your shirt. It just doesn’t make sense financially.

Samir Husni: You’re offering so many incentives with the first issue, including for people who subscribe now, getting their names printed in the first issue of the magazine. Does that ego trip of seeing your name in print differ from seeing your name in digital?

Steve Casimiro: For me personally? Or speaking in general?

Samir Husni: For you as a magazine editor and in general for the general public.

Steve Casimiro: Well, anybody can post anything these days, right? What is the value of that? To see your name in a Tweet; well, everybody is a publisher now and everyone is a photographer. By virtue of that, it inevitably diminishes the value. If anybody can do it with one click; what is the value of that?

In print though, magazines cost money to make; they cost a lot of money and once they’re done that’s it. It’s finite; it’s never going to be changed. So, that’s a luxury and a leery, right? But there is a specialness built into it.

You may have a 5,000-plus run or a million-plus run, but still you’re not going to make any more of those. I think that brings, by its very nature, more value to the process. Nothing is forever, but there’s permanence to that. I think it’s cool to see it. To me, when I see a story in print, whether it has my byline on it or not, I know how much effort goes into that because you get one shot to do it right. You make a mistake and get a typo in a blog post, it’s easy to change. I’m always adding to it, or changing something here and there, just whatever, it’s dynamic and you can do those sorts of things.

But with print, it’s luxurious and impressive by the fact that you have to get it right the first time. And like any publisher I’m sure of the value of the magazine that I’m making. (Laughs)

I think it’s really cool that I can devote a page to and recognize the people who are helping it get off the ground. The outdoor culture is big in some ways and small in many others, especially now through social media. It feels very connected and I have readers who have been commenting about AJ for years and people who have won things from contests keep in touch with us, people who regularly share things on social media. It’s a cliché, but it feels tribal. It feels like we’ve known each other for a long time.

And the people who are subscribing; over and over again I’m seeing names that I recognize from the comments or social media or whatever. The personal connection really warms my heart; it’s a tremendous vote of confidence. And it’s absolutely true that I could not be doing this without them, so to be able to have them in some small way be recognized; I just wish that we could do more. I would like to be able to do every subscriber, but we just don’t have the space for that.

I want to recognize these folks and I want to show my appreciation, our appreciation, for them because it really means a lot. And so far I’ve reached out to every subscriber and sent them an email personally and with a lot of these guys, we end up having conversations back and forth and it really does warm you. It’s not a financial thing; this is really about wanting to share the cool stuff that we find outdoors and exploring what it means to be that person. The page with the readers names; there’s a lot behind it actually.

Samir Husni: You promised the readers in your promotional piece that the stories in the AJQ magazine will only be available in print; they will never appear online. None of the pieces will run on the dot com site. And there won‘t be a Kindle, E-Book or digital version of any kind; it’s print, baby. (Laughs)

Steve Casimiro: (Laughs too). Yes.

Samir Husni: So you’re really committing all that great content and photography and editorial that you’re creating to the magazine. If you want it, you have to buy it on the newsstand; you have to subscribe to it; you have to spend your $15 to get it. Having said that, do you think that high quarterly cover price package or curated content that’s only going to be available in print is the only way for the future of print to survive?

Steve Casimiro: I think it’s one way. It really depends on your scale. I think before it closed National Geographic Adventure had 675,000 in circulation. So that’s huge. If AJ Quarterly has 20 to 30,000, I think that’s very realistic, based on other similar quarterlies like Surfer’s Journal, which is now a bimonthly.

I believe the publishing model for large circulation magazines is just going to be very tricky going forward. I think staying focused and well-connected to the reader and giving and asking the readers to take a stake in it; I think that’s the future of publishing.

I don’t know how familiar you are with Surfer’s Journal?

Samir Husni: I am very familiar with it.

Steve Casimiro: Oh OK, well that’s really the model. I worked with Steve from Surfer’s Journal on several publications before he left to do the Journal and I learned a lot from Steve because he and Debbie both are just so generous with sharing their experience on how things have worked and not worked. Right from the get-go Steve was saying this is reader-supported publishing. And that’s my model and the model for most of these quarterlies.

And I think that is the key difference with large-scale publishing, which is one of the reasons why they’re so vulnerable to swings in the economy and to changes in taste. And the reason is because, as you know being a magazine expert, large circulation magazines are built based on selling huge advertisements and have very high ad rates because they have large circulations. And the magazine is essentially given away and is subsidized by the advertising and you do lose money at the newsstands. And the reader gets a year’s worth of the book for $12 or $15 in a tote bag or little trinkets that come with the subscription. So they don’t have the same kind of investment.

One of the things that I’ve always tried to do, in terms of writing a story or building a magazine, is build it in a way that it is irreplaceable. What difference are you making in your reader’s life? Like if you went away, would they even notice? Or would it be like, oh well, whatever? What are you doing that your competition can’t do? I think about that all of the time. What makes Adventure Journal uniquely Adventure Journal?

And along with that comes, I was about to say responsibility on the part of the reader, but the reader has no responsibility. But of you make something that is really solving a problem for them, or filling a need in their lives, they’re going to feel that connection and be willing to pay for it.

I do want to touch on one thing which is not doing crowdfunding on this. I know a number of people do through Kickstarter. And the reason I didn’t use it is that I really believe you have to give people something that they want and are willing to pay for. And that you really shouldn’t be asking for favors, if that makes sense? Crowdfunding is sort of a favor. Crowdfunding is also so many of these amazing Kickstarter ideas that never seem to come to fruition.

I would much rather have something that I just diddled and handed to somebody, rather than ask them to support me with a donation. I even feel a bit awkward pre-selling subscriptions, but there’s just no way that this model would work if we didn’t do that. I’d rather say here’s the magazine, what do you think? I think it’s better to just do things, rather than talk about what you’re going to do.

