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Common Good
Political title scales back in search for partner
By Jeff Bercovici
Common Good magazine is taking an uncommonly long time to get off the ground.
Announced in May, the new politics-and- entertainment title was originally supposed to publish its first issue in October.
That has been pushed back until at least March while Common Good's founder, Helen O'Donnell, casts about for a partner to take over business-side operations and shoulder part of the financial burden.
Meanwhile, the vision for the magazine has been scaled back considerably.
Promising a politically neutral voice and a circulation of half a million, Common Good drew instant comparisons to George, the short-lived glossy of similar description started by the late John F. Kennedy Jr.
Under the revised plan, however, Common Good will be less like George and more like most every other political publication, with a small circulation, a low budget and a decidedly partisan point of view.
“The original plan I had was this $25 million launch,” says O’Donnell, who will hold the title of editor in chief and publisher.
“But with the investment climate being what it is and the economy being what it is, we thought we needed to be more practical. We have figured out that we can do the same magazine for $10 million.”
Like George, Common Good has a Kennedy connection: O’Donnell's father, Kenneth, was a longtime adviser to JFK.
O’Donnell says her experience working on numerous political campaigns gave her the model for running Common Good: small, cheap and unglamorous.
The magazine will have a staff of about 12, with day-to-day editorial operations headed by a managing editor who will be named shortly.
Veteran newspaper editor Jim Bellows will also have a role with the magazine as a sort of editor-at-large overseeing stories.
As for the early claim that Common Good would start out with a circulation of 500,000, with plans to triple that in five years, that has fallen victim to the reality principle.
“If we could do 100,000 with the first issue we’d be happy,” says O’Donnell.
Meanwhile, the editorial vision for Common Good has also changed radically.
Originally, the magazine—which, like George, will cover entertainment stories with a political angle as well as straight politics—planned to take a non-partisan approach.
The advantage of that is the ability to appeal to readers on both sides of the spectrum. The drawback, as George demonstrated, is that most people who care about politics enough to read a magazine tend to side with one party or the other. Then, too, political magazines aren’t big advertising vehicles, and most rely heavily on donations from like-minded benefactors.
As it’s conceived now, Common Good will espouse the politics of O’Donnell and her father, an old-fashioned brand of liberalism that she says resonates with “lunch-bucket Democrats.”
“In truth, I’m much more comfortable with the magazine this way,” she says.
Along with Common Good’s political shift has been a real-world migration: Its headquarters have moved from New York to Boston.
“Kennedy country—it’s where a lot of my political strength and business strength is.”
For its financial backing, Common Good relies for now on the Kenneth P. O’Donnell Restoration fund, a charity set up following O’Donnell’s death to carry on his political and policy aims. Helen O’Donnell is the fund’s director.
“This magazine will be an outlet in a lot of ways of the work of the fund,” she says.
While the fund means that Common Good can afford to self-publish, O’Donnell says she is looking to partner with a publishing company that will agree to take over circulation marketing, ad sales, production and distribution.
She says she has held very preliminary talks with a number of publishers in New York and elsewhere and hopes to reach a deal by the end of December.
November 25, 2002
© 2002 Media Life
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