{"id":30452,"date":"2011-03-03T15:59:35","date_gmt":"2011-03-03T23:59:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=30452"},"modified":"2011-03-03T17:27:31","modified_gmt":"2011-03-04T01:27:31","slug":"the-relaunch-of-westlake-magazine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=30452","title":{"rendered":"The Relaunch Of Westlake Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I spoke to the new publisher of <A HREF=\"http:\/\/westlakemagazine.com\">Westlake Magazine<\/a> last week.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"YouTube video player\" width=\"480\" height=\"390\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Z6iHVug5VyE\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"YouTube video player\" width=\"480\" height=\"390\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/g0P2uOJ5fJc\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"YouTube video player\" width=\"480\" height=\"390\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mTCPdKTcAC4\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Lev: &#8220;Rebecca, how long have you been the owner and publisher of <A HREF=\"http:\/\/westlakemagazine.com\">Westlake Magazine<\/a>?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Rebecca: &#8220;I acquired the magazine in July of 2010. We redesigned and relaunched the publication in November.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve been involved with <A HREF=\"http:\/\/westlakemagazine.com\">Westlake Magazine<\/a> for 13 years. I started out as a contributing editor and then over the years became an advisor to the publisher. We became good friends. I started running the non-profit fundraising element of the magazine. She wanted me to the person she passed the baton to. She&#8217;s almost 80 years old. She&#8217;s run this magazine for 18 years. Before that, she ran Glendale magazine for 15 years. She still acts as a consultant for me.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<A HREF=\"http:\/\/westlakemagazine.com\">Westlake Magazine<\/a> is a creative departure for me. I have been running a non-profit organization (<A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.grossmanburnfoundation.org\/\">Grossman Burn Foundation<\/a>) for the past four years, going to Afghanistan, opening up a burn center in Kabul. This was lighter, more fun, community-driven.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<A HREF=\"http:\/\/westlakemagazine.com\">Westlake Magazine<\/a> serves one of the more affluent markets in the country. It&#8217;s the oldest lifestyle publication in the Conejo Valley. It has name recognition.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re not only targeting the community and mom-and-pop stores, we&#8217;re also establishing ourselves as one of the premiere lifestyle magazines in California. We&#8217;re building alliances with other luxury publications across the country. We&#8217;ve been talking to publications in Dallas, Palm Beach and the East Coast. It&#8217;s a tough time to be in the print business. I feel like there&#8217;s strength in numbers. That&#8217;s always been my philosophy in the non-profit area.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The <A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.grossmanburnfoundation.org\/\">Grossman Burn Foundation<\/a> is the philanthropic arm of the <A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.grossmanburncenter.com\/\">Grossman Burn Centers<\/a>, the largest private corporation of burn centers in the world.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Lev: &#8220;You went to Afghanistan.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Rebecca: &#8220;I&#8217;m going to Indonesia in June. We&#8217;re partnering with another organization to establish a burn unit in a clinic that serves about 50,000 refugees.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My husband and I kinda adopted a young girl from Afghanistan who was a burn patient. She lived with us off and on for about seven years. She&#8217;s back in Afghanistan now.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Most recently, the foundation brought over the young girl featured on the cover of Time magazine who&#8217;d had her ears cut off. She&#8217;s in New York now.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Lev: &#8220;Are you afraid to operate a magazine in these difficult economic times for print?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Rebecca: &#8220;No. Because this magazine serves an affluent market, people tell me they won&#8217;t throw it away because it&#8217;s a book, a beautiful piece of art. People are proud to showcase it.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m very involved with technology. I have called <A HREF=\"http:\/\/pandoraapps.com\">Pandora Apps<\/a>, a mobile Pandora apps company. My offices are based in Romania. We&#8217;ve developed a few apps out there such as a tag reader app. We put our codes on our advertisers in <A HREF=\"http:\/\/westlakemagazine.com\">Westlake Magazine<\/a>. The magazine is available in an iPad version. The magazine is involved in Facebook, blogging, and that whole online element. There are still people who appreciate a beautiful print magazine and like to sit down and thumb through a hard copy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Lev: &#8220;What do you plan to do with your website westlakemagazine.com?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Rebecca: &#8220;We&#8217;re launching it now. It&#8217;s interactive. We videotape all of our cover shoots and post that. <A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm2794962\/\">Hailee Steinfeld<\/a> was recently in <em><A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt1403865\/\">True Grit<\/a><\/em>. She did our most recent cover along with <A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0582462\/\">Jesse Metcalfe<\/a>. We do double covers. Jesse recently booked the remake of Dallas.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kevin_Cronin\">Kevin Cronin<\/a>, the front man for <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/REO_Speedwagon\">REO Speedwagon<\/a>, was our celebrity contributor for this issue coming out. We have a tag on his editorial that you can snag with your mobile phone, whether it is a Blackberry or an iPhone or an Android, and it will go directly to the band in concert and to a news clip of him being interviewed. It&#8217;s fun to introduce that digital technology with your magazine. I own the tag reader app we use.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The magazine provides me the opportunity to check out things. You get a lot of feedback from people who are successful in business. I&#8217;m going to a meeting in a few hours with the president of Angeleno magazine. He&#8217;s been a wonderful adviser to me.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Lev: &#8220;What are the typical contents for the magazine?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Rebecca: &#8220;The magazine used to do a lot of fluffy stuff. We&#8217;ve decided we want to mix it up and bring some interesting editorial, not only highlighting people in the community but global causes, a social scene, profiles&#8230; We recently profiled <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nick_Vujicic\">Nick Vujicic<\/a>, who was born with no arms or legs. His book has become a best-seller. He tours around the world and is a motivational speaker. He&#8217;s from Agoura Hills, our neighboring community.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have somebody writing a more controversial editorial poking fun of the Kardashians, who are also a part of the community. Why are we putting these people in a position to be role models for our children? We&#8217;re trying to go outside of the box so we&#8217;re not so fluffy.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have 3,400 words on <A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm2794962\/\">Hailee Steinfeld<\/a>, telling her whole story of her journey from wanting to be an actress to going up against 15,000 girls to be chosen for <em><A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt1403865\/\">True Grit<\/a><\/em> and getting nominated for an Oscar. Most of the celebrities we focus on live in the area.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/westlakemagazine.com\">Westlake Magazine<\/a> comes out six times a year and typically runs 104-112 pages. It measures nine by twelve and has a circulation of 30,000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I spoke to the new publisher of Westlake Magazine last week. Lev: &#8220;Rebecca, how long have you been the owner and publisher of Westlake Magazine?&#8221; Rebecca: &#8220;I acquired the magazine in July of 2010. We redesigned and relaunched the publication &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=30452\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[25630,25631,25627,25628,25629,25632],"class_list":["post-30452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","tag-affluent-markets","tag-burn-foundation","tag-creative-departure","tag-lifestyle-magazines","tag-lifestyle-publication","tag-philanthropic-arm"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30452"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30459,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30452\/revisions\/30459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}