Mother Earth is Giving Birth

Publication:
Chicago Sun-Times
Publish date:
February 25, 1987
Author:
Nancy Millman
More results for:
Owen Lipstein

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NEW YORK At age 35, Owen Lipstein, already the owner and publisher of two magazines, is confidently launching a third title next month called American Country.

The bi-monthly publication is being called "a progeny" of Mother Earth News, which Lipstein bought in January, 1986, for $11 million.

Since his purchase of Mother Earth News, Lipstein has engaged the art director team of Will Hopkins and Ira Friedlander to undertake a total redesign of the bi-monthly, which took effect last July.

For the last six months of last year, advertising sales increased 33 percent over 1985, Lipstein said. The first two issues of this year continued to show sales increases, up 10 percent and 7 percent, respectively.

Hopkins and Friedlander also are the design force behind what was Lipstein's first magazine, American Health, which he started from scratch in 1982. That magazine, which won the National Magazine Award for general excellence in 1985, has grown from an advertising rate base of 300,000 to its current 850,000. A rate base of 1 million will go into effect in July. Last year, American Health carried just over $9 million worth of advertising, according to Publishers Information Bureau figures.

That success, coupled with the $3.3 million in ad sales from Mother Earth News last year, is enough to inspire the confidence of Lipstein to plunge right in with American Country.

From his company's funky office in the publishing neighborhood of lower Fifth Avenue, Lipstein explained that Mother Earth News had been putting out newsstand annuals without advertising on special topics for several years.

The idea to spin off American Country, which will devote each of the year's six issues to a particular topic, sprung from the availability of Alfred Meyer, the editor.

Meyer, who had held a senior editorial post at Science '86 until it folded last year, "showed up at my house with a kid and a dog," Lipstein said. He concluded that giving a talented "buddy" a job was a good reason to launch this venture.

"There are six editors at Mother Earth News who are experts in different areas," Lipstein said, "but they're out of work every other month," because of the publication's bi-monthly circulation, which he doesn't want to change.

Each of these editors will head the team for the themed editions of American Country. The premier issue is a "Kitchen Special," with contents ranging broadly from butchering a side of beef, to sausage making, preservation of fruits and vegetables, bread baking, dairy products and beer brewing.

Coming issues will focus on the garden, the great outdoors, hardware, the harvest kitchen and the home.

The premiere issue carried advertising from some major marketers including Armstrong floors, Lipton, Campbell Soup Co., Paul Masson wines and H.J. Heinz.

Already, Lipstein said, the company is negotiating with publishers to turn each special issue, minus the advertising, into a book.

Lipstein is not anxious to over-hype this new publication, which is starting with a $3.50 cover price and a rate base of 200,000.

"I'm a great believer that bad start-ups come from people who promise too much," he said. "If you look at examples like Vanity Fair and TV-Cable Week . . . almost everything they did afterward was anticlimactic."

Like another young publishing entrepreneur, Chris Whittle (head of Whittle Communications, formerly 13-30 Corp.), Lipstein also is moving into the "sponsored publication" field. Companies like Procter & Gamble and Nissan have asked his company to develop special-interest magazines in which they would be the only advertiser.

The single focus issues of American Country also "represent potential sponsored publications," Lipstein said.

A young-looking, casual man, who seems uncomfortable in his good wool suit, Lipstein says the publications he owns are based on themes in which he is greatly interested.

And like yet another young publishing tycoon, Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner, Lipstein's success is tied to the baby boom generation.

The boomers' obsession with health and fitness helped fuel the tremendous growth of his flagship magazine.

"What used to be alternative culture now is mainstream," he said, echoing what Wenner says is one of the key reasons Rolling Stone has lived to celebrate its 20th anniversary this year.

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