'O' Gosh

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Feb 1, 2003 by Simon Dumenco

Byline: SIMON DUMENCO

There are certain things about my professional past that if I told you, I'd then have to kill you. Stuff about O, for instance. As much as I'd like to dish about my early role in the creation of Oprah Winfrey's magazine (I was consulting executive editor on the launch), if I blab I fear that Oprah's goons - her lawyers, if not Dr. Phil and Suze Orman - will come after me. Like everyone who works for Oprah, I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement.

I've been thinking about O lately because we're supposedly in a post-celebrity-branded-magazine era. The (painful) memory of Rosie is slowly fading, Martha Stewart Living continues to wobble, and Martha's Everyday Food spin-off has launched with her name and image largely absent from the packaging. And yet O thrives.

If O is the exception to the rule, well, why?

Like Rosie was, O is a joint venture (between Hearst and Oprah), and if truth be told, right from the start it seemed possible the whole thing could ride off the rails just as Rosie ultimately did. O, of course, didn't exactly have a healthy birth: Oprah and Hearst didn't see eye to eye on the magazine's direction, as was widely reported at the time (i.e., I'm not violating my gag order by repeating public-domain knowledge here!). You may have even read that to bolster morale after the first torturously produced issue shipped, Oprah flew the entire staff down to Miami for an all-expenses-paid weekend retreat/bitch session. (As for the rumor that the staff, after a dinner at Oprah's private-island condo, engaged in a slightly sauced dance party that culminated in a conga line that briefly and surreally wove its way through Oprah's bedroom - well, I can neither confirm nor deny that.)

To me, now, O is a mere memory - a consulting project that I've spent three years distancing myself from. So it was a bit of a revelation when I picked up some issues recently.

Guess what? It's a pretty decent magazine. It has none of the icky please-your-man sex content that gunks up other women's magazines. Its service content is brisk and doesn't overpromise. It's elegantly designed and photographed, it's effortlessly multicultural, the "Oprah talks to" interview is always irresistible, and perhaps most remarkably, it's literate. I mean, how cool is it that O devotes space in every issue to "Books that made a difference"? (In a recent issue actress Kathy Bates recommended the Collected Sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay.) Really, is there any other mass-market American magazine that would devote a front-of-book page to an excerpt from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself"?

Of course, the big hit on O is that it's too "Song of Myself" - as in too "Song of Oprah." Starting with those goofy all-Oprah-all-the-time covers. In fact, it's my past ridicule (in this column) of one of those covers (Oprah gliding toward us in a convertible roadster that looked to be the size of a Matchbox car, thanks to her giant celebrity head) that allows me to speak my mind - negatively and positively - about O. Because, you see, I've got nothing to lose or gain: I have absolutely no relationship with Oprah or the magazine anymore. (After my critique ran I was mysteriously cut from the invite list for O events and anniversary parties.)

So here, I'll just say it: I occasionally have to suppress the gag reflex when I come across something like the "Something to Think About" worksheet in O, which in January asked readers to "Ask Your Body," "Ask Your Mind," and "Ask Your Heart" (stuff like "What is your spiritual anchor?"). But then again, whenever I get off my jaded New York ass and venture someplace authentically Middle American and profoundly suburban, I'm grateful that good ol'Oprah is so big on pushing her tireless gospel of self-improvement. After all, there's really nothing wrong with a cultural icon encouraging women to lead something other than lives of quiet desperation.

Ro.sie failed not only because it involved a bad marriage between celebrity and publisher, but because ultimately Rosie - and Rosie - didn't stand for much other than a sort of grating cutie-patootietude. Like most comedians, Rosie O'Donnell defined herself in opposition to the status quo without offering an alternative. (Martha, on the other hand, does stand for something: better living through anal-retentive homemaking; there will always be room in the marketplace for publications that celebrate fetishes.)

On the newsstand, O is a real, genuine - meaning from the heart - alternative. I worked with Oprah enough to know that she is who she says she is. This is her life, her ministry - she's authentically obsessed with helping women make better lives for themselves - and in her early battles with Hearst she held her ground, prevailed, and created the magazine she wanted.

In other words, as weird as O comes off in my neck of the woods - Manhattan - it sure as hell plays in Peoria. And I'm really happy about that.

"The Glossies" columnist Simon Dumenco's ( sd17@aol.com ) spiritual anchor is TiVo.