A makeover for Yankee Magazine Advertising, circulation trends spur push to retain old, attract new readers

DUBLIN, N.H. – The dowager of New England magazines is getting botox and collagen.

Yankee Magazine will start the new year with a dandy new look, growing from digest size to full-size in hopes of attracting new readers and advertisers. It also will cut circulation and reduce the number of issues from 10 to six annually.

The changes reflect industry trends and the soft advertising market for magazines. But change is a particularly delicate balancing act at Yankee, which has used New England humor, yarns, recipes and travel tips since 1935 to become something of an institution. The regional magazine needs to retain its base while attracting new readers in its target demographic: women age 35 to 65 with household incomes of $75,000 and up.

To do that, it must persuade younger women it’s not their grandmother’s Yankee, while reassuring the grandmothers that behind the facelift is their trusted old friend.

For many younger women, “their perception of Yankee is frozen in time,” said Jamie Trowbridge, president of Yankee Publishing Inc., the privately held company that publishes Yankee, the Old Farmer’s Almanac, and the newsstand-only Yankee Magazine Travel Guide to New England.

“Fifteen years ago when they were 30, they looked at Yankee and said, ‘That’s not for me.’ We want them to take another look,” he said.

Yankee saw a 10 percent drop in the number of pages of advertising from 2005 to 2006, according to the Magazine Publishers of America. But industry analyst Dan Capell said the larger format should attract more national and high-end ads.

“Everyone’s doing it now,” said Capell, editor of Capell’s Circulation Report, an industry newsletter. “Advertising’s off, [so] let’s cut the frequency, let’s cut the circulation.”

Some longtime subscribers are worried about the changes, but editor Mel Allen said it’s reassuring to know readers care.

“We’re hearing from people who’ve said, ‘I’ve always been able to carry Yankee in my pocketbook,”‘ he said. “We are a beloved magazine, and any change to something that you love is going to be met with hesitation.”

The biggest change is visual. Mock-ups of the January-February 2007 issue provided to The Associated Press feature a contemporary, more upscale look and layout, and expansive photo spreads – even plenty of white space, an extravagance that was unthinkable in the thrifty digest format.

Allen, who was promoted to editor in June, said he also will have space for longer stories by writers of national stature, such as an article on eminent domain in the upcoming issue. Some old fixtures will move to Yankee’s Web site, which will soon have a searchable archive, he said.

Still, the old lady is nothing if not practical. Allen plans to sharpen the magazine’s focus on core offerings such as regional recipes, travel stories, and home and garden ideas. He is even bringing back an old fixture under a new name: “Best Cook in Town” will profile a great local cook in each issue.

“Everything that makes Yankee beloved – storytelling, the sense of place, humor, reflecting the beauty of the region and the seasons, the people no other magazine writes about … will still be there,” he said. “We are not celebrity-driven. We are not trend-driven. It’s all about New England.”

In fact, Yankee began as a full-size magazine, but cut back to digest size during World War II because of paper rationing.

Now it will become a bimonthly with four seasonal issues, a November-December “holidays” themed issue, and a May-June summer travel issue that will replace the travel guide.

The subscription price will remain $24 a year. The newsstand price, which dropped by $1 a year ago, will return to $3.99 except for the summer travel issue, which will be $4.99.

Yankee also plans to cut the circulation it guarantees to advertisers from 500,000 to 400,000, largely by eliminating most of the “public place” copies it provides for free to doctors’ offices and health clubs. It will ship 90,000 copies to newsstands, up from 70,000, Trowbridge said.

Magazines recently have been required to disclose how many “public place” copies are included in circulation guarantees to advertisers, prompting cuts nationwide, said New York magazine consultant Martin Walker.

“Advertisers are questioning the public place distribution – ‘How do I know they read it? How do I know they want it?'” he said.

Most of those business changes will be invisible to Yankee’s regular readers, whose biggest concern seems to be whether the magazine will retain its unique identity, judging by letters to the editor.