Speaker 1 00:00:01.470
On May 1 1970 a sensational new black magazine focusing on the black woman hit the newsstands of America. Now five years later the fifth anniversary issue of Essence magazine is on the stands and is being received in households throughout the nation. Here at Lewis publisher and Marcia Gillespie editor discuss five exciting years of Essence magazine on tonight soul of reason. This is Soul of reason a program that will examine the roots of the black box.

Speaker 2 00:00:53.070
Soul of reason is produced by the W NBC Community Affairs Department in cooperation with the Institute of Afro-American affairs at New York University and will be presented each week at this time. Here now is your host Dr. Roscoe C. Brown Junior director of the Institute of Afro-American affairs at New York University.

Speaker 1 00:01:13.740
Our guest this evening on solar reason are Ed Lewis and Marcia Gillespie publisher and editor respectively of Essence magazine and Marcia now that Essence magazine has its fifth anniversary issue on the stands.

Speaker 3 00:01:28.680
What is some of your reflections on the experience of editing the first black woman's magazine.

Speaker 4 00:01:35.100
My dad said you know such a big question because in part it's. Where did the time go. You know it's moved so quickly. And also I think it's about just the challenges that you know trying to overcome and face. It's been for me one of the most incredibly exciting times of my life. I never dreamed that I would have a chance to be a part of a magazine that. I would feel as proud of as I do with essence that I felt would be saying something very personal to black women.

Speaker 3 00:02:04.590
Now speaking of this idea of a magazine addressed to black women Ed how did you happen to come up with this particular concept did you start out with a magazine and then decide to focus on black women or did you start out with the idea of something that was directed at black women and then developed the concept from there.

Speaker 5 00:02:25.290
We started out with something called starting a business really.

Speaker 6 00:02:29.970
And the idea of the magazine itself my partners and myself for young men at that particular time felt that there was no publication out there dealing with the aspiration needs beauty intelligence of black women. Other magazines such as The Ladies Home Journal McCall's or cosmopolitan or directed towards white women but no one was talking to a black woman about her experience and examining her contribution to the black experience. And we felt that if we could bring a magazine to the marketplace that showed the quality the show the beauty and intelligence of the black woman we'd be fulfilling a need a need to examine what the black woman is doing in our society.

Speaker 3 00:03:09.750
This was coming at the time probably the height of what might be called a black revolution. And blacks were asking for their share of the action in the media in business and housing and education and so on and the publishing world is a very tough world because we faced a lot of money in order to produce a magazine. And I believe I read that you had hoped to start the magazine with a million dollars in the bank or of credit or what have you and you started considerably less than that standard first two hundred thousand issues that you published only 75000 were sold or thereabouts now. How did you move from that particular position which I would say wasn't the most propitious one that you could be in to the position now where I understand your circulation is upwards of four or five hundred thousand four hundred fifty thousand one and fifty thousand.

Speaker 7 00:04:04.350
And you have readers literally all over the world and you consider it to be a very very successful magazine.

Speaker 5 00:04:12.390
How did you move from that position to this position now five years later as you know magazines even in the best of times risky propositions. However we felt that the idea was here in terms of the magazine and we made many many presentations on Wall Street at the time as I remember too we came out in midst of recession 69 70. But in terms of the presentations we made we made to to financial institutions we were able to certainly in the beginning I got we got what I called real charity money some 130000 and never did get the money that was really absolutely necessary in terms of really managing a first class quality magazine. However during the course of our development the goal for the magazine and the expertise that was coming about in terms of the experience of the editorial staff and the other people of all the magazine we were able to secure other kinds of monies to keep us going and fulfill the need in terms of demand that was out there for the magazine itself. And that's what we've come now.

Speaker 8 00:05:16.650
Just for the edification of our listening audience I believe that the magazines essentially derive their revenue their black ink as it were from their advertising rather than from their news stand sales or circulation which then suggests that obtaining advertising is a very very important factor. But in order to obtain advertising of course you have to have a magazine some exciting content and people want to read. So on one hand you don't necessarily make money directly from subscription but you don't have a fairly good roll of subscribers and a fairly good newsstand sale. You don't really attract the advertising so you have a sort of a chicken egg question which then brings you back to the developmental stage of a magazine. What do you do first in conceptualizing a magazine and do you conceptualize what particular market you want and then develop a content toward that. Or do you conceptualize a particular type of content and then see if you can find a market. I see you're smiling Marsha. Maybe you could respond to that.