Samir Husni: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Steve Casimiro: One thing that I’d like to say is what I keep trying to tell myself basically, and encouraging myself with is, one of the mistakes that I think magazines make and businesses in general is trying to be everything to everybody and chase after every possible dollar and not be willing to say, this is what we are; we’re going to be great for some people and we won’t be the thing for others, and being comfortable with that.

The decision to do print-only rests on that. It’s having the commitment to say, you know what, this is the product that we’re making and this is how it’s designed. It’s designed to be read in print; it’s designed to be consumed in a certain way. And yes, we could get more readers and put it behind a paywall, we could build more synergy, but why? This isn’t about the money, it’s about the experience. So, let’s have the faith that the experience on its own is good enough and luxurious enough and rewarding enough that people aren’t going to feel the need to do anything different like crowdfunding.

Samir Husni: What motivates you to get out of bed in the mornings?

Steve Casimiro: Taking my daughter to school. (Laughs) But seriously, I hate to say this because it really does sound pretentious, but I feel like I have a mission with Adventure Journal.

I have been so incredibly blessed in my career. I discovered skiing and it changed my life and within a couple of years I was working at the best ski magazine in the world and I was editing it. And that is a gift. And I got to start a mountain biking magazine and I got to have a hand in starting a snowboarding magazine and they’re all doing really well still today.

And I got to work with National Geographic and still do some work with those guys. I’ve been working with them since 1998. For a photographer and a writer and an editor, that’s a dream. I’ve been so fortunate.

Adventure Journal though to me feels like the most important and the best thing that I’ve ever done. And even though it’s been around for seven years, I feel like it’s just about to take off and the reason is because I am very, very idealistic about the power and potential for magazines to change people’s lives. They changed my life. And to move people, whether it’s about environmental issues or learning what adventure means to their lives; just whatever it is, magazines have so much power to do that, to communicate with people.

And at the end of the day with my own magazine; I’ve worked without compromising any of my own values. If you work for other people no matter how aligned you are, ultimately you’re going to be compromising your values at some point because you have your own perspective about things. So, AJ has given me the ability to share whatever it is I think is important. And to do stories that I know are not going to get as many viewers online, but they’re important stories. And to make decisions that are not just about commercial reasons. And I think that’s rare outside of small indie publications.

What I’m trying to do with AJ is have it not be a terribly small independent publication, but still take chances like one. And see where that takes us.

Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

Steve Casimiro: Just that there are too many things that I need to do myself around Adventure Journal. Aside from the occasional stabs of anxiety, where I just go, oh my, what have I done? (Laughs) Generally I don’t worry about anything. I have faith. What’s the worst that’s going to happen? The way that I’ve built it, it’s not going to lose life. If I didn’t sell a single copy, I wouldn’t lose money with the first issue. I could not be successful, but I’m not going to lose my shirt with it either. And I do have faith that it’s going to be successful. Already it is, based on two weeks of pre-selling.

The challenge is just trying to keep the direction straight. There are just so many directions you can go, right? Whether it’s a website or a magazine, you can go one way or another or both. There are so many challenges. So, how do you keep it as close as possible to that center line while still be willing to take chances? That doesn’t necessarily keep me up at night, but I think that’s something that I think a lot about, especially with this first issue. How do I balance the pieces that I find most interesting with what I think the readers are going to find interesting? And they’re not necessarily the same things because I’m kind of a nerd about stuff. I like to do really deep dives into things and I don’t mind reading a 15,000 word piece in The New Yorker. I love that. A 15,000 word piece in Adventure Journal is probably not going to work. (Laughs) You have to have a really firm hand on the tiller and not be afraid to say this is how it’s going to be.

But you also always have to be thinking about your ideal reader and what’s going to resonate with them.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

“People want something beautiful in their hands, I see it over and over. And again, the requests we were getting, even before the first issue came out with all the buzz we received, but after the second issue, and no pun intended on the buzz (Laughs), after that issue did come out the requests have been in the thousands every week.” Meridith May

A farm-to-table food magazine with a unique twist; The Clever Root combines everything that grows, including the cannabis plant, to create a singular reading experience that is showcased in a beautifully done print magazine. It focuses on ingredients, chefs, ranchers and growers and brings the farm-to-table movement to life in new ways that both enlighten and entertain.

Meridith May is the captain at the helm of this new endeavor. As both publisher and editorial director, Meridith has a strong and steady hand on the wheel of her new ship as she not only guides The Clever Root, but also her other two vessels, Somm Journal, which summarizes consumer, restaurant, and wine trends and news for wine professionals, and The Tasting Panel, a widely circulated trade publication for the beverage industry.

I spoke with Meridith recently and we talked about The Clever Root and how it brings an industry-insider’s look at food, the trends and tools of the trade, and the different ingredients that are used, and how the magazine takes a “clever” twist to include an intelligent look at the booming cannabis industry.

All in all, The Clever Root is an astute and savvy magazine that is smartly-done and highly informative and entertaining. Just like the woman who guides it.

So, sit back, pour yourself a glass of wine and get ready to embark on a journey back to your “Clever Roots,” the ones that connect you to Mother Earth and all things that grow. And now the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Meridith May, Editorial Director and Publisher, The Clever Root.

But first, the sound-bites:

On the genesis of The Clever Root and the “leaf” aspect of the magazine: It all started when I received a call from the Department of Agriculture and the State Board of Equalization in California. The first thought I had when I got the call from the State Board was: uh-oh, do I owe back taxes? (Laughs) But apparently, they were getting the other magazines that we do, The Somm Journal and the Tasting Panel. And they liked the magazines and they asked me would I ever be interested in producing a magazine about marijuana and the cannabis industry. And this was the government calling. (Laughs) And I said no; I don’t really have any ties to that side of it, but I’m flattered.

