Mr. Magazine

If you would have told Andrea Barbalich, editorial director of The Week Junior, when the magazine was launched in 2020, that the magazine will become the fastest growing magazine in the United States, she probably would have responded, “you are out of your mind.”

Launched on the outset of a pandemic that shut down the country and most of the world, followed by social unrest, worldwide demonstrations, two very contentious general elections, a war in Ukraine, and a war in the Middle East, most observers will have given the magazine no chance of surviving.  Under normal circumstances the average survival rate for new magazines is less than 20% after four years of publishing.

What are the odds of swimming against the trends, celebrating five years of publishing, and being named the fastest growing magazine in the United States.  Notice how I did not say fastest growing children’s magazine, I said, fastest growing magazine followed by The Atlantic and New York magazines in the second and third places respectively.

So, what is the secret for the success of The Week Junior and why is it one of two newsweeklies (the other being The Week) still published weekly year-round?  To answer this question and others about the secret sauce used to make The Week Junior successful, I reached out to Andrea Barbalich, the editorial director of The Week Junior, looking for answers.

The enthusiast and passionate editorial director answered my questions and more cheerfully.  Without any further ado, here is the lightly edited conversation with Andrea Barbalich, editorial director of The Week Junior magazine. 

But first the soundbites:

On The Week Junior’s success: “The quality is outstanding in terms of the editorial and the visuals and its appeal to children and the trust it’s generated among adults.”

On what makes the magazine special: “To have a news magazine coming into the home every week that is timely and topical and based on the news that happened that week, engaging and age-appropriate and fun, is something special.”

On the children as her audience: “So they’re really a dream audience and they really respond to the fact that it’s print.”

On the content of the magazine: “The most important thing of all is that we create something that’s interesting and it’s exciting to read.”

More on the content of the magazine: “The kids want to read it and there’s a really special editorial mix and really magical quality to this magazine that kids respond to.”

On the importance of the trust factor: “We’ve worked very hard over the years to build that trust with parents and show them that we can be a non-partisan, unbiased resource for their kids that helps break stories down into a format that children can understand and that helps them form their own opinion about it.”

On why they survived as a new weekly where others didn’t: “It’s because of the way we present the news and the fact that our business model is based on subscriptions.”

On why the magazine resonates with its audience: “The Week Junior is created in such a careful, thoughtful, exciting, and fun way that really is engaging.”

On being the number one fastest growing magazine in the U.S.A.: “The number two and number three magazines in terms of growth are The Atlantic and New York. So we’re delighted to be in such excellent company.”

On the usage of AI: “We have not used AI very much at all. We don’t use it at all in our editing or our writing or even our research. It’s all done by the talented staff that we have.”

On the creation of the weekly magazine: “It’s created by human beings who really care to create the best quality product that they can every single week. And it’s read by an audience of children who really care. So it’s an absolutely wonderful proposition.”

On being a community: “Because in addition to publishing a magazine, we really see ourselves as building a community. We’ve built something very powerful with this brand that I hope will continue to evolve.

On children spending more time on the screen and less on magazines: “Maybe we’ve proven that theory wrong. Children who read this magazine really do feel that they’re part of a community of like-minded children. We went into this launch believing in the power of Generation Alpha and believing that this was a really incredible generation of kids who care about the world and are curious and knowledgeable and want to make a difference and want to have their voices heard.

On her hope for the future: “It’s vital for children to have this sense of hope and strength and I hope the Week Junior can continue to help with that.”

And now for the lightly edited conversation with Andrea Barbalich, editorial director of The Week Junior magazine. 

Samir Husni: Congratulations on surviving five years. Less than 20 percent of new magazines survive four years, let alone five. Tell me, what’s your secret?

Andrea Barbalich: Well, first I’d like to say thank you for inviting me to talk to you.

I looked back on our interview from four years ago and remembered that great conversation that we had. So you’re checking in with us really at an exciting moment for The Week Junior.  As you said, we just passed our fifth anniversary. We’re also currently the fastest growing magazine in America.

We have a devoted readership of amazing children across the country who absolutely love this magazine. We’ve launched some very successful brand franchises and had some amazing PR successes since we last spoke. I think we’ve really changed the whole concept of creating news for children in this country.

So we’re really thrilled with where we are. As to our secret, I think there are so many reasons why this magazine is resonating. One is that the quality is outstanding in terms of the editorial and the visuals and its appeal to children and the trust it’s generated among adults.

In our business model, the core product really comes first always above everything else. It’s a business model primarily based on subscriptions. We charge a decent price and the purchasers repeatedly tell us in surveys that we’ve conducted, that they feel it’s a fair price and a good value.

So the magazine has to deliver on this value proposition every single week and it does. Our renewal rates are very high and our mailbox is overflowing with letters from kids and parents telling us how much they love it. Another factor is the magazine is doing something no one has ever done in the United States and parents and children have recognized how positive that is not only for the children reading it but for the whole family.

To have a news magazine coming into the home every week that is timely and topical and based on the news that happened that week, engaging and age-appropriate and fun, is something special. Children are truly engaged in reading it and what parent doesn’t want that? They don’t just read it, they love reading it, they can’t wait to read it. Then it sparks conversations around the dinner table and in the car and so it’s a benefit for the whole family.

My team is so brilliant and they make my job a joy. But also to have the opportunity of a lifetime to speak to this incredible generation of children every week.

Also to have the opportunity of a lifetime to speak to this incredible generation of children every week. They love The Week Junior, it helps them feel informed and confident and happy. It’s incredibly rewarding work for me and they are such amazing people and they give me hope for the future.

Samir Husni: So when people tell you that the screen agers, i.e. the children, spend  eight or nine hours on an average on a screen while they spend few minutes on a magazine. Why are you the exception?

