It's Tuesday: Five Questions with Carla Frank
Plus: A few thoughts of freedom of speech and Nazis
The problem with national myths is that at some point you’re going to encounter the truth about what really happened. Then you will have to decide how you react. You will have to come to terms with how the myth came to be.
Growing up in my time, Nazi Germany in general, and Nazis in particular were essentially some version of Hogan’s Heroes. In the late 1960’s sitcom, Nazi malevolence was situational. Regular soldiers like the bumbling Sgt. Schultz were reluctant participants in the war and mostly wished they were home making toys and eating apple strudel. Officers were incompetent aristocrats like Colonel Klink. Actual Nazis, like Major Hochstetter were evil, but also laughable.
Even my history classes tended to gloss over how supposedly sophisticated European countries like Germany, Italy and Spain succumbed to the twin demons of fascism and nationalism. French collaboration during the occupation of their country was at best a paragraph about that sad piece of history.
The murder of the Jews? It was talked about incessantly in my religious school, but it always seemed like something far away and nope, never here, not in the United States.
Why do I bring this up? Because up until about twenty years ago, Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, flat earthers, conspiracy theorists, religious zealots, all those people with unusual belief systems far outside the mainstream were given a wide berth in this country.
Want to talk about the Rothschilds conspiracy?
No thanks.
Concerned that a major political party is trafficking small children so they can drink their blood in the basement of a pizza shop?
Not interested.
Hey, I know, that school shooting was all an act! Let’s go harass the parents.
Are you crazy?
But now, we seem to find people who subscribe to these belief systems everywhere. They’re county chairpeople in elected office. They have dinner with ex-presidents. They turn up on major cable TV channels as hosts or regular guests. They have platforms here on Substack with paid subscribers. If you didn’t know, Substack takes a cut of that subscription money.
Last week, some Substackers sent a letter to the founders asking them to explain themselves. Free speech is a good thing. But platforming Neo-Nazis and profiting off of it? I’m hoping that if they get a response, the words “free speech” aren’t the totality of the answer.
I’ll repeat myself. Platforms like Substack, Instagram, LinkedIn, X and others are, in fact, publishers, not government institutions. So the First Amendment is not the law. Free expression? Sure. Free expression of hateful ideology? No, thank you.
People use these platforms to put information out into the world. Some of it is private: member to member. In other cases, it’s for everyone. Maybe legally, the platforms have no responsibility to moderate content. However, I think that they do morally.
You own a platform? You’re the founder? You are responsible for what put out into the world in your name. Why would you want to platform a Neo-Nazi? Why would you want to make money off of a racist? Why would you be interested in collecting money from people who subscribe to a writer who wishes to erase trans people?
There is nothing laughable about today’s version of Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, anti-LGBTQ adherents and the like. Their views are morally reprehensible. They are dangerous. If they were to gain power, they would destroy themselves with their power and take you along with them. It is to our shame that they’ve been allowed to get as far as they have.
Five Questions with Carla Frank
It’s the third Tuesday of the month, so let’s go and meet someone you should know if you’re going to spend any time in the world of magazine media. If you want to launch a magazine or reposition it for success, you just might want to have a chat with this week’s guest.
Who is Carla Frank and why should you get to know her?
Carla has guided twenty plus launches and redesigns. What sets her apart in the magazine media world is that while she is a specialist in magazine development and rebuilding, she has a generalists knowledge of many subjects and situations.
Her education began with the launch of the original Saveur Magazine. From there she worked at Condé Nast Traveler as Art Director and eventually became the founding designer of O, The Oprah Magazine.
Her experience with relaunches and rebranding is equally impressive and includes the repositioning of Cooking Light for Time, Inc., where she built an omni channel presence for the publication. She also worked on Glamour Italia for Condé Nast Italy where the new version hit the newsstands with 400+ pages and delivered record breaking sales.
Let’s go and meet Carla.
Here’s a lightly edited versions of our conversation with Carla…
Q1: How did you begin working in magazine media? Did you have any specific training that prepared you for your first job in magazines?