Speaker 9 00:06:26.200
Well you know the way that we really went about it was first identifying the market. Who did we want the magazine to reach because you know you could come out and say Oh it's gonna be a black women's magazine and that's very amorphous in one sense because just to say that does not really even hone in on subjects that you would want to cover and who among those black women you're really going to aim the magazine at. So that in many ways when we began to say things like it's a magazine it's going to reach women 18 to 35 and an urban living situations. That helped us to hone in on our editorial product when we kept saying things like we wanted this book to be a full service magazine giving women you know information and ideas and a broad range of topics that will affect their lives. I think we brought it one step further in development. I think also that that the cornerstone of the whole thing is that you know if you don't have the readers if you cannot hold the reader inch interest it's not enough just to have a black magazine you know it has to be a magazine that's going to have direct kind of impact on a person's life because they're not going to spend 75 cents just to pick up a book on blackness. They're gonna pick up a book that's going to be black but it's going to give them information that is truly usable in their lives.

Speaker 10 00:07:40.110
Well what about the allegation in a magazine a slick magazine and I think essence is a flip magazine in terms of the qualities production and so on aimed at the black population is too boogie to bourgeois too much focuses on the material the capitalistic and not enough on the development of political awareness and so well of black people.

Speaker 11 00:07:59.980
What about that allegation. I'm not necessarily saying I support it personally but this is an allegation that many people have said particularly at the beginning of the magazine you hear it less so now because success sort of breeds success.

Speaker 9 00:08:14.020
I think you know in part I was always a little annoyed with that because you know yes essence looks good. And I believe that we as black people have a great deal of style. I would have been very ashamed to put out a book that didn't have the kind of style that Essence has. The fact that we will do fashion and beauty which some people will say oh that's irrelevant. The word I've begun to hate I think is ridiculous. I think that you know that's a part of what we are and we should be allowed to express that part. But I have always felt that we have done incredible surfaces when we have talked about issues like sterilization abuse when we have talked to women about their money and how to manage it when we've talked to women just about certain issues that affect us all like a loneliness and what do you do about the problems we might be having. You know just relating to our men I think that what happened was someplace in the 60s people began to have a very narrow definition of what being black was. And I think that if anything essence is proof positive that you know we are many different people under an umbrella. And part of that is there are many different you know roads that lead into our experiences and Essence is one of them.

Speaker 5 00:09:17.950
We quickly realize in the beginning we started out with the concept of essence being a fashion magazine but we quickly realized that the black woman is not one dimensional. She's multi-dimensional. She's concerned about many problems as it relates to her well-being. She's concerned about home decoration consumer problems she's concerned about legal problems real estate problems at the same time. She wants to know about issues that are swirling the black community. So we do we change a concept of a fashion magazine to a full woman service magazine.

Speaker 6 00:09:48.190
It's just an incredible wealth of information out there that the black women ought to know about in order to make her life a little bit better than what it is today. And that's what we're all about.

Speaker 10 00:09:56.640
Well I think that what you said relates to black when it relates to white women as well. Absolutely. I think magazines probably even more successful commercially.

Speaker 11 00:10:06.700
Ms Magazine at least it has a possibly a larger circulation I believe. No no it doesn't. No there's not. It has a greater press role. In other words it's considered to be as matter of fact I heard this on the air myself and it was the most successful women's magazine that has been started in the past few years.

Speaker 12 00:10:28.390
You know we sit here now and that becomes again sometimes what I call who America likes to notice first in essence is the fastest growing women's magazine in America.

Speaker 11 00:10:37.410
Okay well could you say that again and also give some information some data that support that because I think it's very important for people to know that I say it one more time.

Speaker 9 00:10:48.000
Essence is the fastest growing women's magazine in America certified such by the ABC audience.

Speaker 10 00:10:55.060
And that means when you say fastest growing means you move from one set of circulation statistics to another. And I believe you said earlier that you have a circulation of 450000.

Speaker 11 00:11:06.240
That's what you're guaranteeing readers size 2 million and a readership of 2 million which means each copy somebody five other people see you they are about. So that that certifies the extent of which you've grown from an original circulation of what closer to we started out with fifty thousand and now we had 450000 over a five year period.

Speaker 5 00:11:28.190
Now we expect to be a half million by March in 1976. I might add what the bureau circulation is a regulatory body that governs all magazine circulations. And not only are we the third fastest and we are the we are the number one woman's magazine in terms of growth but we are the fastest growing magazine of all ABC.

