San Diego Magazine at 60

It’s been an amazing journey, all the way from the birth of the first city magazine to our continuing success today. Join us for a look back.

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1978-1988

As the 1970s segued into the 1980s, San Diego became a big city—and San Diego Magazine both chronicled and reflected its transformation. There were articles on the reborn trolley that made San Diego a poster child for the new face of public transit; the eclectic Horton Plaza shopping center that lit the fuse on downtown redevelopment; the rise and fall of Mayor Roger Hedgecock, which foreshadowed a wave of civic scandals that continue to rock the city.

Ed Self remained editor-in-chief, but daughter Winke took on more and more of the day-to-day editorial operations. Writers Martin Hill and Maribeth Mellin shined lights on toxic pollution, inadequate healthcare, poverty, homelessness and the sensational twin trials of cop-shooter Sagon Penn. But the magazine’s focus seemed to shift toward the good life. There were features on the symphony, the Old Globe, native son Cliff Robertson and the burgeoning local dining and nightlife scene—the latter growing into a stand-alone annual supplement. Fashion and society began to command a substantial share of the editorial space, with Gloria Self traveling to Milan and Paris to dispatch reports on designers’ latest runway creations. Readers also were treated to a series of feel-good stories on local sports heroes like Steve Garvey, who helped take the Padres to their first World Series, and Dennis Conner, who brought home the America’s Cup.

San Diego Magazine met a new competitor, San Diego Home/Garden, head on, with features on gardening, architectural design and interiors. A cover shot of Ronald Reagan’s head atop a body builder’s muscular frame generated controversy and set a new tone for the covers, which became increasingly cheeky.

The magazine’s national profile continued to shine, and in 1987 the City & Regional Magazine Association (CRMA) honored San Diego Magazine with its William Allen White Award for general excellence.

1988-1998

San Diego’s cosmopolitan push intensified in the late 1980s and 1990s, with the city electing two female mayors, opening a massive new waterfront convention center and gearing up once again to host a Republican National Convention (this time, for real). San Diego Magazine did its best to keep pace. When Mayor Maureen O’Connor toured the Soviet Union, Gloria Self went with her; when the ribbon was cut on the new convention center, a headline proclaimed it “has opened a new era for the city.”

In 1994, Ed and Gloria Self ’s long reign ended when San Diego Magazine was sold to Jim Fitzpatrick, the former vice president and publisher of Entrepreneur magazine. Tom Blair, the popular city columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune and TV commentator, was brought on as editor-in-chief. An ambitious overhaul of the magazine was begun; both men’s vision for the publication was more Texas Monthly than Sunset, and the hard-hitting investigative reports that had disappeared in the final years of the Self era began to reappear. Executive editor Ron Donoho, then managing editor, was behind several of them, including a look at the numbers behind the 1996 Republican National Convention and an exposé of the sordid life of spree killer Andrew Cunanan. Within a year of the sale to Fitzpatrick, paid circulation had risen 15 percent, while total ad pages rose 12 percent, according to Folio, the trade book for magazine management.

1998-2008

The past decade will perhaps be best remembered as the era when San Diego Magazine reestablished its beachhead on the shores of investigative journalism, with a series of award-winning exposés on such hot-button issues and topics as the state of public education in San Diego, the quandary over airport relocation and our increasingly congested freeways. Magazine writers continued to steer readers toward the best restaurants, the best nightclubs and the best of everything, but reports on a brutal North County murder, a falsely accused child molester and Coronado Bridge jumpers received equal play. This year, writer s.d. liddick won the prestigious silver award as writer of the year in a national competition among all major city magazines, sponsored by the CRMA. Magazine president Jim Fitzpatrick was honored with the association’s lifetime achievement award. In 2005, Maureen Sullivan moved up to become publisher.

On the watchdog front, no longer did the San Diego Reader have the monopoly on keeping The San Diego Union-Tribune on its toes. From the pages of San Diego Magazine burst forth a journalistic fire storm not seen since the days of Harold Keen. The magazine took aim at everything from the San Diego city council’s pension-fund scandal to the shenanigans of renegade City Attorney Mike Aguirre.

At the same time, the magazine’s circulation spread into the county’s major hotel rooms (much as USA Today has done nationally), and several satellite magazines-within-the-magazine were launched, focusing on travel and home design. San Diego Magazine also published special issues around such major civic events as the Super Bowl, the Republican Party’s national convention and the U.S. Open, and began a concerted push north of the city limits with features and a column centered exclusively on the sprawling North County region.

Three years ago, the magazine was sold to CurtCo Media Labs, a national publishing company that specializes in the luxury market. But for Fitzpatrick, Blair and the rest of the team, it’s been business as usual. San Diego Magazine continues to expand its publishing scope with ventures into custom publications and a new magazine called Exquisite Weddings.

Longtime civic leader and philanthropist Malin Burnham has been a regular reader for more than 40 years. Despite all the changes that have taken place, both in the city and at the magazine, he says, San Diego Magazine is fundamentally the same as it’s always been:

“That unique type of community-wide local-feature magazine. It’s part of the glue of the city and of the community, because it features things and people and ideas that most of us don’t have a feel for, or don’t get next to. It’s our other life, if you will—a very important other life.”

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