Andrea Barbalich: Before we launched the magazine (in 2020) we were told exactly what you just said, that children are not interested in the news for one thing and also that children only care about screens and they don’t want to read on paper.  We believe that that was wrong and it turned out that we were right. When we launched this magazine, if you think back to that time and our launch date was in March 17, 2020, precisely when the world was shutting down from the pandemic, children’s entire world was on a screen.

They were going to school on a screen, they were meeting with their friends and their family on a screen and so the magazine came in as a nice alternative to that and that’s still the case. There is really something special about having a product that you can hold in your hand that comes into the home, it has the child’s name on it, it feels special, it feels like a gift, it’s not homework.

Kids read it, they take it into their treehouse, they read it upside down on the monkey bars, they read it to their pet chicken and their baby brother and they take it on vacation. They have their favorite covers and they save their copies and refer back to them. So they’re really a dream audience and they really respond to the fact that it’s print.

We do have a subscription option where people can purchase both a print and a digital edition as a bundle and some people do take advantage of that, mainly the digital subscription is read by someone outside the home, such as a grandparent who wants to read along with the child, but overwhelmingly the subscriptions are print and I think that the medium is important for the reasons I just cited, that the children love having it. I also think that the most important thing of all is that we create something that’s interesting and it’s exciting to read.  The kids want to read it and there’s a really special editorial mix and really magical quality to this magazine that kids respond to.

Samir Husni: You launched back in March of 2020, the world shut down that month, so my question to you, after that major obstacle, has your journey been a walk in a rose garden in those five years or you had other major obstacles and how did you overcome them?

Andrea Barbalich: Well, as you said, there really were some obstacles in the beginning.

We couldn’t have some of the in-person events that we wanted and we had to completely rethink our school strategy because school wasn’t taking place. But as of the year after that, kids were back in school and we could resume some of those plans. Producing a news magazine every week is its own challenge.

It’s a demanding schedule and a demanding pace and the news itself poses a challenge every week. The news environment itself is both a great challenge as well as a great opportunity. It’s very challenging for all of us right now, including adults, and it has been that way since our launch in 2020.

So much of the news is worrisome, frightening, it changes at a rapid pace. The biggest news story in the first thing in the morning is not always the biggest news story at the end of the day. Many parents are struggling to address current events with their kids.

Children are seeing the news, they’re hearing about the news, they’re exposed to it in school and from their friends and from social media. The Week Junior provides a real service in explaining the news in a calm, factual way that kids can understand and is age-appropriate. We’ve worked very hard over the years to build that trust with parents and show them that we can be a non-partisan, unbiased resource for their kids that helps break stories down into a format that children can understand and that helps them form their own opinion about it.

And in terms of the greatest challenges, I would say some of the biggest challenges have been some of the actual news stories themselves. If you think back on the past five years, we’ve had a pandemic. We had the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, two months after we launched, and worldwide demonstrations after that, two very contentious general elections, a war in Ukraine, a war in the Middle East.

Those are difficult events to explain and to understand. But it actually turns out for us that they wind up being our greatest opportunities because we’re able to, because of the way that we address the news, gain the trust of children and their parents. And we really become an incredible resource.

And we’ve also established our authority within the media beyond The Week Junior as an authority on this generation of children. And we’ve been interviewed many times on the topics of how to explain difficult news events to children. That has also helped with our growth.

Samir Husni: The Week Junior and The Week are the only two news magazines published weekly in the United States on a year round basis? All the other news weeklies have become 17 times a year, 20 times a year, but nothing left as a news weekly. Why do you think that’s the case?

Andrea Barbalich: It’s because of the way we present the news and the fact that our business model is based on subscriptions.

We do, of course, accept advertising and we’re grateful for our advertisers, but the business model is based on creating a quality product and delivering on the promise. We found with The Week Junior, and the same with The Week before us, people want to read what we’re publishing. The Week Junior is created in such a careful, thoughtful, exciting, and fun way that really is engaging.

And that resonates. We’re very fortunate with The Week Junior that it’s a gift title. So it’s always a gift because it’s not the child who’s paying for it, so it’s either a gift from the parent or from someone outside the home, a grandparent or an aunt or an uncle or a friend.

We found that as time has gone on, The Week Junior has become a very in-demand gift. We see sometimes that a grandparent will subscribe for all of their grandchildren or an aunt or uncle will subscribe for all of their nieces and nephews or the parent will give The Week Junior subscription as a gift for all of the birthday parties that the child attends during that year. That’s another way that we’ve grown and that the magazine has been able to develop quite a strong word of mouth following.

Samir Husni: Can you give me a percentage why you said The Week, Junior is the fastest growing magazine in America?

Andrea Barbalich: We had a 23% increase in circulation for the second half of 2024, as measured by the Alliance for Audited Media. But then if you measure the growth year over year, instead of just for that six-month period, the percentage is even higher. We just had our highest ever subscription month just this past January, just a few months ago.

The number two and number three magazines in terms of growth are The Atlantic and New York. So we’re delighted to be in such excellent company.

Samir Husni: Everybody is talking these days about AI. Is AI a friend or a foe to The Week Junior?

Andrea Barbalich: We have not used AI very much at all. We don’t use it at all in our editing or our writing or even our research. It’s all done by the talented staff that we have.

We have used it in a limited way in our art department. There are some capabilities in terms of Photoshop, for example, that have enhanced their work. But for right now, we’re being very cautious and judicious and we’re taking a wait-and-see approach.

Samir Husni: So in an age of AI and digital, print has no backspace, has no delete. It’s permanent. Right?

Andrea Barbalich: And it’s created by human beings who really care to create the best quality product that they can every single week. And it’s read by an audience of children who really care. So it’s an absolutely wonderful proposition.

Samir Husni: In the midst of all this digital land, if you and I are having the same conversation a year from now, what would you tell me The Week Junior accomplished in 2025?

Andrea Barbalich: I would hope is that our ambition, our editorial excellence, our subscriptions, and revenue growth have continued to climb. I want as many children as possible to have the opportunity to read this magazine and be part of our community. We have some creative ideas for growth that I hope we can make happen.

