PHOENIX — Arizona Highways magazine, the glossy and iconic publication designed to promote the state as a vacation spot, faces tough times ahead.
The state-owned magazine is operating at a deficit, circulation has dropped by an average of 10 percent in each of the past four years and state lawmakers' raid of its reserve funds has left little financial cushion.
A financial outlook done earlier this year predicts the magazine will be $1 million in debt by 2010, even though Publisher Win Holden has already made steep cuts, including cutting the staff by 45 percent.
Whether the publication faces a withering death, a sale to private enterprise or some sort of rescue remains unclear.
"I believe that, without a change in strategy, the magazine will be dead in five to seven years," said Peter Aleshire, recently replaced as the publication's editor.
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For more than eight decades, the magazine's slick pages have painted the state as a fantasyland of natural beauty, Indian culture and Western lore. Many say the periodical is largely responsible for establishing Arizona's worldwide reputation as a vacation spot and luring millions of visitors each year.
Bob Early, who served as editor before Aleshire, said Arizona Highways is "in a free fall" because it isn't being marketed.
"This magazine brings in hundreds of millions of tourism dollars every year," he added. "And, without it, you'd lose that."
Founded in 1925 by the state Department of Transportation, Arizona Highways is unique because it is state-owned and barred by law from accepting advertising, usually a prime revenue source for magazines.
Because they weren't beholden to advertisers, publishers were able cover offbeat places and people rather than the tourist attractions pushed by clients. The magazine was a pioneer in photography, especially color reproduction, using pictures from some of America's greatest landscape photographers.
Paid circulation peaked in the 1970s with 507,000 subscribers in 50 states and 120 nations. Today, with 182,476 customers, Holden said Arizona Highways is still relatively large for a regional publication. But the trend is down, down, down.
Some of the decline can be blamed on changing lifestyles, the Internet, too little time and too many electric gizmos among potential readers.
Another problem is the aging readership: More than half of the subscribers are 65 or older.
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