David Lauren, "Swing" editor: Mr. Media Interview Classic

Originally published May 26, 1997

If you know someone in their 20s who needs a boost in self-confidence or direction, try sending them a copy of David Lauren's Swing magazine.

The 25-year-old publisher is on a mission to propel his generation to greatness.

"When I started the magazine," he says, "there was no magazine that spoke intelligently to people in their 20s. I could not find anything that spoke to me, that told me how to grow up, told me the stories of young entrepreneurs who were successful and how I could be successful. I didn't want to read about an 80-year-old business tycoon whose life I could never emulate. I wanted to know about somebody my age, who was 25 years old, who was already a millionaire, who had done it on their own. I wanted to know about politics but not through Newt Gingrich or Bill Clinton. I wanted to know about politics through somebody who was 27 years old, who was responsible for writing a speech or a bill that got passed through Congress."



Lauren wants to convey to his peers why somebody their age cares so passionately for political and social issues, what their vision is and how it reflects on an entire generation.

"They make politics accessible to us," he says. "The same thing with technology and medicine. Some of the greatest breakthroughs are made by people in their 20s. We are the ones using computers, we are the ones working at home because the job market is tight. We are the ones being forced to figure out the future."

The idea of Swing was to chronicle his generation, to give people in their 20s not only a sense of themselves but of how they fit into the the world and where and how they can succeed. Lauren is trying to accomplish that with cover stories such as "The Best Places to Live for People in Their Twenties," "The Most Powerful People in Their Twenties" and "The Best Job Advice from the Best Mentors" -- including Martha Stewart, Donna Karan, Doug Williams and Chris Blackwell.

And while his magazine's appearance on the scene two years ago brought its share of derision and skepticism, Lauren has stuck to his guns and is finally winning respect for his lofty goals and delivery.

Inside Media named him one of seven "rising magazine stars." Dr. Samir Husni, publisher of his own annual guide to new magazines, told the New York Times that "this generation is a group to be reckoned with and this magazine will be a voice for that group."

Swing is also making money; Lauren reports advertising sales are up 50 percent over a year ago.

Starting the magazine for a national run -- Lauren originally produced it for a regional audience while a student at Duke University -- the young publisher followed his nose, not any particular demographic studies or focus groups.

"I saw the magazine as a vehicle to inspire people in their 20s, to talk about the issues and the personalities that were defining people in this generation," he says. "It was just a feeling; it was an instinct."

Producing the magazine was also a day-by-day, feel-your-way-around-in-the-dark experience, too. Early issues looked like the product of an enthusiastic but undisciplined college staff, but more recently, Swing's design has shown improvement. Part of the credit may go to Hachette Filipacchi, the international media conglomerate (Elle, Mirabella, Premiere) which has become a partner in Swing, echoing its relationship with John Kennedy and his youth-oriented political magazine, George.

Lauren and Kennedy have another common bond; both are sons of fathers with household names. Lauren's dad is fashion designer Ralph Lauren.

It took Lauren a little longer than it did Kennedy to figure out that while idealism is good for the soul, celebrity sells.

"Sometimes we ran a really funky cover that did not connect to what was inside," he admits. "Our belief was that the audience would find us, but we learned we had to make it a little more salable. And that also evolved our view about celebrities. In our first year, we refused to run a celebrity on the cover."



But while Lauren insists that the cover stories Swing has done from time to time on Generation X icons such as comedian Janeane Garofalo or actor Chris O'Donnell don't significantly bump sales up, they do distinguish it on the newsstand.

"It has been hard for us to find celebrities in their 20s who really reflect the integrity and the quality of the audience that we cater to," he says. "For us to just put a celebrity on the cover who is hip and trendy doesn't really embody the quality and the direction of this magazine. Swing magazine has always been about leaders, people who are original thinkers, that are more than just famous. This magazine is about people who are successful in business, politics, sports and technology."

