The counter counterculture: Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian group, has found magazines to be very effective in spreading its gospel. But if flagging, post-9/11 donations don't pick up, the nonprofit may have to scale back

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Jan, 2002 by Dale Buss

Focus on the Family spent about $22 million on its publications in both 2000 and 1999, according to financial statements filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Johnson says that Brio, Breakaway and the Clubhouse titles would operate in the black if they used standard accounting, but not the others.

Dobson doesn't draw a salary from Focus on the Family; his income largely stems from book royalties. The half-dozen other top officers of Focus on the Family each receive salaries of between about $90,000 and $120,000, according to the most recent filing with the IRS. A staff of fewer than 40, including an editor and assistant editor for each magazine, do the publishing work, relying heavily on trusted freelancers. Focus magazines don't have their own marketing department, and largely build their circulation from interplay among the ministry's various communications channels. But the publications also diligently experiment with address lists provided by a wide range of other sources. For Brio and Breakaway, for example, it taps Time and Sports Illustrated lists selected for "Bible and devotional readers" and for households that include 12- to 17-year-old kids. Citizen, says Jeff Hoyle, Focus on the Family's circulation director, has been snubbed by Newsweek but plumbs lists provided by organizations ranging from the Republican Party to U.S. News & World Report.

Focus's newsstand presence has been limited largely to Christian bookstores, which sell only a few thousand issues a month--the vast majority coming from Brio. But there could be a mainstream break for the teen magazine. About 18 months ago, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. asked to display Brio, finding its wholesome image a match with its corporate philosophy--one that doesn't allow porn magazines in its stores and blocks the edgiest CD titles. So far, WalMart stores ask for only about 1,000 copies of Brio a month, overall, with sell-through coming in at between 30 percent and 40 percent. "We're beginning to analyze whether it makes sense to continue, or to expand what we do on the newsstand and how to go about it," says Hoyle.

BALANCING OPPOSING NEEDS

That more mainstream venue will only make the balancing act Brio's editors face more challenging. As Bruner sees it, Focus on the Family is "trying to preserve innocence, to helping those kids who are in the thick of the culture and wanting us to be another voice. It requires great skill on the part of editors and designers--from the images portrayed, so that they feel hip and current, to the need to speak to issues carefully and in the context of, 'Listen to your parents.'"

The required dexterity is obvious even within the context of single articles. While Dobson and Focus on the Family have been highly critical of Hollywood and, specifically, of many of the movies made by Walt Disney Company, the September issue of Brio carried a glowing feature about Kirsten Storms. She's a 17-year-old actress starring in a new movie for Disney--but she's also a devout Christian.