An `Activist Agenda' For New Utne Reader

The new Utne Reader hit the streets last week and a few people, including founder Eric Utne, are calling it a significantly new magazine.

No longer content to be the "Reader's Digest of the alternative press," the Minneapolis-based bimonthly is adopting an "activist agenda," Utne says in an opening-page essay.

"Henceforth, Utne Reader will provide visions," he declares, noting that the cover story, "100 Visionaries Who Could Change Your Life," is an example of the publication's new agenda.

`An upgrade'

"If you loved it before, consider (the January/February edition) an upgrade," Utne says. "If you hated it, consider it a total transformation."

Others, including Utne editor Jay Walljasper, are a little less expansive. "To the reader just picking it up, it's going to feel familiar, but dressed a little differently," says Walljasper, who has worked at the magazine since 1984. "But it's the same magazine with some small incremental differences."

The magazine has a redesigned logo, smaller type, less (and less busy) artwork, and a new set of regular subject columns. Utne also says plans call for more original writing. "We've grown increasingly frustrated waiting for others to publish some of the ideas we want to see in print," he says in an editor's note. "Now we'll publish them ourselves."

Some observers of magazine publishing have different theories about why the 10-year-old Utne Reader has decided to change its image.

"Follow the money trail," says Bill Babcock, a University of Minnesota journalism professor who has watched the Utne Reader's remarkable ascent from a tiny New Age newsletter to a thick, ad-rich magazine with more than 300,000 subscribers.

"The question is, why tinker with a product that is going great guns?" Babcock asks rhetorically. "The answer is, the Utne Reader is not going great guns now. Five years ago, it was the fastest-growing magazine in the country, circulation-wise . . . But the Utne Reader is now in the throes of its midlife crisis."

Circulation and advertising figures supplied by the magazine earlier this year appear to support Babcock's assessment. From 1987 to 1992, the Utne Reader's circulation quadrupled to 295,609 paid subscribers. In 1993, circulation grew slowly to 306,554 and during the first half of 1994, it stayed virtually flat, increasing by less than 1,000 readers.

The number of advertising pages rose at an equally slow rate after 1992 - from 53.9 pages per issue in 1992 to 55.5 pages in 1993, and to 55.7 pages during the first six months of 1994.

Walljasper says these figures are not all that disturbing. "We still think there's more room to grow," he says. "It's easy to have phenomenal growth when you start out. You can't be the hot new book forever. We were the hot new book for longer than expected. Now we're moving into a new life cycle.

"Things are all right," Walljasper adds. "We have three times as many readers as we ever imagined in our wildest dreams when we started out. When you start looking around at mags that don't have semi-clad celebrities on the cover, 300,000 is pretty impressive."

Going online

And Utne's ambitions extend beyond a "redefined" magazine. Next year, Utne Online will debut on the Internet, offering a distinctly different product than the magazine, plus forums for electronic discussion and comment. By the end of 1995, a new publishing venture called Utne Books will begin releasing titles that Utne promises "will explore more deeply many of the ideas that we can only just touch on in the magazine."

Utne says he's taking the magazine on a new course "because the world is changing."

He explains: "I woke up six months ago and found myself asking, `What's alternative anymore?' - especially since so many others are cloaking themselves in the mantle of being alternative. We went through quite a process and at one time considered dropping our subtitle, `The Best of the Alternative Press.'

"So now we've decided to reclaim the word by raising the ante on what it means to be `alternative.' "

Among other things, Utne says the magazine "will focus on people who have the temerity to ask questions and offer solutions." It will promote activism with a section called "New Works" that will serve as "a tip sheet for readers who want to get involved . . . in projects that we think are worthy of their support."

The magazine did subtly change its subtitle, too: Now it bills itself as "The Best of the Alternative Media."