When Cathleen Black interviewed at the Chicago advertising firm of J. Walter Thompson shortly after leaving college in 1966, she asked about the company’s Executive Training Program. “The head of personnel or whatever he was practically tweaked my cheek,” Black recalled. “He said, `Why would a cute little thing like you be interested in the training program?’
“I decided I would probably not do well there,” Black said.
It might have been the only place where Black would not do well. The “cute little thing” who Thompson rejected as executive material has since reached the pinnacle of the publishing world. As the recently appointed president of the magazine division of Hearst Inc., the Chicago native presides over a fleet of magazines that includes Cosmopolitan, Esquire, House Beautiful and Good Housekeeping.
In the intervening three decades, Black filled her resume with an impressive list of accomplishments: first advertising director of Ms. Magazine, first female publisher of a major consumer weekly magazine, president and publisher of USA Today, first CEO of the newly reorganized Newspaper Association of America. It seems that wherever Black goes, glass ceilings shatter.
That’s no surprise to her friends and associates, who attribute Black’s success to her sharp intelligence, focus and prodigious capacity for work.
“She’s a maniac!” said Helen Gurley Brown, editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan. “She gets everything done swiftly. And she’s totally organized. She sticks to her schedule. Meetings start when they’re supposed to start and end when they’re supposed to end. They don’t slop over.”
Friends also praise Black’s warmth and devotion to her family, husband Tom Harvey, staff director of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, and her two children, aged 8 and 4. They also speak of her sense of humor (“She sees the outrageousness of things,” said Brown.) as well as her calmness and self-control. One adjective that crops up again and again is “self-contained.”
It’s an odd description for a woman whose career was nurtured in the aggressive, ego-driven world of advertising. But “self-contained” seemed an apt description of the trim, attractive blond during an interview in Hearst’s Manhattan headquarters.
Despite having spent most of her life in the publishing world, Black, who looks much younger than her 51 years, offered no colorful insights, no stable of snappy anecdotes to spice up the interview.
While she answered all questions gamely, she seemed uncomfortable discussing her private life. For instance, when asked how she manages both a high-powered career and a family, she shifted quickly to general remarks.
“I think if you are confident in the person you have in your home and you have a strong and good relationship with your husband, it’s very workable,” she said.
Don’t ask for any deep psychological insights about her personal development either. Did she always want a career? “Yes.” Was there a particular motivation? “I just always knew that I wanted to move to New York and make my mark in publishing.”
If you want her to light up, you have to talk shop. Ask her about the challenges of selling feminism to the male-dominated business world of the 1970s, or about the new format introduced by USA Today, or the prospects for newspapers in the electronic age, and Black’s self-containment evaporates. She leans forwards, eyes aglow, as the words and ideas tumble out. Black is clearly in love with the business.
It was this enthusiasm that impressed Patricia Carbine, the first publisher and editor-in-chief of Ms. magazine, when she interviewed Black, then 28, during a series of breakfast meetings in 1972. Even though up to then Black had no management experience and had handled only what Carbine described as “some very modest accounts” as a member of the sales staff at New York magazine, Carbine hired Black as the first advertising director of Ms.
It was, Black recalled, a “baptism by fire” as Black and the other members of the Ms. team took on the male-dominated world of advertisers and advertising agencies, trying to sell the concept of a feminist magazine to men, many of whom felt personally threatened by feminism.
“You have to understand the climate of that time,” said Gloria Steinem, one of the founding editors of Ms. “Feminism was regarded as something only three crazy women on each coast cared about.”
“There were some real horror stories,” said Suzanne Levine, then senior managing editor of Ms., “especially involving the people in ad sales. Sometimes people threw things across the desk at them. Other times the agencies would let them pitch and pitch and pitch and then when it was all over, they’d laugh in their faces. Cathy always kept her cool. She was always very businesslike.”
Did it ever get to her? “Oh sure!” said Black. “Sometimes you wanted to strangle somebody. But I think that I’m a pretty level-headed person, and I can be very focused and strategic.”
What Black kept focused on was the facts. Tens of thousands of women were pouring into the workplace, and they were there to stay. Soon, they would making their own consumer decisions, purchasing their own cars, houses and financial plans. “We had to help ad agencies and advertisers understand that this was an enormous growing market,” said Black.
To do this, ad pitches often became mini-seminars on feminism. “It was like being a little traveling road show,” recalled Steinem. “Not only did we have to describe a new magazine but describe a new movement. I think that what saved us was that wherever we went, the women in the agencies, including the secretaries, would ask to come to see our presentation. That helped the men to see that this was something important.”
Working at Ms. in those early days was a “marvelous experience,” said Black. “As you broke through advertising categories, you had a tremendous sense of victory.”
At Ms., Black set the pattern she was to follow throughout her career. Always staying one step ahead of the next big trend, Black, in choosing the next job, would opt for the one that would expand her skills and offer new opportunities over the safer, more secure alternative. For instance, she rejected the chance to return to New York Magazine as advertising director in order to work as an associate publisher at Ms., where she would be involved in radio syndication and product development.
Later, when she was again offered the post of advertising director at New York Magazine, she accepted it “with the clear understanding that if we improved the business that I would be named publisher withing a year and a half.”
In April, 1979, Black was appointed publisher of New York Magazine, the first female publisher of a major general interest weekly magazine.
Black stayed at New York Magazine until 1983, when Gannett Corp. recruited her to work on a new concept: USA Today, a national newspaper with a revolutionary format that included color pictures. “One of the things that I have been attracted to until this huge job at Hearst have been startups,” said Black. “The fun of something that’s new and all-encompassing, a big challenge, has had more appeal to me than something comfortable.”
In assuming her post at Hearst, Black has come full circle. The woman who first made her mark by hawking the feminist Ms. magazine is now presiding over the very magazines — Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping and Redbook — to which Ms. was meant to be an alternative.
“Ms. was a passage that women went through,” she declared firmly. “But now women are interested in a huge variety of issues. Cosmopolitan is the nation’s sixth largest newsstand seller. It’s the No. 1 seller on all college campuses.
“Good Housekeeping is the magazine women trust,” she went on. “So, yes, it’s traditional, but it is a trusted vehicle. When you think of the Good Housekeeping Institute, there’s not a product mentioned in the pages of Good Housekeeping or advertising that does not have to literally be approved by the Good Housekeeping Institute. That’s about reliability, it’s about quality, it’s about trust.”
The image of this high-powered feminist executive defending the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval might seem a contradiction to some. But to Black, it merely reflects how the women’s movement has expanded women’s choices and opportunities.
“What the last 20 years have been all about is allowing young women to mature into women with hopes and dreams and aspirations that they can achieve for themselves, not just through the accomplishments of their spouses,” she said.
But, she added, “this is 1996 and it doesn’t have to be all one way or the other. In the early days of the women’s movement, it had to be all one way. The only way to feel good about yourself was to have a very successful career. I think a lot of people bought into that. But then some women said, hey, you know what, I don’t want all of this. And that’s OK too.”
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Black will speak at the Chicago Advertising Federation luncheon Nov. 6 at the Hotel Inter-Continental Chicago. For information, call 847-375-4764.
