Publishers joining forces on editorial, ownership.

Publication:
Folio: the Magazine for Magazine Management
Publish date:
February 1, 1987


Publishers joining forces on editorial, ownership

This month's Esquire spotlights a first for the monthly men's magazine: an editorial insert not produced inhouse. Researched, written, photographed and produced by Sail, the piece also exemplifies an emerging trend in magazine publishing. Increasingly, publishers are entering into joint ventures, exchanging and combining their specific expertise to their mutual financial and editorial benefit.

The Esquire insert's theme was the America's Cup yacht racing competition. Sail essentially sold the authority and expertise of its editorial staff to Esquire, while Esquire provided its readers with top-flight coverage of the America's Cup. Although Sail did not carry the insert, it gained exposure to Esquire's 750,000 readers. Both magazines picked up new advertisers they would not have signed otherwise--Sail by offering a 10 percent discount to those who ran space in Sail's January issue as well as in Esquire's insert.

At the other end of scale are the joint ownership ventures that Time Inc. is pioneering with magazines such as Parenting and Working Woman (see story, page 55, this issue). Time now has the major stake in the women's magazine market that it has long been seeking; its partners gain the tremendous resources of Time's financial and circulation departments--without giving up their editorial control.

"What we're looking for in any of these projects is synergism,' says Dale Lang, owner of Working Woman, Inc. The key, he continues, is the willingness to share strengths and to let each company do what it does best.

Adds American Health editor T George Harris, who has coproduced inserts with Lang's Working Woman and Success and is working on another with Good Housekeeping, "If you're giving it your best shot, from both sides, you're going to generate excitement like you've never seen before.'

Editorial inserts

Special sections covering such topics as beauty, fitness and major sporting events are nothing new. Generally, they have been supplements containing articles generated specifically to support advertising and have been produced on contract. The new breed of insert, however, is conceived and produced in-house by editorial aficionados, usually for a more general audience that is interested in, but not necessarily committed to, a subject-- say sailing.

These editorial inserts, of course, have opened more than a few doors on the business side. Carol Taber, publisher of Working Woman, says she met with American Health publisher Owen Lipstein specifically to discuss areas in which they could cooperate to attract business that large competitors such as Conde Nast generally dominate.

With Working Woman readers' interest in health and fitness and American Health's high readership among career-oriented women, they found a "great deal of homogeneity between the two,' Taber says. The result was three different inserts, one of which was a 52-page pullout, "Fitness: The health advantage at work,' that had a combined 1.5 million circulation.

Good Housekeeping's "Body Be Beautiful' joint insert with American Health began as "an editorial hunch' of chief editor John Mack Carter. The two editorial staffs agreed on 14 articles for the section, to run in May. American Health editors will concentrate on the technical aspects of health and fitness; Good Housekeeping editors will cover beauty, nutritional health needs and beauty products. "Our staffs are working in these areas anyway,' says Carter. "It's just a matter of refocusing their activity.'

Joint salon guide

Another editorial project between two business magazines grew out of their recognition of a professional need. Beauty and hairdressing titles Modern Salon, a monthly, and ShopTalk, a quarterly, combined efforts on a guide to help salon owners deal with a growing trend: multiethnic crossover of both clientele and staff. ShopTalk concentrates on the ethnic market, and Modern Salon serves a primarily white market.

"We wanted to do the definitive educational piece to run in both magazines, acknowledging the trend, showing salon owners how to deal with it and how to make it work profitably,' says Michael Ross, publisher of Modern Salon. A 64-page insert with 31 ad pages resulted.

Growing potential

The partnership formed in November between Time Inc. and Working Woman's Lang will be the joint venture to watch in the next several years. Lang sees such joint ventures becoming more prevalent, especially as launches become riskier for both entrepreneurs and large corporations. In addition, tax reform makes partnerships, in some cases, preferable to outright corporate acquisition.

In the area of special inserts, publishers such as Sail's Don Macauley and Modern Salon's Ross are looking for new ways to market their particular expertise in conjunction with general interest consumer magazines.

Concludes American Health's Harris, "I think there's a lot of room for cooperation between magazines, and there's no reason not to cooperate. It just takes a strong guy to say, "Let's do it.''

Photo: A common reader need and a willingness to share editorial and sales strengths have resulted in a growing number of joint ventures among magazines, including Modern Salon and ShopTalk, Sail and Esquire.

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