Ellen Levine Lady Of The House

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, March 1, 2004

Byline: RACHEL LEHMANN-HAUPT

Ellen Levine knows women's magazines. She joined the staff of Cosmopolitan in 1976, and at the age of 37 was named editor-in-chief of Woman's Day magazine. On January 28 she was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Magazine Publishers of America. She is a former president of the American Society of Magazine Editors and has been a mentor to numerous up-and-comers. She sat down recently with Folio: to share her views on how the magazine business has changed and where it is going.

Folio: How have women's magazines changed since you first went to Cosmo>?

Levine: The stories used to be 5,000 words. Now they're 1,200. You'd get like 10 colored pages, and the rest had to be black and white. People's attention spans are shorter. Now it's "Give me the information. I want it to be right, but I want it fast." But I think. to a certain extent, the writing is better now. The staffs are much smaller. When I first went to Woman's Day, I inherited a staff of 110 people. By the time I left, it was about 70. In those days, we would put out an issue of Woman's Day and sell 8 million on the newsstand. Now, if they're selling 1 million on the newsstand, that's good. It's the same thing that has happened with TV.

Folio: You mean the 1,000-magazine newsstand effect?

Levine: Yes. So you have to be sharper. Magazines have to change with greater frequency. Change used to be seen as a bad thing. Now it's a positive. We need to redesign every couple of years because people get bored.

Folio: You've talked about how a really good editor needs to understand circulation and other aspects of the business.

Levine: I watch my circulation figures more intently now than my cholesterol numbers, and with greater trepidation because they're the lifeblood. More money is spent on printing and circulation than on editorial. You really need to understand the dynamics of circulation. If they want to raise your cover price, you can fight like crazy saying yes or no, and it's good to be involved.

Also, you're going to be judged on your circulation, and you need to be able to say: "It's fine that it's not selling the way it did 10 years ago, when there were three magazines at the checkout and now there are 30." You need to be involved in the business of the business. Otherwise, you're in the ivory tower and might as well be working for The Harvard Business Review, and then you can marry Jack Welch!

Folio: How has the modern housewife changed for Good Housekeeping ?

Levine: It depends on your definition of housewife. It used to be a housewife stayed at home. Now, at Good Housekeeping, 70 to 80 percent of our readers are working either full- or part-time. But their primary interest is their home life. For us, the homeruns are about the children and family health. No matter how life has changed, women generally remain the primary caretakers. Now men do a lot more at home than they used to, and the women today don't spend much time browsing in stores.

In the 1950s there were all these instructions about how you were supposed to behave and greet your husband at the door. Now we know that doesn't happen, and we don't want it to, but the woman is still the CEO of the home. She wants to be responsible for funds in the house. She doesn't necessarily want to be always taken care of. There's much more intrusion of reality over romance.

Folio: What do you mean, by "intrusion of reality over romance?"

Levine: Many women were told: "He's going to come on a white horse. If you go to college, make sure you have a teaching degree to fall back on just in case he dies in a car accident."

But the just-in-case turned out to be a 50 percent divorce rate. We know women are much poorer after divorce, so they need to have the reality injection that says: "You need to understand what's happening." Women, even of my generation, often don't know whose name the house is in, and so it actually gives Good Housekeeping more of a reason to exist than before.

Folio: How do you blend celebrity and service journalism?

Levine: We generally write about what celebrities have in common with our readers, rather than what celebrities have that our readers will never get. So, we're less about J.Lo's pink diamond ring, which tends to piss off our readers, and more about Joan Lunden having those babies at 52. That was a very popular magazine cover, because it had a newsworthy story line. Celebrity and service is difficult, female celebrities have a lot of helpers. We try to stay within readers' interests. On the other hand, people do like the nose-against-the-glass routine, where they're looking in on a great house. So, for example, we did Deborah Norville's house, which is fabulous. The stuff is not cheap, but she sews all the draperies and she makes the bedspreads, so then you can see how she connects with the reader.

Ellen's 9 Rules

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It's not about the money. The reason most of us go into journalism is because we're passionate about righting wrongs and shining lights into dark corners.

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Don't screw with the bible. You've got to know the DNA of your magazine.