New magazine idea: “Sunday Politics” – a “Parade” of debate
In with the old, out with the new. This is an idea for a new magazine distributed in weekend newspapers** called “Sunday Politics.”
I have been kicking it around for the better part of a decade. Haven’t done much more than bruit it about at lunch with various clients. I once interested Mickey Kaus enough that he may or may not have forwarded it — with or without enthusiasm — to Michael Kinsley (actually I think Kaus was just being kind). But that was before Kinsley joined former client, The Atlantic, and complained about the length of newspaper articles.
So if the phone doesn’t ring, etc.
Sunday Politics was inspired by…
1. Parade magazine is ridiculously successful. I know what you’re thinking. I can’t easily explain it either. It just is.
2. Beyond the big cities (and even among them), most Sunday newspapers have anemic op-ed / commentary sections. Just the usual syndicated suspects. A piece by George Will to the rational right. A column by David Broder leaning left. Not much more.
3. Newspapers, which are going the way of, well, newspapers, are not in spend-to-grow mode. Just the opposite. They are cutting furiously hoping to survive long enough for some yet undiscovered something to save them. (And I’m guessing it won’t be this.)
Sunday Politics business model would mirror Parade’s architecture:
a) 16- to 24-page magazine-sized supplement supplied to local markets weekly.
b) six to ten pages of national advertising (I can dream!) with perhaps one to two of those pages reserved for the local newspaper to sell or PSA.
c) Targeted national advertisers would be the the Archer Daniels, DuPonts, GEs, and other sponsors of Sunday morning’s Meet the Press, This Week, and other political shows.
d) Distribution in two newspaper towns (are there any left?) would be exclusive to a single newspaper’s market.
Sunday Politics content would be new and re-purposed posts submitted by the small circulation, but influential bloggers (the Firedog Lakes and Powerlines). Insiders who write for the Politicos, Huffington Posts and Politics Daily. Working journalists at Roll Call and The Hill. Columnists and opinion makers at the long established journals like National Review and The New Republic. Along with mainstream and international media heavyweights — adding a South China Morning Post and Le Monde to the usual New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
I envision the editor as a respected media star with chops acting as a curator with a fascinating sensibility — an impresario of cultural and political thought. Michael Kinsley is a natural choice. I like Mickey Kaus’s feel for what makes a good, smart story and what does not. And if only Michael Kelly were alive….
I would urge, too, Parade’s editorial sensibility — with a twist. Relentlessly upbeat in the tradition of American Exceptionalism. Fair and balanced to be sure, but not by hewing to the middle. To hell with Brooks Broder beige. I’d urge a cast of colorful bomb throwers from the edgier left and out-there right. Ann Coulter and Markos Moulitsas. Josh Marshall and Jonah Goldberg. Michelle Malkin and Robert Wright. Throw in iconoclasts like Camille Paglia and Christopher Hitchens and the whole flavor of Bloggingheads. And bring Glenn Reynolds and Caitlin Flanagan to wider audiences. That sort of thing.
Most of all, Sunday Politics will need a gossip column. A little nasty. A bit unfair. Shameless. Irresponsible. The kind of thinly-sourced, insidery, score-settling, it-wouldn’t be a-rumor-if-it-weren’t-half-true, mind candy that gave birth to Wonkette. And gives Game Change its juice.
After all, that’s the whole idea.
If you like Sunday Politics, don’t steal it like a candidate on the make. Contact me and we can both lose money to the limit of our egos and credit lines work to somehow make it a success.
I think this idea would also work for business as well as politics. In fact “Sunday Business“ did (does?) work in the UK. I recall in the 1990s my former client, Linda McDonald, (who after stints with The Economist in New York, The European in London, and The Scotsman in Edinburgh now works for The Morning Call in Allentown — don’t ask, it’s complicated) talked to me about a U.S. version of Sunday Business. The idea then was an independent newsstand/subscription-sold newspaper. I advised against — absent a national partner like the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times.
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** Isn’t print dead? Maybe for Gourmet. But certainly not Cook’s. I think in our iTunes world the death of print is exaggerated. Like the death of music CDs. Until I was hired to do some creative for Olive, I would never have guessed that 65% of all music sales are still on CDs. Not the business it was, but certainly not nothing.