I had no specific training in media except for a project I did in my graphic design course at university. I still have my handmade magazine and had a great experience recently, when I was selling some of my photography books to a well-known book buyer. I had so many books that he agreed to come over and browse the shelves. I left him to it and went back to my work. A short while later after he’d stacked up a few books he wanted, he came to me and said. “I want this. What is it and are you willing to sell it?” It was my first magazine which I had forgotten was buried in the shelves. I was so utterly touched that it still garnered interest from anyone let alone a pro with an eye. (BTW he bought all of my best books).
I have come to realize that another great influence in magazines was my mother who was a magazine connoisseur. Vogue, House and Garden, Town and Country, Time Magazine to name a few were constantly arriving to the house.
For me, my mother was hard to connect with and to understand emotionally. Whenever she settled in at the dining room table with a cup of coffee, I plunked myself next to her and sat, head resting in one hand, to watch her read her magazines. Her face lit up as she called out names of celebrities, as if they were her friends. She loved fashion, style and worldliness and would tell me about fabrics, designers, style, resorts, restaurants and more. Witnessing these joyous effects and the worldly knowledge she gained made me realize the power of magazines at a young age and mysteriously made me feel part of her world.
Q2: What are some trends or challenges you watched the industry confront this year and how well do you think it was handled? What are the big challenges we will encounter over the next few years?
I’ll answer that in the next question.
Q3: Do you think print magazines will have much of a future over the next decade? Will there be print magazines in 2043?
I think print has a very strong place in the future and predict an analog moment will be welcomed soon. Wouldn’t you love to immerse yourself in something without pop up ads constantly dinging your concentration? The trick now and in 2043 is to reach smaller dedicated audiences on a deeper, more customized level. Let’s go back to the loyal subscription model as the litmus tester and provide benefits, access and experiences that make the reader proud to be part of your brand. Print is still the most trusted form of media, but we still have to earn that trust everyday. Bring back all of the fact checkers please! (Editor’s Note: Hear! Hear!)
Q4: If you couldn’t have worked in magazine media, what would you have wanted to do?
I would have liked to have been an anthropologist. Oh, and a Contessa. That’s a career right? If I was a Contessa, we would have the good wine at the onsite picnic lunches. Seriously though, I actually do feel like I do have the privilege of being a cultural anthropologist when I’m scanning culture for what motivates people in particular situations. And I honestly get to do this directly with my clients directly on Discovery Days. Those are so much fun. From the unearthing process we can always find a new path forward and infuse the most unique characteristics of the brand we’re rebuilding or launching.
Q5: Did you have a mentor early in your career and do you want to give them a shoutout? What was a good piece of advice that they gave you that you’d be willing to share?
I didn’t have a mentor per se, but I did have an excellent professor, the late great Lanny Sommese. He was known for some crazy stunts and an unconventional teaching style. He even inspired a book based on him, by designer, author Chip Kidd called The Cheese Monkeys.
Lanny constantly drilled in the desire for us to be thinking designers, beginning with meaningful content and only then figuring out the visual path to tell the story. Never the reverse. He also designed a program that accepted only 30 students and cut down to 15 graduates during in the final two years of the study. His style of teaching would be tough to use today, but it made certain that whomever had a truly burning desire to learn and do well in this field, stayed in the program. By the time I graduated, I felt like I had earned some sort of badge of courage and wanted to do meaningful and important things with my new found skills.
Now, I have the privilege of working with interesting and imaginative people on all sides of the business and feel so fortunate to say that I get to do what I really love everyday.
Thanks so much for having me!
This week in “Things Placed In Front of the Magazine Rack”
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So I’ve sort of, kind of committed to testing the waters at BlueSky. I’m not sure how I feel about it all but if you’re there want want to look me up, here’s where you might find me…
What do ya’ll think of Threads? Worth it?
It’s Tuesday morning and it’s the week before Christmas. You’re taking next week off right? Well, guess what? That’s not going to happen for our favorite stressed out magazine media marketing team. Their office is quiet too. But that’s because the new PE owners have consolidated offices, laid off everyone at our team’s local office with the exception of the CMO and Veronica’s team. Let’s check in with them. It’s their first day in the office after everyone was let go and the CMO told them he needed them next week, Christmas Week, to “catch up” on some projects…
If you’ve read this far down, I wish you a very Happy Holiday season and the best of New Year’s. We’ll be off next week, 12/26/23 and will return to a regular schedule on Tuesday 01/09/24.
Happy New Year!
