The upside is that Dave Schabes has created a good, smart, engaging new monthly magazine.The downside is that Dave Schabes has created a good, smart, engaging new monthly magazine.The experts worry that its strengths are its weaknesses; that its quality could be a problem; that it may be too good for its own good; that in the world of magazines in these times, Schabes may be attempting the equivalent of opening an art-film theater on the Las Vegas strip.
But for the moment, let’s consider–and celebrate–the fulfillment of an ambitious idea that one day just over three years ago happened to strike a certain 32-year-old native of southwest suburban, blue-collar Bridgeview turned nuclear engineer from Northwestern University turned literature scholar at the University of Chicago turned trade-magazine maven named David Allen Schabes (rhymes with shades).
Schabes’ dream has become The Midwesterner, which is published in Chicago, making it the first general-circulation magazine born and raised here since a Northwest Side fellow named Hugh Hefner had his own epiphany some four decades ago.
Beyond the origin of their founders and their shared birthplace, Playboy and the new arrival clearly have little in common, to which a cursory glance at their exteriors will easily attest.
The Midwesterner, handsome and assured in its slick paper, sleek design and scenic covers, seeks to emulate the stylish blend of journalism, fiction, opinion and reviews that distinguishes The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker.
“To me, The New Yorker is the best, the gold standard,” Schabes says.
It also was the source of his inspiration. In reading a New Yorker article about the selfless teamwork of Midwesterners in fighting the floods of 1993, he realized this was something that should have appeared in a magazine from this part of the country, written with a perspective that is a function of place, or sense of place.
The Atlantic and The New Yorker, of course, are products of the Eastern seaboard–headquartered in Boston and New York City, respectively.
By rooting his magazine in the Midwest, Schabes, now 35, intends to draw upon and reflect all the things that this region connotes in the way of virtues, priorities, self-images, biases, angles of thought, shadings of character.
To pose one pervasive conceit: Are we not, those of us who live in the center of the country, more, well, centered than folks in other areas?
In last September’s premiere issue, publisher/editor Schabes addressed the foundational concept of his new monthly, defining it as “a national magazine with a Midwestern sensibility.”
He conceded that this sensibility “is not always easy to articulate because not only is it somewhat different for everyone, it’s constantly evolving.”
Targeting a certain type
Shrewd, marketing-minded Midwesterner that he is, Schabes suggested that the best explanation would come from reading the magazine.
It’s not that he doubts the existence of a Midwestern identity, spirit, sensibility. “One of the first things we did was send out hundreds of surveys to find out if our assumptions were true,” Schabes says.
Sure enough, Midwesterners saw themselves as Midwesterners.
Which means? “The survey also had a multiple-choice list of personal qualities that have been considered stereotypical of Midwesterners, things such as common sense; straight talk; an appreciation of hard work, compassion, thrift, honesty. Those qualities kept being mentioned.”
People everywhere would probably claim these traits, but Schabes is certain that if you put him in a room with a Midwesterner, an Eastener and Californian, he could tell who was who:
“Easterners are probably more cynical, opinionated, dismissive. Midwesterners are probably a little more accepting, slower to judge and less judgmental, reluctant to pigeonhole people without getting to know them.
“Californians are a mixed bag. More glitzy, trendy, breezy, rootless, interested in play more than work.”
Easterners and Californians shouldn’t despair; remember, they can acquire a Midwestern sensibility by reading The Midwesterner.
And Southerners, Westerners and Southwesterners? Similar to Midwesterners because of the special ties to the land that all four categories have.
“Part of the whole organic concept of this magazine is that the Midwest is a place where there’s a stronger, more natural affinity between urban and rural areas than there are in other parts of the country,” Schabes says. “Chicago and St. Louis and Minneapolis all grew up as agricultural distribution centers, so there’s a natural mixing from the surrounding countryside into the larger cities of the Midwest–more so than on the East Coast, which was dominated by financial and shipping centers, as the entertainment, shipping and fishing centers dominated along the West Coast.”
Schabes wants his magazine to bridge not only the urban/rural divide, but also that between working-class and white-collar worlds. “My father was a factory worker, and I’m the first member of my family to go to college,” he says. “I know there are many people from the kind of community I came from that will be interested in the kind of pieces in our magazine.”
What’s inside
The founder believes The Midwesterner ($20 for 10 annual issues; 800-938-8361) presents “the whole package,” which includes a calendar of events and festivals (from 15 to 30 pages) for the eight-state target area (Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri, Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio).
In translating theory into content, The Midwesterner prefers longer pieces of journalism and fiction, which are presented in straightforward gray columns unbroken by “read this!” subheads that are the rule in many postmodern mags.
For the 84-page, inaugural September issue, the lead article anticipated the 1996 Democratic National Convention with a seven-page retrospective of the ’68 spectacular by David Farber, author of “Chicago ’68,” who teaches history at Columbia University.
This was followed by a nine-page short story by Jane Hamilton, a native of Oak Park whose first novel, “The Book of Ruth,” won the PEN-Hemingway Prize in 1988, and whose second, “A Map of the World,” was a best seller in 1994.
“I heard her give a reading of the story at the Art Institute (of Chicago) and asked if I could run it,” Schabes says. “She had shopped it around to The New Yorker and other places, but she’d been told it was too long.”