On the name The Clever Root: First, we were going to call it Grow and I called my trademark attorney and she said no. Please don’t do that. We thought of Something with a Leaf, no not that either. What I learned was you really have to have a name that no one else has and something clever. OK – The Clever Root. The name was that simple.

On why she felt the magazine needed to be a print publication: That’s a great question. The Tasting Panel keeps growing and growing and after seven years we really feel like it reaches all of the important people in the industry throughout the U.S. And they want that print publication; those requests keep coming in every single day. So I thought, people want something beautiful in their hands, I see it over and over. And again, the requests we were getting, even before the first issue came out with all the buzz we received, but after the second issue, and no pun intended on the buzz (Laughs), after that issue did come out the requests have been in the thousands every week.

On the uniqueness of The Clever Root: Again, it’s not food, it’s everything that grows: fruit, flower, farm and leaf. Whether it’s animal, vegetable or mineral, in the case of salt; it’s really everything that’s consumed and grown and raised and about how it relates to the working, professional chef.

On any stumbling blocks she had to face with the magazine: We really didn’t face any stumbling blocks and yes, the stars were aligned; the right people were in the right place to pull me up and mentor me on the cannabis side, so I would have enough seed money, again no pun intended, to get this off the ground.

On her major source of revenue besides advertising: My major income for all of the magazines is sponsorships and events. There are so many different things that we’re involved in with our clients, which is the wine industry for Somm Journal and the spirits side for The Tasting Panel.

On how she started in the publishing industry: I started in media in 1977 when I began working at KISS FM radio in Los Angeles and I was VP of marketing after a few years in my 20s and I saw that I was quite ambitious, but I loved being in the media. So I stayed in radio for a while; started a little radio show about food and wine; started writing about food and wine for the Santa Barbara News Press and then was hired as editor for Patterson’s Beverage Journal, which was similar to the bible 20 years ago. Eventually, I was contracted to run Patterson’s and later on I bought the name from the owner and killed it and turned it into The Tasting Panel.

On whether everything in the magazine is sampled and taste-tested: On no, it’s not a recipe magazine. Each individual writer who goes out and meets with the chefs; they might taste the food and sip, but I personally don’t. We also have a section called the Clever Marketplace where people send in samples of everything from pickles to coffee to ice cream and that’s sampled by our Clever Pantry editor. Everybody has their own experience and that’s pretty much the same way with our other magazines.

On what she might be doing at any given moment when she’s at home: I’m probably spending time with my dog, my Border collie; either walking her or just being with her. But at home when I’m relaxing; yes, I’m on my iPad, watching some great new Netflix series with my husband.

On what motivates her to get out of bed in the mornings: The stress of the new day; an exciting stress, but again coming to the office, overseeing the three magazines and having a great, wonderful team who are responsible for so much.
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On her favorite magazine out of the three she captains: I think Somm Journal is my pride and joy because it’s 100% mine and Clever Root is also mine, but I do have a partnership with several people, but I’m proud of it, very proud of it.

On what advice she would give to someone who had an idea for a new magazine: I would tell them that they better have some backup money to get it, not only off the ground, but to even know who your audience is. To make sure you continue to get that support, because having a niche publication is one thing, but having a consumer magazine where you’re depending on anything from watches to car money; I mean, good luck.

On whether there are any other magazine ideas in the hopper: No, but if somebody called and really could support it and wanted to do a shoe magazine (Laughs), I could give free samples. No seriously, I’m done. I’m pretty sure I’m done. We also create catalogs for Southern Wine & Spirits, which is a major distributor in the U.S. for California and soon Illinois.

On anything else she’d like to add: No, I just appreciate in advance that you use your magic for magazines, because I do get your emails and I do enjoy reading them and everything that you write about. I hope that you do your magic with The Clever Root and get the word out.

On what keeps her up at night: Worrying about feeding my employees and making payroll, of course. It’s always about being responsible to the people around me and never letting anyone down. That would hurt me the most; letting my team down.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Editorial Director, Publisher, Meridith May, The Clever Root.

Samir Husni: I’ve read a lot about The Clever Root even before it was first published and everyone was billing it as a “farm-to-table” type publication. Yet, when I looked at the cover and I saw the tagline “fruit, flower, farm, leaf,” I knew there was more there than just “farm-to-table.” Tell me a little bit about the name; the combination of the three F’s and the L. What is the genesis of the magazine and the “leaf” aspect of The Clever Root?

Meridith May: It all started when I received a call from the Department of Agriculture and the State Board of Equalization in California. The first thought I had when I got the call from the State Board was: uh-oh, do I owe back taxes? (Laughs) But apparently, they were getting the other magazines that we do, The Somm Journal and the Tasting Panel. I’ve owned the Tasting Panel with Anthony Dias Blue since 2007 and I bought and relaunched The Somm Journal two years ago, which was the Sommelier Journal, and has been rebranded as The Somm Journal.

And they liked the magazines and they asked me would I ever be interested in producing a magazine about marijuana and the cannabis industry. And this was the government calling. (Laughs) And I said no; I don’t really have any ties to that side of it, but I’m flattered.

A couple of weeks later a colleague of mine who had left the wine and spirits industry and went into the cannabis industry as a distributor asked me: hey, have you ever thought of doing a cannabis magazine?

Well, the coincidences were just too much and I put the government together with my friend and I said the magazine would have to be food-focused. We have a wine and spirits publication, the Tasting Panel, which has a broad market, we have a geeky wine trade publication, The Somm Journal; I need to have a trade publication for chefs, and for people who are supplying chefs with ingredients. So, why don’t I have a magazine about everything that grows, including cannabis? And that’s how The Clever Root was born.

