Down East magazine beats downturn

ROCKPORT – At Down East, talk of a sluggish economy and a mediawide slump in advertising revenues isn’t heard.

The monthly magazine about Maine that was first published in 1954 set a record when its July issue weighed in at 196 pages. The record was broken with a 220-pager in August.

Circulation has remained above 100,000 for the past six months, a level it touched briefly for the first time last summer, said Dale Kuhnert, editor in chief. Gains have been averaging 5,000 per year since the mid ’90s.

“We’re bursting at the seams,” Kuhnert said. The magazine has become so fat, he said, “we’re having trouble holding it together.”

Down East is not alone.

Regional magazines are doing well this year and have weathered the economic downturn better than their general-interest counterparts, said Samir Husni, a University of Mississippi journalism professor.

Industrywide, magazine advertising revenue for the year ended June 30 is down 2.9 percent, while ad pages fell 11 percent, according to the Publishers Information Bureau, which tracks magazine advertising.

In contrast, Ocean Drive, a magazine about south Florida, set a record for a city, state or regional magazine when its January issue contained nearly 500 pages, said Husni, whose specialty is magazines.

The success of Ocean Drive and Down East is not in their widespread appeal but in their ability to reach a specific audience, he said.

It doesn’t hurt, either, that their advertising rates are generally lower that those of general-interest magazines.

“Each of us satisfies a niche, and niche magazines are proliferating,” said Beverly Magley, editor of Montana Magazine and president of the International Regional Magazine Association.

“Down East has the niche of Maine, we have the niche of Montana,” Magley said. “As globalization progresses, people are looking to their own neighborhoods.”

Many states have state magazines. Some have more than one and others have none. They vary in quality, but most have at least one thing in common: “Most of them view their state through rose-colored glasses.

“They are sort of a guide to your own state,” he said. “They help you rekindle your love for your own state. They make you feel good.”

Breaking the mold is the muckraking Texas Monthly, “the leader of the pack,” according to Husni. “They are not a rose garden magazine,” he said.

Arizona Highways, a popular state magazine hailed as the granddaddy of the genre, began publication in 1925 to lure touring motorists to the state.

The magazine, best known for its photographs of Arizona’s dazzling landscape, is published by the state and carries no advertising. Among other state-run magazines are New Mexico, Oklahoma Today, South Carolina Wildlife, Texas Highways and Vermont Life.

Maine’s Down East was launched by Duane Doolittle, an economics professor at Syracuse University, and his wife, Betty. Doolittle grew up in Maine, where he and his wife had a summer place.

“They started on a shoestring, just hoping that there was a market out there,” Kuhnert said. The first issue sold out quickly.

The magazine was modeled loosely on The New Yorker, according to Kuhnert. The section titled “North by East,” the shorter pieces at the front of the publication, was Down East’s version of the New Yorker’s “Talk of the Town.”