Mr. Magazine

“I think magazines are different; there’s a different creative concept; a different mix of text and graphics. Something that makes one plus one equal more than two and that’s something that maybe magazines can’t do as fast as electronic media can do, but there are things that magazines can do that aren’t just replicated online. And then there’s the more basic answer; you get better writing.” Jack Kliger

“I think that print has been wildly underestimated. The Internet came along and people imagined that it was a tool to be used for every single thing in their lives. But it’s not a tool for everything in their lives; it’s a tool for some very important things in our lives like news or information, information that we need for our daily lives, but I don’t necessarily know that the Internet is the right medium for deeper reads.” Alana Newhouse

When God gave his people the Ten Commandments they were etched onto stone tablets to read and follow, maybe it was no accident that you could conceivably consider that the original “printed” word.

And in 2009, when Tablet’s editor-in-chief, Alana Newhouse, originated the online entity that has since become a highly successful informational site, she’d had just that thought running through her mind, along with the idea that eventually she would love to expand the online experience into a more tangible and lasting conversation with its audience, and of course, follow God’s lead by doing that through a printed magazine.

Tablet Magazine was born from that idea and the passion that Alana has for its subject matter. And along with veteran media executive, Jack Kliger, who joined Alana as publisher and brought over 35 years of his own expertise to the magazine, they have set out to prove that when you really believe in the product you’re creating and the message being sent to your target audience, the printed word can be a Godsend.

I spoke with both Alana and Jack recently and we talked about what each of them hopes to accomplish with the new magazine. And about the community spirit that lives within its ink on paper pages and how they achieved that goal and many more.

It was an enlightening and inspiring conversation and one I know you will enjoy as much as Mr. Magazine™ did. And so without further hesitation, the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Jack Kliger, Publisher & Alana Newhouse, Editor-In-Chief, Tablet Magazine.

But first, the sound-bites:

On the idea that print suddenly seems to be the new media for everyone (Alana Newhouse): I think that print has been wildly underestimated. The Internet came along and people imagined that it was a tool to be used for every single thing in their lives. But it’s not a tool for everything in their lives; it’s a tool for some very important things in our lives like news or information, information that we need for our daily lives, but I don’t necessarily know that the Internet is the right medium for deeper reads. The example that I’d like to give you is the invention of the phone, or a fork. The fork is a great utensil, but it’s not the only utensil that you need for everything in your life. And it’s the same thing when it comes to the Internet.

On the idea that suddenly print seems to be the new media for everyone (Jack Kliger): Personally, I don’t think people stopped reading magazines. Maybe some people never started in this new generation; maybe some people did start, but to me printed magazines are as bad as the theatre is. I went to the theatre the other day and I said isn’t it amazing that this is a form of performance that William Shakespeare was writing for years ago, but I remember reading articles that said when movies came along and television came along, who would need theatre? I’ve gone to the theatre lately and there are things that happen there, in terms of seeing live performances, and three-dimensional experiences, that aren’t different. And I think magazines are different; there’s a different creative concept; a different mix of text and graphics.

On the Tablet reader (Alana Newhouse): Increasingly for us, paper and the web is the way to go because for Tablet’s audience; we have a very big readership on the web and then we have a smaller audience of, I would say, hardcore Tablet readers, people who are our most engaged, most excited and most committed reader. And for them, they really want to take Tablet more fully into their lives. And the only way for them to really be able to bring Tablet completely into their lives is through print.

On the name Tablet (Alana Newhouse): When we started we tried to think about a name for the magazine and one thing we thought about was what the very first platform was, at least in our tradition, right? The idea behind it was we wanted to imagine a new medium that could send a message that could be lasting.

On the conversational cover of the printed magazine (Alana Newhouse): In terms of the armchair cover; the cover is a little bit of an inside joke for American Jews who were raised in the post-war years, but not only American Jews, also people who were raised around Jews; all of those people are who the magazine is for. Many of us were raised by immigrants or by children of immigrants. One of the funny phenomena of those homes was that they all had this plastic-covered furniture. And the reason why they had plastic-covered furniture was because the furniture was the only thing they had of value, or frequently one of the only things of value. And it was permanent. And they wanted to protect it, so many of us grew up in these homes with those particular chairs and couches.

On whether Alana was surprised that the name Tablet was available (Alana Newhouse): I don’t think we were that surprised; we learned later that there are other Tablets. There are Tablet Hotels and many other things with that name. And of course, the digital device started being called tablet.

