In 1971, Lute H. Harmon was working in the marketing department of the Illuminating Co., but his mind was toying with an idea, a dream really. And the more he considered it, the more exciting the prospect of creating a city magazine for Cleveland became.
After all, New York, Washington, Philadelphia and other cities had magazines that were thriving. But Cleveland did not have a history of welcoming new ideas. It also had a history of failure of local magazines stretching back to the 1930s.
Today, some 40 years later, Harmon has built a $10 million company that publishes more than 25 titles annually and employs nearly 60 full-time people. It’s one of the most successful entities nationally in the city and regional magazine field.
To honor his efforts, Sam Miller, emeritus co-chairman of Forest City Enterprises, personally asked the panel that selects members to the 16-year-old Northeast Ohio Business Hall of Fame to consider Harmon for induction. It was kept a secret from the recipient.
“It had to be done this way,” Miller says. “Lute is the creator of the Hall of Fame, and there was no way the man would nominate himself. When you look at what he has accomplished, no one can challenge his credentials for membership.”
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LIFE LESSONS
> There hasn’t been a great city ever built that doesn’t have great journalists. If we have good journalists, we will be an exciting, vibrant city. — from his 2006 Press Club of Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame acceptance speech
> Truth, we believe, is elusive and ever changing. — Cleveland Magazine, November 1972
> Why do so many people
complain about Cleveland’s problems, but show so little interest in coming to grips with them? — Cleveland Magazine, October 1977
> The future of the city
and the future of the schools are interwoven; unless we move to rebuild the educational structures our efforts in other areas are pointless. — Cleveland Magazine, March 1980
> Freedom of the press
means different things to different people. To some — too many — it means the right to run roughshod over the lives of persons who have earned the sometimes unfortunate label of “newsworthy.” To others — not nearly enough others — it means the responsibility to investigate and relate significant stories about significant people and events. — Cleveland Magazine, January 1981
> I’m a sucker for wisdom
sayings. — Inside Business, April 2006
> If I hear one more local politician tell me
“the glass is half full” I am going to dump a pitcher of water over his or her head. The glass is not half full in Cleveland. Rather, there are two glasses: one for the city, which is about one-quarter full, and another for the suburbs, about three-quarters full. — Inside Business, April 2006
> I have never met
an entrepreneur who was a crook. My observation of entrepreneurs is that they are too scared to be crooks. They are afraid a competitor will catch them, a new idea will flop or the money will run dry. They care too much about their businesses to be crooks. — Inside Business, July/Aug. 2010
> My finest hour in sales
— more precisely, my finest two minutes — was the elevator pitch I used to snag a date with the woman who became my wife. — Inside Business, March 2009
> Cleveland needs to move
Burke Lakefront Airport and build a lakefront that matches the reality of Cleveland as a world-class city prepared to compete in the global economy. — Inside Business, May/June 2011
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Lute Harmon always had a special interest in the city and in publishing.
But the Rocky River native heard another calling first, studying religion at Boston University with aspirations of the ministry. The sheaf of sermons he delivered in Boston earned him an interview and, eventually, a job as a copy boy at The Cleveland Press, where he worked his way up to assistant makeup editor before he joined the utility company.
The 1970s in Cleveland were dominated by the two daily newspapers, The Cleveland Press and The Plain Dealer. They did not look kindly on any competitor who might challenge the market for advertising dollars.
But Harmon, 32 at the time, was a man of exuberance, charm and boundless optimism. These qualities would serve him well, for the path to his dream would be littered with all variety of doubt and obstacle.
Initially, Harmon thought a magazine could be published in the evening and on the weekends. As the project transformed from vision to reality, however, it became obvious that the venture would require his full attention and the inherent risk that went with giving up a good job for a dream.
“We need to give readers in Cleveland something that they can’t get elsewhere,” Harmon would say of the editorial mission of his proposed magazine.
Harmon pitched everyone who would listen and found a man who shared his enthusiasm for the effort and the city as well. Oliver F. Emerson, owner of Emerson Press, a high-end printing company, met Harmon for lunch to hear his vision.
“I think it’s a great idea,” Emerson told him. “Do you have a business plan?”
“Mr. Emerson,” Harmon replied. “I have no idea what a business plan is.”
Together the two men set out to raise the needed capital. At the Union Club, Emerson assembled about 25 investors, mostly prominent Clevelanders who felt a magazine would energize the city and give it another voice. They initially raised about $200,000.