And they really center on finding new ways to connect with our audience and having them connect with one another. Because in addition to publishing a magazine, we really see ourselves as building a community. We’ve built something very powerful with this brand that I hope will continue to evolve.

Samir Husni: Why do you think we’ve allowed digital to steal the word community from magazines? You said The Week Junior is building a community. We don’t hear that much in the magazine world anymore. It’s like all the communities are on the digital sphere?

Andrea Barbalich: Maybe we’ve proven that theory wrong. Children who read this magazine really do feel that they’re part of a community of like-minded children. We went into this launch believing in the power of Generation Alpha and believing that this was a really incredible generation of kids who care about the world and are curious and knowledgeable and want to make a difference and want to have their voices heard.

We believe in those kids. Those kids believe in themselves, and we believe in them. That’s what creates the community.

We have also created a brand extension called Junior Council, which is 12 children who are chosen every year to be part of the council. They spend four months with us learning from our editors and guest speakers that we bring in. Then they choose a cause that they’re interested in, and they research and write stories that are then published in the magazine.

When they graduate from Junior Council, they become what we call junior journalists. They have opportunities to cover stories for us and have their work published. They’ve done everything from attending red carpet premieres to interviewing prominent people such as Michelle Obama and the head of the FDA.

They’ve been featured on NBC Nightly News Kids Edition with Lester Holt. They’ve done all that, but then they’ve also done things in their own individual schools and communities. That spark was ignited in them during their time on the Junior Council.

We’ve heard from so many children and parents about how this program has changed their life. I think there’s a sense of that community and strength and hope and optimism running through the whole magazine every week, not on Junior Council, but also on the magazine itself.

Samir Husni: Before I ask you my typical last two questions, is there any question I should have asked you and I did not, or anything you would like to add?

Andrea Barbalich: I would be remiss if I didn’t mention some of the amazing PR successes that we’ve had over the past five years.

Just in the past 12 months, we’ve had significant partnerships with the Today Show and the Drew Barrymore Show and NBC Nightly News Kids Edition with Lester Holt that have really helped raise awareness of the brand and elevate our authority and our excellence. So that’s a big part of our growth also, that’s a significant part of our growth.

In terms of anything else I’d like to add, really just how grateful I feel to be leading this magazine at this moment in time.

First, to have such an incredible team working beside me at a company that values our work. Every person who ever dreams of becoming an editor-in-chief has a dream team list in the back of their head of who they would want to assemble if they ever got the chance, and I was lucky enough to have that opportunity. There’s something very special about launching a magazine as opposed to relaunching or refreshing or reinventing.

When you go through that experience together, it’s very powerful for everyone. My team is so brilliant and they make my job a joy.

Also to have the opportunity of a lifetime to speak to this incredible generation of children every week. They love The Week Junior, it helps them feel informed and confident and happy. It’s incredibly rewarding work for me and they are such amazing people and they give me hope for the future.

Samir Husni: Excellent.  So if I come to visit you one evening unannounced, what do I catch you reading a book, having a glass of wine, watching TV?

Andrea Barbalich: First of all, Samir, you’re welcome to stop by anytime. I love to cook and I would certainly make something special for you. I also have a wonderful family and a close-knit group of friends and so maybe you would walk in on an interesting conversation or some healthy and respectful debate and a lot of laughter.

Samir Husni: And what’s keeping Andrea up at night these days?

Andrea Barbalich: Many things actually. But at the top of the list for me would be that our nation is extremely divided right now and amid all the challenges that we face, I want children to be able to hold on to their optimism and their hope, to maintain their desire to be engaged with the world no matter what happens, to learn to be critical thinkers and form their own opinion, to continue to care as they do very much right now, to realize their view and their voice matters.

It’s very easy for all of this to get drowned out, but it’s vital for children to have this sense of hope and strength and I hope the Week Junior can continue to help with that.

Samir Husni: Thank you very much.

Teneshia Carr was not born with a silver spoon in her mouth.  A daughter of a father who owned and operated two delis and a mother who was a roving nurse.  Her parents were her inspiration to be an entrepreneur and not seek a job with a paycheck at the end of the month.  She wanted to own the space she occupies. Ms. Carr learned that, “there is nothing else but working for yourself.”

And work for herself she did.  She launched Blanc magazine in 2011. Born from a sense of frustration when she started, “it was the typical angry story, just out of frustration.”  Blanc, which means white in the French language, was in her words, “The irony of a black woman from Philadelphia owning a magazine called Blanc is on purpose.”

To say that Teneshia has succeeded with Blanc as the magazine that, “is a creative platform that presents a diverse and underrepresented perspective of the fashion, art and music world,” will be a major understatement.

A talented editor, photographer and now co-founder of a content agency, Teneshia still have time to rewind at home journaling “mindless writings.”  The passionate magazine founder and I had a very pleasant, fun, and educational conversation via Zoom.

So without any further ado, here is my the lightly edited interview with Teneshia Carr, owner and editor in chief of Blanc magazine:

But first the soundbites:

On the reason she named the magazine Blanc: “I thought if I could figure out how to make a Trojan horse for people who look like me to  sneak into the side door of fashion that just wasn’t letting us in, was something that I wanted to do.”

On the secret of a good publishing model: “You need to figure out how to do something that’s relevant, do something that matters to your readers and to advertisers to allow them to keep supporting you.”

On why Blanc survived and thrived where others failed: “I think Blanc has stuck around because we work with a wide array of creatives, and those creatives go on to work with some of the biggest stars, the biggest talents, and the biggest magazines in the world.”

On sticking to print: “They say, do that digital, girl, but they are adamant at the legacy that comes with the advertising that they create lasting forever in a print publication.”

On Surviving as an independent magazine: “In order to survive as an independent or a niche magazine, you have to understand that circulation isn’t going to save you. Nothing is going to save you. You need to figure out how to do something that’s relevant, do something that matters to your readers and to advertisers to allow them to keep supporting you.”