I really didn’t have that much on the cannabis side, so using the contacts from the government; we created The Ganjier and the stories about terroir and the selection for cannabis because the government really does want this to pass in California, but we’re a national magazine, so I reached out to the Colorado Cannabis Chamber and I reached out to Washington State and several other regions.

Meanwhile, back to the chefs; Food Arts magazine went out of business, as you know, about a year ago, and there were a couple of other publications for chefs that didn’t quite make it, so I thought there was a need for it, to bring them back into the spotlight. And to tie in everything that grows, unique ingredients, wild Alaskan salmon fishing; stories on salt, pigs, chickens, whatever, everything that grows and how it fits into the restaurant industry.

Samir Husni: How did you come up with the name, The Clever Root?

Meridith May: First, we were going to call it Grow and I called my trademark attorney and she said no. Please don’t do that. We thought of Something with a Leaf, no not that either. What I learned was you really have to have a name that no one else has and something clever. OK – The Clever Root. The name was that simple. My managing editor and I tossed a bunch of names together on the board and we just liked that one.

Samir Husni: I noticed from the magazine that you have an editor and then you have a cannabis editor.

Meridith May: Yes. The cannabis editor is specialized. I was pleased that we had a great team for both sides.

Samir Husni: We live in a digital age certainly; why did you feel that you needed The Clever Root to be a printed magazine?

Meridith May: That’s a great question. The Tasting Panel keeps growing and growing and after seven years we really feel like it reaches all of the important people in the industry throughout the U.S. And they want that print publication; those requests keep coming in every single day. With the Somm Journal we’ve quadrupled our circulation again, through these requests from the most important people in the wine industry; people who wouldn’t even think about subscribing to The Tasting Panel are subscribing to the Somm Journal because they think it’s important and that makes me feel so good.

So I thought, people want something beautiful in their hands, I see it over and over. And again, the requests we were getting, even before the first issue came out with all the buzz we received, but after the second issue, and no pun intended on the buzz (Laughs), after that issue did come out the requests have been in the thousands every week.

Samir Husni: I think in this year alone, this is the fourth cannabis magazine to come out, but I like the unique identity of The Clever Root. There’s MG (Marijuana Grower), also from California, and there’s Marijuana Venture…

Meridith May: Yes, those are business magazines.

Samir Husni: Yes, those are business magazines and that’s what I love about The Clever Root; its uniqueness. You’re more of a food magazine that happens to also delve into the world of cannabis cooking and cannabis in general.

Meridith May: Again, it’s not food, it’s everything that grows: fruit, flower, farm and leaf. Whether it’s animal, vegetable or mineral, in the case of salt; it’s really everything that’s consumed and grown and raised and about how it relates to the working, professional chef.

Samir Husni: So, were the stars aligned perfectly during this endeavor and it was smooth sailing all the way, or were there some stumbling blocks you had to face and overcome?

Meridith May: We really didn’t face any stumbling blocks and yes, the stars were aligned; the right people were in the right place to pull me up and mentor me on the cannabis side, so I would have enough seed money, again no pun intended, to get this off the ground. Now, there’s no more seed money left and it’s my job with my team to raise enough money to keep this magazine alive through advertising because it’s free to the trade, it’s $36 per year for subscription for the non-hospitality trade consumer and we’re getting a lot of the subscription cards back for paid subscriptions as well. The only stumbling block now is making enough money to keep the printer happy.

Samir Husni: Now that you have three magazines under your belt; besides advertising, what is your major revenue source?

Meridith May: My major income for all of the magazines is sponsorships and events. For the Somm Journal we put on Somm camps all over the world, where we bring in Sommeliers; we just brought a group to Champaign; we brought a group to Napa and then on to Washington State. We’re going to be doing Oregon next year and British Columbia. So that brings in money.

We sponsor events such as SommCon, which is a big Somm conference, and also at the Culinary Institute; we work with them on events. We also produce the International Chardonnay Symposium. There are so many different things that we’re involved in with our clients, which is the wine industry for Somm Journal and the spirits side for The Tasting Panel. We put on spirits competitions and we create unique experiences for mixologists and that brings in our extra money.

Samir Husni: You wear both hats of publisher and editorial director; how did you end up in this industry?

Meridith May: I started in media in 1977 when I began working at KISS FM radio in Los Angeles and I was VP of marketing after a few years in my 20s and I saw that I was quite ambitious, but I loved being in the media. So I stayed in radio for a while; started a little radio show about food and wine; started writing about food and wine for the Santa Barbara News Press and then was hired as editor for Patterson’s Beverage Journal, which was similar to the bible 20 years ago. Eventually, I was contracted to run Patterson’s and later on I bought the name from the owner and killed it and turned it into The Tasting Panel.

So I was always writing about things and that was my editor’s side and then when I realized how much fun it was to actually run a business, to bring the money in as publisher; now I kind of oversee the editorial team as well as the entire business. I’m not writing as much anymore.

Samir Husni: I noticed that there wasn’t an introduction letter in the magazine, but rather there was a letter about both the Clever audience that you’re trying to reach…

Meridith May: And a letter from our Managing Editor, Karen Moneymaker and she is the soul behind the magazine. She is my teammate when it comes to making the pages come alive and working with the designer. She helps me assign stories and come up with articles, so I prefer that she be the voice and the face of the magazine at this point. I’m sort of the executive producer.

Samir Husni: (Laughs) I was going to say that you’re the cornerstone.

Meridith May: (Laughs too)

Samir Husni: Do you test everything, all the articles and the recipes?