I asked Lauren to identify several cultural tidbits that best describe his generation:

ALBUM: "Alanis Morissette's album was a major success with this generation. She spoke about honesty and truth; she didn't want to be pushed around with false images."

MUSICAL ARTIST: "Jewel is very popular now. Young people are searching for an honest voice with integrity. We are very media-savvy. We are very aware of the hype that is out there, that surrounded a lot of the artists before us, and the artist that speaks to us with real meaning is connecting to us."

POLITICAL FIGURE: "You can't quite tell who is real and who is not, but Colin Powell, if somebody were to do a major poll right now, would probably be one of the more popular leaders. His interest in being an activist is very popular with this generation. We are one of the most activist generations in terms of getting in on community service, but some people might, in the same poll, feel that it is just a step toward the presidency and maybe not completely trusted."

BUSINESS PERSON: "Jim Barksdale would be a hero to this generation. He is the president and CEO of Netscape."

ACTOR: "Claire Danes from (the short-lived TV show) 'My So-Called Life," has this huge cult following because the character she played was just a young woman in search of a good relationship with her parents, good relationship with friends."

TV: " 'The Real World' (on MTV) is popular because it is real."

MOVIE: "I don't think we have produced a classic yet, but there are movies like Swingers, about society and young people, that is a movie about real questions.

WHAT HIS READERS READ AFTER SWING: "Time, Entertainment Weekly and Vanity Fair. But I don't think that there is one magazine that people feel, oh, my gosh, I have to read it. I think that people today will pick up Men's Health because they want to understand health. Years ago, people would pick up Esquire or Life magazine because it told you how to live better, to reflect a certain sense of society, and I don't think there is a magazine besides Swing right now that is doing that for this generation."

Won't that come as a surprise to the editors of Spin and George?

"I don't think so," Lauren says. "They are nice magazines, but . . . If you want to read about who the hottest new band is, you pick up Spin, but I don't think it tells you how to live better."


Maybe it is his fashion designer father's influence, but Lauren insists his generation -- and audience -- is not just a bunch of grungy, angry, self-absorbed dirty punks only interested in designer drugs, body piercing and getting tattoos.

"When we started off, people really assumed that this generation only looked like the people that you saw on MTV or in Details magazine," he says. "What they are finding now is that this generation is much more aspirational, much more clean-cut, much more traditional than people previously thought. This is not the slacker MTV generation that sits on their butts watching TV all day. This is a generation that wants to get ahead, be successful and be close to their parents."

A media mogul at 25, Lauren will outgrow his target audience in a mere five years. What then? Will he hang on, pretending forever to be twentysomething? Will the magazine mature along with its audience, eventually catering to thirtysomethings and fortysomethings?

"I can't tell you," he says, answering the question yet playing coy. "We target 18- to 34-year-olds, but we finding that people in their 50s and 60s read the magazine because they want to understand what this generation is about. In the last three years, I learned who our audience is, and I have another five years to decide who it will be."

© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.

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Brian Hecht, "Electronic Newsstand" CEO: Mr. Media Interview Classic

Originally published April 7, 1997

He's 26 years old. But a quick read of his bio makes it seem as though Brian Hecht worked three jobs simultaneously to get where he is today.

"Either that or it looks like I can't hold a job," he jokes.

Hecht wears two heavy, staple-studded crowns these days, as president and CEO of The Electronic Newsstand as well as online editor of The New Republic magazine.

"One of the cool things about working in new media is that someone like me gets a chance to try their hand at things that I would never get a chance to do in traditional media," he says. "Two years ago, I was getting coffee for Barbara Walters at ABC News."

And how does she like her coffee, anyway?

"I think I'm contractually prohibited from sharing that," Hecht says.

Hecht -- whose resume also includes participation in the launches of ABC's "Turning Point" news magazine and the Generation X print magazine, Swing -- is a wonderful example of a phenomenon Mr. Media recently discussed with an electronic journalism class at the University of Florida. Most of the students asked questions about the future of traditional newspapers jobs such as reporting and editing, concerned that shrinking staffs at dailies meant limited post-graduation opportunities.

