BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield. It's early, of course, but so far, this hasn't been a very good millennium for the American magazine industry. Advertising fled during the recession, never completely to return. Circulation has been stagnant or worse, and the editorial integrity of some titles has been called into question, as publishers seek to make advertisers happy with content more promotional than journalistic. Watching all of this is Samir Husni, professor of journalism at the University of Mississippi, and known far and wide as Mr. Magazine, and he joins me now. Samir, welcome to On the Media.

SAMIR HUSNI: Thank you.

BOB GARFIELD: So, what ails the magazine industry?

SAMIR HUSNI: The major problem is that magazines after September 11 have become the only comfort food that is arriving at mailboxes and in newsstands, so yes, some people may say we've dumbed the content a little bit, or the line between editorial and advertising has been crossed, but the more the magazines become specialized, the more that line is going to blur. But, contrary to your pessimistic announcement, I think the magazine industry last year and so far the forecast for 2005 is going to be in very good shape compared to what happened in the early part of the 21st Century. Once we have all the numbers tallied for 2004, we will probably have more than 1,000 new titles, which is the largest number since 1998.

BOB GARFIELD: Of course, people keep opening restaurants in New York, too. They don't necessarily last very long. Obviously there are a lot of failures. But someone's succeeding. Who is out there who's cracked the nut?

SAMIR HUSNI: Maxim. When Maxim came to the United States, and Felix Dennis tried to launch Maxim, there was not one single expert in this country who said this magazine will work. Maxim has now a circulation of 2.5 million. Real Simple. When it first came out in the marketplace, everybody said this is from Time, Inc? Time, Inc will do something like that? And look where Real Simple is now. So the odds are against you from the very beginning, but everybody had that Lisa Newsom dream, the woman that started, in 1988, Varenda Magazine, and sold it two years ago to Hearst for almost 50 million dollars. Everybody wants to be that entrepreneur.

BOB GARFIELD: A couple of years ago, one of the big new introductions was a magazine called Lucky, which just made my jaw drop, because it was a magazine about shopping. Tell me how that's doing, and tell me if there's any similar counterintuitive offerings coming up in 2005.

SAMIR HUSNI: Lucky is doing very, very good. In fact, it's doing so well that after Lucky succeeded, we've seen a slew of shopping magazines -- not only in the United States, but all over the world. Everybody that discovered that, hey, we can take all these catalogs that used to be available for free -- put them all in a magazine -- and charge for it and make some money. So Lucky came to the market. Then we had Cargo, the buying magazine for men, since men don't shop -- they just buy. I mean almost every magazine you pick now -- there is a new magazine that came out this year called Cats -it's a shopping magazine for your cat.

BOB GARFIELD: No. No, it isn't.

SAMIR HUSNI: It is. It is an annual, published once a year - everything you ever wanted to buy for your cat, [LAUGHTER] in one magazine.

BOB GARFIELD: Let's talk about the relationship between the editorial side of magazines and advertisers, because the magazine industry in the United States has always been a girl with a reputation. But it seems that lately the pandering has really turned to whoring, and that editorial content is barely distinguishable from the ads. Am I, am I imagining this?

SAMIR HUSNI: No, you're not. And - but it depends also on which magazines you are looking at. I mean you still can pick up a copy of the Atlantic Monthly, and you are not going to find any blurring. You are not going to find something that say - oh, is this an ad or is this an editorial? Because the audience of the Atlantic Monthly is different than the audience of Lucky, is different than the audience of Shop, Etc. We have to judge the magazines by the audience that they are intended to. When you pick up a magazine like All You that is only sold at Wal-Mart, you know that the content -- it's not dictated by Wal-Mart, but it has to adhere to the Wal-Mart standards, because that's the audience that's going to go and pick up that magazine and shop. That's where the blurry line that some people are saying that exists now in our magazines. But the magazines in this country has been specialized from the very beginning. Look at all the automotive magazines that were started in the '40s and the '50s that were dedicated to a very specific car, whether it's a Pontiac, whether it's a Mustang, whether it's a Ford, a Chevy truck -- which ads did you find on those magazines? I mean you pick up a magazine like Dog Fancy, you expect to see ads for dog food. You don't expect to see ads for McDonald.

BOB GARFIELD: Forgive me for asking the question you must field all the time, but you see, you know, a bazillion magazines every month. What do you actually read for pleasure, not for scholarship?

SAMIR HUSNI: To me, I mean anything that says Volume 1 Number One, since I was in 8th grade, is my pleasure reading -- and my excuse, at the same time, so my wife don't get mad at me if she sees me reading something she does not approve of. [LAUGHTER] Better says in big type: Premiere Collector's Edition.

BOB GARFIELD: Well, Mr. Magazine, thank you so much for joining us, and of course our best regards to Mrs. Magazine as well.

SAMIR HUSNI: Thank you very much, Bob.

BOB GARFIELD: Samir Husni is a professor of journalism at the University of Mississippi, and widely known as Mr. Magazine.