Speaker 10 00:11:48.180
Now has this been responded to by contrasting grassroots a comparable increase in advertisers. Well yes indeed.

Speaker 5 00:11:59.430
We know how many different firms product et cetera advertise with Essence magazine Sears and Roebuck Johnson Products and Revlon company United Airlines Eastman Kodak Avon wine companies or Seagram. Do we have a diverse selection of advertisers that have come to forward to the magazine itself.

Speaker 10 00:12:22.350
Is there less resistance on the part of advertisers now to advertising in black magazines. Because at one time they were only a certain number of companies out of the blue chip companies were doing this as part of their public service in the sense that advertised in black magazines. But now with the phenomenal success of the Johnson Publishing Company and and Ebony magazine and jet and all the other magazines you now have less resistance to that they are I'm sure some pockets of resistance.

Speaker 11 00:12:56.400
But how did how does it come across.

Speaker 5 00:12:59.010
There is certainly greater awareness and greater recognition of a black consumer market today. And I think that the Johnson Publications Black Enterprise and in essence have made a greater impact in terms of getting advertisers to recognize that blacks do have money men and women and will buy their products and therefore we're broadening the share of broadening the marketplace for advertisers to to advertise our products certainly and our own case. We for example we're not getting business out of the beauty industry with any real degree of success but now after almost four or five years of being in business we're beginning to be supported by the beauty and beauty industry which traditionally supports for example other women's magazines except they had not really had the recognition of what black women are doing in terms of buying.

Speaker 11 00:13:47.670
Now that's an interesting point because many of the major media advertisers have said well why should you have a radio program or TV program or magazine addressed to black because black people read the magazines addressed to the general population local white population what will we gain by advertising in a black publication other than just some good social consciousness.

Speaker 10 00:14:14.130
Do you have statistics that show that a larger proportion of your readers for example will purchase a product advertised in your magazine as against advertised in a competitive women's magazine address largely white population or do you do this on the basis of sort of a logical sell.

Speaker 13 00:14:31.560
We do this both on the basis and logical and we do have statistics I know that for example Black Enterprise has done studies and comparing where products have appeared in its magazine and in other magazines in terms of the sale of the product. We ourselves have had many examples from Sears and Roebuck from TWC that have indicated to us that that advertisers that do advertise to our market will get the kinds of response blacks want to be motivated they want an invitation and this isn't this is they're not getting this in other kinds of publication in terms of the kinds of advertising that's appealing to them to get them to buy X number of products and that's why we have black magazines and black newspapers where these products have to be sold to motivate to be invited to buy products.

Speaker 11 00:15:15.900
Well what about the idea that as more blacks are integrated into advertising and cross-sectional magazines you won't need to have that much focus on pinpointed or targeted advertising to blacks. Is that a a problem is that something you've given some thought to.

Speaker 13 00:15:35.070
We have given some thought to but from my standpoint in terms of where the society is going we're still going to have a credible problem of overcoming what I call a trilogy of demands jobs housing education and as long as we have those problems which I do not foresee any reasonably good degree of substantial overcoming. We're going to have the problems of how do we get blacks to. Well as I say I'm probably going to have race as an American.

Speaker 11 00:16:00.440
This is the same problem we have in black studies and education. So in other words what we're saying is that we want to segregate ourselves because the larger society does and so long as they do it we're gonna do it better. Now I'm positing that as a provocative statement but in a sense logically it is the box that sometimes we paint ourselves into. For example it says well we ought to integrate black history throughout the total of history and therefore you won't need a black history course which is that those of us who deal with that say that we do need it largely because we feel that it will not be adequately treated. Of course so long as you follow that logic you do tend to lead yourself to a partial exclusionary position. And I know when you're in magazine and publishing and other areas of focus specifically on the black market this is a question you have to deal with over and over again.

Speaker 14 00:16:52.970
But I think you know that the other part of it is this that you know even if all history books what since you started with that example suddenly included facts and figures et cetera about blacks in America you would still need specialization because you know if you really want to go in-depth in anything you know you can read European history smarter through everything but you can still become a scholarship ministry. I think the same. Another analogy works with magazines. You know you might a woman might go out and pick up five magazines for it which would be white women's books the fifth one would be in essence she reads essence because she knows she she's going to get information that is directly related to her. She doesn't have to sift through. She doesn't have to you know see it tangentially. I think the same thing is true with an ad. You know I might look at an ad and it's got a white woman in it how much attention am I going to pay to it. I might say oh that's an interesting product but I will pay a lot more attention when I see a black woman's face staring back at me. And I think that's the truth.