On how Jack became publisher of Tablet (Alana Newhouse): The truth is meeting Jack was our real good fortune. I’m sure there’s a biblical metaphor here of why he came onboard. (Everyone laughs). But that was a real stroke of luck for us. I had wanted to do a print magazine, but I could not figure out how to do it. And not only could I not figure out how to do it; I couldn’t find people in New York who thought I was anything other than a lunatic for wanting to do it. I couldn’t even find anyone who believed in it with me. So, Jack and I were introduced and one of the strokes of luck for me was actually having someone who was such a brilliant publisher who looked at me and never said I was crazy, first of all, and believed that there was a value proposition here.

On what made Jack want to be a part of Tablet Magazine (Jack Kliger): First of all, I’ve been fortunate in working with editors who are real visionaries and not functionaries. I mean, I work with functionaries too, but one of the things that obviously impressed me in the beginning with Alana is she had a really clear and strong perspective on what she wanted to create, but she also knew very well who she wanted to create it for.

On how it feels for him to create his first not-for-profit venture (Jack Kliger): It feels great because this is one of the proudest efforts I’ve made, not only for my own personal reasons about wanting to create an informational platform that would help what I call millennial and 21st century American Jews understand their identity better, but it’s also a very talented and enthusiastic group of people led by Alana who are genuinely passionate and committed to what they’re doing.

On how Tablet, the magazine, creates the community spirit that is felt between its pages (Alana Newhouse): The first thing that has to happen is that we have to start by mirroring the community. One of the problems with both certain Jewish organizations and also with certain magazines is that they forget the actual people they’re supposed to be speaking to. So suddenly they determine that this person is a Jew, that person is not a Jew; this person is inside the community, that person is not.

On anything either of them would like to add (Jack Kliger): I would just like to say that the response from people that I have talked to since they started getting the magazine has been just wonderful. They just started getting the magazine in the past couple of weeks. As you know, it’s not easy to find on the newsstands. The fact of the matter is this magazine is going to be built with a core of subscribers that we think will be not only strongly committed and heavily renewing, but will also be part of a community and we think they will use Tablet as a proud bag.

On what motivates him to get out of the bed (Jack Kliger): What gets me up in the morning is finding out how many subscriptions we’ve sold to date. (Laughs) I want to know on a daily basis. Energy comes from engagement. And there are a lot of things that can engage you.

On what keeps him up at night (Jack Kliger): The problem is people all over the world now feel threatened because they don’t know who’s going to do what. Society has some very big challenges. We have people who want to go back to the Wild West. What keeps me up at night is what kind of world my grandchildren are going to live in.

On what keeps Alana up at night (Alana Newhouse): I think that watching how fast the world changes and sharing that it’s incumbent upon me and my staff to try our best to cover it as smartly and as clearly and as non-hysterically as possible, but then also feeling at the end of the day that there’s more to be done. And that’s what keeps me up at night as well. And what happens next.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Jack Kliger, Publisher, & Alana Newhouse, Editor-In-Chief, Tablet Magazine.

Samir Husni: The Columbia Journalism Review recently ran an article talking about print as the new media; what gives? What do you think has happened that suddenly many people are talking about print as the new media?

Jack Kliger: That’s a very good question. Alana, would you like to tackle that first?

Alana Newhouse: Sure. I think that print has been wildly underestimated. The Internet came along and people imagined that it was a tool to be used for every single thing in their lives. But it’s not a tool for everything in their lives; it’s a tool for some very important things in our lives like news or information, information that we need for our daily lives, but I don’t necessarily know that the Internet is the right medium for deeper reads.

In fact, I think the last 10 years have seen print be discarded by many people who assumed that they could get the same benefits that they always got from print, on the web. And I don’t think you can.

The example that I’d like to give you is the invention of the phone, or a fork. The fork is a great utensil, but it’s not the only utensil that you need for everything in your life. And it’s the same thing when it comes to the Internet. The Internet is a very valuable and a very important, and in some cases for many of us, one of the most important tools in our lives, but it’s not the only one.

So, I think that it’s understanding that print has always had a value that just needed to be rediscovered and I think that’s what the articles and the talk mean by that.

Jack Kliger: I would say Alana’s answer is a pretty good delineation. I would also say this, Samir; I’d rather talk about magazines as new media; it’s relatively broad and I can sit here and also talk about newspapers, but more specifically what we consider an art form called magazines. I’m one of those old horses that never thought magazines went away, they just have to morph in terms of a very differently dissected economic pie.

