New magazine

I know, I know … earlier I said I was gonna go crash on the couch. I guess I haven’t gotten there yet. Oh well. And I’m upping my post count. I already have almost as many as I posted last month … and it’s only the 1st.

Last month, the company across the hall from us at work (they’re actually in our old office space … where the Carla I mentioned works) launched a magazine. I heard a lot about it because Kelly (one of my bosses) was working with them selling ads. So I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a copy. It’s a really cool magazine. Instead of me trying to explain, here’s the article that was in the local paper.

Lifestyle magazine launches
Business - 05/31/2007

Fargo-Moorhead’s changing cultural landscape is one company’s inspiration for publishing a new lifestyle magazine.

Open, a quarterly magazine that hit newsstands this month, calls itself the “premier lifestyle” magazine for Fargo-Moorhead.

The magazine, launched by Fargo-based FrostFire Creative, fills a niche missed by other local publications, said president and publisher Christopher Mohs.

“There really isn’t a cosmopolitan, all-around magazine in Fargo right now,” said Mohs, a Detroit Lakes, Minn., native and 2002 graduate of Concordia College.

“Fargo has taken a huge leap forward in culture, sophistication, cosmopolitan edge ￂﾅ just everything. I realized there wasn’t anything capturing ‘What is the essence of Fargo?’ ”

Mohs met with Concordia College professor and writer Merrie Sue Holtan and others to discuss the magazine idea and how the concept could complement Moh’s media company, FrostFire Creative.

Mohs co-founded FrostFire with KVLY television reporter Sarah McCurdy in 2005 to make independent films.

The media company has expanded to include consulting, modeling and talent, and recording services.

FrostFire has three full-time employees and one part-time employee. Eight people also work under contract for the company.

In October, FrostFire reorganized and started developing Open, a title Mohs and his staff chose for its simplicity and link to the F-M area’s attitude about accepting new immigrants and ideas.

The magazine’s start-up costs came from FrostFire’s reserves, Mohs said.

Open’s first issue features personality profiles on Fargo Marathon organizers Mark and Cassi Knutson, former North Dakota State University basketball coach Tim Miles and a bilingual article on local nonprofit Mujeres Unidas/Women United.

There’s also a “best bets” section on upcoming entertainment events and activities, restaurant and bar reviews and a section called “local indulgences,” which highlights shops and other Fargo-Moorhead haunts.

The magazine is distributed free at area Hornbacher’s stores. In addition to the limited 20,000 copies at Hornbacher’s, Open is establishing a subscriber base — a tactic that sets it apart from other local magazines.

Four issues of the magazine cost $12. Open already boasts a few hundred subscribers from California, Arizona, Florida and New York, as well from Minnesota’s lakes country, the Twin Cities and Winnipeg, Mohs said.

The magazine’s business model could change to an allpaid subscription base — similar to Minneapolis/St.Paul magazine and other city magazines across the U.S. — once the publication grows, Mohs said.

“We built it to be very popular; we built it to be very substantive,” he said. “We wanted to have a way that people locally could subscribe to it and have that convenience of having it mailed directly to their home.”

Open joins a growing number of print publications in the F-M area and follows a nationwide trend of high-end magazines being launched in cities, said Jim Dowden, executive director of the Los Angeles-based City and Regional Magazine Association.

City-based magazines started as alternatives to daily newspapers in major metropolitan areas after World War II, Dowden said. They took a dive in the mid-1990s, but spiked in popularity after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks when consumers started staying closer to home, he said.

There are about 125 city magazines in the U.S. that meet the association’s definition of a magazine. Whether a new city magazine can make it through its first year is usually the test for how long it will last, Dowden said.

He said city magazines, which are often geared toward more-affluent populations, are growing in circulation and advertising sales revenue while other publications are shrinking, according to recent data from Advertising Age magazine.

Smaller markets like Fargo are now tapping into the city magazine market, once reserved for major metropolitan areas, he said.

Open will indirectly compete with Area Woman magazine, which is distributed free six times annually in the area. Area Woman prints about 25,000 copies each issue, according to its June 2007 edition.

Other publications in Fargo-Moorhead are also expanding. Moorhead-based F-M Extra recently switched to publishing weekly. The free news magazine started publishing monthly five years ago. Its sister publication Metro Magazine is published six times a year.

John Kolness, publisher of Extra Media Inc., said Fargo-Moorhead’s market is big enough to support several publications.

“It all depends on the publication and the audience they are aiming for,” he said. “They just have to find the right niche.”

Mark Strand, chairman of the mass communications department at Minnesota State University Moorhead, said there has been a noticeable expansion of publications in Fargo-Moorhead in recent years. Whether the community can maintain advertising revenue to support all those publications remains to be seen, he said.

“They are slicker, they are better technically,” Strand said of local publications.

“I’m curious about the competition for advertising dollars and how it’s going. It’s hard to believe there’s a market to sustain this many.” Mohs said he’s not afraid to introduce a new publication in the Red River Valley. “It was inevitable that at some point someone was going to launch a full-fledged lifestyle magazine. We’re just happy to bring that to the Fargo area,” he said.