GAME The short, happy, tragic life of The New York Times Sports Magazine
Nastia Liukin, mid-flip on the balance beam, featured in the Beijing Olympics issue
By tim loh
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n Super Bowl Sunday, 2006, The New York Times launched Play, an ambitious sports quarterly tucked inside the fold of the Sunday paper. For almost three years, it was—editorially and critically—a smashing success. It won awards for photography and design, had many stories anthologized, and was named a National Magazine Award finalist for General Excellence in 2008, the first year it was eligible. Then, six months later, it was dead. What happened? It’s a sad story that provides some insights into the precarious nature of magazine journalism these days. Part I: The Concoction It all began in early 2005, when Gerald Marzorati, editor of The New York Times Magazine, was stuck in Boston’s Logan Airport, waiting for a delayed flight. Over the previous six months, Marzorati had been hard at work. He had rebranded the magazine’s four Part 2 Sunday supplements into the sleek and sexy T. Luxury advertisers had responded positively, and the increased ad revenue gave the Times Magazine enough of a financial cushion to allow Marzorati to entertain ideas that would have been impossible before. A lifelong sports fan with time to kill in the terminal, he went to a newsstand and picked up copies of Sports Illustrated and ESPN— both of which his teenage sons subscribed to—and sat down to analyze how two of the most prominent magazines in their field were covering the sports world. He wasn’t altogether impressed. The publications had, he thought, basically given up on traditional magazine journalism. They were 34
creating “simulacra” of their websites in print, with “small dynamic bits all over the place,” and, in their tone, shape, and form, he thought, “they were deciding that the only people who care are teenage boys.” He considered the people he saw every morning on the train commuting into New York—welleducated, highly literate adults—and envisioned a sports magazine for them. He imagined an idea-oriented product filled with longform narratives. In that moment, Play was born. Back in New York, Marzorati consulted the Times’ Strategic Planning Department to see if there really was an audience for such a thing. They ran some numbers, decided in the affirmative, and gave him a green light to put together a prototype. He contacted Mark Bryant, who had been the editor of Outside magazine in the Nineties, to see if he would be interested in serving as editor. Bryant hesitated. He didn’t think there was room for another sports magazine. Even if there was, he said, he wasn’t the man to lead it. He told Marzorati that he probably couldn’t even tell him which major league baseball teams were in first place on any given day. But for Marzorati, that was beside the point. “It was never going to be about the day-to-day sports,” Marzorati says. “It was about doing those big kinds of profiles, journeys, and reported pieces that make a magazine a magazine.” After some back and forth, Bryant agreed to do it. As summer approached, he roped in Josh Dean, a New York-based freelance writer with whom he had worked at Men’s Journal at the start of the decade, and they teamed up with some of the Sunday Magazine
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OVER Michael Phelps featured in the Beijing Olympics issue
staffers—Dean Robinson, the story editor, and Janet Froelich, the creative d i r e c t o r, among others, plus the photography department— to create their prototype. When it was finished in early fall, Marzorati and Bryant brought it to the editors at the top of the Times masthead—Bill Keller, the executive editor; and Jill Abramson and John Geddes, both managing editors. Although Bryant was pleased with the product, he was also a little wary. Sports was becoming an increasingly difficult environment for advertising, and Play wouldn’t have a daily website to help promote it. But the response from the Times editors allayed any fears. “I don’t remember exactly who said it,” he recalls, “but within the first 10 minutes someone said, ‘This is great. How soon can you do it?’” The answer (“very soon”) came soon thereafter, when the Times advertising department said they were convinced they could sell plenty of ad pages. With that, the game was on. Part II: The Short, Happy Part In the seven weeks between Thanksgiving 2005 and mid-January 2006, Bryant, Dean, and a small staff rushed to put the first issue together. It debuted on Super Bowl Sunday, which also happened to be five days before the start of the Winter Olympics. The cover featured US skier Bode Miller—up close and unshaven—his blue eyes gazing high and off the page. Against a black background, the Photography by Finlay MacKay
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orange caption read: “Bode Miller Is Not Such a Bad Boy: ‘He just loves skiing fast,’ says his mother. ‘Other than that ... he’s really quite unhappy.’” The issue opened with a letter from Bryant describing the kinds of readers Play was after. The magazine certainly was for that buddy of his who’d climbed to the top of his profession, started a family, and attracted a large circle of friends—despite his all-consuming passion for the San Diego Chargers (“Sports may not be my life, but it is my religion”). It was also for the “weekend warriors” of the world, the folks who enjoy playing sports as much as, or more than, watching them. But what could really set it apart from the pack, Bryant hoped, was if it appealed to those who never dealt with sports at all—people who simply love the big, rich, human stories that sports so often provide. “Stories that reveal character. Stories that engage the world,” Bryant wrote. “As far as we’re concerned, it doesn’t get any better than that.” The response from readers and advertisers was good enough that the Times moved up the second issue to June (instead of August, as originally planned) to coincide with the World Cup in Germany. Thus commenced another whirlwind creative and production process. As they prepared that second issue, Bryant was already moving on the third, hoping to capitalize on the momentum. He phoned David Foster Wallace, the renowned, be-handkerchiefed novelist and essayist—and a regionally ranked tennis player in his earlier years— whom Bryant had heard was a huge fan of Roger Federer, the Swiss tennis star. Although Wallace’s agent was skeptical, Bryant made the writer NYRM
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an offer he couldn’t refuse. “David,” he said, “I’ve got three words for you: Roger. Federer. Wimbledon.” “Wow,” Wallace responded. “You would let me do that?” Indeed, he would. But it wouldn’t happen without stress and drama, and it almost didn’t work out at all. At Wimbledon time, Josh Dean, Wallace’s editor for the piece, was living in an apartment in lower Manhattan with his new girlfriend. Wallace, who didn’t have a credit card, cell phone or an e-mail address (or so he claimed), arrived in England from Italy, where he had spoken at a literature convention in what was his first trip ever to a non-English speaking country. One morning, around 3 a.m. New York time, Dean’s cell phone rang. “I wouldn’t have answered it,” he says, “but I saw by the country code that it was England and would obviously be him.” Wallace was having a meltdown. He couldn’t find his press credentials, which meant he couldn’t ride the press bus from his hotel to the tennis stadium. And he found the public transportation system intimidating and confusing. “He was stressed and nervous and sure that it wasn’t going to work out,” Dean recalled. For Dean, who has written pieces from Russia, the Andes, and the ski slopes overlooking Tehran, it meant playing travel guide and coach. “It was sort of like leading a child through Europe,” he said. “But I knew that even if he came back with nothing, it was going to be great. If it had been anyone else, though, I would have been pissed.” The result “was probably one of the best pieces we ever did,” Dean said. Wallace opened his essay by describing what a typical “Federer Moment” looks like on television. During the