Personally, I don’t think people stopped reading magazines. Maybe some people never started in this new generation; maybe some people did start, but to me printed magazines are as bad as the theatre is. I went to the theatre the other day and I said isn’t it amazing that this is a form of performance that William Shakespeare was writing for years ago, but I remember reading articles that said when movies came along and television came along, who would need theatre? I’ve gone to the theatre lately and there are things that happen there, in terms of seeing live performances, and three-dimensional experiences, that aren’t different.

And I think magazines are different; there’s a different creative concept; a different mix of text and graphics. Something that makes one plus one equal more than two and that’s something that maybe magazines can’t do as fast as electronic media can do, but there are things that magazines can do that aren’t just replicated online. And then there’s the more basic answer; you get better writing. (Laughs)

Samir Husni: (Laughs too). And I agree with you. I’m the one that trademarked the phrase if it’s not ink on paper, it’s not a magazine.

Jack Kliger: Exactly. That’s a great phrase. And mind you, we’re not thinking that digital or a website is a place to jump off of. Tablet started and is still doing very well as a website, but that’s a different thing from the magazine. We just think digital and print is better than digital or print.

Alana Newhouse: I would say that I don’t necessarily disagree with you as much as I definitely believe that we are running a magazine also on the web, because my original definition of a magazine was a publication that had a perspective. And it had a particular personality. And again, I’m not talking about general interest magazines; I’m talking about magazines that offered you a way of looking at the world.

And we try to do that online and I think that we do a very good job of it. I realized that you simply cannot transmit that perspective in the same way if it’s not on paper. And I think that right now Jack is right; increasingly for us, paper and the web is the way to go because for Tablet’s audience; we have a very big readership on the web and then we have a smaller audience of, I would say, hardcore Tablet readers, people who are our most engaged, most excited and most committed reader. And for them, they really want to take Tablet more fully into their lives. And the only way for them to really be able to bring Tablet completely into their lives is through print.

Samir Husni: You mentioned on the web that the experience of tuning the world out and losing yourself between the covers of a magazine is what you pushed you to actually bring the print edition to life. So, you’re talking about the experience; we’re not just about information; we’re experience makers. And the digital experience is completely different from the print experience.

Jack Kliger: I think what you’re saying is very true. Experience maker is a very interesting phrase.

Samir Husni: So tell me about the name Tablet and also about the cover; you have an armchair with text all over it that goes from, God never forgets Zion to ET, phone home. As you wrote in your Letter from the Editor, there’s seems to be a mix of fun, storytelling, along with the seriousness. Tell me about the name Tablet first and then about the DNA of the brand, from the web launch in 2009 to the print component that just came out.

Alana Newhouse: When we started we tried to think about a name for the magazine and one thing we thought about was what the very first platform was, at least in our tradition, right?

Jack Kliger: (Laughs). The first Jewish platform.

Alana Newhouse: In the Jewish story the very first media were the tablets. We came out before the tablets were known as iPads. It was earlier than that. But the idea behind it was we wanted to imagine a new medium that could send a message that could be lasting. And that’s where we came up with the name.

In terms of the armchair cover; the cover is a little bit of an inside joke for American Jews who were raised in the post-war years, but not only American Jews, also people who were raised around Jews; all of those people are who the magazine is for. Many of us were raised by immigrants or by children of immigrants.

One of the funny phenomena of those homes was that they all had this plastic-covered furniture. And the reason why they had plastic-covered furniture was because the furniture was the only thing they had of value, or frequently one of the only things of value. And it was permanent. And they wanted to protect it, so many of us grew up in these homes with those particular chairs and couches.

Jack Kliger: I didn’t know until I was 18 that chairs came without plastic. (Laughs)

Alana Newhouse: Exactly. What we wanted to do was take the chair that was this sort of icon of the homes that we grew up in, and of the American Jewish experience in the post-war decades, and we wanted to use it as the basis for something. But then we also wanted to show what we were putting on it was our own. And we were going to sort of graffiti it with some of the elements of the Jewish inheritance that we feel is now ours to play with and also to save and to be stewards of.

There’s scripture, religion, faith, observance, literature, music and movies; it sort of runs the gamut of what we see as the wider American Jewish inheritance. But the idea was that it was being put on top of this chair as a way of expressing that we know what we’re sitting on. And we know our history and we know the foundation that we are on top of. And we also know that it’s important for us to respect it, and for us to use it as a basis for moving into the future.

Samir Husni: Were you surprised that the name Tablet wasn’t already taken?

Alana Newhouse: I don’t think we were that surprised; we learned later that there are other Tablets. There are Tablet Hotels and many other things with that name. And of course, the digital device started being called tablet.