On the creation of BabyRobot agency: “There’s other ways that while for the past 15 years, I’ve built this community, I have to really figure out how to create experiences that, connect to them as individuals and connect to them as my audience. So that’s how you rule the world, diversifying. But leave your lighthouse untouched.”

On Blanc and its influence: “It’s not built to be necessarily the influence. It is the lighthouse to shine on the influencers themselves.”

On being an entrepreneur:  “I grew up with the entire idea of being an entrepreneur… I was taught that there is nothing else but working for yourself.”

On her journey those past 15 years: “The entire journey for me has been Rose Garden because it’s full of the beauty and full of the thorns.”

On Artificial Intelligence and its role: “It’s amazing. You didn’t think about a tool as something to fear. You thought about it as a tool to enhance the thing that you’re doing.”

On the impact of AI and other digital platforms: “We’re heading to the land of the falseness. That’s going to make Blanc and other niche magazines who are doing really cool things still interesting.”

On how she rewinds at the end of her day: “I do a lot of journaling, just mindless writing in the evening. And that really helps me relax from the day.”

And now for the lightly edited interview with Teneshia Carr, owner and editor in chief of Blanc magazine:

Samir Husni: My first question to you is, 15 years ago, you embarked on a mission that manifested itself with Blanc magazine. Can you tell me what that mission is, and why did you choose an ink on paper magazine to manifest that mission?

Teneshia Carr: First of all, the irony of a black woman from Philadelphia owning a magazine called Blanc is on purpose. I thought if I could figure out how to make a Trojan horse for people who look like me to  sneak into the side door of fashion that just wasn’t letting us in, was something that I wanted to do.

I wanted to figure out how to tell stories with people that look like me, with creatives from around the world to share that one perspective, to share their different perspectives on what luxury is, what beauty is, what fashion is, what culture is. So, when I started, it was the typical angry story, just out of frustration. I wanted to be the next Anna Wintour.

I wanted to be the next, not just fashion editor, but the next great fashion storyteller. And I knew from the constant rejections that it just wasn’t going to happen until I figured out how to build my own space. And that’s what I did.

Samir Husni: And then 2020 happened.

Teneshia Carr: And then 2020 happened. There were quite a few Black-owned magazines that were popping up around that time.

They didn’t really have a luxury advertising, but they still had a really strong point of view. There was Fashion Fair, Crown Magazine, and New Knew was another one. It was just like a renaissance that was happening around publications, Black editors, Black designers, and Black magazine owners.

It started bubbling up around 2018, 2019, when all these little cool magazines started popping up. When I first started Blanc (2011), years before, there weren’t any Black-owned, Black female-owned, the advertisers just didn’t publish with us. Essence didn’t have luxury, fashion advertising.

When 2020 happened, the whole thing stopped a little. You would think that because of what was happening with the streets and the social revolution and all the Black calls on Instagram, that all of this money would start pouring our way, and that just wasn’t the case.

I think Blanc has stuck around because we work with a wide array of creatives, and those creatives go on to work with some of the biggest stars, the biggest talents, and the biggest magazines in the world.

We are, quite frankly, to pat my own back, just consistently good. We are consistently telling really good stories. So, 2020, to imagine,  I couldn’t get my issue from London.

I print in the UK. I couldn’t get my issue anywhere. So, I lost the print run. I couldn’t distribute it, and I had to fulfill my obligations to the advertisers. I had to fulfill what I needed to do for my advertisers. But everything just stopped.

The world stopped. It was really hard to pivot to something else, because we’re so old-school print. Digital’s fine and digital’s cool, but I don’t really care about that.  No advertisers, I care about it. But, like, print is the thing. It’s the thing.

It’s smelling the copy and and knowing the difference between a digital print and a real print and, feeling the paper and the weight and all of that. It still means something, and it still meant something, but I couldn’t, it was impossible for six months or eight months to do anything. I think the only reason why I survived is because of my advertising partners.

I don’t have very many, but the ones I have are really dedicated to the way I tell stories. They really are wanting to see us grow, but it’s hard because there are only so many partners that are willing, unfortunately, to support in a real way.

The pandemic stopped things, but then it restarted. We got a boost, and that boost quickly died out. We got a boost of advertising, and that quickly died out and we went back to our regular partners. I think we’ll keep going because every time I meet a client, they go on and on about how valuable what I do is, how valuable the magazine is still for them and their business, how important it is.

They always get on me about getting more digital now. They say, do that digital, girl, but they are adamant at the legacy that comes with the advertising that they create lasting forever in a print publication.

Samir Husni: Back in 2011 everybody was into digital and social media. Did somebody say, Ms. Carr, are you out of your mind? You’re doing an ink on paper magazine?

Teneshia Carr: Well, people still say that, and they keep saying it to me.

People were saying it, but the thing is because I don’t know how many other people could have started the thing that I did in a way that I did it without any investment, without having any contacts or any connections. I focused on having the creative network first, and then I figured out everything else. Like, I knew that I wanted to make a magazine.

I had no idea how the business of magazine was run. I don’t need to know that stuff. That stuff is fine.

I just need to know how to make a magazine. So, imagine me focusing on creating the work and then figuring out how to build a magazine business. I had to do those two things.

I could not figure out then how to build the concept of Blanc digitally. That just wasn’t my focus. I just wanted something eternal.

I wanted to create a perfect coffee table magazine that you can put on your coffee table, and whether it’s from 10 years ago or four years ago or from last season, it’s still relevant and still feels relevant. And that’s what I wanted to make. I didn’t want to make a beautiful website that no one cares about.

I wanted to make something that was forever.

Samir Husni: Excellent. So, tell me, as you are climbing every mountain, so to say, do you really want to rule the world as your issue 28?

Teneshia Carr: Yes.

Yes. So, my theme of the Rule The World issue, and the other issue themes are based on song titles.

