A Magazine for Farm-to-Table

White Oak Pastures farm’s staff in Modern Farmer magazine.

HUDSON, N.Y. â€" When a fledgling magazine gets former President Bill Clinton to contribute an article, you would think he would be featured on the cover. But the cover model for the current issue of the quarterly Modern Farmer is a sleepy-looking goat. Mr. Clinton is mentioned between articles on outer space farming and soil cuisine.

Cheyenne Dapra, a herder in Italy, with her flock in the fall issue of Modern Farmer magazine.

The magazine, which offers advice on building a corn maze and articles on the effect of climate change on lettuce and oysters, is trying to carve out a new niche on the newsstand. It edges into the food magazine sphere with luminous photography of vegetables, while articles report on straight agricultural topics more often found in farming publications like the 111-year-old Successful Farming.

Modern Farmer, which began publication in April, is trying to benefit from the first signs of growth in the total number of farms since World War II and the farm-to-table food trend that has fueled growth for farmers’ markets and community-supported agriculture. That means the magazine has attracted readers who include an Amish farmer and vegetable supplier to Whole Foods, Brooklyn rooftop farmers harvesting kale and broccoli and myriad young farmers going back to the land.

“I know they’re trying to reach people like me and the kind of hobbyists and the people who are just kind of enamored with the idea of farming,” said Courtney Cowgill, a 33-year-old co-owner of the Prairie Heritage Farm near Power, Mont., who formerly wrote about agriculture and other topics for The Associated Press. To appeal to the person who wants to romanticize farming and the person who is knee deep in turkey droppings “is hard, and I think they’re balancing that,” she said.

It helps that Modern Farmer explores a subject on the minds of some of the world’s wealthiest people. Ann Marie Gardner, the founder and editor in chief, conceived the idea for a magazine in 2011 after she noticed that sources she interviewed for Monocle magazine seemed preoccupied by agricultural issues. In spring 2012, Ms. Gardner, who previously worked for The New York Times and Tatler magazine, started to pitch an idea to investors. Frank Giustra, the Canadian mining billionaire and former chairman of Lion’s Gate Entertainment, who had started to produce award-winning olive oil in Umbria, Italy, took an interest in Ms. Gardner’s project. By November, he gave her enough money (she would not divulge figures) to start a Web site, and a print magazine.

“He was very interested in food investments,” Ms. Gardner said as she sat in her sun-dappled second-floor offices beneath a Pilates studio and above the Face Shop, which sells skin care products, along Hudson’s main strip. “It sat between his media interests and investments and his newfound food investments.”

The magazine has also attracted surprising financial support from advertisers eager to sell trucks, tractors, organic wine and work clothes to these young farmers. Sean O’Brien, global director of footwear for the Original Muck Boot Company, based in Smithfield, R.I., has advertised in both Modern Farmer issues.

“It’s really targeted almost a new consumer group for us,” Mr. O’Brien said. “We sell a lot of boots to farmers and workers and outdoorsmen. You can look at a Modern Farmer as almost a hobby farmer. This a perfect vehicle to target that key consumer group.”

Ms. Gardner has been quick to nurture her powerful supporters on the editorial and business sides. She asked Mr. Giustra to let one of her reporters travel with him and Mr. Clinton, whose foundation has benefited from Mr. Giustra’s friendship and largess, when they visited Peru and Colombia in May. He declined, but instead she was able to arrange for the former president to contribute an article. He wrote about the work his foundation has been doing with farmers globally, like helping fisherman along Colombia’s coast get their fish into restaurants. Mr. Clinton also offered his own recollections of helping his Uncle Buddy tend his farm plot in Arkansas.

“As a young boy, I picked beans, corn and tomatoes, poured tubs of water into sandy soil to grow large watermelons, fed animals and badly lost a head-butting contest to a ram,” wrote Mr. Clinton, whose foundation staff worked with Ms. Gardner on the article.

Ms. Gardner seeks business guidance daily from Rob Withers, managing director of Fiore Capital and part of Mr. Giustra’s team. Mr. Giustra declined to comment. Ms. Gardner said she hoped to find a strategic investor to help support the magazine. She said she also hoped soon to add a chief technology officer to her nine-member staff and to hold farming conferences.