previous summer’s US Open final, he had watched on TV as Federer was caught off-balance by an apparently unreturnable Andre Agassi shot. He somehow managed to stop his forward momentum, backpedal furiously, and hit a ridiculous forehand (his body still moving backwards) that screamed down the line past Agassi to win the point. “It was like something out of ‘The Matrix,’” Wallace wrote. “I don’t know what-all sounds were involved, but my spouse says she hurried in and there was popcorn all over the couch and I was down on one knee and my eyeballs looked like novelty-shop eyeballs. “And the truth is,” he went on, “TV tennis is to live tennis pretty much as video porn is to the felt reality of human love.” The 8,400 words that followed (footnotes included) were Wallace’s attempt to capture the felt reality of Federer’s tennis game. What’s so special about it, he argued, was that Federer dominates with beauty and grace, traits that are supposed to be obsolete in today’s power game, in which heavily muscled athletes swing lightweight carbonfiber rackets like fly swatters that send the ball trampolining off at unprecedented speeds. The two-dimensional TV screen can’t come close to conveying Federer’s exceptional skill. To see it in person, Wallace concluded, is something downright spiritual. “Federer as Religious Experience” remains one of the most celebrated nonfiction works of Wallace’s short life and was the most e-mailed sports article on NYTimes.com in 2006. But it wasn’t eligible for a National Magazine Award because newspaper inserts
weren’t included in the competition till 2008. Play also was able to leverage the writing talent already at the Sunday Magazine. One example was Michael Lewis, fresh off of two best-selling books on new ideas in the sports world (one on baseball, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game; the other on football, The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game). In September 2006, he was granted unheard-of access to the reclusive Dallas Cowboys coach Bill Parcells for eight days. The result, “What Keeps Bill Parcells Up at Night,” was another piece that landed Play on the national radar. Michael Sokolove was a second example. A self-described specialist on the culture, psychology, and business of sports, he flew to Europe earlier that summer to track the journey of an Israeli basketball star, Yotam Halperin, as he tried to become the first from his country to play in the National Basketball Association. The article, which appeared in the same issue as Lewis’ profile of Parcells, chronicled Halperin’s odyssey from Tel Aviv to Slovenia to Rome to Miami to Salt Lake City to Seattle, including a sympathetic account of NBA draft night at his agent’s apartment in Miami. That night, Halperin slipped some 30 spots below where he’d hoped to be picked, crushing any chance of landing a big-money contract. Ordinarily not much of a drinker, he switched from beer to straight vodka as things worsened, and before long, he was drunk. A friend took him outside to get fresh air, and it was only then that he got picked, which he found out via a text message from a friend in Israel. He was a Seattle Supersonic now. At that point, he fell asleep. “Who’s going to sponsor that anymore?” Sokolove asked. “That takes time and effort and money and expertise on the writer’s part. Those are the ingredients of good long-form writing. Take the time, pay them to go places, places the reader can’t go. A great magazine strives to take people places they can’t go themselves.” Play’s sophomore campaign built upon its rookie success. In 2007, it had the two most e-mailed sports stories on NYTimes.com, and in spring 2008, it was nominated for a National Magazine Award for General Excellence. Unfortunately, the success was not accompanied by abundant advertising.
“It’s not like The Times was going to shut down some foreign bureaus to save the sports magazine.” Michael Sokolove, contract writer for the Times Magazine . JJJ
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Part III: The Tragic Part Like any startup, Play was a business experiment. And it faced an uphill battle from day one. Whereas the T magazines are what the ad trade calls “vertical”— they get about three-quarters of their advertising from a single sector (like women’s fashion or cosmetics)—sports magazines have to rely on at least six different sources. Play sought ads for cars, alcohol, sporting goods, financial services, men’s clothing, and—to a lesser extent—electronics and travel. The liquor advertising never materialized. But the real crusher came when Detroit started tanking and brought automobile advertising down with it. “Those were just killers,” Marzorati said, “absolute killers.” Had it merely paid for its own production costs, Marzorati said, Play wouldn’t have been eliminated. But the financial crisis
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that began last fall exacerbated the problems in the print industry’s advertising environment and added to the myriad other troubles facing the Times. The company’s debts totaled $1.1 billion, and it had less than $50 million in cash. To shore up its capital, the Times accepted a $250 million investment by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim in January 2009, and in March, it sold—and promptly leased back—$250 million of its new $600 million headquarters. Bryant recalled Marzorati telling him in early November that the company needed to cut $90-to-95 million in expenses right away. Given those circumstances, Play was doomed. On average, it had been losing about $300,000 an issue. Nearly all of its content was provided by freelancers who weren’t members of the Newspaper Guild and other unions that hold sway with the company’s management. But perhaps most damning, it focused on a subject that the company doesn’t consider a core product. In the daily paper itself, the Times last year downgraded its standalone sports section by relegating it to the back of the business section most days of the week. As Sokolove put it, “It’s not like the Times was going to shut down some foreign bureaus to save the sports magazine.” Still, Play never lost more than $500,000 on an issue. And on at least one occasion, it made a considerable sum. For the Beijing Olympics issue, Nielsen Media, keen on expanding its global brand, signed up to be Play’s sole sponsor. It was the first such move in the history of the Times, and Play made over $1 million on that issue, Marzorati says. This helped it more or less break even financially for 2008, but with no such sponsors lined up for 2009, that wasn’t enough. The ultimate decision came from the top: publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Keller, who, ironically, were big fans of the magazine and had intimated throughout 2006 and 2007 that, regardless of advertising, they would find a way to make it work. Marzorati relayed the bad news to Bryant over the phone. It was, he said, the hardest call he has made in his 30-year career. “Laying off anybody is hard enough, but telling someone that something that he created no longer is going to exist is even harder,” he said. “Mark and I were intensely involved and engaged in it in a way that can only happen in a startup phase, when something is your baby and you’re looking over its every detail.” Thinking back to the day in Logan Airport, he added, “I had some back-of-the-envelope idea of what the idea of it should be, but Mark just made something so much richer than I could have ever imagined.” “It was by far the best magazine I’ve ever worked on,” said Dean, who’s back to freelancing full-time now. “We hit a little sweet spot at the Times. I’m not sure I’ll get to do anything that exciting again.” As for Bryant, he’s back in Santa Fe, N.M., where Outside is headquartered. On Nov. 20, 2008, in his final e-mail newsletter to a list of his most supportive readers, he said: “We had such grand plans for Play in 2009, and the regret runs deep; Play has been the kind of publication one doesn’t get to create much anymore. But we’re grateful to have had the chance to make this magazine, and to have had such a rich relationship with so many devoted readers. Believe me, you’ll be missed.”