Jack Kliger: I am surprised that seven years ago when Alana started it, it hadn’t yet been used. Every word in the vocabulary seems to have been used as a name for a magazine at one time or another. It was a pleasant surprise.

Alana Newhouse: Our blog is called The Scroll, and that’s the one I’m really surprised about. (Laughs) Think about it, right? That’s the one that has the great double meaning for now.

Samir Husni: This is one thing that I keep telling anyone who is willing to listen; the law of rejected simplicity. When we think something is so simple that there’s no way it will work, or someone has already done it, but yet everybody who heard that I was interviewing you both; when they heard the name Tablet, they knew exactly what I was talking about.

Jack Kliger: That’s great.

Samir Husni: As you said, it was the original form of communication.

Jack Kliger: The first platform.

Samir Husni: Take me through the journey of bringing Jack in, because Alana you were there from the beginning with the website. Then Jack came onboard to be the publisher.

Alana Newhouse: The truth is meeting Jack was our real good fortune. I’m sure there’s a biblical metaphor here of why he came onboard. (Everyone laughs). But that was a real stroke of luck for us. I had wanted to do a print magazine, but I could not figure out how to do it. And not only could I not figure out how to do it; I couldn’t find people in New York who thought I was anything other than a lunatic for wanting to do it. I couldn’t even find anyone who believed in it with me.

So, Jack and I were introduced and one of the strokes of luck for me was actually having someone who was such a brilliant publisher who looked at me and never said I was crazy, first of all, and believed that there was a value proposition here. And also on top of that to come in and say I’ll help you was a dream.

Jack Kliger: That’s very nice to hear.

Samir Husni: Jack, this isn’t the first time that you’ve worked with lunatics, right? (Laughs)

Jack Kliger: (Laughs too). No, I’ve made a career of working with lunatics. (Laughs)

Alana Newhouse: Thanks so much. (Laughs too)

Jack Kliger: First of all, I’ve been fortunate in working with editors who are real visionaries and not functionaries. I mean, I work with functionaries too, but one of the things that obviously impressed me in the beginning with Alana is she had a really clear and strong perspective on what she wanted to create, but she also knew very well who she wanted to create it for. And she had a seven year record of building an audience that was definable. But what struck me was when she described the reasons for creating a print magazine; it was really about what she felt could be produced in terms of the product, which was different from what was already being produced. But also what she wanted for the reader.

What I added to the mix was most people were advising her that it could be built on both a subscription and ad-driven model and I said it was going to be a predominately consumer-driven revenue product. It was going to have to be good enough to command a reasonable price and it was going to have to be good-looking enough to be something everybody is proud of. But it’ll never be large enough or broad enough to be substantially based on advertising revenue, nor should it be. That was another part of my recommendations for how to look at it.

Samir Husni: Jack, if I’m not mistaken this is your first not-for-profit publishing venture. How does that feel?

Jack Kliger: Yes. Well, it’s the first one that’s intentionally not-for-profit. (Laughs)

Samir Husni: (Laughs too).

Jack Kliger: It feels great because this is one of the proudest efforts I’ve made, not only for my own personal reasons about wanting to create an informational platform that would help what I call millennial and 21st century American Jews understand their identity better, but it’s also a very talented and enthusiastic group of people led by Alana who are genuinely passionate and committed to what they’re doing.

I have to tell you; one of the things that concerns me about the established media business, in particular I see this in magazines, is that many people who are working at magazines are just trying to hold on to their jobs and benefits and make it to retirement. Many times you go into places and you talk about change and people don’t want things to change

Here, it was an adverse change; here, after we went around a couple of times of coming up with what seemed like a reasonable way to execute, it was talking to a staff that you would assume didn’t believe in print because they were all young, digital hotshot kind of people. But it really wasn’t that hard because they believed in journalism and they believed in their audience. And they do know their audience.

I have come a long way in this business and I think frankly even though it’s a not-for-profit, I believe this product will be operationally profitable and I think that’s an important thing to target for in any case. Operationally, it’s a very important thing that we get enough revenue from our consumers to pay for the high quality of the product that we’re going to put out. That’s sometimes a radical notion in American magazine publishing, but it’s a basic notion for us.

Samir Husni: Alana, keeping that notion in mind, as I was reading the magazine and flipping through the pages; I felt that sense of community. From within the pages it felt like I was getting a letter from a friend just updating me on everything, those good old days when people used to write five, six, seven or eight page letters to friends. Tell me about that tribal sense that you talk about and that community sense and how Tablet, the magazine, actually creates that community spirit?

