The New American Goes Mobile

In an increasingly polarized political world, The New American has content to burn. The weekly political magazine was born in 1985 after the merging of American Opinion and The Review of the News, and now publishes biweekly to hit constitutionalists and like-minded subscribers with more news, more often. The official publication of the infamous John Birch Society, The New American recently launched a mobile edition, deliverable to subscribers’ portable PDA devices, a s well as a retooled content-rich Web site, TheNewAmerican.com, with full and partial articles culled weekly from its print edition. The high-tech efforts have yielded an unexpected upsurge in book sales for The New American’s American Opinion Book Services, which offers an online store of more than 600 constitutionalist books, videos and magazines, not to mention interest in the John Birch Society, says publisher and chief executive John F. McManus. Publishing Executive spent some time chatting with McManus from The New American’s headquarters in Appleton, Wis., about the fate of print publications, gun control and the issues that keep the passionate publisher up at night. Publishing Executive: How would you describe the readership of The New American?John F. McManus: Our target audience is independent-minded and concerned about the departure of this nation from its marvelous founding principles. …PE: What types of publishing collateral do your subscribers respond best to?McManus: The readers of our magazine look for investigative reporting and hard-core analysis of governmental programs. For example, the Constitution mandates that Congress alone can get us into war, but this undeniable grant of power solely to Congress has been cast aside ever since Korea—with stalemates, losses and extremely questionable forays into other lands.PE: There has been a lot of talk about online publishing one day in the future replacing print editions altogether. How does this affect your publishing philosophies? McManus: Our Web sites deliver information free of charge to the public, updated weekly or even biweekly in some cases. Articles published in The New American are posted, some fully, some partially. The online approach we are using should bring us into contact with younger Americans, the 25- to 50-year-olds who have been victimized by slanted or poor education, and know something isn’t right in the good-old U.S. of A. We have also begun development of approaches to school-age, [younger] Americans. PE: Do you think digital editions (where readers can actually peruse what looks like the printed magazine, but in the format of an Adobe PDF) will eventually replace print altogether? McManus: There will always be a market for the printed word. But the pressure of trying keep one’s head above water economically has left a large segment of the American public with far less time for recreational reading. This has opened the door for suppliers of information and analysis that can provide it to these many people who are seemingly always on the run. PE: I understand you’ve recently launched a mobile edition, deliverable to subscribers’ PDAs every day. What was the catalyst behind this innovation, and how has it been doing?McManus: The real catalyst for this approach was our hiring of a young man who knew how to accomplish this new technique, enabling us to reach more of the public. Our effort in this arena has interest among those tapping into it that has led to sales of literature, new subscribers and interest in the magazine’s parent, the John Birch Society. I don’t want to overstate this outreach capability because it’s still small. But its potential is really huge. … The French organization Mobipocket rated our initiative very highly only a few months ago. PE: As publisher of The New American, what issues keep you up at night? McManus: It’s undeniable that many Americans have abandoned the practice of serious reading. This has resulted, in large part, because of the abysmally poor quality of the nation’s education system. This narrows our market. As for competition, we don’t really have much. Many who tap into our output quickly come to realize that what we publish is markedly differently from virtually all other purveyors of perspectives about national and international events. Another hurdle we face is the stream of supposedly hard-nosed publications aimed at concerned Americans for the purpose of keeping them corralled into supporting false alternatives, such as an “Establishment Republican” versus an “Establishment Democrat”—when the real choice, a constitutionalist of either party or some other party, is the real answer to perceived ills. Paul Barbagallo is a freelance writer based in Washington, D.C. He is a former senior editor of FundRaising Success magazine, and associate editor of the Inside Direct Mail newsletter and Target Marketing magazine.

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The New American Goes Mobile

Paul Barbagallo

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Paul Barbagallo