The story starts with one of the all-time great audio viruses from Rupert Holmes:
“If you like Pina Coladas, and getting caught in the rain
If you´re not into yoga, if you have half a brain
If you like making love at midnight, in the dunes of the cape
I´m the love that you´ve looked for, write to me, and escape”
As Samir “Mr. Magazine” Husni notes in his interview with Monique Reidy, we all need to escape to somewhere new from time to time. And Reidy, as publisher and editor-in-chief of the new title Weekend Escapes, intends to help us do just that.
“Our first magazine, Southern California Life, is primarily about where to go and what to do in Southern California,” Reidy explained to Husni. “But we were getting so many requests for media trips, stories about travel outside of Southern California, so we started a special section called ‘The Weekender’ in Southern California Life magazine because we thought we should give residents or locals, even the tourists who read our magazine, because we are in-room in numerous hotels, we should give them an opportunity to see what is beyond Southern California in case they want to travel.”
From there, she launched Weekend Escapes, which she says is “100 percent travel content.”
Reidy credits Husni with helping to crystalize her vision for the new print magazine.
“I took the advice of one of your speakers at one of the ACT Experience conferences, and it hit me pretty hard in the face when they said you should recycle your content, that’s what other magazines do and I decided that we were going to do that too,” she said to Husni. “So, our launch issue is primarily regurgitated articles from our past magazines, but the publication is beautiful and it features back-to-back places that anyone can visit for an extended weekend and have a wonderful time.”
But with so much travel content on the internet now, why print a new travel magazine? For Reidy, the better question is “why not?”
“I don’t know why people are having this print meltdown; we love magazines; everyone we talk to loves magazines,” Reidy noted. “If you go to any Barnes & Noble or any newsstand, people are sitting around reading magazines. I don’t understand what the hype is all about. I know this is nuts, and maybe I could be way off base, but I think partly us, as a publication community, are partly responsible because we keep talking about it. I think we should just move on and not even make it an issue.”
Sort of like travel, if you think about it. You love it, you want to do it, and just because you don’t have two weeks to spare doesn’t mean you can’t indulge. We welcome Weekend Escapes in to the ranks of new travel magazines, and wish Reidy and her team all the best.
“…and we’ll plan our escape…”