The New York Review of Magazines

Pocho.com

By Maria Soldevila

Circulation........Unknown
Date of Birth.........1989
Frequency......Whenever updated by owners
Price...........Free
Natural Habitat......In the 'My Favorites' list on my laptop.

SINCE I came to New York from my home in the Dominican Republic, I’ve been fascinated by the intermarriage of Spanish and English. Surfing the Web one day, I found Pocho.com, a site with the motto “Spanglish is my language.” I dived into its pages, ready to immerse myself in Spanglish. But to my surprise, I discovered that almost every word in this electronic ’zine is written in English.

Even so, Pocho’s contents reminded me of the way Latinos sometimes feel in the United States—mixed and undefined. When I saw a caricature on the site of Presidente George W. Bush in a “cheguevaran” black beret with Texaco’s logo on it, I knew I was in the presence of satire with a distinctly Spanglish flavor— even without any text.

Before going any further, we need to pause and deal with this pocho thing. What does pocho mean? The magazine explains: “Pocho is a term used by Mexican nationals to call their Mexican-American or Chicano relatives to the North. It basically means ‘A Gringoized Mexican’.” This was emphatically not a compliment until Pocho’s founders started working hard to turn the word into a symbol of pride.

Pocho.com is the multimedia offshoot of a ’zine two buddies—cartoonist Eduardo López and Esteban Zul—put together for fun. After ten years, Pocho published its last print issue in 1998 and moved into cyberspace. It was an easy choice for the struggling entrepreneurs. Online publication is cheaper and can reach more people, including potential clients for López’s cartoons. It has become a combination of articles, pictures, comic strips and audiovisuals.

Isn’t that what magazines are about in this era of multimedia and short attention spans? The more I look at magazines, the more I see shorter stories and increasing numbers of illustrations. And, of course, every magazine now has to have a Web site with interactive features.

Years before the Internet was a big deal for anyone, López, whose pen name is Lalo Alcaraz, worked for a comedy group called Chicano Secret Service and Zul was a rapper with the band Aztlan Nation. They toured together, became friends and decided to collaborate on a Chicano magazine. They named it Pocho and put it on sale for $2 a month.

Besides being an outlet for political rebels who are freaking out because of the rightward alignment of this country, Pocho has opened doors for López and Zul to enter Hollywood and move into “the mainstream.” López’s signature cartoon, La Cucaracha, created for the ’zine, is now distributed by the Universal Press Syndicate and appears in sixty papers around the United States. And the Pocho partners are writing a screenplay about affirmative action for MTV.

But back to the magazine. At first glance, Pocho appears to consist mostly of cartoons. But as you navigate through its online pages, you find articles of piercing irony—as well as some shallow, not-so-comic commentaries. Pocho is a messy, crowded, colorful place where people can laugh, scream and complain. López likes to compare its “pochistic” sense of humor to Monty Python’s. It screams visually, too—yellow, red and black are the colors that stand out on nearly every page. If Pocho were a building, the visitor would need a thread like the one in the Minotaur story to be able to find the way out. Every page is different, and it’s easy to lose track of where you’ve been and where you are. If, however, you are, like Theseus, willing to face the beast and conquer the labyrinth of this satirical mess, you may enjoy the trip. I did.

One thing that kept bugging me, though, as I explored the site was the lack of Spanglish in a self-advertised Spanglish publication. “I think Spanglish is an attitude,” López explained. “It is not a good written language, and we’ve found it inadequate. Like pochismo, it is a philosophy.”

A review of a translation into Spanglish of the classic “Don Quixote de la Mancha” done by Ilan Stavans, a professor at Amherst College, is the only “pure” Spanglish I could find in the site. An excerpt:

“In un placete de La Mancha of which nombre no quiero remembrearme, vivia, not so long ago, uno de esos gentlemen who always tienen una lanza in the rack, una buckler antigua, a skinny caballo y un grayhound para el chase.”