“Rule The World” is a nod to Beyonce or “Pieces Of You,” which is one of my favorite issues. That’s a Jewel song. So the themes are always rooted in music, mainly sad British music.

In order to survive as an independent or a niche magazine, you have to understand that circulation isn’t going to save you. Nothing is going to save you. You need to figure out how to do something that’s relevant, do something that matters to your readers and to advertisers to allow them to keep supporting you.

And you have to diversify. I can’t just print Blanc because that’s just not enough space for the stories I want to tell and the things that I want to make. I had to do what everybody else is doing.

That is the reason why I felt like I had to build an agency. I built an agency called BabyRobot Studios, with my partner, Scott Omelianuk (former editor in chief of Inc. and This Old House magazines). I built it because that’s only one piece of a touchpoint to the community. How else can I connect? How else can I engage? How else can I, with my partners, with my advertising partners, how can we engage and connect authentically in other ways? But the magazine, that’s the lighthouse, baby.

You don’t touch that. It’s perfect.

But there’s other ways that while for the past 15 years, I’ve built this community, I have to really figure out how to create experiences that, connect to them as individuals and connect to them as my audience. So that’s how you rule the world, diversifying. But leave your lighthouse untouched.

Leave it pure, leave it beautiful. It’s going to last forever and the advertisers will love you. But figure out other ways to build a brand, touch your community, and engage in your community.

And that can be digital for you. I’m working on it. I’m going to build it. It’s going to be amazing. It could be social, but for me, it’s going to be real life experiences when I partner with my advertisers and connect with my audience. So that’s how I’m going to rule the world.

Samir Husni:  It has been said magazines were the original influencers. What has been the influence of Blanc?

Teneshia Carr: I think we’re influenced by the idea of finding the people who are creating culture genuinely.

Magazines were the original influencers. That’s absolutely correct. And then fashion designers and fashion editors were the other first influencers.

But for us, it’s the community. It’s the people who we research and find, those next big artists, and those next big musicians. Like, Blanc is the other part of it, which is, it’s a clean slate.

It has nothing to do with the editors. It has nothing to do with my team. It’s about the contributors page, which changes every single issue.

We work with hundreds of new teams, every single issue on purpose, because that is who matters, the contributors, not necessarily the masthead. It’s about figuring out how to find those people who are on the precipice of becoming, and allowing their light to shine as influencers of culture. That’s what Blanc is built on.

It’s not built to be necessarily the influence. It is the lighthouse to shine on the influencers themselves.

Samir Husni: You’re so passionate about the magazine. Does this mean that your last 15 years have been a trip in a rose garden?

Teneshia Carr:  I grew up with the entire idea of being an entrepreneur. My mother was a nurse, and she was essentially a freelance nurse who went around, she had certain clients, and she moved from client to client.

My father, without a high school diploma, he started two cheesesteak stores in Philadelphia. One was called Carr’s Deli, and one was called Sandwich Masters. The point is that I was taught that there is nothing else but working for yourself.

There is no such thing as going to some job and getting some paycheck, and living life. That was never a part of my DNA. Whatever I was going to do in this world, I was going to sit inside whatever that thing is.

I was going to own the thing that I sit inside. There have been years of struggle and years of drinking champagne, and that’s the journey of being an entrepreneur. Every successful entrepreneur can tell you a dozen moments that they have been unsuccessful and they have failed.

For me, the entire journey has been worth it because I can’t do anything else. Now, at this point, can I maybe go and work for someone else? Maybe, but I could never do that before. It just wasn’t even in my DNA to think that way.

The entire journey for me has been Rose Garden because it’s full of the beauty and full of the thorns.

Samir Husni: Dealing with all the creative world, from music, to art, to fashion, do you have any fear from AI?

Teneshia Carr: No. I think I’m aging myself, I remember when Photoshop didn’t exist and you didn’t fear Photoshop. You were like, oh my God, I can get rid of all these pimples off this girl’s face.

It’s amazing. You didn’t think about a tool as something to fear. You thought about it as a tool to enhance the thing that you’re doing.

Now, if you aren’t talented and you use this tool in this way, I think that’s no different than people who used to over-process their photos in the eighties and nineties. And you used to say, oh my God,  look that’s so heavily Photoshopped.

In Blanc, most of our photos are shot in film still, by the way.

Most people don’t know that, but we encourage so many of our photographers to shoot on film. They don’t charge us the same rates. We tell them this is the theme, go explore.

It’s like testing ground to be experimental, to be different. And most of them say oh wow, a lot of people don’t let us use film. And I’m like, dude, go use film, go do it.

It’s a bit more expensive, but the print quality like this is (holding in her hands issue 28 of Blanc), this is shot in film. The difference you can tell in the whole story, you could tell them the stories that we shoot on film.

So I understand that people are afraid, but there are a lot of AI artists doing a lot of really cool things, there are a lot of photographers, a lot of creatives that don’t use anything that are doing some real cool things too. I mean, it’s okay.

All of it’s okay.

Samir Husni: I’m seeing so much like fake art, fake pictures…

Teneshia Carr: When they pass it as a real art, that’s the thing that’s scary, but I just think there isn’t anything we can do about that.

Like the moment that we started accepting images that were, literally wastes were reduced by seven inches, that people look completely different from retouching. When we were starting to accept that in advertising and in print as facts, we were already coming here anyway. We were already coming to the land of the fakeness anyway.

As if it just got here and now everybody’s scared, but we’ve been moving here. If you look at some images again from the nineties and the early two thousands that were so over processed that the people were unrecognizable. That’s where we were heading.

We’re heading to the land of the falseness. That’s going to make Blanc and other niche magazines who are doing really cool things still interesting. It’s going to make us interesting in a couple of years because people get exhausted with not knowing if something that they’re seeing is real or not.

And they know that when they pick up Blanc, they see the film edges. They know that that was shot on film and that was just printed and that’s it. There’s nothing else.