In the February issue, Schabes showcases white-hot David Foster Wallace, who teaches at Illinois State and whose recent novel, “Infinite Jest,” catapulted him to the nation’s top rank of writers.
To keep the magazine free of what he sees as over-the-top elitism, Schabes won’t carry poetry or high-brow music in his arts and entertainment section. “I think free-form poetry turns people off,” he says. “And our record reviews will cover jazz, pop and country, but no opera or classical music. I want more ordinary people to find things they want.”
And while he had an article about the Degas exhibit in the first issue, it was “because most people are familiar with his work. But some artists and sculptors and photographers–like Mapplethorpe–won’t have a place with us.”
Reviewers’ plaudits range from a string of enviable adjectives–“literate, eclectic and attractive”–to a full-out testimonial: “In an era of trendoid glamour books dedicated to top 10 lists and air-headed celebrity musings on what’s cool, The Midwesterner is a refreshing presence.”
This may be impressive, but, as was alluded to earlier, observers of the magazine game warn that raves like this don’t necessarily signal a sound future.
An uphill battle
“I admire Schabes’ passion, and I’m rooting for him, even though his magazine defies today’s conventional wisdom about magazines, which is they should have shorter, tighter articles on entertainment, celebrities, trends, services and self-help,” says Charles Whitaker, professor of journalism at Northwestern University, who also notes that The New Yorker is losing money and that The Atlantic is mainly a labor of love.
“So on the one hand, you can say that the odds against Schabes are staggering. Yet on the other hand, you have a guy who is incredibly invested emotionally and financially in his dream. And that’s how The New Yorker was born.”
Whitaker is dubious about rural or blue-collar readers. “I think his audience is educated, upscale, not very erudite and not very big. But it’s affluent, which may have advertising appeal. I think he’ll have to come to terms with this. This is not a mass-market book.”
Schabes gets another salute from Michael Shapiro, assistant professor of journalism at the Delacorte Center for Magazine Journalism at Columbia University: “I think what he is doing is really good, and I applaud anyone who says, `I want a magazine about ideas.’
“We would all love to think it’s enough to say, `I’m giving you a magazine that is filled with wonderful, thoughtful, important, interesting stories that you’ll want to set aside time to curl up with.’
“The challege for David Schabes is how you convince a broad market of readers to turn off their TVs, to click off `ER’ and read his magazine. How do you create a buzz?
“There are some 900 new magazines each year, and the overwhelming majority fail. The reason that some succeeed or are turned around is that great editors edit with their stomachs. They say, `I know who you are’ to their readers, and to hell with everyone else. One thinks of Hugh Hefner.”
The Midwesterner has a monthly press run of 50,000, a two-year goal of 100,000, and a 10-year projection of 500,000. Most copies are distributed to newsstands, 75 percent of them in the Midwest; after four issues, the subscriptions total 5,000.
Determined to succeed
Schabes has heard all about the obstacles he faces. “On my advertising sales calls, people always talk about a short attention span. But I still think again that’s sort of a stereotype, maybe an aspect of the more conspicuous elements of our population.
“I still believe–and I’ve been shown to be right so far–that there’s a huge population of people who like serious reading material and will sit down and spend time with a magazine article. A magazine for them is not something to flip through, but something to sit down and spend some time with and enjoy and learn something from. That’s the kind of category of magazines that we think ourselves as in.”
Jay Williams, who was once Schabes’ boss at Critical Inquiry, a journal published by the University of Chicago Press, is also familiar with all the misgivings.
“Everybody asks, `Will they make it in terms of the market forces?’ ” he says. “No one talks about the magazine’s moral sense. And it’s really Dave’s moral vision, his character, that is going to make or break the magazine. And I think something so convinced of its correctness is bound to succeed.
“Don’t lose sight of the fact that Dave’s a hard-nosed businessman. I have seen his business plan, and it makes sense. He has a good sense of what kind of fiction sells.”
But his moral vision? “Dave is offended by certain things in this age when anything goes. I think his sense of place is really an idea about home, an ideal home where people treat each other decently, where people have a moral sense. And it’s not Disneyland, which is an ideal home, but too fabulous. His is a much more realistic ideal.
“And it’s paradoxical. He is writing about the Midwest as home, and home is both a place you want to leave, to get out of. You want to get out of the Midwest. But it’s also a place you always want to return to, an inclusive place that you think of as home.”
FIRST COVERS: FROM EUSTACE TO ROY
When The New Yorker made its debut in 1925, the cover featured fictional Eustace Tilley, a 19th-Century English fop who observes a butterfly through his monocle. The portrait, which bespeaks a wry literary sophistication that was the hallmark of the magazine, would become its symbol, reappearing annually on a February cover (although occasionally altered by Tina Brown, the editor since 1992).
– The first cover of The Midwesterner, which debuted last September and is modeled on the New Yorker, features real-life Roy Mudd, a caretaker at the Wagon Wheel Motel on legendary Route 66 in Cuba, Mo. (pop. 2,000); it was a wry attempt by founder/editor David Schabes to subvert the stereotype of the Midwest as preponderantly rural and delight readers who found the magazine to be a feast of smart journalism. (Later covers featured nature).
