Memoir installment #6

More from the early days of Lucky

The old Conde Nast building at 4 Times Square

Lucky was not an overnight success. Advertisers disliked the way it looked—too "cheap and cheerful" (industry code for downmarket), not nearly aspirational enough—and newsstand sales were slow at the start. To behold the cover was to have no idea that a new kind of magazine awaited those who looked further, and its name was a bit of a disconnect. I didn't mind that the word "lucky" had nothing to do with shopping—neither did Amazon, and that had worked out well enough. Plus, it was a happy, inclusive name, and I liked that—anyone could get lucky.

Praise from the 11^th floor—that airless, quiet zone where I traveled once a month for Print Order, and where all the top corporate guys had their offices—was slow to come, and I knew better than to wait around for it. I was aware that the compliment had come when they'd hired me, and that was the last one I should expect.

    Lucky lacked the pretense of being about anything important—it was all shopping, all the time—and the reaction to it from the overwhelming majority of people who worked in the magazine world was not especially kind. I was prepared for the reception of the insular, often snobbish publishing crowd to be rough, but nothing could have prepared me for how truly harsh it would be.  One media critic wrote that Lucky was "The soul death of our culture." Another called it  "deplorable" and "A sad commentary on magazines." I felt like I was up to the task of defending Lucky's integrity—and I was called upon to do just that, in a thousand interviews. In the Chicago Tribune, I was quoted as saying "There's this attitude that every time someone picks up a copy of Lucky, an Atlantic Monthly reader drops dead somewhere," and the exasperation of that statement pretty much sums up where I was on the topic.