So I think it’s going to be more important to have those kind of bastions of purity, like print, like people who still shoot film, people who still accept film for print, because I know how rare that is.

It’s going to be all the more important to keep figuring out how to publish this stuff, these creatives, they need this platform, they need publications that are still going to be accepting this kind of work.

Samir Husni: If somebody comes to you and says, Ms. Carr, I want to publish a magazine today, ink on paper magazine, do you tell them you’re out of your mind or you give them a different advice?

Teneshia Carr:  I would say you are 50 years too late. If you’re still hearing that and crazy enough to keep going, then you just might have the juice to come out with a couple issues.

I would say it takes a certain type of person to look down the barrel in the face of this impossible thing and say, yeah, I still want to do that. That person can’t be persuaded to do anything else because I’m one of those people. You couldn’t tell me 15 years ago to not do a magazine.

You couldn’t tell me today to not do a magazine. I would do it.

Samir Husni: Before I ask you my personal question, is there anything you would like to add, a question you would like me to ask I didn’t ask you?

Teneshia Carr: No, I think that was pretty good. I think it was pretty fun.

Samir Husni: So my first personal question, I could not but notice the spider tattoo on your hand. What’s the significance of the spider tattoo?

Teneshia Carr: So this is Anansi, Anansi the spider. He’s a trickster spider.

He has seven sons. My husband has a deep affinity for spiders. And so instead of a wedding band, I got this Anansi.

And this is me, who is Djibouti the turtle. Also a trickster turtle. This is the trickster turtle and this trickster spider.

They’re based on folklore. This is the African folklore.

They’re little tricksters who trick the other animals in the forest into doing what they want.

Samir Husni: If I come to visit you one evening unannounced, what do I catch Teneshia doing to rewind from day reading a book, watching TV, cooking?

Teneshia Carr: I do a lot of journaling in the evening. For a long time, I didn’t unwind at all. I didn’t know how to relax, or I was always thinking about work or always checking emails, the worst thing in the world that has happened to us is the fact that we have constant access to our phones and people have constant access to us.

I turn off all the notifications on my phone so it doesn’t even light up because I would be checking it all the time. I do a lot of journaling, just mindless writing in the evening. And that really helps me relax from the day.

Samir Husni: and my typical last question, what keeps you up at night these days?

Teneshia Carr: I think trying to juggle between two businesses, building the agency, BabyRobot Studios and the magazine together. They’re separate, right? They’re sisters, but they have their separate purposes. They’re totally different: one is an agency and one is media.

It keeps me up at night. Realizing that I have to put a lot of all the things that I’ve learned over the past 15 years into my business.  I’m having to learn all over again about a new business that I didn’t anticipate. So it just means that I have to get in a frame of mind. It’s a new challenge that I didn’t expect to run.

It’s just content, right? I make this content for print. I can make this content for white label and give it to the same client and charge an agency rate. It’s this totally different business, totally different self. It’s a totally different set of clients.

It’s totally different. And you just don’t anticipate it until you actually are going to set up an agency. It’s going to be totally fine.

So that’s what keeps me up at night.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

I have a confession to make.  When my mailman delivered issue 201 of Mountain  Gazette to me at 3:00 pm, I did not put it down until 9:00 pm that evening.  Six hours of magazine heaven.  Total bliss and experience unlike any other.

I was determined to interview the experience maker behind Mountain Gazette: Mike Rogge.  He is the owner and editor of the magazine and his wife Meghan Forbes Rogge is the vice president of Mountain Gazette. 

The year was 2020 when Mike bought Mountain Gazette and decided to relaunch it after an eight year hiatus.  As his wife likes to say, “when others were learning how to make sourdough starters and bread during the pandemic, we were learning how to make a magazine again.”  And making a magazine they did with a tagline for the ages, “When in Doubt, Go Higher.”

An oversized magazine measuring a little bit less than 11 X 17 gives you the feeling that you, the reader, is a giant holding a billboard between your hands.  Marvelous stories, beautiful pictures, and a great design sets Mountain Gazette apart from the competition, if there is any to be found.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Mike Rogge, the owner and editor of Mountain Gazette, and found him to be the perfect imperfect experience maker.  So please feel free to be mesmerized with this Mr. Magazine™ interview, but first the soundbites:

On the drive behind the relaunch of Mountain Gazette: “I just thought if we made something that was big and beautiful, it would work.”

On the reason he bought the magazine: “I’m a pretty community-oriented person and I really care about what we put out into the world. So I felt like outdoor culture, the outdoor community deserved a print title like this.”

On his business model: “Our business model is simple, we have subscribers, we make the magazine for our readers and nobody else.”

On his advertisers: “We always put ads in the front and in the back of the magazine. Never in the middle, ever. We’ll never do that.”

On Mountain Gazette’s audience: “We have a highly engaged, sophisticated audience that’s becoming rarer and rarer to reach on the Internet. So that’s the way we work with our partners.”

On the team producing the magazine: “Our journalists are vetted. They’re award winning. They’re what I would call exceptional people and creators.”

On the role AI plays in magazine making:  “Our magazine is made by people. And I think that as good as AI is, AI has never been hurt. AI has never been in love. It can fake that. AI has never been given a cancer diagnosis. AI has never been told that they’re cancer free. AI has never watched their child be born. And above all,  I believe in the human experience because it’s not clean. It’s messy. And messy looks good in our pages.”

On his journey with Mountain Gazette: “My wife describes me as a duck. I’m cool on the surface and underneath I’m paddling like crazy.”

On which role he enjoys most from all his roles: “So far, being editor has felt the most natural position for me to have.”

On the mission of the magazine: “We look at the world through an outdoor lens. We have this strong belief at the magazine that going outdoors anywhere in the world…  has the ability to change your life.”

On what keeps him up at night: “That is such a timely question to me. I’m concerned about our ability to print in Canada, totally dependent on these tariffs.”

