Sunset Has Survived by Keeping Up With the Changing Landscape of the West

Sunset Magazine, based in Menlo Park, Calif., is the granddaddy of regional magazines. Founded in 1898 by the Southern Pacific Railroad, it was created to promote travel to the West.

Named for the train that ran from New Orleans to Los Angeles, the magazine was bought in 1928 by Laurence Lane. It remained a family-owned business until Time Warner Inc. purchased it in 1990. The magazine is devoted to food, lifestyle, gardening and travel in 13 Western states.

In the early days, Sunset promoted the national parks as vigorously as uses for chayote, a local squash. Later on, it crusaded against the pesticide DDT and promoted ways to plant a fire-resistant garden.

The secret of its longevity? Keeping up with the changing landscape of the West and staying in touch with readers, staffers say.

Texas Monthly, an award-winning magazine based in Austin, began in 1972. In its early days, its editors made sure to include a piece from Dallas, a feature from Houston, a story from San Antonio. But over time, that thinking changed.

“We began more and more to think about stories as Texas stories,” said Gregory Curtis, an editor-at-large for Time Inc. who led Texas Monthly for 19 years. And they discovered that Texans, whether they were from Fort Worth or Corpus Christi, were just as interested.

But that approach wouldn’t necessarily work in California, he said, where residents live in ethnically, geographically and economically diverse communities.

Daniel Okrent, another Texas Monthly alumnus, decided to export that magazine’s winning formula to the Northeast. New England Monthly made its debut in 1984 and remained an independent magazine for 5 1/2 years.

“We won prizes and lost money,” said Okrent, 52, also an editor-at-large at Time Inc. in New York. “We thought the fact that people in New England read a lot would work to our advantage. We were dead wrong.” The magazine never had a problem with circulation, he said; it couldn’t attract the advertisers needed to support its circulation.

In 1989, Okrent and his partner sold the monthly to a Canadian company. A year later, New England Monthly folded.