The magazine has attracted a global following with the first print edition being sold in Britain, Germany and Australia as well as in the United States, according to Modern Farmer’s spokeswoman, Jessie Cohen. Traffic on the Web site, which went live in April, grew to 99,000 unique visitors in the United States in July, according to comScore. The first print issue sold 35,000 copies on newsstands and 13,000 by subscription.

Modern Farmer joins a surprisingly robust genre of farming magazines. The Alliance for Audited Media tracks 20 farming magazines in the United States and Canada and their circulation in the last three years has held strong. Scott Mortimer, publisher and general manager at Meredith Corporation, which includes Successful Farming, notes that grain prices are rising, land prices are at historical highs and the technology to produce crops has improved.

Ms. Gardner may find that some of her biggest critics are not battle-hardened media types, but farmers. Allan Van Tassel, an 83-year-old lifelong farmer who is Ms. Gardner’s neighbor, tells her regularly that the magazine does not have a chance of survival.

“It’s a nice idea,” Mr. Van Tassel said. “But as I say, you drive up and down the road and you see these small conglomerates where they’re going to raise things one year, two years. Then they’re gone.”

Ms. Gardner does not discredit the perils of either publishing or farming. While Modern Farmer slowly and steadily progressed last year, a windstorm wiped out her entire crop of pears. This year, as she has logged long hours making Modern Farmer grow, her own garden has become overgrown. Eventually, she placed her trust in a professional.

“I brought in a farmer to help me,” Ms. Gardner said.

A version of this article appears in print on September 18, 2013, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Magazine for Farm-to-Table .

Advertising: Longtime Innovator Has Seed Money for New Ones

Longtime Innovator Has Seed Money for New Ones

Sean Davis/Humanaut

Alex Bogusky, known in the ad industry for creativity, is taking a minority stake in Humanaut, an agency founded by Andrew Clark, left, and David Littlejohn, right.

IS Alex Bogusky becoming the Johnny Appleseed of advertising?

Mr. Bogusky is known in the industry for the risk-taking, rule-breaking creative ideas he came up with in the more than two decades he spent at Crispin Porter & Bogusky and its parent, MDC Partners. Since 2010, when he left MDC, he has started projects like Common and FearLess Revolution. He also joined Made Movement, a fledgling agency in Boulder, Colo., as a minority investor and creative adviser.

Now, Mr. Bogusky is helping an agency in Chattanooga, Tenn., open its doors by becoming a minority investor and creative adviser there, too. The new agency â€" in keeping with Mr. Bogusky’s seeming penchant for affiliating with nontraditionally named ventures â€" is known as Humanaut, a word coined from human and astronaut (or cosmonaut, if you are a Russian Op-Ed columnist).

“I’m the world’s smallest holding company,” Mr. Bogusky said, laughing.

When the Appleseed comparison was suggested, he said he liked it. “Just seeds in his pocket and holes in his pocket,” Mr. Bogusky said. “I’m just a guy with money falling out of my pocket.”

Mr. Bogusky knows one of the two founders of Humanaut, David Littlejohn, because they worked together in the Boulder office of Crispin Porter & Bogusky. The other Humanaut founder, Andrew Clark, is a longtime friend of Mr. Littlejohn’s; before starting Humanaut, they had collaborated for two years as consultants for start-ups â€" advising them in areas like brand identity and user experience â€" under the banner of a company with another unusual name, Pale Dot Voyage.

“David really, really inspired me during his time at C.P.B.,” Mr. Bogusky said, citing as an example an effort for Best Buy called Twelpforce, in which employees in Best Buy stores used Twitter to answer customers’ questions in real time.

“Andrew, who I met through David, is crazy smart,” Mr. Bogusky said, “and that’s always important.” Mr. Clark and Mr. Littlejohn worked with Mr. Bogusky several months ago on advertising for the SodaStream home soda-making system.

Mr. Bogusky said that, around the time he left MDC, he believed he was “out of ideas on how to innovate.” But recently, he added, “some potential ways to innovate have come to me through friends who want to do agencies.”

Although “a lot of people in advertising want to do ads,” Mr. Bogusky said, he preferred to be involved with people who want to “build products that add value to the experience” that consumers have with a brand.

