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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Sunset Looking Toward A New Dawn 98-Year-Old Magazine Quietly Adapting To Realities Of Readers’ Lives In The Modern West

David Armstrong San Francisco Examiner

What becomes a legend most? If the legend is a century-old magazine, the answer might be: retooling and updating, done so gradually and carefully the makeover may be noticed only subliminally by its readers.

In this case the magazine is Sunset, age 98, a monthly that generations of Westerners have grown up expecting to find on their parents’ coffee tables.

Aimed at affluent suburbanites and full of neighborly advice on cooking, traveling, gardening and do-it-yourself home care, Sunset (“The magazine of Western Living”) is profitable if somewhat fusty. At times it appears to be deeply rooted in the sense and sensibility of 1962.

The challenge for Time Inc., which bought Sunset from longtime owner Lane Publishing Co. in 1990, is to bring the vintage title up to date without alienating loyal readers, established types with an average age of 46 and household income of $80,100.

“There’s no revolutionary change, but a constant evolution,” says Steve Seabolt, president and chief executive officer of Sunset Publishing Corp., which includes both the magazine and Sunset Books. “Our formula works.”

Sunset’s fine-tuner-in-chief is its new editor, Rosalie Muller Wright, who comes from the San Francisco Chronicle, where she was assistant managing editor. Before that, Wright edited New West and Womansports magazines and was features editor at The Examiner.

Wright, who became editor in May, says she’s settling in and starting to make changes.

“It’s real exciting to make a difference and take a really good magazine one step further,” says Wright.

According to Wright, that step won’t include dancing to Generation X’s urban, angst-rock beat. “We don’t want to be Wired magazine,” she avers.

So, don’t look for how-to articles on body-piercing alongside the usual gardening-through-the-drought pieces. However, Wright says, she is seeking a more contemporary look for Sunset, which has already redesigned its logo and spruced up major feature stories.

Leafing through a design prototype in a light-filled conference room just off a manicured lawn, Wright previews changes coming in the November issue.

There will be a boldfaced recipe index in the table of contents, a new wine column, a clean Garamond typeface inside and out. Short, front-of-the-book articles, which have long had a cluttered, time-to-clean-the-attic look, will be graced with more white space.

“We are a service magazine,” Wright emphasizes. “We want to make the service useful and accessible, with real, telegraphic information that people can find quickly and use quickly.”

That pragmatism extends to Sunset’s reader services department, with three employees who answer readers’ queries about gardening, fixing up the place and cooking that special meal.

“You don’t want to be here the day before Thanksgiving,” deadpans Sunset’s publicity director, Brianne Murphy Miller.

Sunset’s outpouring of can-do information comes in four zoned editions that cover Northern and Southern California, the Northwest, and the rest of the West. As Wright points out, information about, say, gardening has to be tailored.

“We have people in the desert and the rainforest,” she says.

The ‘burbs in 13 Western states - not the cities or the deep country - are Sunset’s prime territory. Boasting a paid circulation of just under 1.5 million (“Just where it ought to be right now,” says Seabolt), Sunset is aimed at people who own property.

Wright, a New Jersey native who moved West in the early 1970s, says upward-bound strivers gravitate to Sunset when they buy their first house.

Says Wright: “Those people are buying homes. They aren’t buying townhouses. They want a house with a garden. The American Dream is still the single-family home with a garden.”

But American Dreamers these days live in two-income households, on incredibly shrinking building lots and have less time to garden and cook than Mom and Dad did.

Those changes are triggering editorial adjustments at Sunset.

“We’re paying more attention to the time-pressed nature of modern life,” says Wright, adding that Sunset will inaugurate a column called “The Quick Cook,” keyed to meals that can be prepared in under 30 minutes.

Another change: a column, coming in November, called “The Wired West,” that will focus on setting up and running home offices. Sunset’s research shows that Westerners are twice as likely as other Americans to have home offices.

Such changes are keyed toward young working couples. Says Sunset publisher Tony Glaves: “I think you’ll see a little skewing toward younger readers over the next few years.”