Speaker 11 00:17:48.080
That's how I think we're basically out right now but what I was saying is that if there were black women's pictures in those white magazines would that not begin to diminish the need to have ads focused specifically in black magazines.

Speaker 14 00:17:59.870
I think you know it could only if suddenly people decided they no longer wish to buy black magazines but I don't think that second part is going to happen if we continue to do a job if we continue to give information that a student or directly relatable to people's lives then they will be buying black magazines.

Speaker 11 00:18:17.090
And as long as they're buying them it's you know substantial numbers advertisers are going to have to come in and deal because this relates to another development in the publishing industry and that is increased specialization within the publishing industry. For example at one time we had the all purpose Photo magazine all purpose news magazine and now it's broken now. For example Sports Illustrated I think is the second or third largest magazine in terms of circulation. You have people magazine having been started by Time Inc. You have men's magazine you have Essence magazine. I even have magazines as specialized as black sports history so that there is the specializations in publication which does mean that there is an opportunity to survive.

Speaker 10 00:18:59.600
But then the question is how do you avoid doing the same thing. How do you avoid talking about the same topics for example as another entering black magazine unquote magazine which basically focuses on public and social affairs but they also have issues and articles related to health and development of a black woman. And certainly Ebony magazine has some of these.

Speaker 8 00:19:23.510
I think there's a fashion magazine or a woman's magazine called Black US black stars like vanity black stars which is an entertainment magazine.

Speaker 10 00:19:36.380
That's another specialized magazine. How do you avoid doing some of the same thing. For example I might read an article on Aretha Franklin in five different magazines extra and it's true Aretha is a very exciting and interesting woman. But how do you avoid duplicating the same materials the same slants. Do you have editorial slang and editorial policy. What are some of those things Marcia.

Speaker 14 00:20:00.890
Well you know for example you know we were we'll do let's say profiles of celebrities but the difference might be that when we're doing them we're not going to be as interested in the success statistics as much as you know.

Speaker 15 00:20:12.860
Hey person how did if he has a fear that the policy that we have for profiles is that we want to get inside that person's head becomes provocation does it ever. I want to say that so when I say that very specifically because I mean we want them to break it down so that people who are living lives that are very dissimilar will begin to say OK I understand that kind of pain. I understand that kind of rage that that person lived. Now you could say that another magazine might you know do a very similar job but I hope we are doing a different one. I think that we will have duplication. I mean you know there stories. We're doing a story on rape in the June issue on core has done a story on rape. I mean rape will be covered perhaps you know four times more but every time that another magazine does it we hope that we're adding something else to it. You know another another dimension to a story. You know there's an old saying that basically you end up doing for the same five things over and over and over again. But I don't think that's true. I think that every time you know you tackle a story you begin to get other insights. You begin to gather other facts and other other figures you do have choices to make.

Speaker 10 00:21:21.180
For example I've been involved through the university with black creation which is a publication dealing with a creative art.

Speaker 11 00:21:28.440
And one of the things that we note is we must have now at least 500 manuscripts is the lack of outlets for creative work by black writers and yet most of the black magazines do not publish much creative work by black writers. And I know that in the earlier magazine magazines like Cosmopolitan zine became a place where the Fanny Hearst and the Claire Ruth loses develop their reputations. There is a vacuum that I'm not saying your magazine should perform it but one of the things that we do notice is that there's a lot of profiling of black heroes and stars but not much opportunity for black creative writers to get their things across. Now you have a judgement to make. Of course you have to say well what's going to attract readers. That's probably the first thing that you have to say in a commercial publication because if you don't attract readers you don't get advertisers if you don't get advertisers you don't survive. How do you make those kinds of decisions.

Speaker 14 00:22:27.400
I'm not I try to do it as a mix. You know through the example that you know we had up a dry period where we weren't running any fiction and part of got a lot of letters from readers saying you know like we really miss the fiction in the book Why aren't you running more. Well one reason was that basically we had to stop and do some re-evaluation of where were we taking fiction what what sort of writing where we basically encouraging and wasn't the kind that we wanted in the book. When I say that it was because I found that it became one dimensional after a while everybody was kind of talking about as the same experience over and over again. And so that we had to start doing another kind of search process for writers who were opening up into other areas. I wanted to see some science fiction I wanted to see a story that perhaps would not be set. How would I put it in a place that no one might recognize but maybe it was set right on 116 Street right now today with the woman who perhaps was working as a file clerk or on welfare. But you know that kind of an aspect but you know part of it is to that we are constantly doing questionnaires to the reader and we ask them what do you like what don't you like or would you like to see more. What would you like to see less of.