PHOTOGRAPHY BY FINLAY MACKAY
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Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Profit The free-roaming spirit of opinion journals wanders into the thicket of corporate ownership
A By Nikolaj Gammeltoft
lthough objectivity is the modern standard of American journalism, it is probably true that the most interesting writers are those with strong opinions. It’s probably also true that journalists of opinion have surpassed their non-opinionated colleagues at newspapers and news magazines when it comes to influence. But the influence and prestige come at a cost. Opinion journals, with their passionate editors and writers, are often difficult to manage, and their opinionated content scares away advertisers. Now, the forces of modern management, corporate finance, and media consolidation are also affecting opinion journalism. They are tampering with this magazine niche’s DNA, which traditionally has been based on independent ownership and a freely roaming editorial spirit. Two cases in point are The Weekly Standard and The New Republic. In 1995, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation launched The Weekly Standard, and in 2007, Martin Peretz sold the 95-year-old The New Republic to CanWest, a Canadian conglomerate controlled by the politically influential Asper family. The question is: Does it matter? For seven years, I was, on a small scale, one of those free-roaming editorial spirits. I edited and published the only libertarian journal in Denmark, Libertas. I did it con amore, without ever receiving a cent for it, editing through the night in the downtown Copenhagen office of the telecommunications company that paid the salary for my day job as a CEO’s assistant. In addition to being executive editor and publisher, I was the fact checker and copy editor, and sometimes wrote parts of the magazine myself. I sat through those nights correcting typos because I believed in the ideas that my contributors were defending on the pages of Libertas. Denmark is not a “live free or die” kind of place, and I felt that a voice of dissent was healthy for the political climate of the country. I may even have dreamt of introducing a revolutionary new 38
policy idea (not that it ever happened). My journal was just a tiny voice in the global choir of opinion periodicals, but I was tapping into the broader tradition of this ideologically motivated part of the press, using its heavyweight publications (usually American or British) as role models and inspiration. At 25, I wanted to be Denmark’s William F. Buckley Jr. The hallmark of world-class journals of critical opinion like the National Review, The New Republic, and The Nation in the United States, and, to some extent, The Spectator and the New Statesman in the United Kingdom, has traditionally been their independence from political and commercial interests (although the 181-year-old Spectator has been under conglomerate ownership for decades, first as part of Conrad Black’s Hollinger Group and most recently as part of the Barclay brothers’ Press Holdings). These magazines were the creatures of owner-editors who believed in a political program or an ideology. They never worried about offending anyone, and they performed genuinely vital public functions in a democracy as platforms for ideas and opinions not heard elsewhere. My far humbler Libertas fit this mold. I answered to no one and had full independence from all interests. I never even bothered to seek advertisers since the costs of publishing and printing were covered by subscriptions and donations. Although I did not own the periodical (a foundation owns it), I was, for all practical purposes, its sole proprietor with full editorial freedom during my seven years as editor-in-chief. The appeal of opinion journalism is that it can shape public policy and the ideological climate. Opinion journals are weapons in a war of ideas and are created to speak to those in power. That is why they attract the attention of ambitious thinkers and writers, as well as people who want to use this influence for their own political goals. My influence far outweighed my meager budget, small circulation, and inability to come up with a killer new policy idea. The magazine was quoted in newspapers. I got access to the mainstream media as a talking head, and many of the Libertas contributors eventually became instrumental in establishing Denmark’s first free-market think tank in 2005.