Working in three small, dusty rooms above Emerson Press, Harmon put together a skeletal staff that produced the first issue of Cleveland Magazine in April 1972, which featured a young city councilman named Dennis Kucinich who proclaimed he would run for the presidency of the United States.
“We don’t think the way to make the magazine interesting is to tell what’s right and beautiful about Cleveland and forget that it’s a slum-ridden, financially poor, ethnically divided city filled with stubborn people, none of whom seem to know all — or even very many of the answers,” he wrote in that first issue.
And while the approach may have caused consternation among some, especially at cocktail parties he attended, the magazine was a hit. The first issue was a near sellout on newsstands within two days of its release.
In its first year, Harmon had consistently increased advertising pages and could boast of 15,000 paid readers. Realizing that the magazine could only limp along with limited personnel, Harmon convinced the investors that he needed a full-time, experienced staff to propel the company’s growth. They added to their investment, which totaled $500,000.
He began to hire veteran journalists from the newspapers, emphasized the first real restaurant reviews in the city and urged the editorial staff to challenge the dailies in covering the city’s major stories with analysis and in-depth reporting.
With the mob still quite active in the city, Cleveland Magazine devoted considerable effort in covering its activities, an endeavor that brought Harmon more than one invitation to Murray Hill, where he explained there was nothing personal about the stories of shootings or the bad reviews of restaurants.
“All entrepreneurs have an idea,” Harmon recalled in the magazine’s 30th anniversary issue, “and they really believe in that idea.”
Harmon’s vision and enterprise was rewarded. The magazine picked up momentum on the business side and as an independent and alternative voice.
Harvard University’s Neiman Foundation named Cleveland Magazine one of the top five city magazines in the country. The National Observer devoted a Page One story to city magazines, featuring Cleveland Magazine as a successful example of the genre. The Washington Post lauded the magazine for breaking the first story on the discovery of post-traumatic stress disorder.
By 1977, the magazine was profitable. In a column marking its fifth anniversary, Harmon proclaimed: “If this much-maligned metropolis is indeed dead, as some people still insist, you couldn’t tell it by Cleveland Magazine. One look at this month’s entertainment listings will put the lie to the old myth that there is nothing to do in Cleveland. And one look at the new subscriptions — and renewals — arriving in the mail every day will put to rest the myth that Clevelanders are dead above the ears.”
Returns were so encouraging that Harmon was eager to expand. What beckoned was a city without a magazine: Detroit.
Harmon had been eyeing the Motor City market since 1976 and was convinced that its size might even make for a much more successful publication. Thus, he began another round of talks with investors, raising $400,000 with the goal of publishing the first issue of Monthly Detroit in April 1978.
In its first 18 months, Monthly Detroit captured both circulation and journalistic accolades. It appeared on its way to matching Cleveland’s success.
Some investors began to urge a more aggressive business approach by seeking out other city magazine opportunities. By 1981, the company started a magazine in Tampa and acquired Milwaukee Magazine.
Just when it seemed the company was about to consolidate its growth, the country was struck by an economic recession that saw the prime interest rate soar to more than 20 percent. With $200,000 in debt service looming, the company’s board elected to seek buyers for some of the magazines in summer 1982.
These were trying times for Harmon. The lingering effects of the recession would likely stifle the company’s growth even after it sold the out-of-town magazines. So with a national reputation in the city magazine business, Harmon left in 1983 to be publisher of Houston City in Texas.
But whether in Cleveland or Houston, the world of city magazines was changing, and new business models were paramount. Houston City struggled during Harmon’s tenure, and though he attempted to raise money to purchase the magazine, it eventually folded in April 1987.
Harmon returned to Cleveland in 1988 as vice president of marketing for Sun Newspapers. He spent three years there with the creative flexibility to try new ideas for additional revenue streams.
In July 1991, Ollie Emerson lured Harmon back to Cleveland Magazine. The magazine had been through some difficult times with management changes and diminishing revenues. It was desperately in need of new directions in order to survive.
Returning to Cleveland Magazine, he christened a new company, Great Lakes Publishing. Though the magazine medium remained viable, its focus could no longer be general. So Harmon added advertising sections targeted toward specific audiences and custom publishing projects for businesses and organizations to create additional revenue.
“The magazine is a whole business, not just a finished product,” Harmon said in an interview with Debbie Hanson of Clevelandseniors.com. “It’s never been about the money; it’s always about the product, but we need the entire business to make the product the quality magazine it is.”
