I picked up this story on another listserv. The publishers of this new mag are daughters of a soror who belongs to Xi Nu Omega, a Chicago-area graduate chapter. The original poster thinks one of the publishers is a soror, too:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/busin...fin-mag29.html
Chicagoans push mag for black girls
September 29, 2003
BY CHERYL JACKSON
Ruben Studdard is on the cover of the fall issue of Melanin magazine, but Publisher DeAnna McLeary worked hard to make sure the profile of the 350-pound "American Idol" champion wasn't the only weighty thing about the issue.
Drawing on free-lance writers, illustrators and photographers, Melanin includes articles about cosmetic plastic surgery, affirmative action and entrepreneurship.
Together with her sister, McLeary, 25, a former business consultant, runs the start-up quarterly magazine targeted at black girls, a demographic publishers say is under-served and marketing experts consider to be trendsetters with loose wallets.
Melanin -- the title refers to the brownish-black pigment found in skin and hair -- claims a readership of 25,000 reached through independent bookstores and Books-a-Million retail outlets in 12 states.
Now McLeary says Chicago-based Melanin is ready to make the leap to national, million-reader production, and beyond that to monthly publication.
Anderson News Co., a Tennessee-based periodical distributor that places periodicals in Wal-Mart and other major chain stores and outlets, agreed to carry Melanin, and that would expose Melanin to millions nationally.
"But to do that, we're basically giving the magazine away" and surrendering the $3.50 cover price to middlemen.
The McLeary sisters are willing to take the chance.
Tiffanie McLeary, a public school teacher, launched the magazine in 2000, geared to females 11 to 18 years old.
"She was watching her girls embrace Seventeen magazine and YM, and she said 'why isn't there a magazine for these young girls?'" said DeAnna McLeary, who shared her sister's concern and joined the magazine.
A recent survey of black youths ranked hip-hop heavy Vibe and Source magazines, Nos. 1 and 2 in readership among the group. At Nos. 5 and 6 sat Seventeen and Teen magazines, outranking Essence, the most prominent magazine targeting black women.
Black teenage girls want celebrity news and fashion tips, to be sure, magazine owners say, but today's teens need more than the Foster Sylvers and Stoney Jackson profiles that Right On! offered their moms. On the radar of today's publishers are articles about sexually transmitted diseases, teen pregnancy and gang violence.
The magazine stresses diversity in body types, skin tone and self-esteem along with health, fashion, etiquette and how-to articles written with black girls in mind. The same issue that features interviews with the likes of B2K and Tyrese might offer a chat with U.S. presidential candidate Carol Braun, and touch on how to find money for college, the pitfalls of teen motherhood or the allure and dangers of dating thugs.
"We focus on uplifting young girls; erasing negative images," McLeary said. "Part of that includes having heavyset girls and dark-skinned teens pictured in the magazine."
McLeary is counting on advertising sales, not subscription or single-copy sales, to cover the $22,000 cost of producing an issue and to turn a profit.
"You can't get rich off a $3.50" cover price, she said.
Melanin's list of advertisers is typical of a start-up -- local retailers, health-and-beauty salons, a bookstore. But McLeary aims to convince national advertisers with extensive ad budgets that her readers are worth reaching.
"For a young person, all of their income is disposable," she said.
A 2002 survey of 16-to-20-year-olds by Philadelphia-based market researcher MEE Productions found those young adults, from households with incomes of $25,000 or less, had a relatively high amount of spending in entertainment consumption.
On average, they went to the movies twice a week. About 62 percent said they went to the movies twice a month. And about 48 percent said they spend $16 or more per trip.
"They seem to over-consume relative to their household income," said William Juzang, vice president of MEE. "They tend to be trendsetters in terms of fashion and a lot of things in entertainment. In terms of fashion, black females are very much on the forefront, particularly youth fashion."
Still, while there have been attempts -- including Johnson Publishing Co.'s Ebony Jr.! in the 1970s and BET Holding's YSB in the 1990s -- at general interest magazines for black youths, black girls have rarely been singled out.
In common entrepreneurial fashion, McLeary upped the ante on the success of Melanin, recently quitting a $65,000-a-year consulting job to work full time at the magazine.
"The only way the magazine was going to grow was for me to put everything I had into it. This could not be part time," said McLeary, who along with her sister, has been working with angel investors of family and friends.
Tiffanie McLeary sold her home and invested about $30,000 into the Melanin. But she continues teaching fifth-graders at Beasley Academic Center at 5255 S. State, which has the added benefit of keeping her in touch with her target readership.
McLeary plans to later target Hispanic and Asian readers for the magazine, as they too need to see more positive images of their peers.
The mainstream teen magazines, she said, typically are too sexualized.
"These magazines are risque. The content is sexual. A lot of parents really don't want their children reading them," McLeary said. "We have the celebrity profiles, the fashion information -- all the bells and whistles. But at the end of the day, Melanin magazine will stand for something."
Cheryl Jackson is a Chicago business writer.
Shades of an existing magazine for start-up
While Melanin makes a bid for big-time publishing, another periodical aimed at young black females is hoping to add just a few thousand extra readers.
Shades magazine started in 1995 as a black-and-white 16-page newsletter, then moved to digest size, then to the Internet and finally relaunched last year as a quarterly newsmagazine-sized quarterly sporting a $3 cover price.
The audience has remained the same, said Publisher Theresa Tracy: "There was a void historically in the magazine industry. Particularly for African-American women. Young women."
Tracy, 37, recalled her own teen years and the cocktail of periodicals she'd consume for fashion, dating and entertainment information. "I might find entertainment that I want in Right On! and the makeup information in Ebony and the relationship stuff I was looking for in something like Seventeen. I had to buy all these publications. When I started Shades, I thought of it as the NyQuil of publications for African-American females. Finance, health, romance, relationships. It's all in there."
The new Shades issue focuses on sexual harassment in schools. Past articles have looked at the alarming spread of herpes among African-American teens.
Students contribute articles to the four-color magazine, which costs more than $10,000 to produce. Operated as a not-for-profit, Shades runs off sponsorships.
"The real focus is to provide very critical information about issues young girls are facing every day and don't have the outlets like other girls do," Tracy said.
WELL READ
Market researcher MEE Productions surveyed about 2,000 black youths on their reading preferences. Here's how their tastes broke down:
What kinds of magazines do you read most often?
All Male Female
Ethnic 17% 9% 25%
Men's 2 4 NM
Music 24 27 22
News 2 2 2
Sports 4 9 NM
Other 18 14 22
No Answer 32 35 29
NM: Not meaningful
SOURCE: MEE Productions' 2002 Urban Young Lifestyle Study
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