PUBLISHING—Three Decades After Launch, Ms. Seeks Revival in L.A.

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Years of lobbying for women’s rights in Afghanistan and fighting anti-abortion activists in the United States has done little to prepare the Feminist Majority Foundation for its latest challenge magazine publishing.

The foundation, a feminist research and action organization with offices in Los Angeles and Arlington, Va., is in the process of taking over Ms. magazine at a time when shrinking ad revenues have shuttered any number of publications, such as Mademoiselle, Brill’s Content and The Industry Standard.

While having published only newsletters in the past, the foundation is preparing to move the editorial operations of the well-known feminist title into its new offices in Beverly Hills in hopes of reinvigorating the magazine.

Liberty Media for Women LLC, a group of women investors led by Ms. co-founder and contributing editor Gloria Steinem, recently agreed to transfer ownership of the magazine to the foundation as well as all assets of Liberty Media.

After nearly 15 years as a commercial magazine, Ms. will become a nonprofit publication that will allow it to accept foundation support and tax-deductible donations.


Selected advertising

There are other changes in the works. The foundation, which will publish its first issue in the spring, plans to make the bimonthly magazine a quarterly for at least a year. Ad-free since 1990, Ms. will begin taking ads, but only a few and from selected businesses and organizations, said foundation President Eleanor Smeal.

“We certainly wouldn’t take cosmetic company ads,” said Smeal, former president of the National Organization for Women. “You couldn’t put a story on fat women next to a Revlon ad.”

Ms. reached its height in the 1980s with a circulation of 600,000, but subscriptions were allowed to lag and circulation had fallen to about 50,000 when Liberty Media for Women took over in 1998.

Steinem said the group has worked to build up the magazine and that it’s “on its way to becoming profitable again” but would not release financial details.

Active on more than 700 college campuses throughout the nation, the foundation is believed to be well-positioned to help increase the magazine’s paid circulation, which has risen to 100,000 after a decline brought on by several ownership changes and a rocky history.

Launched in 1972, Ms. became a nonprofit publication in 1978 and continued as such until 1987, when it was purchased by John Fairfax Holdings Ltd., an Australian media conglomerate. The magazine later passed through the hands of Lang Communications, which briefly suspended publication, and then MacDonald Communications Corp.

When MacDonald suspended publication in 1998, Steinem gathered the group of women investors, including Cisco Systems Inc. founder Sandy Lerner and Walt Disney grandniece Abby Disney, to regain financial control and resume publication.

Liberty Media for Women was formed to buy back Ms., but considered other projects such as starting an international women’s book club and selling women’s art on the Internet. Such efforts still could happen as offshoots of Ms., Steinem said.

Steinem said Liberty Media for Women had been looking to transfer ownership to a nonprofit organization and she called Smeal this summer.

“(Ms.) had always been envisioned as a movement publication,” Steinem said. “Its profits should go back to the movement.”

The foundation will make Ms. more political and “put a lot more action into it,” Smeal said.

Its 30th anniversary issue will be coming out Dec. 6.

While she described Ms. as still “cutting-edge” despite its age, Smeal said the magazine will take on a more political tone under the Feminist Majority Foundation because of the group’s active involvement in the women’s movement.

“We will make sure there is interaction between the writers and the activists,” she said.

While bra burnings have become a thing of the past, Smeal said the women’s movement is very much alive with many issues that still need attention. “I could write the whole damn thing for a year without moving,” she said. “There’s a lot to write about and there’s a lot of stuff that’s not in the magazines or the newspapers.”


Fulfilling a need

“The amazing thing about it is that it has to have been fulfilling a need, otherwise it wouldn’t still be around,” said Victor Navarsky, chair of the James T. Delacorte Center for Magazine Journalism at Columbia University. “It hasn’t justified itself in terms of the marketplace but yet it has outlived magazines with circulations far larger.”

Many of the 25 New York-based employees of Ms. have been laid off and given severance packages. While administrative, circulation, editorial and production functions will be moved to L.A., the Feminist Majority Foundation’s Arlington office will house direct-mail marketing services and provide a Washington bureau.

Smeal said some of the magazine’s operations could be taken over by foundation staff, including some marketing and administrative functions. “What we’re hoping is that with the combination, we can have economies of scale,” she added.

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