City And Regional Magazines Special Report: Local Hot Spots

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, June 1, 2002

Byline: susan thea posnock

NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK

A burst of metro start-ups are looking to carve out niches in their neighborhoods. Here's how the big city books are defending their turf.

Life at a city magazine has always involved a fair share of hobnobbing and party hopping. Black-tie evenings at charity benefits and sun-soaked golf tournaments with local advertisers are par for the course. But at San Francisco magazine, the social swirl that fills the days and nights of the ad sales staff is threatening to overload many a Palm Pilot. Since last fall, the magazine has doubled its efforts at putting on the party for every slice of the city's social scene - from sponsoring young artist exhibitions to hosting home and garden galas.

What's behind the party binge? The magazine is looking to elbow out local start-ups like San Francisco Gourmet, San Francisco Socialite, Paper City and the urban glossy 7x7, all of which are hoping to capture local ad dollars by going after niche markets in the Bay Area.

"Whereas we might have sponsored four things a month, now we're sponsoring eight things a month," says publisher Steven Dinkelspiel. "The competition is trying to get into the parts of the community that we haven't traditionally been present in. Now we're making sure that our sales and marketing team and ownership are present at every event that is important to our advertisers. Our sales team is out every night."

San Francisco isn't the only city mag pumping up efforts to defend its turf. From Memphis to Seattle, more and more new titles are looking to carve out a piece of the hometown action. In fact, with 86 entries, the city and regional category topped the chart of launches last year, according to Samir Husni, a University of Mississippi professor who monitors magazine start-ups. In the past, this distinction has gone to the celebrity, sex and sports categories. But a difficult economic environment is causing entrepreneurs to stick closer to home, he says. "It is becoming next to impossible to launch a national magazine, unless you have really deep pockets," says Husni. The media recession, increased postal and production costs and consolidation at newsstands has raised the bar of entry. "And that's created bipolar publishing," he says. "The major publishers are doing the big national launches and the ma and pa publishers are doing little things [in local markets]."

Few of these new magazines are bursting into a metropolis with the same formula as the big city books. Just as specialty titles have sliced and diced national markets, most city start-ups are tapping a more targeted segment of the local population. It's niche marketing on a town-by-town basis. For example, At Home in Memphis is honing in on the design-minded readers of Memphis magazine. Bliss, a fashion glossy, is moving in on Birmingham. A business book called Surprise! is competing against Seattle, and in Wisconsin, a woman's health mag named Anew is looking to woo Madison readers.

MICROECONOMICS

The lure to stay local is also being driven by the fact that most city and regional titles tend to be more resilient during downturns. While mass-market magazines fight for the shrinking pool of national ad dollars, city titles are cushioned by advertisers in their neighborhoods. "Local is what has carried us," says Gary Thoe, president of Emmis Publishing, which owns several regional magazines including Texas Monthly, Indianapolis Monthly and Los Angeles. In fact, last year ad pages in the city and regional titles tracked by the City and Regional Magazine Association (CRMA) were down just 0.3 percent from 2000 - an impressive showing when compared to national magazines, which were down 11.7 percent, according to the Publisher Information Bureau.

Seija Goldstein, president of Seija Goldstein Associates Inc., a consulting firm that specializes in regional magazines and newsletters, says these titles are also faring better than national magazines this year. The 33 magazines she surveyed budgeted for an average 5 percent increase in revenue in 2002, and 59 percent of the magazines have met or exceeded that goal through the first quarter. The smaller the book, the better the performance, she says. Eighty percent of the publications with circulation below 20,000 are at or above budget. That figure drops to 50 percent for titles with circs above 65,000.

As the media recession drags on, you can expect to see even more city launches later this year, predicts Husni.

When something is working, others follow the model, agrees Jim Dowden, executive director of CRMA. "Other people are nibbling around the edges to tap into that success."

GOLIATH BEWARE

For the most part, the established players are dismissive of this surge in competition. Alan Klein, president of Los Angeles magazine, says the old guard has been through this drill before. "If you go back historically, you'll see that the same thing happened in the late eighties. You saw this proliferation of niche local magazines," he says. "Out here there was something called Northern California Home and Garden and Southern California Home and Garden. There was SF, a design title, and LA Style here in L.A. None of them ever make it. They never get there."