Meridith May: On no, it’s not a recipe magazine. Each individual writer who goes out and meets with the chefs; they might taste the food and sip, but I personally don’t. We also have a section called the Clever Marketplace where people send in samples of everything from pickles to coffee to ice cream and that’s sampled by our Clever Pantry editor. Everybody has their own experience and that’s pretty much the same way with our other magazines. Whoever is meeting with the winemaker or the master distiller is having that experience in tasting.

Samir Husni: Does that include trying the cannabis samples?

Meridith May: Well, you can’t help but say when in Rome…

Samir Husni: (Laughs)

Meridith May: It’s Humboldt County, you can’t help but sample when you’re sniffing and smelling.

Samir Husni: If I showed up unexpectedly at your house; what would I find you doing? Reading your iPad; reading a magazine; watching television with a glass of wine in your hand?

Meridith May: I’m probably spending time with my dog, my Border collie; either walking her or just being with her. But at home when I’m relaxing; yes, I’m on my iPad, watching some great new Netflix series with my husband.

Samir Husni: What motivates you to get out of bed every morning?

Meridith May: The stress of the new day; an exciting stress, but again coming to the office, overseeing the three magazines and having a great, wonderful team who are responsible for so much. I don’t get to see the little details anymore, which is sad. I guess, just making sure that the engine is running.

Samir Husni: Out of the three magazines, do you have a favorite? Is the baby the favorite now because it’s still in its infancy?

Meridith May: No, I think Somm Journal is my pride and joy because it’s 100% mine and Clever Root is also mine, but I do have a partnership with several people, but I’m proud of it, very proud of it.

But Somm Journal is just gaining ground and growing so fast; I’ve never seen anything like it with Tasting Panel. And I hope Clever Root grows that way, the support is there so I’m going to keep nurturing it.

Samir Husni: And what advice would you give to someone who came to you and said: Meridith, you do three magazines; you’ve been an advocate for print in this digital age; you do a lot of events; I have an idea for a magazine? What would you say to them?

Meridith May: I would tell them that they better have some backup money to get it, not only off the ground, but to even know who your audience is. To make sure you continue to get that support, because having a niche publication is one thing, but having a consumer magazine where you’re depending on anything from watches to car money; I mean, good luck. The competition is fierce out there, so you really need to have somebody in place that can get money for you.

Samir Husni: Are there any other magazine ideas in the hopper?

Meridith May: No, but if somebody called and really could support it and wanted to do a shoe magazine (Laughs), I could give free samples. No seriously, I’m done. I’m pretty sure I’m done. We also create catalogs for Southern Wine & Spirits, which is a major distributor in the U.S. for California and soon Illinois. So, these catalogs are my coffee table books. That’s really our other company is the custom publishing.

Samir Husni: Is there anything else that you’d like to add?

Meridith May: No, I just appreciate in advance that you use your magic for magazines, because I do get your emails and I do enjoy reading them and everything that you write about. I hope that you do your magic with The Clever Root and get the word out.

Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

Meridith May: Worrying about feeding my employees and making payroll, of course. It’s always about being responsible to the people around me and never letting anyone down. That would hurt me the most; letting my team down.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

“Print is never going to go away. We already have a very, very healthy newsstand base and subscriber base. We’re over delivering on our audience, our advertisers, and we’ve broken into the Top 10 bestselling magazines on American newsstands. So, it’s clear that there’s a strong desire to see Dr. Oz’s brand represented in print. And that people like the version that we’re doing right now.” Jill Herzig

Wellness, recipes, fitness and beauty; Dr. Oz The Good Life is a magazine that was and is inspired by Dr. Mehmet Oz, the cardiothoracic surgeon, author and television personality who really needs no introduction anywhere in the country. He is a dynamic and charismatic individual who has become a mainstay favorite among audiences everywhere and in every medium, from television to magazines, by genuinely living and promoting his take on wellness and good health.

Jill Herzig is editor-in-chief of the magazine and brings her own style of zest and energy to the brand, complementing the living, breathing magazine progeny perfectly. Former editor-in-chief of Redbook since 2010, Jill joined Dr. Oz on his quest for nationwide good health and wellness in 2014, and hasn’t regretted it for a moment as she feels connected to his mission as she has no other throughout her magazine media career.

I spoke with Jill recently and we talked about her kindred spirit with the Oz’s, both Dr. and Mrs. and we discussed the future of the brand and the seemingly meant-to-be presence of the magazine among Dr. Oz’s many brand extensions.

It was an entertaining and informative conversation with a woman who truly believes in her brand’s calling and feels a passionate commission to further the cause.

So, I hope that you enjoy this meaningful look at a brand and a magazine that offers a wellness lifestyle experience that Mr. Magazine™ finds unique and extremely relevant to our health-conscious world of today. And now the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Jill Herzig, Editor-In-Chief, Dr. Oz The Good Life.

But first, the sound-bites:

On the difference between editing a magazine with a celebrity affiliation versus one that doesn’t have that attachment: The day-to-day is not terribly different, but Dr. Oz isn’t an ordinary celebrity. He’s a cardiothoracic surgeon and he’s been doing that for decades, long before anyone knew his name. He’s a mission-driven guy and it seems as though he works 24 hours a day trying to educate the public about their health and that’s what inspires all parts of this brand.

On the fact that the magazine cover at Dr. Oz The Good Life is not something she has to ponder over: Well, I guess that is another obvious difference; I do know who is going to be on my cover every issue. (Laughs) But he’s not alone in December’s issue; we have him on with another celebrity, Giada de Laurentiis and we’ll be doing that again going forward.

