A reply from Yankee Magazine
Posted by Kirk M on 07 Jan 2007 | Tagged as: Info, Life at home
I recently posted an article concerning Yankee Magazine going to a new and larger layout. This was a major change from the digest size Yankee that everyone had been seeing on the store shelves and receiving at their doorstep since somewhere around WWII when the Yankee had to be reduced in size due to the paper shortage. An excerpt from the issue's "A Letter to Our Readers" explains about the size change of the new issue:
Yankee was first published in September 1935, and it was the same size as the one you're holding now. The vision of Yankee's founder and editor, Robb Sagendorph, was simple: Bring New England to life. The magazine was reduced in size only out of necessity — paper was in short supply during World War II. Our digest size made us unique for many years, and I think we were loved all the more for our idiosyncratic look.
As I wrote previously, I liked the new layout a lot. It gave some very creative folks at Yankee some additional room to breath instead of having to shove a great deal of content into a rather small package. So I read through the new, larger "Snow Days" issue, snapped a couple of pictures and before I posted the article, I sent an email to the new editor — Mel Allen, and gave some feedback about my only issue with the new issue, so to speak. After stating how much I appreciated the larger format and new layout, I presented my only complaint; that the text was still too small to read comfortably and humbly recommended that they up the font a half a point or so or something to that effect. With all due respect to Yankee Magazine, I really didn't expect a response. I was wrong: Not only did Mel Allen reply to my email but has since corresponded twice more when I asked if I could quote from his email on the blog. He kindly gave me permission so here is the excerpt concerning the readability problem:
Many of our readers have given us very positive response to the new look and content, but we want every reader to continue to feel Yankee is their special magazine. You will find that in the March/April issue we have made the captions more readable, and we are exploring some ways to make all the text easier.
Then, in a follow up email, he added a wee bit more:
Every issue should be better than the one before it. We are definitely changing to a different, more readable font–but because the March/April issue is already in layout we can't make that switch until May/June. But the captions will change immediately.
To say I was surprised and more than pleased not only with his response(s) but the fact that I received a response at all, is most likely an understatement on my part. I'm sure the editor and crew at Yankee are pretty much straight out these days with not only putting out their magazine more often (six times a year up from 4) but dealing with the new layout as well. Having a small amount of experience in dealing with new types of layouts, I know that it's not an easy thing to do, even if one has more room to put one's content. As a co-worker of mine likes to say occasionally; "It's one thing to be organized but an entire other to be smart about it" Just ask any business that moved itself to bigger quarters. Same type of thing. So here's to Yankee Magazine being different from all the rest. I could be wrong about this but somehow I don't think I would have received quite the same response to a feedback email I sent say, to The New Yorker. I can truthfully state that I'm looking forward to the new issues.
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4 Comments »
on 07 Jan 2007 at 7:09 pm 1.Rhea said …
I got to see the new format the other day. The magazine is much better than a few years ago, when they first abandoned some of its New England coverage to include more ‘lifestyle’ stuff. I may actually subscribe again. Your experience with the correspondence sounded great, too.
on 07 Jan 2007 at 9:52 pm 2.KirkM said …
I can’t complain
on 29 Nov 2008 at 6:08 pm 3.Dick O'Connor said …
Having been a Yankee reader since the mid 1950s I do not much care for the new Yankee, although it is a good magazine and people like Mel Allen who put it out are of the finest caliber. We used to consider we were part of a sort of club, a kind of people who identified ourselves as Yankees either by heritage or by temperament. It very much had to do with a sense of history, of place and time which are gone now with mass marketing and media and overdevelopment. I would guess that few readers today so identify themselves.
on 30 Nov 2008 at 7:01 pm 4.Dick O'Connor said …
To elaborate on my comment of yesterday - there was under Yankee founder Robb Sagendorph an agenda. Most of what went into the magazine furthered what he (and many of us) saw as conservative Yankee values. Resourcefulness, shrewdness, independence, personal dignity, gentle wit, honesty, directness, prudence, awareness, and so on. Articles were written or chosen illustrative of, or advocating, these. In the 1950s and 60s these articles, even the factual ones, were mostly sketchy and suggestive so allowed us to bring our imaginations into play. Even the bordered advertisements were supportive of this and at that time were always very much a part of our reading. There was sort of a veil of dustiness, of “oldness”, over the pages of Yankee then that made these qualities seem very important and seductive. Photos (excepting some covers in the early 40s) were black and white until the famous Griffin centerfolds and that began in 1959. Further use of color, outside of the painting covers, had to wait for another ten years.
As circulation expanded to about 400,000 and more some what we might call “slickness” crept in - the illustrations of Austin Stevens, a higher yellow journalistic content, a more hard-hitting and impressive editorial layout, for instance, but the basic format did not change, but deepened as The Forgotten Arts series and the increased profiling of idealistic personalities increased. But then pieces began to appear which, though excellent and extremely entertaining, deviated from the previous avenues of expression. From the later 1970s history and antiquarian interests were given less space while more was devoted to outstanding achievements of New Englanders and to sports. The emphasis began to shift from the ideal to the real. Boomers such as Mel, Tim Clark, Kathleen Kilgore, Susan Peery, Edie Clark, and so on were heard from more and more and they would largely shape the magaxines tone into the new millenium. They were crack writers who with a warmth, vividness, and accuracy Robb Sagendorph, who had died in 1970, could never have dreamed of because, in part, their degree of intimacy was seldom a part of interpersonal, let alone literary, expression before the 1960s.
Of course they put out a magazine that all took notice of, that won awards. They dazzled readers. But in their excellence Sagendorph’s original agenda was more and more lost sight of.
Attrition eventually took those who had subscribed in the 50s, 60s, and early 70s. The baby boom generation, at least many of them, I would guess eventually shifted their attention to the internet. Younger people had no interest in history, fiction, poetry, humor, etc. and no longer identified themselves as, or took an interest in, Yankees.
New England itself changed. The state tourism boards that had advertised in the magazine earlier on succeeded all too well in drawing people to the states as tourists and as residents. Southern NH became crowded from the late 60s through the 70s, and then Northern NH and VT were heavily settled. The attractive rural carachter of these states disappeared. As Sagendorph originally feared, the residents less and less related to themselves or each other or God and more and more to TV, marketers, internet and so on.
Subscriptions decreased from the late 1980s then dwindled to almost half their peak figure by 2001., although it is difficult to get accurate figures.
Budgets were cut from the mid 90s if not before. Yankee, which had been put together at one time by only several individuals, had a staff of , as I hear it, about 75 which had to be cut. Other magazines they had bough or started, and their own book department, did not do well and had to be sold. There appears to have been some kind of a shake-up in the baord of Yankee Publishing around 1999, and the magazine increasingly focused on only the home and personal expenditure issues, apparently in an attempt to emulate the success of certain lifestyle-oriented ’90s successes of others.
It is still a good magazine and still has Edie Clark, Mel Allen, and others, but the driving idealism and suggestive simplicity we so admired years ago is mostly gone.
I have taken to acquiring back issues of Yankee at books sales, on eBay, etc. and I still read them with pleasure as I did, some of them, as a boy 50 years ago.