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There are numerous examples of journals of opinion having an impact that far exceeds their usually modest number of readers. In 1994, a highly controversial article by Elizabeth McCaughey in The New Republic contributed to the failure of the Clinton administration’s health care plan. The Spectator in the UK, in effect, created the public platform on which its former Tory editor, Boris Johnson, would run successfully for mayor of London. The American magazine Commentary can be said to have launched the neoconservative movement. National Review and The Nation have each been vehicles for ideological and political reforms within their separate spheres of influence. Although The Atlantic is not an opinion journal but rather a general interest magazine that publishes opinion pieces, one of them, James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling’s 1982 article “Broken Windows,” was the theoretical framework for the zero tolerance policies that later were widely adopted in crime prevention. When the influence of opinion magazines is discussed, The Weekly Standard is often cited because of its ownership by the international media powerhouse Rupert Murdoch. Scott McConnell, who is the editor of the competing The American Conservative, wrote in 2005: “If Rupert Murdoch’s purpose was to make things happen in Washington and in the world, he could not have leveraged it better. One could spend 10 times that much on political action committees without achieving anything comparable [to The Weekly Standard].” A similar motivation was behind the 2002 transaction in which Peretz, the long-time owner and editor of The New Republic, sold control of his liberal magazine to two financiers, Roger Hertog and Michael Steinhardt. Hertog, who is a champion of various conservative causes as well as a businessman, told The New York Times that he was drawn to the magazine simply because it was an influential forum for the exchange of ideas. “I start my life thinking, what do I believe in, what is interesting, what is good policy, and how do you advance those policies? You want to support institutions that, on average—more than on average—you believe in the ideas they stand for,” Hertog said. Owner-editor types like Peretz and National Review’s Buckley are rare breeds today, as the media industry has become increasingly professionalized and conglomeratized. The professionalization is a response to the financial crisis in the media industry. This has had a particular impact on the opinion sector, which historically has suffered from a lack of qualified managers because content was king and becoming a media manager on the business side was neither prestigious nor well-paying. At times, this meant that reporters and editors who were not qualified to manage a business ended up making the strategic decisions, and important growth opportunities were missed. Conglomeratization and, with it, media concentration mean that today 90 percent of the media assets in the US are owned by six large media companies: Disney, Viacom, TimeWarner, Bertelsmann AG, General Electric, and News Corporation. This concentration of assets is generally not the result of an attempt to rule the world but rather the more mundane consequence of economies of scale and the ability to exploit cross-platform synergies. The colorful and important discipline of opinion journalism has to find its place somewhere in all of this. Regardless of our politics, most of us want a diverse society where there is room for a broad spectrum of ideas and opinions. We value the pluralism of ideas and voices that democracy produces, and we want to ensure this diversity through a free and open media. The financial and political survival of serious opinion journalism is vital to these democratic ideals.
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In late February 2007, Peretz sold his remaining share of The New Republic to CanWest. The company had already acquired 30 percent of the magazine in 2006 when it became an investor together with Peretz, Hertog, and Steinhardt. The trio was brought out when CanWest acquired full ownership of the publication in the 2007 transaction. No price was announced, but according to the Financial Post (the business section of the Toronto-based National Post), CanWest paid $7 million for 100 percent of the magazine. Then, in a surprising turn of events, Peretz bought back his magazine in March of this year with the backing of a group of investors led by Laurence Grafstein, a former investment banker with Lazard Freres & Co. who specialized in media and telecommunications. Very few details about the sale were disclosed. CanWest declined to say anything about why it had chosen to sell The New Republic so soon, beyond what was already on the public record, which is that the sale was part of CanWest’s “ongoing effort to improve its balance sheet.” The Canadian company has, like many other media companies, been struggling in the current downturn. In the 2008 fiscal year, the company reported revenues of $2.6 billion and a net loss of almost $900 million, reflecting the rough economic times and a heavy debt load after a string of acquisitions. The New Republic was only a minor factor in CanWest’s operations, but it has not been a high performing asset. The New Republic’s average paid circulation for 2007 was 59,779 copies per issue, a decline of 41 percent since 2000, according to Quantcast, a company that measures media consumption. This was despite what looked like CanWest’s efforts to boost the profitability of the magazine. Major changes were implemented shortly after CanWest acquired the magazine in 2007, including decreased frequency from weekly to biweekly and an increased newsstand price, accompanied by a new design with more visuals and other reader-friendly content. Like the US, Canada has experienced a decade of ongoing media concentration, with 90 percent of Canadian media in the hands of just four companies today. CanWest bought a chain of 13 newspapers from a company controlled by Conrad Black in 2000 and, more recently, a television network with cable and satellite operations. These acquisitions burdened CanWest with a crushing debt load and raised widespread concern in Canada about the Asper family’s grip on Canadian media. The Aspers have long been associated with Canada’s Liberal Party. They were united with Hertog, Steinhardt, and Peretz by their strong support for Israel, but they disagreed on other foreign policy issues, including the war in Iraq. Peretz’s new backers, the Grafstein family, are, like the Aspers, connected to the Canadian Liberal Party. And they probably are closer to Peretz in their socially liberal values and hawkish foreign policy views, which makes the new ownership constellation seem more organic than the previous quartet. Hertog has an association with a number of right-leaning organizations—the Manhattan Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the Club for Growth, and Commentary—while his partner Steinhardt was a major donor to Bill Clinton. Another explanation for the most recent sale is that there was a risk that The New Republic would suffer in a CanWest bankruptcy. “This was most likely a situation where Peretz asked for it,” said Steve Ross, a media consultant and a former professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. “There is a potential bankruptcy situation, and he was afraid that everything would roll over and the magazine would just die. He wanted to save his baby, and it was too