On what her first reaction was when she was offered the job of editor-in-chief of Dr. Oz The Good Life: I have to say, it was an instinctual yes for me. I knew basically the second the words came out of David Carey’s mouth; I knew that I wanted to take this job, which doesn’t do much for one’s negotiating powers. (Laughs) No, I was really excited and I loved the idea of the launch and I loved the idea of working with Dr. Oz.

On her relationship with Dr. Oz and his wife, Lisa: Well, the relationship is a very easy one. In fact, it’s possible that the single easiest thing about this job is handling my relationship with the Oz’s. Lisa Oz is a great conduit to Dr. Oz and their family life, which is very important to him and to her as well. She’s a fantastic cook and very knowledgeable in her own right. And I just really like her as a person. We get along fantastically well.

On a major stumbling block that she’s had to face: I can’t say that there has been a major stumbling block, other than simply having come onboard at the launch phase and putting together a staff from hardly anyone. I’m sure that our publisher Kristine Welker would tell you the same thing. It can be difficult to take over a legacy brand like Redbook, but you come in and the groundwork has already been laid, there’s a rich, deep history. When I came in here it was a pack of fabulous freelancers and some were arriving, some were leaving; it was a very tiny team and a high-pressure moment. But I wouldn’t call it a stumbling block. It was a big challenge.

On whether she feels a higher responsibility to the brand since there is a living, breathing progeny: Oh, yes. I feel that responsibility and I think about it all the time. I’ve joked to Kristine that there’s no Dr. Marie Claire or no Dr. Harper’s Bazaar, but there is a Dr. Mehmet Oz. And he has dedicated his life to improving public health. It’s of the utmost importance to me that we protect his reputation, that we live up to his standards and that our reporting is deep and always quadruple-checked.

On how she plans the magazine issue to issue: Honestly, the problem is that my mind is so crowded with ideas and my team brings a whole bucketful to every meeting. It’s about figuring out what’s the latest thing, yet it has to be based on completely solid science, and winding it down to the perfect match. The ideas come from everywhere. They come from all of our real lives and many of them come from Dr. Oz himself. Many of them come from Lisa and her experiences with her life. Even her mother-in-law, who apparently is a wizard at home remedies. We’re doing a piece right now on favorite family home remedies that are used in the Oz household all of the time.

On what’s next for the magazine and the brand as a whole and print’s place in that equation: Digital and social have been growing at a really fast pace and we’re only two months into them. The numbers are still small, but the rate of growth is very impressive. I know that’s going to continue and will be more and more important to Dr. Oz The Good Life. The print is never going to go away. We already have a very, very healthy newsstand base and subscriber base. We’re over delivering on our audience, our advertisers, and we’ve broken into the Top 10 bestselling magazines on American newsstands. So, it’s clear that there’s a strong desire to see Dr. Oz’s brand represented in print. And that people like the version that we’re doing right now.

On what it is about Dr. Oz that makes him so successful for magazine covers: I think that you can go back to his early appearances on The Oprah Show because that’s where it all began for him. He was uniquely able to explain to people how their bodies work. It’s a very rare doctor who has that communication skill. Sure, he’s charismatic and dynamic, but he’s an unbelievably gifted communicator and I think that’s really what differentiates him and makes him a star.

On whether she thinks specialty magazines are the future of print or there’s still room for mass appeal titles like Dr. Oz The Good Life: I believe there’s lots of room for different kinds of print magazines, but certainly this concept brand of a healthy lifestyle has really hit home with the audience. They’ve been waiting for this and they love it.

On anything else she’d like to add: I’m just feeling very optimistic when I look at our numbers and when I read the emails we get from the audience. They are so excited about this magazine. They are so smart and so engaged; I’ve really never worked for readers who display this level of intelligence and know-how. We have a whole page devoted to their smart ideas. I have the utmost respect for our audience and I’m so excited that they’re engaging on the level that they are.

On what keeps her up at night: This is a personal thing, but I barely slept last night because Cindi Leive (editor-in-chief, Glamour) and I still go running just about every week and I was meeting her at 5:40 in the morning. (Laughs) Sometimes meeting Cindi for a jog will keep me up part of the night. And it certainly gets me out of bed in the mornings.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Jill Herzig, Editor-In-Chief, Dr. Oz The Good Life.

Samir Husni: What’s the difference between editing a magazine like Redbook and editing a magazine that has a celebrity’s name in the title, such as Dr. Oz The Good Life? Is your job now the same as it was at Redbook?

Jill Herzig: Yes, it’s very much the same job. The day-to-day is not terribly different, but Dr. Oz isn’t an ordinary celebrity. He’s a cardiothoracic surgeon and he’s been doing that for decades, long before anyone knew his name. He’s a mission-driven guy and it seems as though he works 24 hours a day trying to educate the public about their health and that’s what inspires all parts of this brand. And it’s certainly what inspires the magazine.

Sure, the magazine that I worked at before had many reasons for being and it had a great and vibrant relationship with its readers, but the mission feels quite different. It’s personified by Dr. Oz, but now the whole staff has really absorbed the mission; we’re all dedicated to this concept that we’re creating a fun magazine, an inviting magazine, but above all, a life-saving magazine potentially.

Samir Husni: With Redbook, you had the hard job of selecting the cover subject every issue. But with Dr. Oz The Good Life, that’s pretty much done for you.

Jill Herzig: Well, I guess that is another obvious difference; I do know who is going to be on my cover every issue. (Laughs) But he’s not alone in December’s issue; we have him on with another celebrity, Giada de Laurentiis and we’ll be doing that again going forward, so you won’t always see Dr. Oz all by himself. But he’s a no-brainer for us as a cover star.

Samir Husni: Do you miss writing your “Letter from the Editor?”

Jill Herzig: A little; I do. But I think probably as our digital side grows, and it’s growing very quickly, there will be more opportunities for me to reach out and have a more direct contact with the reader.

