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

"Our value system is very different from the worldview of publications for teens that are on the newsstands," says Dobson in talking about what drives the publication of Brio. "Parents and teenagers want to know that other perspective, the difference between right and wrong and what will harm them and what will be beneficial to them."

For a time, Focus on the Family accepted some advertising in its kids' magazines, "because kids expected to see ads," says Johnson. Brio advertising typically would not surpass 25 percent of the pages, with ads by non-mainstream outfits such as True Love Waits (promise rings and other jewelry) and Compassion International, a missions organization. But after wrestling with what kinds of ads to accept from for-profit companies, and finding that nonprofit competitors were buying space, Focus on the Family decided to discontinue external advertisements. "We've developed more of a brand-marketing strategy that has said, 'Let's utilize more of our own pages more often,"' Johnson says.

Focus on the Family's publishing wing has also had its share of missteps. In 1994, for example, it began publishing Single Pa rent Family, recognizing, as Bruner puts it, "that single parents are more passionate about supporting what we do than anyone, because they know how tough it is when a family falls apart." But as editors found themselves struggling with questions of tone and content, readership dropped, and Focus on the Family folded the title in 2000; instead, it decided to add special content geared to single parents into its house organ.

Focus on the Family also decided around the same time to fold Teachers in Focus, of which Johnson had been the original editor. The magazine struggled because it tried to present both the organization's opposition to the liberal bent of public education, but also its concern for individual educators trying to do their best. Circulation dropped below 30,000 from a high of 47,000, and the move was made.

Today, Focus on the Family is forced to make more adjustments. Since September 11, Focus on the Family has faced a dramatic shortfall in giving., with double-digit drops in September and October. The organization, looking for ways to cut costs, decided to cut back its biggest magazine. Beginning in the spring, the house organ will be just 16 pages instead of 24.

Organization officials are cheered by a return to normal levels in the last two month of the year, and hope no more cuts will be necessary. And Johnson believes that Americans' greater introspection may benefit Focus on the Family's emphasis on traditional values. "I'd love to see a turn toward more positive publishing, particularly by other teen-girl magazines," he says. "But I don't have high hopes that that will necessarily happen--regardless of how many seventh-inning stretches there are at baseball games where they sing 'God Bless America' instead of 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game.'"