Magazine Publishers of America
Marin County All Over Again
I recently had the pleasure of spending an afternoon in Mill Valley, Marin County, which must be one of the friendliest places on earth. Even the traffic police who enforce the near-town, two-hour parking limit (by chalking tires) hint that a slight shift in the car’s location puts one on the right side of the law. I was struck by the rather casual reminders about earthquakes; that families should have a plan and three days worth of supplies. No mention of the houses.
The spider roads off Route 101 lead to the Depot Book Store where they seem to stop, thus underscoring my belief that I could actually be at the center of the world. And this is the perfect place to meet David Lusterman, Publisher, String Letter Publishing and a leader in the IMAG community.
In the town square toddlers on leashes were testing the limits of authority and the jazz band played on. But David and I weren’t there to observe the beautiful people. On the contrary, we met over expensive coffee to chat about Content Management System (CMS), the triangulation of content, and whether it was better to begin a career at the New York Review of Books (David) or as a crane operator in McKeeesport, PA (me). Advantage David!
If I could with difficulty ignore the beautiful people, I couldn’t ignore all the Italian-surnamed cycling equipment whizzing by: Colnago, Columbus, Campagnola, Pinarello and more, reminding me of all those lost summers in Europe.
My first trip to Marin was with a team of Rodale executives, there to purchase Bicycling Magazine, born in northern California. Bob Rodale, late chairman, was an Olympic skeet shooter and on his travels saw a velodrome, a bicycle racing track. Bob thought that Lehigh County in eastern Pennsylvania, where the company is located, would be the perfect place to build a track. Not all local farmers agreed and one of my first jobs for Bob Rodale was to sell the idea to local granges, the VFW, and I believe the Daughters of the American Revolution. What some in his own company considered a white elephant became an Olympic class facility and the rest is history.
But what good was a velodrome without a magazine; thus the purchase of Bicycling. One of my first meetings was with Gary Fisher, local hero who went on to invent with his friends the mountain bike which really did transform the sport, putting American savvy and tinkering in cycling driver’s seat.
This development caused some concern at Bicycling where I was Editor and Publisher as our focus was mainly on road cycling. The magazine was very profitable and we saw this upstart mountain bike movement as a threat. In truth the magazine had probably moved too far away from its core and had paid insufficient attention to a growing constituency. I had christened in full public view this new bike as an All-Terrain Bike (ATB), a term lacking poetry and marketing appeal and had absolutely no audience in Marin County.
The solution was to purchase Mountain Bike, a Colorado start-up that was talking the new knobby-tired language of the cycling world. That put Rodale on both sides of the cycling issue and brought some necessary competition in-house.
During this period the road bike riders saw mountain bikers as an unruly lot; mountain bikers saw roadies as decidedly un-cool. I eventually cast my lot with the Colorado crowd. Time and the marketplace would reduce this tension.
There was no storm and stress in Mill Valley. The mountain bikers were loading their machines into vans to travel to the serious climbs. Road riders were everywhere, wearing if not speaking Italian. All was right with the world.
Cycling got a tremendous boost when Rodale entered and transformed the space. From their modest beginnings these titles have become powerhouse brands under a new generation of leaders.
Did I say they are two of my favorite magazines?
Charles McCullagh
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