Samir Husni: When you were first offered this job; can you recall the emotional reaction that you had? Did you take time and think it over or did you immediately say yes? What was your reaction?

Jill Herzig: I have to say, it was an instinctual yes for me. I knew basically the second the words came out of David Carey’s mouth; I knew that I wanted to take this job, which doesn’t do much for one’s negotiating powers. (Laughs) No, I was really excited and I loved the idea of the launch and I loved the idea of working with Dr. Oz. I immediately had thoughts about what we could do with the magazine. I was just totally onboard.

Samir Husni: Can you describe the relationship that you have with Dr. Oz and his wife?

Jill Herzig: Well, the relationship is a very easy one. In fact, it’s possible that the single easiest thing about this job is handling my relationship with the Oz’s. Lisa Oz is a great conduit to Dr. Oz and their family life, which is very important to him and to her as well. She’s a fantastic cook and very knowledgeable in her own right. And I just really like her as a person. We get along fantastically well.

And Dr. Oz, you’ve already heard me say, is a super-inspiring guy. You definitely feel his dedication and his intensity every minute that you’re with him. He pushes himself incredibly hard, but I will say that he pushes other people solely by inspiring them. You just want to live up to his example.

Both of them are such appreciative people. They really love the magazine and they work very hard when we need them to. And yet, they’re happy to give us independence so that we can do what we know how to do. So, I really can’t say enough about them for how joyful this collaboration has been.

Samir Husni: What has been the major stumbling block for you since becoming editor-in-chief of the magazine?

Jill Herzig: I can’t say that there has been a major stumbling block, other than simply having come onboard at the launch phase and putting together a staff from hardly anyone. I’m sure that our publisher Kristine Welker would tell you the same thing. It can be difficult to take over a legacy brand like Redbook, but you come in and the groundwork has already been laid, there’s a rich, deep history. You can push away from that history or you can incorporate it; you have a lot of different choices. The history is there like a foundation. And at Redbook, there was also a staff when I came in.

When I came in here it was a pack of fabulous freelancers and some were arriving, some were leaving; it was a very tiny team and a high-pressure moment. But I wouldn’t call it a stumbling block. It was a big challenge. It made for a less restful than usual summer. (Laughs) But we got through it and I love the team now. I love the group that we have. They’re different from any team I’ve ever worked with. They are people who are called to this magazine.

Samir Husni: Kristine told me that she had sold over 60 pages of ads for the first issue without even knowing the name of the magazine; just because it was a Dr. Oz magazine. Do you feel that responsibility? That you’re not only handling an ink on paper and pixels on a screen brand, but an actual living, breathing brand?

Jill Herzig: Oh, yes. I feel that responsibility and I think about it all the time. I’ve joked to Kristine that there’s no Dr. Marie Claire or no Dr. Harper’s Bazaar, but there is a Dr. Mehmet Oz. And he has dedicated his life to improving public health. It’s of the utmost importance to me that we protect his reputation, that we live up to his standards and that our reporting is deep and always quadruple-checked. And that we further his goals.

Samir Husni: I asked the editor of Rachael Ray Everyday what her biggest fear was and she said that she always wants Rachael to look both ways before she crosses the street. (Laughs)

Jill Herzig: (Laughs too). That’s funny.

Samir Husni: (Laughs again) Do you have similar feelings?

Jill Herzig: I’m very happy that our figurehead is possibly the healthiest human on the planet. It gives me some peace of mind every time I get together with him to see how fit and healthy he is.

Samir Husni: How often do your meetings with Dr. Oz take place? How often is Dr. Oz at the Hearst Tower and involved in those meetings?

Jill Herzig: He drops by really frequently. And I would say that sometimes I see him three times a week and then sometimes I’ll go a couple of weeks without seeing him, but hardly a day goes by that we don’t email.

Samir Husni: If I wanted to go inside your mind as a magazine maker; how do you plan the magazine issue to issue and how do you select what topics you’re going to cover this month or next month or the month after?

Jill Herzig: Honestly, the problem is that my mind is so crowded with ideas and my team brings a whole bucketful to every meeting. It’s about figuring out what’s the latest thing, yet it has to be based on completely solid science, and winding it down to the perfect match.

The ideas come from everywhere. They come from all of our real lives and many of them come from Dr. Oz himself. Many of them come from Lisa and her experiences with her life. Even her mother-in-law, who apparently is a wizard at home remedies. We’re doing a piece right now on favorite family home remedies that are used in the Oz household all of the time.

When I first took over the job I have to say that I had a wicked case of insomnia because I could not go to sleep for all of the ideas that were milling about in my head. I kept a little booklet next to my bed and I’d wake up and turn on the light or just pick up my phone and use that light so I wouldn’t wake up my husband, and I’d scribble something in the booklet. And then I’d go back to sleep and something else would pop into my head. Initially, I’d actually pick up the notebook at a certain point and put it downstairs in my bag in order to go to sleep, because I was just filled with ideas all of the time.

And now we’re in a flow. We have our columns pretty set and we have our features and the pasting of the book is pretty set, so it’s a little more orderly. And I do sleep a whole lot better.

But we’re constantly changing it as well. I’m really over the concept of doing a redesign every few years. As every issue evolves there are changes. We drop columns, we don’t worry about dropping those columns; we add columns and we don’t worry if we only keep them for a short while. We just go with it a little more loosely than I have before. And I think part of that comes from having grown this baby from a launch and knowing it from the beginning and that energy is so exciting that you don’t want to lose it. And we’re still doing that.