Mr. Media scoffed, suggesting that by limiting their view of the world to print media, such students couldn't see the neon forest for the electrified trees. Online publishing means more jobs and wider, different opportunities using the same skills. Tomorrow's journalism graduates will only be contained by their imaginations and entrepreneurial spirit, not the number of openings at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer or Tampa Tribune.

Brian Hecht is a perfect example of that.

"I don't want to make it sound like too much of a rags-to-riches cliche," he says, "but when I was working at NBC News and ABC News, there was a limit to how much of a contribution I could make as an ambitious young person. This whole new world of new media opened up and merely a month later I found myself running a media product, a whole editorial concept in its formation, for a medium, the World Wide Web, that I had never even seen before!"

In his first online job, organizing editorial content for the nascent twentysomething site, Tripod, Hecht was at work a month before he even saw the Web for the first time.

"I was just going on people's word that it was this really cool thing and you could 'link,' " he recalls. "Even though I wasn't entirely sure what that meant."



In college -- he attended Harvard a mere five years ago -- Hecht imagined he'd be a journalist now. Instead, he's sitting atop The Electronic Newsstand, steering the company that produces The New Yorker's Web site, among others.

"Being an entrepreneur? That never even dawned on me when I was considering a career in journalism," Hecht insists. "In fact, the mechanisms of business seemed vaguely distasteful to me."

As someone openly discussing the possibility of taking his company public a year from now, Hecht apparently got over his revulsion.

And while he didn't create the Newsstand, he's the one who came in a year ago and gave it commercial life for the future, moving it away from a narrow presentation for a handful of magazines to an online "Publisher's Clearinghouse," a place where Web surfers will not only find discounts on magazine subscriptions but can also sample a magazine's wares before putting an e-penny down.

It should be noted, in fairness, that Hecht prefers comparing his site to Amazon.com, the virtual bookstore which seriously impacted sales at "real" stores such as Barnes & Noble and Borders and recently registered for an initial public stock offering.

"While we only have a percentage of their traffic and revenue," Hecht says, "it's not that small a percentage. We are where they were maybe a year ago. I should be so lucky as to be filing our SEC papers a year from now."

In the Newsstand's original, 1993 business design, eight charter publishers paid the company to show their wares and offer subscriptions in a pre-World Wide Web online market. Most publishers were skeptical of online ventures at the time.

Since then, more than 300 magazines signed on for Electronic Newsstands kiosks, which frequently exist in additional to their own home pages.

Hecht reconceived the site as a consumer product, accountable to its users, not just its magazine clients. He expanded into original content, adding: "Off the Rack," media commentary and interviews; the "Monster Magazine List," an overwhelming list of more than 2,000 links to online magazines; and "Magazine Monitor," a daily summary of magazine features.

Now the Newsstand is dealing with a problem of many mature, full-figured sites: too much content. In recent months, Hecht admits, there has been confusion among visitors who don't know how to adequately experience the site.

"That sentiment is really the tragedy of the success of the site," he says. "We've accumulated so much great stuff that we have yet to find the ultimate efficient way to navigate through it. That's a criticism that I almost wear as a badge of pride. It's our pleasure to solve that problem."

In its latest redesign, The Electronic Newsstand transitioned into three "channels": Enews for resources; "Off the Rack" for original content; and the Magshop for subscription sales.

That said, the Newsstand must be laughing all the way to the bank, right?

Wrong.

"We're not making a profit," Hecht admits. "But we are unequivocally doing better on the revenue side than the overwhelming number of sites that are our size. Right now, this is about staying power. It might seem counter-intuitive, but it's not about profit yet. It's about positioning for profit."

And once he has profits, will Hecht ever realize his dream of being a journalist?

"That's still attractive to me," he says. "One day, I'd like to go back and do that."