Dr Samir Husni is the former university lecturer who is such a magazine fanatic that he trademarked his “Mr Magazine” tag. He served as professor of journalism at the University of Mississippi for almost 40 years until 2021 and was founder and director of its Magazine Innovation Center. He has consulted for many of the world’s largest publishers and has shared his passion for print magazines with innumerable conference audiences.
Forbes called him the world expert on magazines but it’s more than that for Husni: “I’m the man who loves magazines. I fell in love with magazines when I was 10 years old and bought my first copy of Superman when it came to my original home country, Lebanon. What nobody knew back then is that I would continue my hobby and that it would become my education and my profession. I told my students every single day that I had never worked a day in my life, I’m doing the exact same thing I always did, collecting magazines, designing magazines, reading magazines, researching magazines. Since the first day I bought that copy of Superman…”
Samir Husni was born in Tripoli, Lebanon and gained a master’s degree in journalism from the University of North Texas, and an PhD from the University of Missouri.
What were your earliest ambitions?
Always something to do with magazines. Even when I was 10 years old, I saw a TV ad about a new Superman magazine so I had to get it. I fell in love with the art of storytelling. And the smell of ink on paper. I felt I had so much power, the power to read a story at my own pace, looking at the heroes and villains, flipping the pages without dad or grandpa reading me a story from the Bible – which was the only book we had at home. No matter what happened in my life or what my parents wanted me to be (they had wanted me to be a dentist) I was always determined to be a journalist and magazine person.
How did you get started?
When I was finishing high school, I was creating my own magazines at home. My mom used to scream ‘Why don’t you go and play outside like the rest of the kids?’ Well, I’m just doing my own little magazines and daily newspapers. I was the creator, publisher and designer. A friend of mine had a weekly newspaper so I volunteered to help him with the design and laying out the paper. But my parents still didn’t believe in this journalism thing and they sent me on a very scientific route in high school. But when I told them that I wanted to go to journalism school, they – surprisingly – agreed. I was on cloud nine.
When I moved from Tripoli to Beirut – where the universities were – I was collecting Music magazine. I was missing one issue and went to their office. The upshot was that I got a part-time job there, no pay but my name on a real magazine masthead! I was on my way. It went from there and wasn’t long before I was designing the magazine, writing and translating articles alongisde my university education. I had started my journalism course at uni and a friend had launched a movie magazine, both in Arabic and in French, so I started getting paid as editor the Arabic edition. Before long, I was working on a daily newspaper, a weekly magazine and also a monthly economics magazine. All while studying for my degree! I then got a scholarship to study for an MA in the US, at the University of North Texas. And I never really looked back – or went back. I did my PhD at the University of Missouri.
My dissertation was on the major determinants of success and failure of new magazines. From that day, I learned about the importance of knowing the audience. I learned that the real task was to turn the mere “wanting” of a magazine into a “need”. That’s where I believe in the importance of repetition. Unlike editors who are so creative and want to do something different every time, I always believed (and still do) that readers want more of the same thing – seldom something completely new.
By the time I had completed my dissertation and was ready to return home to Lebabon, the 1982 war had begun so I got a visa to stay in the US, and the University of Missouri offered me a job. I taught magazine publishing and design, which were my dream subjects. When I retired from the university in 2021, I had a personal collection, of around 188,000 magazines (yes) and the University of Missouri agreed to devoted a whole floor at its library to them, and they’ve digitally archived all the first editions.
Will print magazines survive?
We are becoming a nation of bookazines more than magazines. They’re like paperback books but are fancier and printed on better paper. They are like the poor man’s Encyclopedia. In that sense, the magazine is out of intensive care. We passed through a period when the web prompted magazines (thinking or not thinking) to decide ‘Oh, this is the future. We can have even bigger audiences’. It was all for advertising and that corrupted the magazine market, more so in the US than the UK because we were almost giving magazines away in order to attract advertising. I still get offers for a subscription for a magazine for a whole year for just $2 or $5. We haven’t yet learned from the mistakes of 20 years ago.
The bookazine successes show, of course, that if we give audiences what they want, they will pay for it. But we are also seeing some bright spots for printed magazines backed by entrepreneurs rather than private equity who don’t care much about the journalism.
Why do they matter?
It’s to do with the brand and trust because, unlike with digital, not just anybody can start a magazine. It costs money and requires some specific skills.
The importance of print, whether for bookazines or magazines is that they address the showmanship motivation of audiences. People can see what you’re buying or reading. Nobody is going to come and ask whether they can look at your iPad but the magazine is in your face. Plus, perversely, it’s also private: once you access something digitally, everybody knows what you’re looking at or watching. And so – between both privacy and showmanship – print does what humans actually love. If I’m reading War and Peace or The Economist on the plane, I want people to think “there’s a smart guy”.
What have been the best innovations of recent years?
Look at the recent National Magazine Awards, in the US, highlighting in-depth investigative reporting and the combination of photography and typography whether in The Atlantic, New York magazine or The New Yorker. There’s still plenty of very good work and much of it works better in print than digital. The reason people believe in those magazines and trust them is because they have invited them to their homes. They are trusted friends. All the cheating, tracking and spying is digital not print.
What have been your favourite magazines?
Spy magazine was one. The British Marie Claire (not the American one) was also a favourite. And I always loved Life. New York magazine is also still on the top: they’ve been fortunate that every succeeding regime or owner has had a respect for it and have supported the magazine’s mission, style and content. There are also some excellent city magazines in the US because they know and are close to their audiences. I get a magazine from North Carolina called Our State that’s still going very strong with a very high subscription price. Like most city and regional magazines, it focuses on the positive things in life. It’s what its readers love.
What will help magazines to survive?
They must become addictive products and the best magazines certainly are. They must produce more of the stuff that readers really want, targeted and directed – not with some kind of experimentation beyond what we know readers want. Not doing that is when the editors and designers are thinking of themselves not their audience. That’s when they start changing things so much that you – as a reader – have no idea whether this is the same magazine I received last month. Habitual readers are what’s going to keep our industry going, not the once in a lifetime readers. Stick with your readers. It’s as simple as that.
