John Shuttleworth, Founder of Mother Earth News, Interview Part II

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No. What you do if you're Time-Life is you hire a sharp ad agency to conduct some surveys and run some tests and find out that you should represent your magazine to the public not as a sports magazine but as "the third news weekly." This, as I understand it, somehow magically elevated Sports Illustrated right out of the Sporting News class. It also — in theory, at least — blew away U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and a dozen other periodicals that carry hard news every seven days ... and "positioned" Sports Illustrated right in there behind Time and Newsweek.

PLOWBOY: In other words, just to increase the sales of this publication, Time-Life has resorted to a polite fiction. The company calls Sports Illustrated something it isn't — a news magazine — and thereby, to a certain extent obscures what it really is ... which is basically a periodical that covers sports.

SHUTTLEWORTH: Right. In the eyes of Time-Life, that's exactly what the firm has done. It has resorted to a polite fiction to increase its cash flow. But, damn it, Time-Life has done more than that. It has debased the English language by just as much — if not more — than it has increased its cash flow and it has subtly warped reality in the minds of all the deluded people who now sit down with Sports Illustrated every week, read about golf and tennis, and then somehow think they've caught up on what's really happening in the world.

PLOWBOY: And you object to this?

SHUTTLEWORTH: You're dang right I object! And I'm not just picking on Time-Life when I make my objection. I'm picking on anyone, anywhere, who knowingly corrupts values just to make a fast, easy buck. As a matter of fact, I've used Sports Illustrated as an example not because it's one of the most blatant cases of misrepresenting reality for personal or corporate gain, but because it's one of the most subtle. And because Advertising Age and other trade papers continually hold the Sports Illustrated "success" story up to hundreds of thousands of other corporations, ad agencies, and individuals as a shining example of what the calculated manipulation of words and symbols can do. I may be old fashioned and/or naive but I don't like that way of doing business. Not even when it's offered to me.

PLOWBOY: Has anyone made you such an offer?

SHUTTLEWORTH: Oh sure. Someone's always trying to cash in on the Mother Earth News name. Or show us the "right" way to market the magazine. It started with the very first issue.

When Jane and I founded Mother Earth News, you know, we didn't have any money, any contacts in the field, any pre-sold advertising contracts, any big name authors signed up ... we hadn't taken care of a single one of the half dozen or so items that are supposed to be absolutely critical to the success or failure of a new periodical.

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