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Remembering
Elizabeth Crow, editor
And that she was. Her passion was her readers.
By Lorraine Sanders
Any magazine
editor worth his or her salt knows that in the end it's the reader who
matters most, and that's who one always writes to. It's the reader as a
person, and a live person, not a data set of average age, income and
marital status, that are what the sales people talk about.
Elizabeth Crow learned that early on, working for legendary
New York editor Clay Felker in the '70s, and that understanding shaped her
career and her life as she moved about and up in the world of magazines in
the following years, at Parents, at Mademoiselle and most recently at
Consumer Reports.
Crow was 58 when she died Monday of esophageal cancer. This week she was remembered by friends she had gathered through those
years. They remember her passion for her readers.
"At Parents I think she fell in love with the young
parents, and I think she fell in love with the thirty-somethings at
Mademoiselle," recalls Julie Lewit, former colleague and friend for
the past 12 years who was Mademoiselle's publisher when Crow served as its
editor.
But Crow also understood the business side of magazines, a
rare thing in a world where sharp lines are drawn between edit and sales
and mutual suspicions abound.
"Most editors and editors-in-chief tend to look at the
business side of magazines as, 'Yeah, it's a necessary evil you have to
put up with,'" says Lewit. "But when Elizabeth came onboard, we
became partners trying to revive Mademoiselle."
The two crisscrossed the country for three months,
meeting with advertisers, and at those meetings Crow related her vision
for Mademoiselle. Lewit says that hearing Crow explain the magazine
reinforced her message to advertisers and her confidence in that message.
Their joint effort to save Mademoiselle did not come off. The title
was later folded by Condé Nast, but in working together so closely Crow
and Lewit became close friends. They remained so until Crow's death.
Born Elizabeth Venture Smith in Manhattan on July 29, 1946,
Crow received a B.A. from Mills College in 1968 and worked briefly at the
New Yorker before returning to school at Brown University, where she
completed coursework towards a Master's degree.
Crow got her start at New York magazine, where she worked
from 1970 to1978, beginning as an editorial assistant and eventually
becoming executive editor. She married Patrick Crow in 1974 and the couple
had three children. The marriage ended in divorce but the two remained
close.
Crow left New York to became editor-in-chief of G+J's Parents
magazine, where she is credited with reviving the title with editorial
that more closely reflected the real lives of young parents and the
challenges they face.
After a decade with Parents, Crow took over as president, CEO and
editorial director of G+J USA. She remained there for five years, leaving
to become editor-in-chief of Mademoiselle. Crow left Mademoiselle in 1999.
The magazine folded two years later in the fall of 2001.
In early 2001, Crow became vice president and editorial
director of Rodale Women's Health Group, where she oversaw all creative
development for Women's Health Group magazines, the women's health
division of Rodale books, special interest publications, multiple web
sites and brand extensions.
In 2002, Crow became editorial director for Primedia Consumer
Magazines, where she was responsible for overseeing 150 consumer titles,
including redesigns of Seventeen and New York magazines.
At the time of her death, Crow was vice president and editorial
director of Consumers Union, the non-profit publisher of Consumer Reports
magazine and its web site.
Jim Guest, president of Consumers Union and publisher of
Consumer Reports, says wooing Crow to the organization was not an easy
sell.
"We approached Elizabeth to be our editorial director at
a time when she was pursuing her own personal passions of painting and
writing," writes Guest in a statement. "When she reluctantly
agreed to my invitation to breakfast to discuss the job, she said she was
very happy with where she was in her life."
Crow took the job in March a year ago, and Guest thinks what
sold her on it was the chance to put out a magazine where the reader was
not just her prime concern, but her only concern.
"She enjoyed the freedom of being able to focus on
nothing but the consumer interest and took on the challenge of editorial
director with the same intense enthusiasm, joyful sense of humor, and
tenacious integrity as she approached everything else in her life. She
will indeed be sorely missed by everyone who knew her."
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April 7 ,2005
©
2005
Media Life
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Lorraine Sanders is a staff writer for
Media Life.
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