Mr. Littlejohn, 31, is the chief creative director at Humanaut. Mr. Clark, 33, is the chief strategist.

“There’s a lot of great things that come along with Alex,” Mr. Littlejohn said. “There are some great connections he’s introduced us to.”

The name Humanaut is intended to suggest “kind of a human explorer,” Mr. Littlejohn said, “exploring the new frontier of digital and what it means to have these phones in our pockets, these glasses and watches.” He described Humanaut as “a brand invention agency, helping clients invent and innovate, using tools to innovate how people experience a product or business beyond advertising, helping start-ups that lack a brand identity or a brand story.”

On the agency’s Web site, humanaut.is, which is to go live on Wednesday, are declarations like “We are a creative agency exploring how brands and technology collide with humans.”

Humanaut is working with clients that include Friends of the Earth and Live Nation. The agency also works on developing and introducing products and brands.

One such initiative is Felt, an app that mixes high- and low-technology; after users write cards by hand on their iPads, the cards, with accompanying envelopes, are printed, sealed, stamped and mailed through the Postal Service. The Web site describes Felt as “exploring how handwriting and iPads collide with Mother’s Day.”

Another venture is Swoop, with a goal of enabling mobile users who are at football games, baseball games or other sporting events to sell their seats once they are inside a stadium or arena. Swoop is described on the Web site as “exploring how stadiums and mobile auctions collide with sports fans.”

“The Humanaut angle is using new technologies to reinvent age-old human experiences,” Mr. Clark said. “A lot of agencies out there are trying to navigate this space.”

Humanaut has seven employees and, according to Mr. Clark and Mr. Littlejohn, has ambitious growth plans. “We’re looking for designers and writers and developers,” Mr. Littlejohn said.

Chattanooga is not known for advertising agencies, but then again, neither was Boulder when Crispin Porter & Bogusky decided in 2006 to open an office there that would serve as a dual headquarters for the agency along with its operation in Miami.

Mr. Littlejohn said he opened Pale Dot Voyage in Chattanooga because he “had some family there,” adding, “There were huge amounts of opportunity and office space for what seemed like pocket change.” Mr. Clark moved to Chattanooga from Chicago to join him in fall 2011.

Mr. Bogusky called Chattanooga “a great, young market with a lot of cool talent, but affordable.”

Asked if he was interested in planting more seeds through additional investments in agencies, Mr. Bogusky replied: “I wish I had more of a plan around it, but right now, I don’t. If I do it again, I’d be more formal about it, but I don’t have plans right now to do it again.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 18, 2013, on page B5 of the New York edition with the headline: Longtime Innovator Has Seed Money for New Ones .

Time Magazine Names Its First Female Managing Editor

Nancy Gibbs, 53, was named the new managing editor of Time Magazine on Tuesday, becoming the first woman to become the top editor at the newsweekly in its 90-year history.

Ms. Gibbs, who started her career at Time as a fact-checker 28 years ago, is replacing Richard Stengel, who is leaving to work for the State Department after seven years in the job. Ms. Gibbs had most recently been working as Mr. Stengel’s deputy.

While Ms. Gibbs said that she had filled in on occasion for Mr. Stengel in the past, she officially started overseeing Time’s covers last month, beginning with the Aug. 5 issue. In addition to writing more cover stories for Time than any other writer in the magazine’s history, Ms. Gibbs is a prolific author whose most recent book, “The President’s Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity,” was published last year.

Ms. Gibbs said in a phone interview that she expected her writing skills would help Time Inc. tell stories across all media, including online and through video. While Time has experienced a decline in newsstand sales of about 39 percent over the past five years, it has held onto its total circulation of approximately 3.3 million subscribers and newsstand buyers, according to data tracked by the Alliance for Audited Media.

Its digital presence is also growing through its 4.9 million followers on Twitter.

“I think I am the first editor to take over when our digital audience is bigger than our print audience,” Ms. Gibbs said. “My role is going to be more widely spread than past editors’ â€" on what we are thinking about what we are doing online, what we are doing with tablet, what we are doing with print.”

