If Ernest Hemingway were writing magazine stories about the machismo-satisfying qualities of deep-sea fishing today, he probably would be writing them for Men`s Journal-or at least that`s probably what Jann Wenner, publisher of the new sports- and adventure-oriented magazine, would like to think.
He may be right.
Wenner, celebrating the 25th anniversary of Rolling Stone, the generation-chronicling Baby Boomer`s bible he founded as a 21-year-old, has always gone with his industry-renowned gut instinct. So what if that gut nestles these days beneath the cuff-linked striped shirts and snappy suspenders of a stocky 46-year-old with a Jimmy Cagneyish swagger, a center-parted shock of brown hair and a fashionably unshaven-looking jaw? So much the better; Wenner has rarely been wrong when talking about his generation.
”It`s simply that people are growing up. As you grow up, you get more concerned about your health and the quality of your life and making the most of the time you have,” says Wenner, chairman of Straight Arrow Publishing, an estimated $250-million-a-year firm that also publishes US. Feet propped up on his circular conference table as he gazes out the Spectravision-sized windows of his new midtown office here, he says, ”It`s something I like and something I feel passionately about.”
Thus, welcome to Men`s Journal, the new magazine that boldly asks the
`90s question, ”What do men really want?” and answers it with the Hemingway-esque drawl: ”We think they want to climb a few mountains, build the house of their dreams, have a first serve and perhaps play a few memorable rounds of golf with their fathers.”
Hemingway actually might have dispensed with the serve and the tee-off, but he surely would have bought into the magazine`s proposition that ”men have always been oriented toward action and accomplishment, a perspective that life is an adventure-a story worth telling, a contest as well as a collaboration.”
Within the glossy pages of Men`s Journal, whose premiere issue is on newsstands through May, men are men, adventure is only a credit card away, and Wenner gets to take another crack at the market he briefly explored 15 years ago with Outside magazine, which he sold to Chicago publisher Lawrence Burke two years later.
”I was always wondering where the next competitor might come from,”
Burke says. He didn`t expect it to be from Wenner, he says, particularly after Outside editor John Rasmus left Burke to edit Wenner`s new magazine with the idea that he would not be developing a competitor to Outside.
The obvious similarities in the content and market positioning of the spectacularly successful Outside and the newcomer Men`s Journal resonate with the annoying ache of a pulled muscle for both magazines` publishers.
Publishing success
Wenner, who acknowledges the success of Outside with the implicit pride of a parent, is also fond of pointing out that he founded it.
”They`re doing well and they`ll do better. That was a great concept for a magazine,” says Wenner, with a rueful chuckle. ”I really think that he
(Burke) just ought to stop telling people he started the magazine. I find it insulting. I started the magazine and there`s no five ways about it.”
No way, says Burke, who is equally rankled by Wenner`s assertion. ”I bought the title and the subscribers. The point of distinction is that it`s the same name, but it`s not the same magazine,” says the 49-year-old publisher, who is moving his operation to Santa Fe next year.
”The Outside that exists today was originally called Mariah,” he states, referring to the magazine he began in 1976 and continued, only rechristening it Outside, a year after he bought the name from Wenner. ”The Outside Jann Wenner launched, I got in one pathetic cardboard box, as Tim Cahill, one of our writers, put it in our 10th anniversary issue.”
There is no argument that under Burke, and well post-Wenner, Outside has snagged two National Magazine Awards and bucked miserable recent industry trends in circulation and ad pages to become ”one of the most successful magazines in publishing in the last three years,” according to Martin S. Walker, president of Periodical Studies Service, a magazine consulting firm.
While the recession resulted in negative figures for most magazines last year, Outside posted a 9 percent increase in ad pages, which are running 18 percent ahead for the first half of this year over the same period last year. Circulation is running 14 percent ahead, and expects to crack the 400,000 mark with the 15th anniversary issue in October.
Surprisingly warm welcome
Had he not been forced to sell Outside to raise cash, a move he admits he regrets, Wenner might now be celebrating that magazine`s anniversary. Instead, he will be competing with it-and competing in one of the worst publishing climates in years.