And now for the lightly edited interview with Mike Rogge, owner and editor, Mountain Gazette magazine:

Samir Husni:  Mike, while others were killing magazines in 2020, you bought Mountain Gazette and you were  the forerunner of relaunching magazines as we are seeing this year and last year. What gives?

What gave you the idea to buy a magazine that has been dead for almost eight years and to bring it back to life in print and all the surroundings of the print that you’ve done?

Mike Rogge: Well, I have worked for magazines for a long time.

I worked for a newspaper when I was 19 and I’ve worked for blogs. I think one of the things you learn when you work for a lot of media companies is know what to do and what not to do. There’s good practices and bad practices and I thought what if we started a media company and we tried to do things the right way, knowing we would make mistakes along the way and learn from them and we’ve been pretty adamant about learning from our mistakes. I just thought if we made something that was big and beautiful, it would work.

Samir Husni: Besides being a journalist, a filmmaker, now you are also an owner and editor, what’s the drive that makes you create such a beautiful, upscale, large publication in ink on paper in this digital age?

Mike Rogge: I’m a pretty community-oriented person and I really care about what we put out into the world. So I felt like outdoor culture, the outdoor community deserved a print title like this. And I think one thing is respecting creators, respecting writers, photographers, artists, having respect for them, having respect for our readers was paramount to us being able to create something special.

So my drive is, I try to make the next issue better than the last one. This is our 10th issue that we’re putting out and it’s getting harder to do that, but we are having a good time trying to warm up ourselves up here.

Samir Husni: You wrote that the old magazine business model is dead and you are introducing a new business model. Can you expand a little bit on that?

Mike Rogge: I think the model of going out and saying to advertisers, this is how many readers we have and printing an exorbitant amount of magazines just to say that you did print an exorbitant amount of magazines and not sell them at all. Our business model is simple, we have subscribers, we make the magazine for our readers and nobody else. You can’t buy it on the newsstand.

We rarely sell single copy issues. We are doing our best just to keep this like a closed ecosystem where our readers pay us a fee per year to get two issues. In return, we protect that content from the magazine and make sure that it’s exclusive to them.

They only get it. We don’t republish online or anything like that. And that’s that.

Samir Husni: But you’re still accepting advertising? And how do you treat the advertisers in this community of Mountain Gazette?

Mike Rogge: The first thing that our subscribers and our ad partners know is that we don’t do advertorials. And I think that’s a benefit to both. Our readers are never questioning, is this an ad or is this a story? If it’s in the magazine and it’s not clearly an ad, it’s a story.

We always put ads in the front and in the back of the magazine. Never in the middle, ever. We’ll never do that.

What I think is interesting is we have a highly engaged, sophisticated audience that’s becoming rarer and rarer to reach on the Internet. So that’s the way we work with our partners. We tell them we don’t write about gear. We don’t write about jackets. We don’t rank ski resorts. So you have an opportunity to be in our magazine and tell our readers what’s great about your ski area or your jackets or your ski boots or whatnot.

They’ve found it to be really beneficial to date. We hear a lot from our ad partners. It’s the only place that they ever get compliments on their ads. They get people on the street that I saw the Solomon ad or the Fly Low ad in the last issue of Mountain Gazette. It looks really great. I think that’s because of our large format. The magazine really lends itself to great photography.

Samir Husni: You mentioned that most of what’s on the Internet and social media is trash, quote, unquote. How do you define the role of print in this digital age?

Mike Rogge: I think we have to understand that we’ve got a copy editor, a managing editor, myself, we have fact checkers. Our journalists are vetted. They’re award winning. They’re what I would call exceptional people and creators. So I think if anything, like our content, it’s curated and it’s vetted and you can’t say that about most things on the Internet.

We’re not in this to look for a fight. It’s not to say that we’re just going to let people steamroll us. But like, we do some reporting. We do some trip stuff. We do some first descent, cool stuff. We do aspirational stuff. We do inspirational stuff. We have humor. And I think that’s more reflective of how the real world actually is.

If you go on the Internet, you would think the world is falling apart every single day, every single minute. And certainly the world is not in a great place right now. But I think we can all agree that the world’s also not on fire right now, either.

The print magazine is based in reality, and that’s where we want to keep it.

Samir Husni: Mike, especially when it comes to photography,  and you have gorgeous photography in the magazine. But now with AI, we are seeing so much fake pictures on the Internet. I can create even fake pictures saying, Samir is on Mount Everest and I’m here in Oxford, Mississippi. Do you have any fear from AI or is it a friend or foe?

Mike Rogge: I love it. I love AI.

I think it’s great.  I went to college for English literature and writing. So when I have business questions, you know, I can ask AI, I want you to pretend you’re an MBA, and this is a business problem I have.

It’s just kind of bouncing ideas off it. I think it’s great for that. There’s a lot of promise for medical use.

But our magazine is made by people. And I think that as good as AI is, AI has never been hurt. AI has never been in love. It can fake that. AI has never been given a cancer diagnosis. AI has never been told that they’re cancer free. AI has never watched their child be born. And above all,  I believe in the human experience because it’s not clean. It’s messy.

And messy looks good in our pages. Here’s what I know. Samir on top of Everest, that would be really, really cool. I know people that have climbed Everest. And I can tell you that what makes their Everest journey important is not getting to the top, but how they got to the top, the challenges they face in their lives. And that, to me, is part of the human experience.

I don’t know that a robot will ever be, certainly can try to fake it, right? I do say this often, though. It makes me think of the scene in the movie Good Will Hunting, where Matt Damon and the late Robin Williams, are sitting on a bench. And he goes, sure, you can tell me everything about the Sistine Chapel, when it was built,  when it was painted, everything.

But you can’t tell me what it feels like to be there. You can’t tell me what it smells like to be there with the woman you love. And it’s like this trip you dreamed of.