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the magazine’s editorial line, which had small for anybody on the seller side to become muddled because of differing worry about because nobody thought viewpoints on major issues between the that a money-losing opinion journal was editor and the owners. But if Peretz’s of value if there were to be bankruptcy The appeal of opinion reacquisition of the magazine was an proceedings.” intervention to save it before it was Either way, Peretz’s reacquisition journalism is that it can shape swallowed by a CanWest bankruptcy, of his magazine illustrates the uneasy then there’s no telling what will happen relationship between opinion journals public policy and the ideological when the 71-year-old Peretz is no longer and a profit-driven corporate culture. climate. Opinion journals are around. Opinion journals are usually the creations As opinion journalism navigates the of deep-pocketed donors—individuals or weapons in a war of ideas and stormy waters of economic recession foundations—that bankroll them. Public and conglomeratization, the sailing is corporations don’t work that way because they are created to speak to not smooth, but the ship is still afloat. shareholders demand that every part of No one magazine can be viewed as an the company contribute to the bottom those in power. exemplar for this genre. The future will line; there is little room for ideology or probably offer a plethora of models, sentiment. Opinion journals often cease ranging from literary magazines that publication, or struggle to live on, after have found patron saints at colleges the founding editor dies or leaves. around the country to the feisty online The Weekly Standard has three founding opinion sites that are springing up, such editors, all of whom are prominent rightas The Economists’ Voice. Edited by Joseph wing intellectuals. Two of them, Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes, still run the magazine, while the third, Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate and Columbia University professor, it has John Podhoretz, now edits Commentary. They co-founded The Weekly about 40,000 unique visitors per month and has become a go-to site Standard after meeting in March 1995 with Rupert Murdoch, who for informed criticism about the economy and what is going on in would become the conservative magazine’s guardian angel and owner Washington. There is something about the corporate lives of The New Republic through News Corporation. The magazine operates as a fully owned subsidiary inside the company, and its continued publication seems and The Weekly Standard that induces a sense of uneasiness, brought safe despite losing $1 million every year, according to press reports on by a feeling that such journals don’t belong inside Excel charts of ad revenues and operating margins. It is evident that The New (News Corp. does not report these figures). According to observers, The Weekly Standard operates thanks Republic, America’s oldest weekly journal of opinion after The Nation, to an initial endowment and an annual subsidy from Rupert could not get itself out of the corporate suites up in Winnipeg fast Murdoch. “It is not always understood beyond the world of enough. It has been difficult to persuade people to talk on the journalism that political opinion magazines almost invariably record about corporate ownership of opinion journals, as if there lose money—sometimes a lot of it. The deficits are usually made were something inappropriate about raising the subject. One of the up by their owners and subscribers’ contributions, some quite insiders I approached refused to talk on the record and called it “a substantial...Buckley once answered a query about when his stupid discussion.” I think again about my own little opinion journal, Libertas. It is magazine would be profitable by saying, ‘You don’t expect the Church to make a profit, do you?’” wrote Scott McConnell of The still around with articles in the latest issue about the culture wars in Denmark, the difference between liberalism and libertarianism, American Conservative in 2005. But Murdoch’s News Corp. is also struggling in the economic and the debate over global warming. There are still no ads, but the downturn. Its stock price has dipped to new lows, and it increasingly magazine comes out regularly and will probably do so until a minimal appears that the company overpaid for the 2007 acquisition of The government has been implemented in Denmark, which probably Wall Street Journal. News Corp. has initiated cost saving measures means until the end of time. I can’t visualize it in a corporate context throughout its world-wide businesses. Still, it is probably a safe and it will never make money. “Opinion journalism will, except in very rare circumstances, bet that The Weekly Standard will continue to publish as long as Murdoch is at the helm of his company (he turned 78 in March) lose money—or only make enough to cover expenses,” said John because of his particularly personal relationship with politics and Podhoretz in an e-mail. “Its purpose is not to garner lucre but to attempt to set the terms of the national debate.” Podhoretz is now a conservative agenda. In a 2005 article for the Columbia Journalism Review titled “After the editor-in-chief of his father’s old magazine, Commentary, another Rupert,” writer Neil Hickey speculated about News Corp.’s post- opinion journal that has maintained an independent life outside Murdoch future. “What is certain is that after Murdoch departs, the media corporations. It was supported for most of its existence the company will never be the same,” Hickey wrote. A new CEO by the American Jewish Committee, until it became independent of News Corp., whoever it might be—a member of the family or as a nonprofit corporation in 2007 (see page 58). “Owners who go an outsider—may not have the political interest or the power to into it thinking they can profit from it are fools,” Podhoretz said. convince shareholders that they should continue to subsidize an “Owners who go into it thinking they can have an important role in establishing the intellectual parameters of the national discussion opinion journal. The New Republic also seems likely to survive for now. The know what they’re getting into and will act accordingly.” transactions over the past years have removed the confusion about
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Reading Newsweek in Niger By Matthew Bachtel
A former Peace Corps volunteer remembers better times
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s Cathryn Poff and I talked about our time serving in the Peace Corps in Niger, she recalled the nights that she spent explaining pictures in Newsweek International to the men of her village, Diomoga, and I talked about my own experiences using the magazine as a tool to teach English informally in my village, Kirou Haoussa. The village of Diomoga is home to about 200 people. Though it was only 50 kilometers (about 31 miles) from the capital and largest city, Niamey, it was rural, with little government support. It had no school. The people of Diomoga are Fulani, who have historically been nomadic herders; however, this small group of Fulani decided to settle in one area and begin growing crops. One Newsweek issue that Cathryn remembered covered the first Gulf War. Pictures in the magazine included the Arabian Desert with American soldiers, tanks, and fighter planes. The men were fascinated. As they passed the magazine around, sometimes they held it upside down, unsure of what they were seeing. None of them had ever had formal schooling, nor had they ever seen a photograph, let alone an actual tank or airplane. The only official news they ever heard came from local radio stations that broadcast in their language, Fulfulde. Through Cathryn’s magazines, they got a chance to see what they previously had only heard about and imagined. “Not to stereotype, but the men were very interested in the tanks, guns, and artillery used in the first Gulf War,” said Cathryn. The men, however, were not the only ones to experience the magic of the magazine. In the daytime, when the women had finished their daily tasks of pounding millet, carrying water, and collecting firewood, they came to Cathryn’s courtyard to see the pictures in the magazines that they had heard their husbands talking about. The women were fascinated by Bill and Hillary Clinton. “Anytime they saw a picture of Hillary Clinton, they thought I was her daughter, since I have light hair like Hillary,” said Cathryn. Diomoga is just one of thousands of villages and cities around the world that has hosted Peace Corps volunteers, and Cathryn and I are just two of the thousands of volunteers who have passed through the Peace Corps since its founding in 1961. The Peace Corps has adapted 42