Speaker 11 00:23:33.230
And it's really from that that I'm constantly re-evaluating what the mix will be and what we need to put back in or do I want what it's shown it can get. That's one of the circles that's involved and if you ask people what they want. Nine times out of ten they will tell you exactly what they've been getting. Whereas one of the roles is that maybe we ought to be suggesting new things or giving them new things to respond to.

Speaker 12 00:24:00.270
And I realize this that is risky now because I think we have done that.

Speaker 14 00:24:04.770
I mean I didn't have any impetus to believe that taking to special issues and dealing with the question black man black woman closer together further apart was something anybody wanted. It was something I felt we had to do. But along with that I find that perhaps the difference is we have a kind of very demanding kind of letter writing group of people and it might not be because they've seen it in the magazine or seen it anyplace but they'll just say hey I don't understand why you weren't doing this you know which is also part of it. I mean you know I think my job as an editor is to be do two things. I must constantly be trying to figure out what it is the reader does want and the other thing is what it is I really think the reader should know about.

Speaker 7 00:24:40.050
And it is a you know it's two streams Junos is part of the problem of the commercial world is against the academic world of publishing and that is that if you get a success formula probably it's wise to keep pretty close to it until you really break away. I know. Just as your magazine has been criticized for being overly bourgeois. So is every magazine which the most successful little black magazines being criticized for focusing too much on the middle class black and pointing up aspirations of cars and houses and clothes and so on. And yet at the same time it's the very thing that makes the magazine able to survive and to be able to do the type of thing. Lauren Bennet does for example in exploring black history when you're out there. I'm sure if you get a lot of criticism for what you're doing as well as for what you're not doing and that makes the role of a black executive a black publisher a very very tenuous role how do you see black oriented publications moving what do you see as a main responsibility of a black publisher.

Speaker 13 00:25:52.770
I try to to oversee that Essence and when Essence is all about is going to be meaningful in terms of the quality in terms of the advertisers that come into us. It's certainly one of the tenets of our organization is a showcase for black talent. But we also realize that we cannot be all things to all people and there is going to be a need for the kinds of magazines to address these needs that are coming to for that or demands that are being made in the community. For for these kinds of things. But I think the overall responsibility is to see that the quality see that the black woman is Exhibit A way that that's meaningful to her in terms of her intelligence in terms of her beauty her beauty.

Speaker 11 00:26:42.950
I thought you were right to respond not to put words in your mouth at the first task to Black publishers to survive because if you don't survive economically we won't be able to do the fantabulous things that you're talking about. Which gets us down to the question of what do you see as the survival picture for black magazines.

Speaker 13 00:27:05.250
Black magazines are going to survive those that that had the right kind of editorial product and right kind of business management Johnson is gonna be around black enterprise is going to be round soon black sports and I think we're gonna be around and certainly SS is gonna be above and surviving quite nicely.

Speaker 11 00:27:21.450
And Marcia how do you see this coming about. How do you see the survival tactic working its way out.

Speaker 14 00:27:27.880
Oh well it works its way out just in one very real thing. You know that every month a magazine continues to come out. We have taken another step because one of the first things you had to convince a lot of black readers was that we weren't gonna be around. You know from May to June to June to July. So that's I think the first step that we have to do is just be there in the second one is to do the very best job we know how giving people good information well-written articles visually exciting books and encourage the public at large to let you know what they want.

Speaker 11 00:27:59.770
And as you say you have a very literate and active readership and demanding readership. I'd like to thank our guest on tonight soul of reason Ed Lewis publisher and Marcia Gillespie editor of Essence magazine which is now completing its fifth year publication.

Speaker 16 00:28:15.930
You've been listening to soul of reason with your host the director of the Institute of Art for one African affairs at New York University Dr. Roscoe C. Brown Jr. and featuring a distinguished guest voicing the black experience.

Speaker 2 00:28:30.360
Soul of reason is produced by the W NBC public affairs department in cooperation with the Institute of Afro-American affairs at New York University. Please join us again next week.