Yankee Magazine, the publication that continues to be, in words penned by founder Robb Sagendorph in 1935, “for Yankee readers, by Yankee writers, and about Yankeedom,” turns 75 this year.

That phrase has seen the magazine through periods of growth — both agonizingly slow and dangerously fast — as well as times of debt and downsizing. Today, in a difficult time for print publishing, Sagendorph’s vision for Yankee is still used as its guiding light.

The concept was crystallized in Sagendorph’s introductory essay to the first issue of the magazine, published in September of 1935, in which he describes the condition of The Yankee.

“He sees himself, his sons and daughters, hungry, on the edge of a civilization which demands mass production, mass distribution, mass advertising, and mass almost-everything-you-can-think-of. He sees individuality, initiative, natural ingenuity — the things he and his fathers and their fathers fought for — about to be sold, to be ‘swallered inter’ a sea of chain stores, national releases, and nation-wide hookups.”

These words are familiar. They are the very reasons doomed businesses cite today for their undoing.

And yet Yankee has endured, stubborn as the persona it celebrates.

Yankeedom

Jamie Trowbridge, Sagendorph’s grandson and current president of Yankee, is quick to point out that distaste for the homogenization that threatens New England’s unique character has always fueled interest in the magazine.

“What made Yankee successful then, and what continues to make it successful, is the way we celebrate the people and scenery and what truly makes New England distinct from the rest of the country,” Trowbridge says.

And what does make it distinct? Trowbridge lists a number of traits, including compact geography, individualism, appreciation of history and the feeling of being pitted against the elements. But none of these is unique to New England, he says. It is their combination, along with something indefinable, that characterizes the region.

“We attempted every month to capture that New England culture,” says Jud Hale, Yankee’s editor-in-chief. “Sometimes we came close, sometimes we missed, but that was always the goal.”

It sounds like a serious undertaking, but it isn’t. Hale and the others at the magazine say that an important part of Yankee is not taking oneself too seriously.

“New England humor is part of our image,” Hale says. “I want us all to be ready to laugh at ourselves with affection.”

Hale, Sagendorph’s nephew, joined Yankee in 1958 as a way to get a foot in the door in the publishing industry. He never intended to stay longer than six months, and 52 years later he is still with the company. He became the magazine’s editor in 1970 and continued in that position for 30 years.

Now Mel Allen is editor. Hale says writers often came to him with 15 or 20 ideas, of which one or two were any good, and maybe none. When Allen first came to him in 1977, Hale not only wanted every single idea Allen pitched, but he wanted Allen himself to work for the magazine. Two years later, Allen was hired.

Allen considers Hale a mentor and has devoted himself to Sagendorph’s vision of the magazine since he started.

In Allen’s mind, the magazine blends storytelling with reality. Because New England is so compact, Yankee readers from all over the six-state region can travel to the places written up in the magazine in just a few hours and investigate for themselves.

“Yankee is filled with stories; it has never not been filled with stories,” Allen says. “The stories are of people tied to a place, and you can, as a reader, see a photo of a man holding a fish, and then you can go see him and talk to him. There is a link between the photos and stories in the magazine to the way people live.”

The stories Allen shies away from are what he calls the ubiquitous ones, stories about top doctors or schools, or stories about fads and celebrities.

“We’ve endured for 75 years because we never lost our focus,” Allen says. “We’ve concentrated on people who have deep roots in the region.”

For Yankee readers

Throughout the years, the magazine has been defined by the people within its pages, but also by its loyal readers. Again, words from Sagendorph’s essay were to become prophetic:

“If he doesn’t behave, ‘tan his hide,’” he wrote of the magazine. “Give him your care, your interest, your heart, and you’ll be repaid over and over.”

Yankee began with 614 subscribers, 600 of which had been purchased from a fraudulent Boston-based agency that picked random names out of a phonebook. Hale smiles as he says that, early on, he made up interesting reader letters because the magazine did not receive enough. All that has changed.

