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Recipes? Celebrity profiles? Product reviews? O.J. Simpson updates? What articles do you pass over without a glance? Say what and why in the Media area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Under the Covers
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greener pastures OUT OF THE GROWING GLUT OF FINANCE MAGS, ONE ZINE IS POISED TO CAPTURE THE EXPANDING MARKET OF YOUNG INVESTORS. Green began as most zines do. One night, when nobody was looking, Ken Kurson sneaked onto the Xerox machine at work and printed 15 copies of what was then called the Kenny Quarterly. "I hadn't planned to do it as a real thing," the 29-year-old Kurson, a contributing editor at Esquire magazine, says of his first stab at publishing. It was just something to give to his friends. But before he knew it people were calling, even showing up at his doorstep, demanding a copy. "It got written about in a couple newspapers -- one called the New York Press and one in Delaware, just a regular daily newspaper there. I didn't have a price. It was my home address in Chelsea." Three years and one name-change later, Green is a full-fledged glossy magazine with 17,000 subscribers and distribution in stores such as Barnes & Noble and Tower Records. And a book based on three years of printed material hit the stands earlier this month. All this would be unremarkable -- plenty of zines are making good these days -- except for one thing: Green is not your typical Gen X rag, overflowing with attitude-drenched ramblings on popular culture and alternative trends. Green is about the last taboo, the uncoolest of topics, the most boring subject you can imagine: Green is about money. While most kids were blowing their allowances, Kurson was learning how to save, invest and reap dividends. By the time he reached his 20s, he'd accumulated a wealth of information on the topic and was constantly being approached by friends wanting to know everything from how to set up their 401Ks to the best way to pay off massive credit-card debt. But as appreciative as some of Kurson's friends were, others regarded his interest in money with suspicion and scorn. Green, which touts itself as "a personal finance magazine for those nauseated by the phrase 'personal finance,'" still must overcome many 20-somethings' distaste for the subject. After all, knowing the finer points of asset management accounts is about as cool as passing up a Radiohead concert to see the Rolling Stones drag their tired old asses onstage for yet another show. So-called slackers may have cushy jobs and 401K plans, but they aren't about to become their boomer parents -- not yet, at least. "It was clear to me that a lot of rich kids and a lot of trust-fund kids had this attitude that you didn't need to learn about finance and how to manage your money. It's such a bullshit attitude," he explains. "It's fine for rich people to think it's gross, but for those of us who weren't blessed with trust funds, it shouldn't be stigmatized." When Kurson sneaked onto the copy machine three years ago, he hoped to kill several birds with one zine: Instead of answering the same questions over and over, he could hand friends the Kenny Quarterly; and by placing the topic of money in a readable and interesting format, he could start to free the topic from its stodgy roots. The result is a funky mix of plainspoken financial advice -- buying a house with little money, the best thing to do with $5,000 and saving dough on alcohol (smoke pot) -- and more traditional zine fare such as alternative cartoonist Harvey Pekar strips and poetry. "I think that if you're a 25-year-old and you wouldn't normally be caught dead with a financial magazine, you come across one that has a Harvey Pekar cartoon and maybe a poem and a recipe and you go, wait, maybe this person's more like me," Kurson says. Kurson's book, "The Green Magazine Guide to Personal Finance: A No B.S. Money Book for your Twenties and Thirties" loses the cartoons, but its honest, jargon-free explanations of everything from complex investment lingo to 1040 EZs still speak to a generation of people for whom genuine, serious interest in anything is considered a cliché. The combination works, and the timing couldn't be better in an era when young people are being forced into financial self-reliance. "People our parents' age, if they thought about retirement at all, thought about the pension plan, which was managed by a pension manager who they never met, and the money was invested," Kurson says. "Now if you've got a 401K plan, like it or not you have to choose how to invest that money." And with boomers living longer and the Social Security system looking shaky at best, Americans born between 1965 and 1978 -- the designated Generation X years, don't really see much hope of a government-supplied safety net. Fear of being left out to dry in the retirement years is fueling more active financial planning. So whatever worries young adults may have about becoming anal-retentive number-crunchers, such fears shrivel up when confronted with the chilly reality of impoverished old age. Of the growing glut of financial magazines, none addresses the needs of these marketplace newcomers. Either they're focused on who made the most billions in 1997 or they're writing for home-buying, family-focused middle-aged folks who've already graduated from the early stages of financial planning. But as Kurson knows, publishing a magazine -- even a funky financial zine -- is as good a way to lose money as any. And the rapidly growing Green isn't any different. As Kurson puts it, "The mag business is a shitty business because at the very best, the magazines with the highest revenue can't expect to earn a profit for years and years." But with a dash of luck and a dose of its own financial medicine, Green may flourish despite the odds. In the meantime, Kurson says he's getting more respect from those who used to scoff at his choice of topic. "Every now and then people make the foolish, grad school, round glasses mistake -- from an apartment their parents are subsidizing -- of saying, 'Shouldn't you be paying attention to social justice and stuff like that?' I always say, that's what Green is about. Green is not for rich kids. It's for people who are on their own and trying to enhance the freedom they experience in their lives."
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