”This is not a great time to be starting a new magazine, unless you`re very rich, which Wenner is. But a good product, marketed even in this economy, can succeed,” says Gene DeWitt, president of DeWitt Media Inc., a media-buying service. Although Dewitt declined to buy space for his sports-shoe client Reebok in the premiere issue of Men`s Journal, preferring to take a wait-and-see attitude, he says, ”There`s no question that it`s a very high-quality, well thought-out magazine.”
Wenner, who has committed two years of development and $10 million in capital to the magazine, not surprisingly agrees. ”This is the best new magazine launch of any new magazine in years,” he says with
characteristically exuberant immodesty.
”I want to do this magazine. And I know. It`s `Field of Dreams,` ” he says with a rumble of self-satisfied laughter. ”Build it and they will come.”
In fact, they did. Men`s Journal, whose premiere issue hit newsstands on April 14, received a surprisingly warm welcome from an advertising world only recently showing the first signs of thawing out from a long recessionary freeze. Within the first issue`s 180 glossy pages, Polo Ralph Lauren, Lee Jeans, Isuzu, BMW, Nike, Johnnie Walker Black Label, AT&T and Tag-Heuer watches are among the many major advertisers showing up among the 83 paid ad pages.
Marketer friendly
And Men`s Journal appears to be extremely marketer friendly, even devoting a 20-page section to ”Equipment,” which translates into an attractive, tightly edited catalog of things to buy. In the debut issue, for example, the man of adventure is counseled on sports watches, golf clubs, suspension mountain bikes, hiking boots, sports bags, world band radios and, under the ”Hot Car” category, a review of Jeep`s new Grand Cherokee.
”So far, so great,” says Wenner, crunching down a handful of celery sticks. Response to the magazine`s initial 135,000 copies was strong enough that the presses were geared up to print an additional 60,000. At this point, Wenner plans to put the second issue on the newsstands for eight weeks, starting Oct. 27, and to begin bimonthly or monthly publication in 1993.
”Magazines have to come from the heart,” says Wenner, who says Men`s Journal also comes directly from changes in his own lifestyle, one of the most significant of which is evident from the handful of photos in his office. There, beside a shot of John Lennon, Rolling Stone`s first cover subject, is a photo of his wife, Jane, to whom he has been married since 1968, and their three sons, all under the age of 8.
These days, he goes on family skiing trips and is an avid hiker, tennis player and motorcycle enthusiast. ”I have a list of things I`m hoping to do. It`s hard to crowd them all in. I`d like to do a mountain climb. I`d like to do a kayaking trip-maybe I`ll be able to do one of those two this summer.”
Both of them already are subjects in the magazine`s first issue, along with going to race car driving school and deep-sea fishing off the Florida Keys.
Speaking his mind
Although he constantly taps his Mont Blanc pen and restlessly swivels around in his chair, it`s difficult to match Wenner`s polished, pinstriped persona with the erratic, drugged-out but impatiently brilliant enfant terrible of publishing that he epitomized in the `60s and `70s.
”I don`t miss any of that. I`ve enjoyed everything I`ve done and I don`t regret too much of it,” he says quietly. ”You can`t be an `enfant` at 46, but I still like doing things my way, shaking things up, and I`m still roughly outspoken and don`t hesitate too much to say what`s on my mind.”
In fact, he wants to give a piece of his mind to Vanity Fair magazine over the image of him portrayed in a major article in its June issue: ”B-minus journalism-but great publicity.”
”I think the image presented in Vanity Fair is somewhat false and overdrawn,” he says. He does not deny that he once used drugs regularly or conducted editorial meetings while swigging from a bottle of vodka. But that`s over now. ”At a certain age, it`s very hard to take drugs, you know. Some people continue to do it, but I can`t,” he says.
What really bothers him is stuff like Vanity Fair`s description of him as ”a man renowned for throwing tantrums.” ”I never threw tantrums,” he says, firmly and without a trace of humor.
He also isn`t too crazy at the article`s refrain that, as the child of a baby-formula magnate father and mother, who divorced and who neglected him, his career has been driven by the overriding need to find the love he didn`t get at home.
”I think most people are in a search for love, aren`t they?” he asks snappishly. ”Like I said, it`s overdrawn. Everybody wants love and approval and affection. I think that`s normal. But that`s not what drives me.
”I want to enjoy myself, raise my family and do the work that I`m good at, that I`m obviously here to do. To use the talent I was given, to make the most of it. That`s what drives me.”