Samir Husni: As you continue to do that and evolve the magazine; I’ve heard some reports that Dr. Oz is also a firm believer in print and that print is part of the equation of his brand. So, as you move forward and add to the digital and grow your pixels on the screen; what role do you think that print will continue to play in this brand? He’s on TV; he’s everywhere, even in competitor’s magazines, he’s on the covers. What’s next for the magazine and for the brand as a whole?

Jill Herzig: Digital and social have been growing at a really fast pace and we’re only two months into them. The numbers are still small, but the rate of growth is very impressive. I know that’s going to continue and will be more and more important to Dr. Oz The Good Life.

The print is never going to go away. We already have a very, very healthy newsstand base and subscriber base. We’re over delivering on our audience, our advertisers, and we’ve broken into the Top 10 bestselling magazines on American newsstands. So, it’s clear that there’s a strong desire to see Dr. Oz’s brand represented in print. And that people like the version that we’re doing right now.

I do think that our creative content, a healthy lifestyle magazine, really lends itself to print. And because of that our print edition has a robust, nice, long lifespan to it. This is really important information and we make it luscious and beautiful and we make it fun and acceptable and we make it very, very clear. But we’re also presenting information that is not uncomplicated. It’s important stuff that people need to understand. And in certain cases, it has life-saving implications for our readers.

We’re giving them information that they’re going to take time to absorb and they do take time to absorb it. They’re going to want to keep these issues around because they know that it could help them or a loved one at some point down the road. They’re going to want to make these recipes for years to come. When you’re talking about a healthy lifestyle magazine it’s really meaningful for people to have this information. We’re not talking about celebrities; we’re not talking about fashion and beauty trends, those are delightful when they arrive in your mailbox or you pick them up at the newsstand, but they have a built-in expiration date, so you’re going to recycle that magazine when those trends have faded or that celebrity has been forgotten for a moment. Our magazine is a keeper.

Samir Husni: I have struggled for a comparison to the magazine’s namesake and all I can come up with is something one of my professors once said: if you put Robert Redford on the cover of any women’s magazine, it will sell. Today it’s Dr. Oz. What do you think made him the celebrity he is on magazine covers? Why does he sell so well?

Jill Herzig: I think that you can go back to his early appearances on The Oprah Show because that’s where it all began for him. He was uniquely able to explain to people how their bodies work. It’s a very rare doctor who has that communication skill. Sure, he’s charismatic and dynamic, but he’s an unbelievably gifted communicator and I think that’s really what differentiates him and makes him a star.

When he did the initial Oprah shows, he actually did an autopsy, harvested organs and put them in a cooler, got on a plane, flew to the Oprah show and used actual human organs to explain to that audience and to millions of viewers how their bodies work and why it was so important to keep those inner workings healthy. And the viewers went crazy for that. No one had ever taken the time or chosen that very visual way to communicate with them about their bodies. And he’s still doing that in the magazine. We’re still doing that.

Samir Husni: As an editor who’s very well-versed with the industry as a whole; do you see that degree of specialization (wellness and food in a magazine), do you think this is our future in print? Or do you think there’s still room for a mass appeal magazine, such as The Good Life, which is not a specialty, tiny magazine?

Jill Herzig: The wellness and healthy lifestyle area has been very niche for a long time. But I think what we’re bringing to the table has really grown up in the category. And we’re doing something very different with it.

And I believe there’s lots of room for different kinds of print magazines, but certainly this concept brand of a healthy lifestyle has really hit home with the audience. They’ve been waiting for this and they love it.

I’ve never seen a time when people are more concerned with health and wellness than they are right now. It is top of mind for every age category, every demographic, every socio-economic group. And I’m so grateful that shift has happened because in our country we’re seeing some serious health issues. Diabetes is raging out of control; obesity is a huge problem and we haven’t managed to make an appreciative dent in it, the average American woman now weighs what the average American man weighed in 1960. So, we’ve got issues. And I’m really happy to see such broad interest in health and wellness.

Samir Husni: Is there anything else that you’d like to add?

Jill Herzig: I’m just feeling very optimistic when I look at our numbers and when I read the emails we get from the audience. They are so excited about this magazine. They are so smart and so engaged; I’ve really never worked for readers who display this level of intelligence and know-how. We have a whole page devoted to their smart ideas. I have the utmost respect for our audience and I’m so excited that they’re engaging on the level that they are.

In our most recent reader feedback survey, the scores were off the chart for this magazine, but the top-rated piece of content in the entire magazine was a six-page report that we did on inflammation in the body. It is not an uncomplicated topic. We made it as clear as we could; we reported the heck out of it. But this is a topic that readers really had to pull up a chair and sharpen a pencil and concentrate on it to understand. And 75% of them said that it was extremely interesting to them.

So, the notion that people don’t have the attention span and don’t have the intelligence and can’t stick with a long piece in print; I am not seeing that. I’m seeing readers who are thrilled to get deep interest, as long as we’re bringing them vital information about their health. So, we’re doing that in our magazine.

Samir Husni: That’s one thing that I told Ellen Levine; if we’re just content providers, then we would have been dead a long time ago. We’re experience makers. Today, if a magazine is not an experience, it’s going to be in trouble. And that’s why today you’re seeing a higher level when it comes to the attention span of the average American adult, which is now eight seconds, according to the latest research, one second more than a goldfish. (Laughs)

Jill Herzig: (Laughs too) I have to say that our readers do not have that ADD.

Samir Husni: That’s because you are creating a very good experience for them.

Jill Herzig: Well, thank you.

Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

Jill Herzig: This is a personal thing, but I barely slept last night because Cindi Leive (editor-in-chief, Glamour) and I still go running just about every week and I was meeting her at 5:40 in the morning. (Laughs) Sometimes meeting Cindi for a jog will keep me up part of the night. And it certainly gets me out of bed in the mornings.

Samir Husni: Thank you.