Class aims to make magazine dreams reality

photo by Luke George

Jonathan Weber teaches students what it takes to start a publication in the "Creating Your Own Magazine" course at the UM J-School.

By Chelsea DeWeese
J-School web reporter

Nineteen journalism students are getting insider secrets to the magazine market this fall, and their dreams of creating their own publications are either moving closer to fruition or slipping through their fingers.

Jonathan Weber, an adjunct professor in the UM School of Journalism, is teaching a class called Starting Your Own Magazine. The course examines what it takes to get a publication off the ground in today’s market. It’s the second in an annual series of business journalism courses offered at the J-school through the Jeff Cole Legacy Fund.

The course focuses on how to find an untapped niche in a market currently swamped with specialty magazines. Students learn how to determine the demographic makeup of their magazines’ audiences and how to tailor and market their publications to those audiences. As the semester draws to a close, students will present business plans for their magazines and explain the editorial and advertising content they’ve chosen.

At this point, students in the class have ideas for new magazines ranging from home brewing to women’s hunting.

“The reality is it’s hard to start a magazine,” said Weber, adding that he’s trying to teach students the nuts and bolts of circulation and practical experience. “I think that a lot of the things that we talked about in class were things that students didn’t know about.”

Weber came to the J-school in January 2002 to teach a class about globalization and the media for the Pollner professorship, an endowed position made possible by the friends and family of T. Anthony Pollner, a 1999 J-school graduate who died in 2001. In the fall semester of 2003, Weber taught a business reporting course. This year, he decided to teach journalism students the actual logistics behind the magazines many of them want to work for or dream of creating.

Weber has practical experience in the field. He co-founded The Industry Standard, a fast-growing magazine that reported Internet news for businesses. The hard copy magazine “crashed and burned,” in Weber’s words, when the Internet bubble burst in 2001. But before it  crashed, it ran almost 300 pages weekly and had an editorial staff of more than 100. The Industry Standard now exists as an online publication. Weber is currently creating a regional magazine focusing on the Rocky Mountain West.

Weber’s inspiration for teaching the magazine course this semester stems from a class he took while enrolled in graduate-level courses at Columbia University. After earning his BA in philosophy from Wesleyan University in Ohio, Weber went to Columbia to study international relations and took a course on starting a magazine from the Columbia School of Journalism. He enjoyed the course, he said, and thought J-School students at UM would, too.

“Starting a magazine is something that many journalists aspire to do at some time,” he said.

Brett Ferre, a 27-year-old junior in print journalism, is interested in creating a kayak magazine, which is why he applied for the program in the first place. He said he was happy to see this course being offered his first year in the program.

“It’s difficult learning how to express such a big idea and then condensing it down to an actual plan,” he said, adding that Weber has been a good source of constructive criticism during this process.

Alison Grey, a senior in print journalism, said the sheer scope of the class is overwhelming in some ways but it’s refreshing to have classes in the J-school that aren’t focused on newspaper reporting.

“(Weber) shows us the ins and outs and how to get (magazines) off the ground and hopefully be successful,” she said. “He knows a lot of tips that nobody else knows unless they’re intimately involved with the industry.”

Some students, like senior photojournalism student Dan Menlove, said the class is more of a business class than a journalism class. It teaches students how to sell a product and themselves. The class has taught him that he doesn’t want to start his own magazine – just have his pictures published in them, he said.

“The stuff you have to do is insane and the failure rate is ridiculous,” Menlove said.

Weber said it takes incredible amounts of money and perseverance to start a magazine, but the reward is a business that allows room for tons of creative flexibility. He said his goal is to give his students an accurate idea of what they can expect to encounter should they embark on creating magazines of their own.

“I’ve found (the course) fun and interesting to teach,” Weber said. “My sense is it is opening some different perspectives for students and I hope it has been useful.”

The Jeff Cole Legacy Fund provides funding for scholarships, resources and guest lectures for the UM School of Journalism.  The fund was created in memory of UM J-School alumnus Jeff Cole, an aviation reporter for the Wall Street Journal who died on the job in a 2001 plane crash.

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