What would Cervantes make of that? The “cover stories” of a recent issue also include a pochistic version of President Bush’s speech on immigration last January: “Fellow Americans, as your Chief Expletive I’m requesting that our Congressionals pass new legislatures to improve emigration..... uh, immigration.....uh, you know what I mean. We are a nation of emigrants and if it weren’t for emigration, many bird specialties would not be able fly south to warmer guesting spots in order to survival and contribution to our environment.”

Then there’s a piece about “The Mexterminator,” Pocho’s nickname for the governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger. It is an acidic, out-of-date, account of his voteseeking endeavors among Latinas.

There is also “news” about the hunt for the snipers who terrorized Washington, D.C., and Maryland. The article is sharply satirical—or, at least, it was in 2002.

Which brings us to a serious weakness of this e-magazine. Pochos, here’s the problem: When you tell a joke too many times, it gets old. López and Zul seem to be too busy to attend to the maintenance of the site. Many of the links to supposedly current stories are unavailable. And much of the material that is available should have been removed long ago and replaced with more current stuff.

One up-to-date feature of the e-zine is its cybercholo chat. Pochos and pochas—most of them humorous, but some of them totally humorless—get together in the cholo chat room to discuss Latino issues, gender issues, politics, sex or their favorite beers. In the chat room you can get a feel for what the readers are like: mostly young, educated, somewhat in touch with their roots but very much in tune with American mainstream culture.

One of the best things about Pocho is its editors’ ability to make fun of themselves and, at the same time, ridicule the establishment and any form of racism that may emerge from it. But there is evidence that—as so often happens with satire—some of Pocho’s readers just don’t get it. A warning at the bottom of every page reads: “Pocho.com is a site involving satire and parody, okay? Sheesh! We hate having to explain that to the humorless.”

In 2000, López and Zul received a grant from the Rockefeller New Media Fellowship that has enabled this nonprofit effort to go on, which is why the advertising space at Pocho is free. Pocho is expanding, and with it, el laberinto, the labyrinth. Who knows how much thread we will need to find our way back home? Possibly, mucho.

Which Would You Choose?

Newsweek reveals the inexact science of capturing eyeballs By Maria Soldevila

ON the newsstands, they compete for your attention. Bright colors, bold letters, flashy headlines catch your eyes. Magazine readers talk about covers; some even collect them. How many times have you picked up and bought a magazine because you just had to read the story behind that riveting, intriguing cover?

Conventional wisdom seems to be aligned with Richard B. Stolley’s “law of covers.” As the first managing editor of People, Stolley came up with the following set of rules for the face of a magazine: Young is better than old, beautiful is better than ugly, television is better than music, music is better than movies, movies are better than sports, anything is better than politics, and there is nothing better than a dead celebrity. But even Stolley thinks those rules are not necessarily relevant anymore. People’s first issue appeared on March 4, 1974. Twenty-eight years later, in February 2002, after he had become senior editorial adviser at Time Inc., Stolley told Folio the only rule he sticks to is the last one.

What makes a good cover—or a bad one? How do they come up with a design, with the headlines that will make us buy a particular magazine? Are they just thinking about making money? And who is “they”? Through one magazine’s cover selection process, we will show you how those covers that grab you by the lapels got to the newsstand—and why other others just didn’t make it.

The “they” at Newsweek starts with the editor, Mark Whitaker. He claims that in a news-oriented publication, the ad-sales department has no say in what goes on the cover. He says he refuses to look at readers’ polls and does not try to adjust his news judgment in order to increase sales. So, how does he choose what to publish and what to reject?

For the most part, two people—the editor and the cover director— decide what three million readers are going to see in the cover of Newsweek every week. The first step is a weekly cover meeting that takes place every Wednesday. In that meeting, the editors decide on the story that will be the face of the magazine that week. Two days later, the top editors make the final cover decision. Rick Smith, editor in chief; John Meacham, managing editor; and Dorothy Kalins, executive director; join Whitaker and Newsweek’s cover director, Bruce Ramsay, to pick their favorite.

Common sense plays a key role in cover selection. “It has to be a subject we can photograph or illustrate in some way,” says Ramsay, the man responsible for coming up with images and concepts that satisfy Whitaker’s demands for absolute clarity. “What I’m looking for as a designer is poster-quality for the cover, something clean and strong—something people would want to save, and maybe even keep and frame as a poster.”