I do think that nuance is often overlooked. And on a final note on AI, don’t you think it’s so interesting that the first thing they asked AI to do, these creators, quote unquote, these people that have no artistic ability, was to try to mimic being an artist. That makes me kind of sad.

I don’t know how to tell Sam Altman this, but like, your painting is good enough, buddy. If it came from your heart, it’s good enough.

Samir Husni: Good. Tell me, has your journey with Mountain Gazette been a walk in a rose garden?

Mike Rogge: No. No. No. My wife describes me as a duck. I’m cool on the surface and underneath I’m paddling like crazy.

One thing that has been challenging is the notion that I might have all the answers because of our success. And the truth is, I have the answers for our title when we face problems or challenges because I’m deeply involved. This is what I do. This is my work. This is my life. In some senses, for better or worse, it’s part of my identity as being the editor of Mountain Gazette.

Obviously, there’s been way more good times than bad. Currently we’re printing our magazine in Canada and we’re dealing with a tariff issue and that’s a challenge. But I’m inspired by some of the athletes who do climb Everest and fail. They don’t make it to the top. And what they do the next year is they return. That’s kind of our thing, we may get punched, but we’re going to get back up.

The last five years have offered me some opportunities that I could have never dreamed of. And mostly that’s working with contributors.

Samir Husni: You wear too many hats with Mountain Gazette. Which one do you prefer? Is it the owner, the editor, the publisher?

Mike Rogge: I like a little bit of all of them. So far, being editor has felt the most natural position for me to have.

I don’t necessarily prefer being the trash guy who takes out the trash at our office, but that’s one of my hats too. But I like being the editor of Mountain Gazette. That’s by far my favorite.

I guess my favorite part of the publishing side has been trying to get to know some of the men and women and people who actually physically make our magazine. They’re craftspeople. They essentially work in a factory and they take a lot of pride in their work.

And I’m inspired by that.

Samir Husni: Is there anything you would like to add before I ask my final two personal questions?

Mike Rogge: We relaunched Mountain Gazette in 2020, in the midst of a pandemic, and my wife likes to say that when others were learning how to make sourdough starters and bread during the pandemic, we were learning how to make a magazine again. So that what we did. When I bought the magazine, my original ambition for it was to try to get to a thousand subscribers.

I felt like that would be a good four or five year goal. We hit that in six months. We say this that this magazine is not for everyone, but obviously anyone can subscribe to it.

We don’t limit anyone in wanting to look at it. But we’ve certainly found people that accuse us of being too liberal or too conservative. And we don’t see it as a political act.

We see it as an artistic expression. I suppose you could view the entire world through a political lens. It’s not how we look at it.

We look at the world through an outdoor lens. We have this strong belief at the magazine that going outdoors anywhere in the world, whether it’s Missouri or Manhattan or Mount Everest or wherever, it could change your life. It has the ability to change your life.

Those are the stories that we seek. In our next issue, we have first descent of a mountain in Pakistan that no one’s ever heard of. But truly, like I think maybe 300 people in the history of the world have ever even been in its presence.

Well, and the following story is about fly fishing in the 1980s on the New Jersey coastline. I find that those stories equally tell the story of the outdoor experience. And these experiences are  our mission, they allow us to have a lot of different voices in our magazine, a lot of different perspectives.

I don’t expect everyone to like every single article at the Mountain Gazette, but I can tell people that every single piece at the Mountain Gazette comes from somebody’s heart. No one is weighing up their Mountain Gazette story. They’re putting everything they have into it.

Samir Husni: So tell me Mike, if I come unannounced visiting you one evening at home, what do I catch you doing? Having a glass of wine, cooking, eating dinner?

Mike Rogge: Depending on what time, you will find me playing with our two sons that are six and two. We’ve got two dogs. We live a pretty quiet life here in Tahoe.

My wife and I tend to go out and see some outdoor films. North Lake Tahoe is sort of like Avengers Tower. If you’re into outdoor recreation, we have several first descent, first to do this in the outdoor recreational world.

We run into them in the grocery store. I’ve always joked, it’s like being a non-superhero and living in Avengers Tower and Iron Man to pass the cream, the coffee. We live a pretty quiet life.

We’re a family of four with two dogs, and we’re just really enjoying our kids being young. We go to a few fundraisers here and there, catch a movie. But we spend a lot of time outdoors.

Samir Husni: My typical last question, what keeps you up at night these days?

Mike Rogge: That is such a timely question to me. I’m concerned about our ability to print in Canada, totally dependent on these tariffs. And what upsets me is that our printing partner, Hemlock, has nothing to do with it.

The fact is a 25% tax on our print bill. We’re a sheet-fed magazine, a large format, sheet-fed. It’s 160 pages, but we’re probably using, on a standard magazine size, close to 300 pages of paper per issue.

We chose to do it that way because we wanted to offer our readers a high-quality product, and we felt like magazine stories deserved to be put in a high-quality format. I worry about it in part because, again, this is a non-political statement. It’s just fact.

The idea around these tariffs changes sometimes hourly, daily, weekly. News happens on the weekends. So I’m a little concerned about that.

I want to make sure that we can keep printing, high-quality products, whether it’s in Canada or we have to move to the U.S.

And what keeps me up at night? I worry about AI infringing on our creators’ rights, only because, we have a standard licensing agreement, and it really puts the creator front and center. And, we have this reputation. There’s a reason why we’re able to work with creators like, Harry Bliss and the comedian Steve Martin in every issue for the last two years, because we have a reputation.

I just worry about people taking advantage of that or taking advantage of our creators in an effort to try to earn a quick payday. We keep our head above water. We’re profitable, but I feel like in the magazine industry, you have to constantly be preparing for, not just rainy days, but snowy days and typhoons and everything.

It’s a medium that a lot of people have forgotten about. We obviously haven’t. And my hope is through these tariffs and everything, that some of the magazines that have arrived alongside us or after us, can also survive, because, saving for a rainy day is expensive.

Samir Husni: Thank you Mike and all the best.