When Richard M. Ketchum, a farmer in Dorset, Vt. (pop. 1,293), rose at his customary 5 a.m. one day this month, he could hear a cow bellowing in pain. Ketchum, who left his job as a Manhattan book editor five years ago, hurried to his barn and minutes later handed his wife a quivering, wobbly-legged newborn calf. Then he went off to care for another recent offspring: Blair & Ketchum's Country Journal, a unique combination of country charm and big-city slickness, which last week won a National Magazine Award.
Country Journal was brought quivering and wobbly into the world one year ago this month by Ketchum, 58, and William S. Blair, 53, former publisher of Harper's magazine, who now has a 250-acre spread of his own in Guilford, Vt. (pop. 1,108). When the two reformed Manhattanites first met in Vermont in 1972, each found that the other was thinking of starting a monthly to capitalize on the growing city interest in rural life. After raising $170,000 from friends and scraping up $35,000 of their own, they founded Country Journal.
Compost Heap. Since then the magazine has served up a steady fare of amiably instructive articles on such topics as how to raise pigs, make maple syrup, build a compost heap and install a lightning rod. "How-to articles are our bread and butter," says Editor Ketchum. Interleaved between the how-tos are thoughtful pieces on such issues as energy policy, the morality of hunting and the future of farming. For all its bucolic content, the magazine is dressed up in striking contemporary design that earned it last week's award.
Country Journal's rural urbanity has made it a swift success. Advertising revenues are running at more than double last year's pace, circulation has sprouted from a start-up 36,000 to more than 60,000, and an encouraging two-thirds of the magazine's charter subscribers are renewing. Blair and Ketchum predict that Country Journal will be in the black early next year, fast growth for a mere calf of a magazine.
Success has not come without problems. Editor Ketchum has had some trouble attracting big-name writers for the magazine's $200-to-$500-per-article fee. Publisher Blair has found that the local ad scene is a different place from Madison Avenue. "You don't talk about cost-per-thousand, reach and frequency," says Blair. "You talk face-to-face with a guy. If he's interested, he points to an ad and says, 'How much is that?' You say it's $90, and he answers, 'That's a lot.' So you sell him one for $45."
If the problems are uniquely rural, so are the payoffs. Country Journal's eight-member editorial staff takes lunch breaks on cross-country skis or picnics in an old gazebo on a pond behind the office. Blair gazes out of his office window at photogenic Mt. Wantastiguet. And Ketchum's family has become a working advertisement for the magazine's editorial pitch of self-sufficiency: they spend spare hours milking goats, making maple syrup and, of course, delivering the occasional calf.