over the years to make the lives of volunteers better, and in 1982, it made a deal with Newsweek International to purchase the magazine at a reduced rate, providing every volunteer in service with his or her own subscription. Whatever the Peace Corps paid, this was, in my judgment, one of the best foreign policy investments the United States has ever made. It was extraordinarily useful to us volunteers in our interactions with our host communities. Since its founding, the Peace Corps has had three primary goals: provide the developing world with technically trained men and women; provide a better understanding of America and Americans to people abroad; and provide the people of America with a better understanding of people in other countries. The magazine was the perfect tool for accomplishing the second of those goals. In addition, it provided volunteers with a connection to the United States. It was a tangible news source that could be read and re-read when volunteers needed a break from the world they were living in. For many volunteers, there are few opportunities to speak English on a daily basis—the only language spoken is that of their village. Reading Newsweek provided a chance to interact with English, if only for a few minutes. So when I heard that in September 2008 the Peace Corps stopped funding the program, I felt more than a moment of sadness. With the end of the program, the volunteers lost a unique resource that could reveal how their host communities saw the world. “The pictures in the magazine provided a starting point for many conversations,” said Bindi Jhaveri, who volunteered in Bacheniya, Niger, from 2004 to 2006. “It was easier to show them a picture of a modern car than to try to explain it. They could see the picture and ask questions.” The village of Bacheniya is home to about 300 people. The main ethnic group in the region is the Hausa, who are known for their farming and trading across West Africa. In the fall of 2005, with Bindi’s help, the first elementary school opened in Bacheniya. On one occasion, she shared a Newsweek article on the Middle East with some villagers. A picture showed a group of Arab Muslims praying. The villagers reacted positively. “I had been told by volunteers in other parts of the country that Nigeriens didn’t like Arabs,” said Bindi. “My villagers did not have a problem with Arabs, but I wouldn’t have known that if they hadn’t seen the picture and
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Kira Taylor and Saman Maman enjoy their free copies of Newsweek in Niger
discussed their views with me.” In my village of Kirou Haoussa, populated by 1,200 Hausas, I found another use for the magazine. A group of young men wanted to learn English so that they could go to Nigeria to work during the dry season, and I agreed to help them. From my Newsweek International magazines, I copied sections of text onto a blackboard and had them copy it into their notebooks. I then gave them the Hausa translations and had them list the English words in one column and the Hausa equivalents in the other. They practiced reading the text and pronouncing the words. The story I chose was about Liberia’s president, Ellen JohnsonSirleaf, who was the first woman elected to lead an African country. The article enabled me to create a dialogue about whether the men would vote for a female president. One of them said he would, which I found surprising, because Nigerien culture is male-dominated. The magazines also became a treasured prize for people in the villages. After Cathryn read her Newsweek cover to cover, people in the village asked her to tear pictures out for them to take home. When she visited the homes of her villager friends, she often found those pictures on the walls, prominently displayed. As a volunteer from 2005 to 2007, I was often asked for pictures from my magazines, to be used for decoration. The first time I gave away a magazine, early in my service, I almost started a war among the children. With that in mind, I saved all of my magazines until my last day of living in the village and discreetly gave them to friends before I left. Newsweek International provided more analysis of the news than we were able to get from radio broadcasts. (Volunteers can hear the news on radio stations in local languages, or on the Voice of America, the BBC, or Radio France International during their English broadcasts.) Newsweek, however, gave us something more tangible: written news of life and events back home. Volunteers received the last copies of Newsweek International on Sept. 30, 2008. According to the acting director of the Peace Corps’ press office, Laura Lartigue, the administrators in Washington eliminated the program as one of the ways to reduce the strain on the Peace Corps’ operating budget of $340 million. Though that may sound like a large sum, it’s minuscule compared with the $711 billion the government spends on the military. The move was made after Newsweek said it couldn’t continue offering the magazine to the Peace Corps at the reduced rate because it no longer made a profit on the sales. My backof-the-envelope calculation is that even if Newsweek International gave the same discount that the US Newsweek gives its customers, the cost for 8,000 volunteers would not be more than $250,000 per annum. (Of course, that doesn’t take into account shipping, which would raise the price considerably.) Besides having a small budget, the Peace Corps bureau in each country receives money that has been converted to that country’s currency. In light of the weakened US economy, the Peace Corps has also had to cut 15 percent of its headquarters’ budget, and it plans to take 300 fewer volunteers in 2009. The Peace Corps also reasoned that, since most volunteers now have access to cell phones and the Internet, they do not need a magazine that may arrive a few weeks or months after it has been printed. That reasoning may be valid for some volunteers. When Chris Fletcher served in Grenada from 2006 to 2008, his assignment was primarily to help develop technology infrastructure. At his home there, he had Photograph by Christina del Campo
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the fastest Internet connection of anyone in the area. He could be as connected with what was happening in the US, or anywhere in the world, as his friends in the States. Nevertheless, the Peace Corps’ arguments are not convincing to me. Though Newsweek may not address news issues with the depth some volunteers desire, I believe that providing a print news source through Peace Corps funding, or through generous donations by a publishing company, would be a worthwhile investment in terms of helping volunteers fulfill the Peace Corps’ goal of giving people abroad a better understanding of America, as well as encouraging volunteers to become paying subscribers to the magazine after they complete their service. Another flaw in the argument relates to the availability of printed or Web material at volunteers’ posts. In countries like Niger, a volunteer could be posted at least two hours away from Internet access that they then have to pay for out of pocket—the equivalent of a couple of dollars for an hour of Internet access. Though that may not seem like a high price, most volunteers earn only a couple of dollars a day. Furthermore, the computers or the Internet service are not always reliable. Depending on the volunteer’s work schedule, it could be a few weeks to a month before he or she gets to an area with Internet access. Even in Eastern European posts, some volunteers have dial-up, rather than high-speed, Internet access and do not have time to wait for news pages to download when they are trying to do work-related research. Chris Fletcher, though not a big fan of Newsweek, still read the magazines cover to cover and then cut them up for collage material. He agrees that news in some print form would serve volunteers well. He thinks that the Peace Corps should be getting volunteers subscriptions to The Economist, since Newsweek only provided basic information and little analysis. “The Economist gives more information for a volunteer to understand a food crisis or what is happening in development,” said Fletcher. That’s just wishful thinking on Fletcher’s part—an