Ms. Gibbs added that she had been surprised at how many young women at Time said they were excited about her promotion, even at a time when breaking “this glass ceiling has become so commonplace.” In January, Time Inc. named Martha Nelson editor in chief of its magazine division, the first woman to hold that job.

Ms. Gibbs said that these moves seemed to have resonated with employees. “This is a historic institution and there is something that excites people about seeing a woman run it for the first time,” she said.

Ms. Gibbs is taking over a title that continues to generate revenue for the Time Inc. empire. According to data tracked by the magazine consultant John Harrington, the title’s projected advertising and circulation revenues generated $497 million in 2012.

‘Sleepy Hollow’ Ratings Offer Hopeful Sign for Network TV

The network television season got off to an early and swinging start on Monday thanks to the ax wielded by the Headless Horseman on the Fox network.

The Fox drama “Sleepy Hollow” burst out to one of the strongest recent ratings for any new series, proving both the value of jumping ahead of the pack for a fall premiere and of promoting a new show effectively through sports, among other programming.

At the same time, ABC’s reality war horse, “Dancing With the Stars,” showed some new life thanks to an intriguing lineup of celebrity dancers, and CBS’s summer drama hit, “Under the Dome,” finished its first season in strong fashion.

But the big ratings story Monday was “Sleepy Hollow,” a show that was announced without much fanfare last spring. The series garnered many good reviews and strong word of mouth for its far-out premise, which involves the reincarnation of Ichabod Crane and the Horseman, some Revolutionary War mythology and even biblical references like the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse.

In its initial outing, “Hollow” pulled 10.1 million viewers with an excellent 3.5 rating among the viewers Fox sells to advertisers, those between the ages of 18 and 49. That was the best number of the night (aside from “Monday Night Football” on cable).

It was a spectacular improvement for Fox over the disastrous results it scored last fall on Monday nights at 9, with a show called “The Mob Doctor.”

Some of the competition was weaker than what “Hollow” will ultimately face, especially “The Voice” on NBC, and CBS’s comedy lineup, which both start next Monday. But ABC did have the latest edition of “Dancing,” featuring some celebrities of high interest, including the actress Valerie Harper, defying her cancer prognosis, and Nicole Polizzi (Snooki) of “Jersey Shore” fame, back down to her playing weight.

“Dancing” attracted a huge audience of 16.2 million. But the series always has had big total viewer numbers because of its loyal following among older women. This edition also scored a respectable 3.2 rating in the 18-49 group. (One caveat: Some portion of the number may be inflated because ABC’s station in Pittsburgh was carrying the Steelers, who were playing on “Monday Night Football.”)

As for “Under the Dome,” the series was consistent all summer, winning its time period most Mondays. The finale averaged about 12 million viewers and a solid 2.8 rating in the 18-49 group. Both numbers are exceptional for a summer series, and CBS, of course, is bringing the show back next June.

Fox News Unveils New Prime-Time Lineup

The Fox News Channel on Tuesday announced a new lineup of hosts for its weeknight schedule, moving Greta Van Susteren to 7 p.m. from her current spot at 10 and moving Sean Hannity into the 10 p.m. hour from his present 9 o’clock slot.

The 9 p.m. show is going, as previously reported, to Megyn Kelly, who is considered the fastest-rising new star at Fox News and is a centerpiece of the network’s plan to attract younger viewers. Bill O’Reilly will remain in the 8 p.m. slot with “The O’Reilly Factor.”

The changes have been long in the planning and have attracted much speculation, especially about whether Mr. Hannity would slide to 7 p.m.

Roger Ailes, the network’s founder and chairman, opened up the 7 p.m. hour by elevating his most prominent news anchor, Shepard Smith, to a new role that will bring him on throughout the evening with breaking news.

In his announcement of the changes on Tuesday, Mr. Ailes said the success of Fox News had extended well beyond the traditional hours considered prime time, 8 to 11 p.m. He called that definition of prime time an “antiquated format.”

Ms. Kelly’s new show will be called “The Kelly File” and will be live, with a concentration on breaking news. The new lineup will begin Oct. 7.

‘Mad Men’ to Split Final Season Into Two Parts

AMC is having a hard time separating from its hit series. On Tuesday the network announced that instead of a final season of “Mad Men,” as was planned for next spring, the much-acclaimed series will divide in two, pushing off the finale for another year.