For Newsweek, newsstand sales constitute only 5 percent of total circulation. It may sound like a small amount, but when Whitaker and his cadre make the call, they are thinking about subscribers, but also about what might attract the 150,000 readers who decide to buy Newsweek on the newsstand—and maybe push that average number up.

Here are the stories of four covers that ended up in the trashcan. If you had the power to decide, which ones would you have run? Which would you have rejected?

The Viagra Story

Old covers of Newsweek adorn the walls of Whitaker’s sixteenth-floor office. He likes to think of them as posters. An exception sits on a shelf, however, next to the doorway. Of his collection, this mockcover is one that never made it to the newsstands. It was rejected, but Whitaker keeps it as a reminder. When he sees it, he remembers that sometimes it’s OK to take risks.

On November 17, 1997, Newsweek ran a story about a magic drug called Viagra. “The New Science of Impotence: Can It Be Cured With a Pill?” says the headline on the cover on Whitaker’s shelf. The word “impotence” is in bold, threatening capital letters. Accompanying it, a delicate pink flower, drooping—the graphic device Ramsay thought fit the concept. Whitaker, then substituting as editor, was cautious. “I thought it was too edgy, too playful, too irreverent—of course, I wasn’t the editor yet, and I didn’t want to take the risk. I thought it could have been offensive to our readers who had that problem.”

Ramsay didn’t regret trying out the flower image, but he said, “That cover was not going to do well on the newsstands. No man was going to walk around with that in his hands.”

Whitaker opted to run a picture of a stack of pills, a move that he swore to never repeat. To him, an image with pills is simply not attractive enough. He broke that oath, though, on April 9, 2001, when Newsweek ran a cover about painkillers.

Pretty vs. Newsy

On March 18, 2002, Whitaker and Ramsay came up with one of those “poster-quality” covers that they love so much. Since September 11, 2001, hard news had dominated Newsweek’s cover, but there was an entertainment story about an HBO series that caught Whitaker’s attention—the pictures were beautiful, the story was fun and Whitaker knew that TV stories sell well. He even came up with a catchy cover line: “Why We Dig ‘Six Feet Under.’” While they were working on it, however, eight American soldiers were killed in Afghanistan. Editors waffled on which cover to run but ultimately chose to feature news from the war. For Ramsay, the lesson was simple: “Never fall in love with your layouts.”

Looking Scary

For the March 24, 2003 issue, Newsweek’s cover had a provocative headline: “Why America Scares the World.” Bruce Ramsay, cover director, said his challenge was to find an image that represented America’s threatening power. He gave his editor, Mark Whitaker, three choices. First, a globe with an almost-world-size United States painted in black. (Ramsay secretly liked this one most). Second, a muscular arm sporting an American flag tattoo. Third, a weapon called MOAB (Massive Ordinance Air Blast, or the Mother of All Bombs) shown with a satellite picture of Earth. Which of the three ran on that week? The bomb. Not only was it as threatening as an image could get, it was also newsworthy. The attack against Iraq was imminent, and the MOAB was being touted as this war’s Tomahawk.

Misleading Images

A cover needs to get attention, but it should not be scandalous. When Newsweek decided to do a cover story on the controversy over stem-cell research, it was a particularly tough challenge. How could they illustrate the dimensions of the tiny cells?

They tried magnifying the tip of a pin to give the reader a sense of proportion. But the enlarged pin came out looking too much like something else. The pin had become pornographic. Ramsay spent hours Photoshopping the pin so that it would not look like, um, a penis. After three versions, the editors’ consensus was that Newsweek’s readers would not see it as a porno pin—Photoshop had worked its magic and their cover wasn’t hard-core anymore.

But before going to press, someone in the office took the image home to show it to his wife to get a fresh perspective. The result? That week, Newsweek ran the stem-cell cover showing only cells—no pin.

Mags-a-Million

Maria Soldevila discovers an East Village entrepreneur who feeds collectors' addictions.

