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The Oxford American
Southern lit title to readers: Send us your money
By Jamie L. Jones
When this month's issue of The Oxford American, the highly regarded journal of Southern writing and culture, arrived on doorsteps, readers found a free CD, which they get every year with the special music issue.
But they also found something they didn't expect, an unabashed plea from the editor: We need more subscriptions, help us get them or this magazine is going under.
The magazine is hoping to add 8,000 subscribers to its existing 30,000 in order to break even, and in the meantime editor Marc Smirnoff tells readers the magazine will drop its frequency from monthly to quarterly.
That The Oxford American should be in trouble may seem ironic on several levels.
For one, it celebrates a region with a strong identity, and that identity may be at its strongest when it comes to literature.
Oxford, for non-lit buffs, was the home of William Faulkner, certainly among the greatest Southern writers, as well as being a hard-drinker and a more than half-decent scriptwriter in his Hollywood years.
As The Oxford American struggles, moreover, that other, better-known regional publication, Southern Living, blossoms with ad pages, even if its editorial fare is far more pedestrian, having mostly to do with preparing for white-gown weddings and buying okra.
But yet another irony is that The Oxford American, "the Southern Magazine of Good Writing," lists as its publisher John Grisham, the mystery writer who is among the most commercially successful writers in America.
Grisham has invested heavily in the magazine, but he is an absentee publisher, not the ad-selling kind, and his commercial success has not carried over to the magazine.
But the great irony, as Smirnoff addresses in his note to readers, is that this region of great literature simply may not care enough to support a magazine devoted to it.
"It may just mean that, contrary to our personal beliefs, there just isn’t a large enough audience for The Oxford American," writes Smirnoff to readers.
History would certainly argue that point. Magazines seem to pop up once a decade with the same goal in mind, and also usually backed by deep pockets whose love of the South, more than common sense, serves as a Jaws of Life of sorts to wrest dollars from other, more rewarding, investments. Their lives are brutally short.
Over the phone, talking to Media Life, Smirnoff seems almost whimsical when asked to discuss the troubles facing The Oxford American.
"In some quiet, silent, and unobserved way, aren’t we all in trouble?" he muses.
He only wishes his magazine’s trouble had not gone unobserved for so long.
"People have the misimpression that we’re rolling in the dough," he says. "I guess the magazine exudes a sense of well-being."
In part, he says, it stems from the presence of Grisham on the masthead.
"He’s allowed us to have a magazine, and for people here to have jobs, but he’s not a proper publisher," explains Smirnoff. "He’s only been to the office once, and he does not concern himself with daily affairs."
The magazine had money problems from the start. With just enough money to print and distribute, the editor did not undertake expensive direct-mail campaigns or other promotion tactics.
"To be frank, I thought that this magazine was going to bust through and get popular a long time ago," says Smirnoff. The folks at The Oxford American hoped that if they published it, readers would come.
Where the readers are supposed to come from—literally—is certainly a question.
The writers’ guidelines state that submissions must be "from and/or about the South." Does the same go for readers?
Smirnoff says no, but admits that the magazine’s regional identity is "tricky."
He likes to compare The Oxford American to The New Yorker, which he calls an essentially regional magazine.
But Oxford American readers do not have to come from the South, any more than New Yorker readers have to come from New York.
At the moment, The Oxford American would take readers from anywhere.
"The response to the letter has been touching," says Smirnoff. He expects to know in January whether enough new readers have signed up to keep the magazine from folding.
Meanwhile, the staff at The Oxford American is trying to figure out what went wrong.
"Maybe we didn’t put enough pretty girls on the cover," Smirnoff wonders.
The dark-haired trombone player on the current Music Issue, a pretty thing with a far-away look in her eyes, may be a hint of things to come.
Yet that seems unlikely. If anything, the magazine will cling to its current argument for existence: the South as a literary experience, history be damned.
August 1, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Jamie L. Jones is a staff writer for Media Life.
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