Even after eight years and 100 issues, Sonja Keith and Donna Spears don’t completely feel that they own 501 LIFE.
Oh, they’re listed at the top of the magazine’s masthead, and they split the income. They are also basically the entire paid workforce, along with part-time office manager Dani Hancock. “I make advertising sales calls, Donna covers events; we do it all,” said Keith, whose main roles are writing, photography and editing while Spears directs advertising. But they say a great many others lay claim to some figurative ownership of the community lifestyle monthly.
“Our readers, advertisers and editorial boards all give us suggestions,” Spears said a few weeks ago at the magazine’s comfortable headquarters in downtown Conway. “Those people feel a sense of ownership. They’re our ambassadors.”
Even the title was a community effort. “Well, 501 is the area code,” Spears said, “but even the name came from our editorial board.” The free-distribution glossy, which celebrated its 100th edition this month, originally focused on Faulkner County but now distributes 14,000 to 15,000 copies in 11 counties.
The two women met in the mid-1980s when Spears was an advertising executive and Keith a reporter at Conway’s daily newspaper, the Log Cabin Democrat. In 2008, they were working together again when “a light came on.”
“We thought, why are we doing this for someone else?” Spears said. “I walked straight out that door [from her old job] to a little office we had rented, and we started the prototype of 501 LIFE.”
There was no infusion of capital, no bank loan. “People asked what would we do if it didn’t work,” Spears said. Keith answered: “That wasn’t an option. It was a huge leap of faith, with lots of prayers.”
The concept was a central Arkansas magazine focused outside Little Rock, with a positive outlook on local interests. “We wanted to celebrate life in these counties,” Spears said. “We cover churches, scouting, and people tell us we’re the people’s magazine. Some folks thought we were crazy because this was 2008 when we started, but we knew what we were doing.”
First they assembled a Faulkner County editorial board, made up of decision-makers, contributors and advertisers. “It was eight or 10 people at the time,” Spears said, “and they’re all still on the board.”
After the early Faulkner focus, they added editorial boards in Conway and White counties. Spears said the three boards include “bank presidents, stay-at-home moms, medical people, teachers, real estate professionals, young and mature people, folks into health and fitness, or cooking. Just every walk of life.”
One popular feature in the publication, printed by Magna IV Communications in Little Rock and generally running 80 or 88 pages, is “Loving LIFE.” Readers take photos of themselves with the magazine on vacation and church trips, at class reunions and the like. “It’s been around the world,” Keith said. That sort of engagement, along with smiling faces and uplifting stories, helped it thrive in a tough publishing climate, Spears and Keith say. Success has spawned two newer publications, 501 Kids and 501 Football, as well as weekly electronic newsletters linked to the 501 website.
Content comes largely from local contributors with particular interests, Keith said. She mentioned chef Don Bingham, administrator of the Governor’s Mansion, as a “dear friend and contributor,” and photographer Mike Kemp, formerly of the University of Central Arkansas and now owner of his own studio.
The 100th issue had items on the Sacred Heart Bazaar, a 100th birthday and a feature on antique typewriters.
“Sometimes people in publishing get too focused on what they think people want, rather than asking them what they want,” Keith said. “We work really hard to listen.”
Another key has been attention to local detail. “We were both trained under the eagle eye of Frank E. Robins III,” Spears said, referring to the late Log Cabin Democrat publisher who became a cheerleader for 501 LIFE in his retirement. “We’re sticklers on getting it right, and people appreciate that. We know how to spell Freyaldenhoven and Hambuchen, Siebenmorgen.”
As she mentioned those prominent Conway names, your Outtakes correspondent, who also trained under Robins in the 1980s, realized that he, too, had memorized those spellings.
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