My 12 Glorious Weeks As A Wannabe Magazine Publisher

What do Larry Flynt, Jann Wenner, Conde Nast, Gloria Steinem and Sean B. Pasternak have in common?

At one point, all of those people attempted to start up their own magazines. Granted, some of these folks were more successful than others....

The year was 1995. I had just graduated from Journalism School and was earnestly looking for full-time employment. My prospects weren't great and in fact, I ended up working four jobs at the same time while also exploring various freelance opportunities. I also remembered back to a final year J School assignment in which I'd written up a rudimentary business plan to create my own magazine.

On paper, I thought the concept behind this magazine (titled TeenAGE) had some merit. It was to be a tabloid-style newsprint publication aimed at the secondary school audience and distributed free of charge at local schools and community hangouts throughout pockets of the Greater Toronto Area. Free publications were virtually everywhere you looked in 1995, so it seemed to be a proven business model with an abundance of potential advertisers to target. Plus, there weren't any publications at that time that were both (a) full of local content and (b) targeted towards teenagers, so this would be a niche market.

I began doing some research on various costs and was encouraged. The cost of printing publications wasn't prohibitive, so long as we ordered enough copies to make it worthwhile for the printing press. I had a hook-up for very reasonable office space and a relatively new Mac computer with the latest desktop publishing software. New content could be written inexpensively (read: free), as many of us recent journalism graduates were just looking to round out our portfolio. On top of that, some distribution locations I corresponded with said they wouldn't charge us for placement so long as we purchased our own display stands and followed some ground rules.

I'd also done some market research by having my brother Ryan Pasternak and some of the telemarketers I employed distribute surveys to their high school peers. Not only was most of the feedback positive, but it also showed that this market was one that had disposable income to spend on video games, entertainment and fast food - which could have been helpful in attracting potential advertisers.

Finally, I assembled a small group of recent J School graduates, as well as my brother and a handful of others. This was more of a brainstorm session to build upon the germ of an idea I had. The feedback was fantastic and it made me feel as though we enough momentum to give TeenAGE a try.

Following that meeting, I set out to create a sample issue of the magazine, largely using some of my existing content as "dummy copy" to see what would it would look like. We spent a couple of weeks perfecting the look and feel of the magazine (and here, I need to give credit to the creative services of my fellow J School graduate Paul Riches (he/him) for putting in tons of work to put together a sample issue we were proud of.)

When I wasn't slaving away in my parents' basement designing the publication, I was driving around the neighborhoods of various high schools (which sounds a bit creepy without proper context) and writing down information about every store, restaurant and small business within a five-minute drive. While I'd never done any advertising sales before, I figured a good starting point would be to at least know whom to reach out to.

Armed with new information and intel, the second TeenAGE meeting took place about a month after the initial touchpoint. I passed around the sample issue like a proud parent and shared what progress had been made. I shared some back-of-the-envelope financials, estimating how much money we'd need to get things started (either from a small business loan or The Bank Of Mom & Dad) and at which point we might expect to break even.

The group asked some very reasonable questions, such as "How will any of us make money in this venture?"; "How can you expect to sell advertising when you've never done that before?"; "What's your strategy for having an Internet presence?" (my experience at the time was limited to using free CD-Roms to access America Online); and "Have you looked into publishing insurance and legal representation in case you ever get sued?"

These were all fantastic questions that I promised to follow up on. After making a dozen more phone calls (I particularly remember trying to get estimates on insurance), it became apparent that this was a tremendous financial gamble, and even with a lot of advantages and fresh thinking, it wasn't going to be nearly enough to start up an independently-funded publication and succeed.

After giving up on the project, I did notice at least two publications creep into the market in subsequent years. While I was more than a little jealous that these folks succeeded where TeenAGE failed, neither were around for very long.

At the end of the day, it was only about 12 weeks of my life and an experience worth having. Despite my best efforts, I wasn't able to prosper in the world of magazine publishing.

It's one of the primary differences between myself and Larry Flynt.

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