Alana Newhouse: The first thing that has to happen is that we have to start by mirroring the community. One of the problems with both certain Jewish organizations and also with certain magazines is that they forget the actual people they’re supposed to be speaking to. So suddenly they determine that this person is a Jew, that person is not a Jew; this person is inside the community, that person is not.

One of the things that I want to do to start with is to ask who wants to be a part of this community; raise your hand. I’m not asking any questions about who you are just yet. I just want to know who wants in. And if you want in and you’ve bought a subscription because you, for whatever reason, want to be a part of an American Jewish conversation, then the first step is I need to welcome you. And I need to invite you in and ask you to have a seat. Then my real job starts.

At that point, I need to say here’s the conversation. And if you pick up on the metaphor, sort of the cocktail party from my introduction, it’s essentially that. You open your doors, you say whoever wants to come in to my party, come in. I’m going to have a great meal; I’m going to serve you something fun. We’re going to have some nice wine and then we’re going to talk. I’m going to give you great stuff to talk about. I’m going to introduce you to some really interesting people and I’m also going to challenge some things. Maybe we’ll disagree and have some fights. As long as you don’t offend someone else in a way that I find inappropriate, then you’re in. So, let’s talk.

In some sense, my job with the magazine is to show people how interesting and fascinating I find the conversation about Jewish identity, both historically and in contemporary society as well. I want them to see that they can be a part of it. Those are the two legs of my job.

Jack Kliger: One thing that is very important in my mind is that with the American Jewish community in the 21st century is that it’s not a ghetto. It’s a community. And that’s a very important thing. One of the reasons that I’m very interested in that is that my parents were in ghettos and my kid is not. The American Jewish experience in this 21st century deserves a magazine and that’s what we’ve created, a 21st century media. So, I think print is certainly a part of the 21st century media. And we’re going to prove that.

Samir Husni: Is there anything that either of you would like to add?

Jack Kliger: I would just like to say that the response from people that I have talked to since they started getting the magazine has been just wonderful. They just started getting the magazine in the past couple of weeks. As you know, it’s not easy to find on the newsstands.

Samir Husni: And thank you for saving me my $10, although, I did try to find it. I went to every Barnes & Noble. (Laughs)

Jack Kliger: Oh, I know. We’re getting more of that. Who else but a Jewish group would launch a magazine at the time that you have the newsstand distributors blowing up? The fact of the matter is this magazine is going to be built with a core of subscribers that we think will be not only strongly committed and heavily renewing, but will also be part of a community and we think they will use Tablet as a proud bag. So, we think we have achievable, reasonable goals to get to a subscription level that will make us self-sustainable. And then I think you’re going to see a great new product on the American magazine scene, which I think is pretty cool.

Samir Husni: Jack, what motivates you to get out of bed in the mornings?

Jack Kliger: My dog. (Laughs)

Alana Newhouse: And I was basically going to make the same joke and say my one and a half year old. (Everyone laughs).

Jack Kliger: What gets me up in the morning is finding out how many subscriptions we’ve sold to date. (Laughs) I want to know on a daily basis. Energy comes from engagement. And there are a lot of things that can engage you.

Samir Husni: Jack, my typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

Jack Kliger: (Laughs) Frankly, what keeps me up at night is not a business question; it’s trying to figure out the crazy world we live in. What’s funny about this Tablet thing is one of the things that really motivated me was a book I read a year ago that talked about the challenge for Jews is we now live in an open society. We’re members of an open society. For generations we haven’t been, we’ve lived in ghettos and we’ve been threatened. There’s a generation of people now who aren’t threatened on a daily basis, afraid they’re going to be attacked just because of who they are.

The problem is people all over the world now feel threatened because they don’t know who’s going to do what. Society has some very big challenges. We have people who want to go back to the Wild West. What keeps me up at night is what kind of world my grandchildren are going to live in.

Samir Husni: Alana, what keeps you up at night?

Alana Newhouse: Well, what gets me out of bed in the mornings besides my child is the news. The truth is that the same thing that wakes me up puts me to bed. I believe that Jews have an obligation to themselves and also to others to try their best to understand the world and to try their best to understand how to organize the world to bring more safety and more justice and more potential for as many people as possible.

I think that watching how fast the world changes and sharing that it’s incumbent upon me and my staff to try our best to cover it as smartly and as clearly and as non-hysterically as possible, but then also feeling at the end of the day that there’s more to be done. And that’s what keeps me up at night as well. And what happens next.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

“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.