international subscription to the The Economist is approximately double the price of Newsweek International. Whatever the cost of the magazine, the investment in support of volunteers who make connections with thousands of people worldwide in the name of peaceful relations on behalf of the US is well worth it. Perhaps the Obama administration could look into adding funds for a weekly news magazine to the Peace Corps budget. If nothing else, the magazine program could be a small “bailout” to the print industry that would also provide benefits to volunteers and the people they serve. As the administration works to change the image of the US abroad, civilian ambassadors like the Peace Corps volunteers are a key to moving to a foreign policy based on dialogue and understanding of different nations and cultures. Though I don’t know how many volunteers subscribed to Newsweek after their service, I’m sure it won numerous followers. In fact, volunteers who were in service when the program ended wrote many letters to Newsweek saying they missed receiving the magazines, said Rhona Murphy, Newsweek International’s publisher. As Newsweek tries to rebrand itself, it has the perfect audience of internationally aware citizenry in news-starved Peace Corps volunteers. Getting them interested in Newsweek again could be a way of increasing readership and interest in the magazine. A market of 7,876 volunteers worldwide waits for a news source to fill the void left by the canceled Newsweek International program. Communities around the globe where Peace Corps volunteers are serving wait for pictures of a world that they have never seen. Which magazine wants to take Newsweek’s place and make an investment in improving foreign relations? Which editor or publisher wants to win the hearts of volunteers and secure some life-long subscriptions? Time? The Economist? Peace Corps volunteers, hungry for news, are waiting for someone to fill the gap. NYRM
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“This Paper S a Street publications, created to empower the homeless, now may need a handout themselves By Elizabeth Henderson
“Hello, everybody! Would you like to read the brand new Spare Change paper today?” street vendor Greg Daugherty asks a group of young students as they walk through Harvard Square in Cambridge, Mass. They ignore the sales pitch and keep walking. Daugherty is used to the rejection that comes with the job. A 15-year veteran of hawking the biweekly paper, which covers homelessness and poverty in the Boston area, Daugherty currently lives at the Long Island Shelter in Quincy, Mass. Spare Change, a newspaper (and yes, this is The New York Review of Magazines, but bear with me), contains a magazine insert, What’s Up, which is important both for its tenacious survival and its impact on other street publications. There are currently only two other street publications that are magazines—St. Louis’s publication of the same name, What’s Up Magazine, and Chicago’s Street Wise, which switched to a glossy magazine layout last fall. After a recent drop in Street Wise’s finances, they put out a call to raise the $75,000 needed to survive, and by late April, they had received more than double that amount in donations, allowing them to live to publish another day. According to the North American Street Newspaper Association, there are currently 23 street publications in the United States, with publication schedules ranging from weekly to monthly. Most papers print information for the homeless on where to find shelters and soup kitchens, and many make attempts to carry articles by vendors and others who have dealt with homelessness. While covering issues of social inequality is part of what makes these publications “street newspapers,” the real mission is twofold: employing the homeless to sell them and changing how homelessness is perceived. Over 3.5 million people will become homeless this year, according to the National Homeless Coalition. And while most of them will find housing, one-fourth of this population—almost 750,000 people—will still be homeless when the year ends. NASNA estimates that they have approximately 1,700 street vendors working across the US. Greg D. sells Boston street paper, Spare Change
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S aved My Life�
Photograph by Carola Di Pola
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Unemployment throughout the US spiked to 8.5 percent in March, and the homeless often face barriers to employment that make it especially hard to find jobs—such as limited educational experience, criminal backgrounds, mental health issues, and substance abuse. For many, selling papers provides them with a chance to get back on their feet and find permanent housing and employment. Daugherty, however, has yet to find permanent housing. His sales technique is a seasoned combination of performance art and shrewd salesmanship, but despite the skills he brings to the job, he has seen better days when it comes to newspaper sales. Tall with wide shoulders, and clad in a knit hat, black nylon coat, and jeans, he has sold only 10 papers in the past two hours on this chilly April afternoon. “It’s a really big cut,” he says, noting that since people don’t have money, they’re less likely to pay $1 for the paper (of which Daugherty keeps 75 cents). “But I still have to make a living,” he adds. Jay Swoboda decided to start St. Louis’s What’s Up Magazine in 1998, when the publication in Boston was still a stand alone magazine. When inspiration struck, Swoboda, then an AmeriCorps volunteer in western Massachusetts, had just spent a day volunteering with the magazine. After wearing a sandwich board and handing out back issues in downtown Boston, Swoboda went out to grab a beer with the editors. He joked that he should start a street paper when he returned to St. Louis, and the rest is history. “I’m a pretty common sense individual,” Swoboda says, “and I believe that poor people want to make something better for themselves. Street papers are all about providing them with an opportunity to step up to the plate and earn an honest dollar.” The magazine’s first issue came out in 2002, and it currently employs 45 vendors and boasts a circulation of 5,000 readers. Vendors are found through a mix of word of mouth and recruitment. Often, potential vendors just drop in at the office and pick up 25 free copies of the paper (this is a one-time deal for those just starting out) and start selling. An unassuming, black-and-white, 30-page magazine printed on matte paper, What’s Up comes out every two months and features articles on everything from local politics to microfinance. The magazine ran on a $22,000 budget last year, $4,000 of which came from grants. The rest came from donations and vendors’ earnings. While paper sales do cover the cost of printing the publication (at 18 cents per issue), there are still other expenses that need to be covered, such as phone bills, vendor supplies, and administrative costs. Vendors’ voices are included in the magazine. In the most recent issue, vendor Isaiah Dyson writes about the difficulties of finding housing (“Help! I Need Somebody!”). Dyson, who had gotten off
