Brief:
This magazine is New West Magazine, a regional magazine that was published from 1976 to 1981. The impetus for its publication came from the publisher of New York Magazine, Clay Felker. His concept was simple: to bring a magazine of the same quality of New York to the West Coast. (Mind you, this is the heyday of New York: a combination of a service magazine, a culture magazine and a listings magazine, with long-form journalism as its centerpiece.)
Within its five years of publication, New West launched a number of careers, and several notable editors passed through its doors. William Broyles (of Rice! and of Texas Monthly) edited the magazine after its purchase by Texas Monthly in 1980 and left in 1982.
I read through a number of issues and what struck me was how the departure of New West (and its successor, California) left a fairly giant hole for good long-form journalism in California. Los Angeles is an excellent regional publication with a stable of excellent writers, but it is largely concerned with the Southland. San Francisco has been on steady decline since its purchase by Modern Luxury; the Kamala Harris [the DA of San Francisco] piece last month is the latest example of how low journalistic standards have gotten at SF. (In case you're wondering, the piece was largely laudatory, even going as far as using photographs from her official campaign photographer in lieu of more words that could have actually yielded an analysis of her tenure in office. Brief aside over.) Let's not even talk about the pure luxury plays in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The new California (by the Berkeley Alumni Association) is sort of nice, but its an alumni service magazine first and foremost.
What's more, I think there's room for an intelligent magazine that covers all of California, not just individual regions. Much hay has been made of the Northern California / Southern California split, but at heart, our state is so inextricably linked that a single contemporary narrative can be woven from California. My good friends from Sunnyvale go to school in Los Angeles. I eat strawberries grown in the Central Valley. Another friend has worked at the two branches of Yahoo in Santa Monica and Sunnyvale.
Since New York has been doing very well as of late (a good, stable set of writers) and its creative direction has been top notch thanks to Luke Hayman, I think it's time that some patron should revive New West.
Introduction: Why New West?
The name is such a "love it or hate it" name. It's certainly not bland, or forgettable like California. It may strike some as being too close to "New York," and not harkening to our region whatsoever. But, I think that there's something to be said about the quirkiness of its name. I remember when I first heard about New West in Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City. The name stood out to me enough to where I googled it and became fascinated by its story. It's been long enough that it's kind of retro for one group of people, but not retro at all for another group. (A whole generation has certainly never heard of the magazine. For what it's worth, my baby boomer mom's only heard of California.)
Visual History (1):
In general, there were two flags used on the cover of New West. One is much, much better than the other. Here they are:
The sharp, Ed Benguiat-style flag from 1976 - 1979. It's nice, a little deriviative, but a very nice flag. Not at all like...
Mmm, not-so-good. The subhead is probably somewhat necessary, given that New West is a bit vague as to what region of the US its covering. However, still not-so-good.
Like our good friend New York, I think it might be good to sharpen up the Ed Benguiat flag, freshen it up and make it more modern and relevant. This shall come tomorrow.
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