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a fine idea
But as a magazine it lacks both voice and identity
By Lisa Schneider
Without a doubt, as a magazine idea Heeb is intriguing.
So it's no wonder that this tiny publication--it launched yesterday with a circulation of just 16,000, and as a quarterly yet--has gotten a huge buildup in the media.
Stories have appeared in The Jewish Forward, The Los Angeles Times, and New York Magazine, amongst others, heralding Heeb as something just short of a Jewish Rolling Stone--irreverent, in-your-face, edgy, muckracking.
Stack the adjectives on as you please.
Founded by Jennifer Bleyer, a 26-year-old Columbia graduate, Heeb is being touted as the new hot magazine for non-religious, culturally affiliated Jews in their twenties and thirties who lead avant garde lifestyles.
And yet after flipping through Heeb's debut issue, this writer can only wonder what all the excitement was about.
It would appear that I am the target Heeb reader, young, Jewish by heritage, educated, urban, mildly hip and pretty open to smart ideas of the sort Heeb promised to offer its readers.
Like so many who had heard of the magazine, I was looking forward to the first issue.
But now that I have it in my hands and have read it, I feel that the project at least at this stage is a better idea than it is a magazine. Heeb lacks both a clear voice and a clear identity.
It needs to identify who its readership is and edit the magazine for that readership.
While appearing to be targeted to young, hip Jews, it could just as well be written for the older Hollywood types who are its benefactors.
Heeb was launched with a $60,000 grant from the Joshua Venture, a foundation funded in part by Steven Spielberg and the Bronfman family that aims to support young, entrepreneurial, and Jewish ventures.
In going through the first issue, it is not hard to see what Heeb is aiming to become.
The first issue’s cover photo is pretty terrific, (a picture of a DJ spinning an LP-sized matzoh).
The people profiled in Heeb include a Jewish girl who skateboards; a half-Jewish tag artist; an 85-year old Yiddish emcee; an ex-convict and prison reformer, Alex Friedman; an Orthodox Jew who is gay, Sandi Dubowski; an artist, Nicole Eisenman; emcee Paul Barman and Neil Diamond.
On the pop-culture front, there is a reprinted article entitled, “Krusty the Clown: Good for the Jews?” and a piece denouncing the anti-Semitic connotations of Pizza Hut’s “twisted crust” pizza.
On the hair front is a five-page pictorial spread of Jewish ‘fro’s.
In the “Our Hollywood” department is a brief showdown between the résumés of Steven Seagal and George Segal.
Heeb’s fashion section entitled “Love, Challah, and Betrayal” includes photographs of young men wearing religious garments getting hot over scantily clad, tattooed models.
The last two pages in the magazine are “His” and “Hers” comic strips that document embarrassing Passover seders.
The first edition of Heeb contains five ad pages, costs $4.50, and will mainly be circulated in major bookstores and newsstands in Jewish loci such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Boston.
In explaining the origins of Heeb, founder Bleyer told Media Life: “I thought of the idea for Heeb a couple years ago when I looked at the newsstands and saw that there were no magazines for Jews like me.”
She describes the first issue as “the bastard love child of Emma Goldman and Lenny Bruce.”
Bleyer admits that the magazine doesn’t yet have a unified or directed voice. “The whole magazine is a work in progress.
“You can’t create a Jewish magazine that will appeal to all Jews,” she adds. “We’re just trying to create a magazine that appeals to us.”
And that may be Heeb's real problem.
It's challenge will be in creating a unique niche, and it has a lot of work to do.
At this point, Heeb is just another alternative Jewish publication floating in a world of expectations that stand little chance of being realized.
February 6, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
-Lisa Schneider is a New York writer and a contributor to Media Life.
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