IN A dusty basement in New York’s East Village, Michael Gallagher, founder and owner of Gallagher Paper Collectables, sits and smokes—even though he is surrounded by floor-to-ceiling stacks of highly flammable magazines. His place is not easy to spot from outside. A sign the size of a shoebox is posted on the wall, at street level. Steep metal steps take visitors down to the entrance, where they are greeted by the unmistakable smell of old paper.

Gallagher—neatly dressed in jeans and a black turtleneck—talks fast, as if he is always in the middle of something important. He finishes his cigarette and wanders through the eight rooms that hold about a million magazines, according to his estimate. He is probably exaggerating, but who’s counting? What you can see in every room is thousands of magazines, sorted by name and, roughly, by publication date. Gallagher says the order depends on his mood. “I change them all the time, whenever I feel like it.”

It is hard for Gallagher to remember when exactly he started collecting magazines. “I was born collecting,” he says. It was a hobby at first, and he did it because he loved the photographs and the drawings in their pages and could not afford the originals. After giving up on a career as an actor, he began selling old magazines twelve years ago. Today, if what he recently told the French magazine Paris Match is true, the business brings in a million dollars a year.

Collecting has become an addiction for Gallagher. His personal library holds such treasures as the extremely rare first edition of Minotaure, a French magazine with a cover by the famed surrealist painter René Magritte. This is one magazine that Gallagher says he would never sell.

But just about everything else is available, for a price. The store has one of the most comprehensive archives of fashion magazines in the world and fashion industry A-listers know it. Designer Marc Jacobs of Louis Vuitton recently called Gallagher from Paris and ordered a full 1970s collection of the French Vogue. David Lipman, chairman of Lipman, Richmond, Greene Advertising, wants all of the 1960s and 1970s Vogue Paris. To get an idea of what this means, Gallagher sells one 1960s issue for $50. A collection from 1920 through 1980 sells for $100,000. Donna Karan bought a set, and Gallagher has three more ready in case one of his rich and famous clients calls. “Magazines are like old baseball cards—you have to have them all,” says Gallagher.

To keep up with customers’ demands, Gallagher shops for magazines everywhere he can think of. He buys from retired art editors, from stores that are going out of business, from design academies and through Internet sites. The Web has contributed to his business in different ways. “Thirty percent of our sales are done online,” he says. “It’s also a great way to find magazines. If I’m looking for a particular edition, I post it on eBay and it’s faster to find it that way.”

Gallagher’s Web sites ( Vintage Magazines and Gallagher's Fashion) advertise not only his merchandise, but also Gallagher’s way of life. They feature a slide show of him being hugged by his celebrity friends—legendary photographers, models, designers, illustrators and art directors.

Many collectors share Gallagher’s fascination with celebrities. His collection includes more than 500 magazines with Madonna covers, more than 250 with Marilyn Monroe (including the Playboy cover) and a section devoted to Barbra Streisand, among others.

The 3,000 back copies of The New Yorker that the Web site advertises are kept on the top shelves in one of the back rooms. “The art is fantastic,” says Gallagher, but The New Yorker is not a big seller. “I buy it because I like it,” he says. The National Geographic collection is not conspicuously displayed, either, even though the Web site declares that copies from 1910 to the 1970s are available for purchase. The same is true of Fortune—although there is a room full of French Vogues, the collection of Fortune issues from 1930 to 1950 must be hidden somewhere near The New Yorker.

Some famous clients call Gallagher when they need to find archival material about themselves. Debbie Harry got in touch with the store recently because she wants to collect all of the old magazine pieces about her pop band, Blondie. Madonna has been sighted in Gallagher’s basement, too.

Of course, you don’t have to be a celebrity to shop here. Some customers descend those rickety stairs in search of birthday presents. If your friend was born in January of 1977, you can gift-wrap an issue of People with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson on the cover.

Catering to magazine collectors, however, is the more profitable business. Gallagher says that he declined a $2 million offer from L.V.M.H. (parent company of Moet & Hennessy and Louis Vuitton), for his collection. “I can’t sell it for less than ten!” he told Paris Match. “With one million, you’re poor in New York!”