Harmon’s change was aided by his consummate sales skills.
“I’ve been doing business with Lute since I came to town in 1997,” says Jared Chaney, chief marketing and communications officer of Medical Mutual of Ohio. “The man is contagious in his manner and outrageous in his optimism. No one is more passionate about Cleveland than Harmon.”
When he wrote about the city, it was as though he were talking about himself. “In the worst of times, there were people with vision getting ready to put their hearts and wallets into new projects,” he said in the magazine’s 20th anniversary issue. “Cleveland wasn’t just a city on the rebound. It was a city leading the charge.”
Over time, Harmon bought out many of the original investors and established a multimillion-dollar company that launched Inside Business in 1994, purchased Ohio Magazine in 2002 and acquired Lake Erie Living in 2009.
He and his wife, Sue, became majority owners of the company. “Every decision I ever made was made with her input and help,” Harmon told Clevelandseniors.com.
In recent years, he has turned the day-to-day operation of the company over to his son Lute Jr., 40, and established a magazine in Cincinnati with his son Eric, 37.
Harmon remains active in the company as chairman of the board, developing new projects, and is involved behind the scenes in civic matters. His role in the embryonic beginnings of government reform went largely unpublicized.
He used his monthly column in Inside Business to urge engagement, prod civic leaders and effect change.
“In order to improve our quality of life, we must take giant steps,” he said in a 1997 column. “Half measures will leave us no better than we are today.”
His efforts united suburban mayors for early discussions on reform and helped create Citizens for Cuyahoga Success, which worked at a grass-roots level. He arranged for the presentation of the charter by attorney Eugene Kramer that was finally adopted by voters in 2010 bringing a new government.
Sam Miller credits Harmon with organizing the framework around which the political efforts came to fruition, resulting in the first major reform of government in Cuyahoga County in 200 years.
“A lot of people in this town sat and did nothing while we were falling further and further behind as a community,” Miller says. “Lute stepped up and lit the fuse that led to people getting off their chairs and doing something about the future.”
Harmon Timeline
1972: Along with Oliver F. Emerson, owner of Emerson Press, Harmon meets with about 25 investors to raise money to launch Cleveland Magazine, which debuts in April with Dennis Kucinich on the cover.
1973: Michael D. Roberts, former city editor of The Plain Dealer, is hired. He serves as editor of the magazine for 17 years.
1977: Cleveland Magazine celebrates its fifth anniversary. “The fact that we’ve lasted five years — through some pretty depressing economic times, I might add — and grown to boot is proof we were on the right track.”
1978: City Magazines Inc., as the company was known, launches Monthly Detroit.
1981: Cleveland Magazine publishes its first custom insert, a 12-page report by Prescott, Ball & Turben Inc. The company also owns publications in Tampa and Milwaukee.
1983: Harmon leaves Cleveland to be publisher of Houston City in Texas.
1986: After three years as publisher of Houston City, he attempts to raise capital to purchase the magazine from its parent company, Southwest Media. When the magazine folds in April 1987, Harmon proposes a new magazine targeted at those 50 and older titled Prime.
1988: Comes back to Cleveland as vice president of marketing for Sun Newspapers.
1991: Returns to Cleveland Magazine as publisher. “It is with joy and anticipation that I return to the magazine at this time in Cleveland’s history. This is not a city about to happen. It’s happening,” he wrote in his return column.
1994: Inside Business debuts as a section in Cleveland Magazine.
1995: Lute Harmon Jr. becomes advertising director of Inside Business. “We never expected it to turn into a family business,” Harmon told Debbie Hanson of Clevelandseniors.com.
1996: Establishes the Cleveland Business Hall of Fame to coincide with the city’s bicentennial.
2000: Great Lakes Publishing Co., as it is now known, purchases Ohio Magazine from the Columbus Dispatch Publishing Co.
2004: Cincy Business debuts in Cincinnati.
2005: Harmon takes over as editor of Inside Business.
2007: Lute Harmon Jr. is named president of Great Lakes Publishing.
2007: Sam Miller’s keynote address at the NEO Success Awards places Cleveland at its lowest point in its 211-year history and challenges the crowd to enact change. It spurs Harmon to begin meetings on government reform.
2009: Great Lakes Publishing Co. acquires Lake Erie Living and Over the Back Fence.