In 1984, Time magazine, protective of its trademark red border, politely but firmly requested Company's founders to change its inaugural front-cover design.
You're holding in your hands (then again, you might be reading online) the 100th issue of Company magazine. It may be the first issue you have ever seen—or you may have seen all 99 others.
Most Company readers have some familiarity with Jesuits through a school, a retreat house, or a parish. But that's not true of everyone. Very early on, when a printer's representative was discussing distribution of Company with a printer, the printer asked: "Don't they just hand it out at their synagogues?"
In 1984, Time magazine, protective of its trademark red border, politely but firmly requested Company's founders to change its inaugural front-cover design.
The American Jesuits had other national magazines before Company. Jesuit Missions began in 1927 and ran for 40 years. Another magazine, called The Jesuit, begun in 1966, aimed at a national audience, as does Company. But The Jesuit came to an end in the early 1980s with the death of its longtime editor, Fr. Clement Armitage. The Jesuit Conference—the board of ten provincials in the United States—appointed a task force to decide if a new magazine should be started. The task force, made up of Jesuits who had worked in various forms of communication, agreed that there should be such a publication. However, when the group met later to interview possible candidates for editor, they discovered there were no candidates to interview!
Since I was a member of this task force, my provincial, Fr. Mike Lavelle, SJ, (Detroit Province) called me in and said, "I think if you believe there should be a magazine, you'll have to agree to edit it." I said yes.
Company has benefitted greatly from other Jesuits who believed it should go forward. Early on, Fr. Dan Flaherty, SJ, then head of Loyola Press (he is Company's publisher today) offered free space in his Chicago building. As I often said, we took all the offers we had and weighed it—the only one—and thus was decided Company's address.
From the start, we wanted to spell out for people what Jesuits and those working with them were doing. Many individual ministries have their own publications, but few have the resources to portray a wider view of Jesuit endeavors. Someone spoke to me of someone who'd gone to "Loyola." I asked "Which one?" It could have been Loyola College in Maryland, Loyola University Chicago, Loyola University New Orleans, or Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
But we were also clear with writers that we didn't want articles to end with a plea for money and an address where to send it! Company intended to cast a wider net over many Jesuit ministries, and we believed that a series of "begging" articles would not be the best way to go. Why the title Company? It's well explained in a text Fr. Ed Schmidt, SJ, wrote for the first issue, still reproduced in part on the inside front cover. Most simply, it's the original name of the Jesuit, the Company of Jesus. "Society," as in Society of Jesus, is an anglicized version of societas, its Latin name. At the time we began, a huge tome called Ayer's listed the names of 40,000 U.S. periodicals—"Company" was not among them.
My provincial called me in and said, "I think if you
believe there should
be a magazine,
you'll have to agree to edit it."
I said yes.
Our idea then was to find a term more inclusive than Jesuit Missions or The Jesuit, each of which implied that Jesuits themselves were always the chief honchos. But the Jesuits reached their highest number ever (about 36,000) in 1965, nearly twenty years before Company began. Each year since, the total number of Jesuits, both worldwide and in the U.S., has been fewer, and so to continue Jesuit works, much more cooperation of other religious men and women and laypeople has been enlisted. More than one Jesuit university now has had a president who is not a Jesuit.
Company was always meant to be a picture magazine; if Company had any close secular model, it was People magazine—in which photos are as important as text. The full-color photos in today's Company are far more sophisticated than were the black-and-white photos on its pages in its early years. Those 25 years have changed a lot. Someone said recently they asked a young person for black-and-white film and heard: "What's that?" (Even the term "film" itself may be moving toward oblivion.)
Beginning a new national magazine was daunting. I recall, having moved to Chicago from Detroit, wandering into a second-hand bookstore and spying a paperback, How to Start Your Own Magazine. That book, plus one called The Magazine, signaled directions to be taken by me as editor and Fr. Edward Schmidt, SJ, (now provincial of the Chicago Province) as my assistant. We learned that we should seek an "art director," so we interviewed several candidates and settled upon a young couple, Peter and Sharon Taylor, then from Wheaton, Illinois, and still Company's art directors. If the magazine looks good, it is almost entirely because of their handiwork, often in the early days with rather challenging materials.
Company's first issues, which appeared with a bright red border on the cover, attracted the attention of someone at Time magazine. We received a very formal letter from that magazine's lawyers telling us to cease and desist. Someone knowledgeable said we should have contested this, but since we had a staff of two and no funds set aside for legal costs, we caved in after just six issues and switched to a pearl-gray border, dropped in recent years in favor of a full-photo cover.
From the start, we wanted to show readers "newcomers," as we called them, and still do, to the Society of Jesus each fall. The idea of running a brief biography of each novice was borrowed from Sports Illustrated's "Faces in the Crowd" feature, where local athletes who might not otherwise get any national attention were pictured and briefly described.
The average age of those joining the Jesuits has risen over the years. The average age of last year's newcomers was 24. Some have not attended Jesuit schools; in a few cases the first Jesuit they met was the vocation director for the province they contacted. Also to note is the influx of young men from other countries. The catalog of U.S. Jesuits now lists thirteen Nguyens among its members, with the oldest in his early 50s.
A happy coincidence of Company's first quarter century was the generalate of Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, SJ. As the first issue was being readied for publication, the Jesuits' 33rd general congregation was electing the group's 29th superior general. When word came that Kolvenbach, 54, had been elected, Schmidt got his photograph from Associated Press—just in time to get it into the first issue. Kolvenbach always encouraged Company; on the occasion of its fifth year, and his fifth year as father general, he wrote in the magazine his praise for "all Jesuits and others seeking to help us in interprovince efforts."
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Fr. Ned Mattimoe, SJ. Company's founding editor, served on staff of the Detroit Province and as principal at Walsh Jesuit High in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. He serves at St. Patrick's Church in Huntington, New York. |
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And what of 1983, now nearly a generation gone? The Soviet Union was very much an operative entity; 1983 was the year that President Reagan introduced "Star Wars" as a projected defense against nuclear attack—a topic enough on Americans' minds that a fictional TV treatment of it, "The Day After," drew an audience of 100 million! Americans were complaining that gasoline had risen to a high of $1.24 a gallon and it was now costing them 20¢ to mail a letter.
Twenty-five years. As the Stage Manager says in Our Town: "Some babies that weren't even born before have begun talking in regular sentences already; a number of people who thought they were right young and spry have noticed they can't bound up a flight of stairs like they used to, without their heart fluttering a little. All that can happen in a thousand days." How much more happens in nine thousand days! Company's first issue introduced readers to a newcomer, John Whitney, then 25. Fr. John Whitney is just finishing his six-year term as the provincial of the Oregon Province.
The greatest change in Company that's taken place since 1983 is that it is available on the Web as well as on paper. Its circulation, right around 125,000, its pass-along readership, and its web viewers constitute a very large audience.
Company has a had a good first 25 years. May it continue to prosper. 