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the streets and had a job and an apartment for over a year, was laid off and is currently facing the loss of his apartment, as well. Looking to Catholic Charities for help, Dyson writes, “So I asked for help and I was told that I need to be working for over three months before they could help me. ... If I had been working, then I would not need help.” Dyson has since found a job but is facing eviction because he’s behind in his rent payments. Swoboda aims for 20-to-30 percent of the magazine’s content to come from vendors and other homeless, or formerly homeless, people. Other articles in the most recent issue deal with the Green Party candidate in St. Louis’s mayoral runoff, Rev. Elston McCowan; the importance of street markets; a beat poetry slam; and the St. Louis Beacon, the city’s only online nonprofit publication. The magazine also features a “Street Sources” section, which includes a directory of homeless resources and shelters. Swoboda says that the magazine has played a key role in changing the way people view homelessness in St. Louis. From outreach efforts to community organizations, a homeless writers’ workshop, and oneon-one interactions between vendors and readers, the magazine has helped bring more attention to issues of homelessness while at the same time breaking down stereotypes. “This paper saved my life,” says James Shearer, the executive director of the Homeless Empowerment Project, an umbrella organization that publishes Boston’s Spare Change and its What’s Up Magazine insert. Shearer started Spare Change with 10 other homeless men in 1991 and lived on the streets until the paper took off in 1992. He worked his way up from selling the paper to being the editor and then executive director. “We wanted to get rid of the myths of homelessness. Homeless people come from all walks of life, and we wanted to offer a different perspective,” Shearer says, noting that the mainstream press often write about the homeless either as a charitable cause or a blight on society. Though Shearer’s relationship with the paper has been off and on (he’s left it twice), his involvement has shaped the paper’s coverage of homelessness. It provides an eloquent and aware outlet both for accounts of personal experiences, commentaries on the shelter system, and policy decisions. Lee Stringer, a former street vendor who went on to write a book about his experience living in the streets (Grand Central Winter: Stories from the Street, published in 1999), cut his teeth at New York City’s Street News in the late 1980s. Stringer was “discovered” by Dan Simon, then with Four Walls Eight Windows, a well-known indie press. Simon bought an issue of Street News to pass the time on a
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train ride and was immediately drawn to Stringer’s prose. “It had a grassroots feel to it�it felt like a movement. Here were all of these disempowered, disenfranchised people that were doing something that would lift them up,” Stringer says. Selling the paper on the city’s streets and subways gave Stringer more than an opportunity to make money—it also gave him a shot at acceptance. “When I was selling the paper, I was standing up and being represented,” he says. “And the response was a measure of acceptance and understanding.” Selling through street vendors is the unifying thread that links all of the street papers that belong to the NASNA, says Andy Freeze, the organization’s executive director, whose position was created this past January. Previously, the association had no paid employees. Finding the balance between engaging coverage and a social mission is not always easy. When Aaron Goldstein created Boston’s What’s Up Magazine in 1997, he drew inspiration from a London street paper, The Big Issue. With a circulation of over a million readers, this weekly’s coverage is focused more on entertainment and pop culture than issues of social inequality. But what appealed to Goldstein was the paper’s ability to provide readable and engaging articles, and he wanted to bring something similar to the people of Boston. “There are so many young people in Boston, and I really wanted to give them something that would make them more active and socially aware and could help them get more connected with the homeless community,” Goldstein says. He spent his senior year at Boston College, where he was a communications major, getting the magazine off the ground. It was founded and run by young adults, mostly college students. The first issue came out in 1997, but after two years went by with no stability in sight, Goldstein was exhausted. Desperate for some kind of financial support for the magazine, he reached out to local nonprofits and eventually found one, Haley House, that would provide them with the office space they needed to continue publishing. The magazine’s relationship with Spare Change during this stage was, at times, contentious. As the only two local street papers, they were competing for limited funding. Goldstein had reached out to the paper for advice back in the fall of 1996, but they weren’t interested in helping. “Spare Change started with a group of homeless people,” says Kathy Ferguson, a former editor of Boston’s What’s Up Magazine. “We were a group of college kids. They probably thought, ‘You guys think this is hip and cool, but we’ve lived it.’ I could understand what they were thinking.” Goldstein had gained Haley House’s help with office space on the condition that the nonprofit wouldn’t have to put up any money. By 2006, however, Haley House was helping to fund What’s Up. A few months later, they told Goldstein that they would no longer be able to support the magazine. What’s Up Magazine was able to stay afloat for a while, but Goldstein eventually turned to Spare Change, and a merger was negotiated. It was initially viewed as a win-win situation, according to Ferguson,
since it would make the Homeless Empowerment Project, the umbrella group that oversaw both publications, more competitive for much needed funding. And while What’s Up Magazine was initially a prominent insert—with space on the front cover and its own staff of writers and editors—after Ferguson left the publication, the insert was reduced to just four pages, compiled by interns, reporting on local arts events. The nonprofit structure of street papers is both an asset and, at times, a curse. The employees of most street papers are unpaid (or underpaid). The papers are understaffed and vulnerable to donors’ whims. While some publications, such as St. Louis’s What’s Up Magazine, don’t put much stock in pursuing advertisers, Chicago’s Street Wise switched to a color glossy magazine format last fall in order to attract more ads. “Our ad base in black-and-white was declining, and we’d been cut out of a lot of business because we didn’t have color,” says Bruce Crane, the executive director of Street Wise. The switch was accompanied by an increase in the cover price from $1 to $2. The changes apparently haven’t helped much, despite the donation influx that resulted from their pubic appeal. According to recent reports, Street Wise is on the verge of bankruptcy. “The switch wasn’t the best timing,” says Norma Green, a communications professor at Columbia College Chicago who has extensively studied street papers. “In this current climate, it’s hard to get people to spend $1 for a street paper, let alone $2.” While what defines street papers—a commitment to alter the perception and existence of homelessness—is unchanging, the issue of what their content should be is a subject of constant debate. “How many years can you go on writing about homelessness?” asks Stringer. “That’s been my biggest bone of contention—these papers assume that they’re a one-story paper. ‘Homeless’ is not a species or a type of people. It’s a circumstance.” Stringer believes that street papers have to focus their coverage more on street life in general and less on homelessness in particular. Another issue, according to Green, is that the definition of street papers is too limited and should be extended to include less formal publications that are produced—and sometimes even hand-written— by the homeless. “It’s a much broader means of expression. This is a perspective that usually isn’t included, and by listening to the voices of the disenfranchised, we have this opportunity,” Green says. The future of Boston’s What’s Up Magazine, however, currently hangs in the balance. Shearer recently fired the magazine’s two paid employees, and, at an upcoming meeting, vendors will decide whether or not to keep the What’s Up Magazine insert. Shearer, however, believes that the real point of street papers is simply for others to understand the experience of being homeless, which is something that is often easier said than done. “Many people come in, and they want to help the homeless,” he says. “But what we really need are people who are willing to go out there and understand the homeless. Stand out there on the corner, work in the shelters, the soup kitchens. Then we’re starting to get somewhere.”
“We wanted to get rid of the myths of homelessness. Homeless people come from all walks of life,” says Shearer. JJJ
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