A day earlier, the network announced it would spin off a new series from its hit zombie show “The Walking Dead” and last week it made a deal to spin off a show from “Breaking Bad.”

In the case of “Mad Men,” AMC is following the strategy it took with “Breaking Bad” in dividing up a planned final season into two installments, but in this case it will be waiting a full year between seven-episode arcs. That means the final season is really two entirely separate ones, at least in terms of scheduling.

The first seven shows will be shown next spring under the title “The Beginning.” The second group will be shown in 2015 and will be called “The End of an Era."’ The show’s creator, Matthew Weiner, will shoot all the episodes in one production cycle, so in effect, AMC will simply be storing away the last seven episodes for a year.

The decision seems to underscore AMC’s concern about losing its two original blockbuster dramas within a year of each other. The network shattered almost every television precedent by developing and showing two prominent and highly successful television dramas over the same time span. “Breaking Bad” is ending in two weeks in a flurry of rapturous praise. “Mad Men” was scheduled to conclude next spring.

That would have left AMC with only “The Walking Dead” as a breakout hit. Its other current dramas, “Hell on Wheels” and this year’s “Low Winter Sun,” have not remotely approached the level of success that “Breaking Bad” or “Mad Men” did. AMC canceled “The Killing” (for a second time) earlier this month.

So the network will now get two more chances, instead of one, to try to introduce new shows using “Mad Men” as a springboard. But in doing so, it will ask more patience from the show’s fans. The one benefit is the addition of one episode beyond what had been originally planned.

In a statement, Mr. Weiner said, “We plan to take advantage of this chance to have a more elaborate story told in two parts, which can resonate a little bit longer in the minds of our audience.”

Chinese Film Company Donates $20 Million to Movie Museum

LOS ANGELES â€" The Chinese film company Dalian Wanda Group has kept a low profile since acquiring AMC Entertainment last year for about $2.6 billion, but no more.

On Tuesday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said Wanda had donated $20 million toward the Academy’s campaign to build a motion picture museum here. The gift is the second largest to date, behind a $25 million commitment from David Geffen.

In recognition of the gift, the academy said it would name the museum’s planned film history gallery for Wanda, which became a player in the North American market through the AMC purchase.

“Our relationship with the Academy is an important part of our role in the global motion picture industry,” Jianlin Wang, Wanda’s chairman, said in a statement.

The academy has said it hopes to raise $300 million to finance the museum, which is scheduled to open in 2017.

Chinese Film Company Donates $20 Million to Movie Museum

LOS ANGELES â€" The Chinese film company Dalian Wanda Group has kept a low profile since acquiring AMC Entertainment last year for about $2.6 billion, but no more.

On Tuesday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said Wanda had donated $20 million toward the Academy’s campaign to build a motion picture museum here. The gift is the second largest to date, behind a $25 million commitment from David Geffen.

In recognition of the gift, the academy said it would name the museum’s planned film history gallery for Wanda, which became a player in the North American market through the AMC purchase.

“Our relationship with the Academy is an important part of our role in the global motion picture industry,” Jianlin Wang, Wanda’s chairman, said in a statement.

The academy has said it hopes to raise $300 million to finance the museum, which is scheduled to open in 2017.

Random House Plans Release of Norman Mailer Books

In an effort to introduce Norman Mailer’s work to a younger generation of readers, Random House is embarking on a publishing campaign that will include the release of a new essay collection, eight books in e-book format for the first time and repackaged paperbacks.

Mr. Mailer, the larger-than-life writer who is perhaps best known for his novels “The Armies of the Night” and “The Executioner’s Song,” which were published in the 1960s and 1970s. He died in 2007.

Gina Centrello, the president and publisher of Random House, said the publishing program will begin with a new book, “Mind of an Outlaw,” a selection of essays by Mr. Mailer, with an introduction by Jonathan Lethem.

“Norman was an American original both on the page and in life,” Ms. Centrello said in an e-mail. “Random House and his readers miss him tremendously. It’s wonderful to have this opportunity to relaunch these books for a new generation.” The rerelease of Mr. Mailer’s backlist books will continue until 2016.

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