Allen says he is amazed at Yankee’s loyal readership, having received letters from people remembering stories from 20 years ago. He has heard of other readers wallpapering their houses with Yankee covers.

Readers are mostly from New England, but some are not. Allen says he receives letters and e-mails from subscribers saying that they’ve only been to the region once, but they subscribe because they love New England.

Edie Clark, who writes “Mary’s Farm,” one of Yankee’s most popular columns, says that some subscribe from far away because they were born in New England, but others don’t have any connection to the region at all. In fact, they have never even visited.

For years, Clark received letters from a woman in New Orleans who read the magazine and wanted to see New England before she died, though she never did.

“I think there is a longing for innocence that exists in the entire country,” says Clark. “New England has homogenized places, but it has a lot of landscape left where it could be 300 years ago. It’s kind of a soothing exercise to be able to just drive cars along a dirt road and feel some sense of peace that there is this simplicity remaining.”

Readers often write positive letters, but there are also letters criticizing the publication, particularly for changing its ways.

In 2007, the magazine switched from a longstanding 6x9 format to a larger, more standard format, a change that was put off for about 10 years. Trowbridge says the change was important to creating a greater visual impact for the magazine, and the reluctance to do it was largely due to fear of upsetting the readers resistant to change.

“That’s one of those New England characteristics we celebrate,” Trowbridge says. “It’s the joke, ‘How many Yankees does it take to change a light bulb? Two: one to change it and the other to talk about how good the old one was.’ ”

In the month after the change, Yankee received more than 3,000 contacts, most of which amounted to “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Yankee answered these letters asking readers to give the new format a chance. One explanation that seemed to help allay concerns was telling readership that the new format was actually the original format used in 1935.

“They like authenticity,” Trowbridge says. “When we said we were actually going back to the beginning, that was fine with them.”

By Yankee writers

Sagendorph’s essay promised that the magazine would contain up-to-the-minute articles, features, fiction and poetry.

“It has its great heritage and Yankee has its present and its future, too... memories of days gone by at times, and at other times the days in which he lives,” he wrote.

For Allen, an ideal story for Yankee would contain heart, emotion, ideas, a sense of place and hopefully humor. And it can’t just be trendy.

“The best Yankee stories for me can be read 10 years from now and still resonate with the reader,” Allen says.

One he recalls as among the 10 most memorable he ever read was of a Massachusetts logger who went out in the woods by himself with his chainsaw. A tree he cut fell the wrong way, pinning his leg. The temperature was cold and the angle he was at wouldn’t let him saw into the tree. He knew he could die of hypothermia, so he sawed off his own leg, crawled out and lived.

“What he represented was endurance and not giving in against impossible odds,” Allen says. “It was a heck of a story.”

Celebrated writers including Stephen King, Robert Frost, Donald Hall and John Updike have written pieces for Yankee. Currently, Bill McKibben, a leading environmental writer, is writing them a four-part series called “How New England Can Change the World.”

Clark has written for Yankee for 32 years, and is in the process of putting together a collection of her articles for the magazine. What strikes her again and again reading through the old pieces is how genuine and profound the simplest of people can be.

All of the people Clark profiled had a passion that drove them and that satisfied them, and in writing about them, Clark felt satisfied, too.

“To write a decent piece for Yankee, you just have to focus on the subject at hand,” Clark says. “The person or subject will unfold and become right for the piece. The pieces that define Yankee are the ones that totally focus on something unique to the region, and usually that’s the people.”

Until 2002, Yankee contained fiction, poetry and straight history. According to Trowbridge, that stopped as a part of a change in emphasis from entertainment to inspiration, an industry-wide trend.

Reader surveys indicated that they wanted more photos, more places and more recipes, which were the most popular hits on the magazine’s website. Allen likened the situation to having only one suitcase to take on a long trip, and needing to pack it with essential items. The departments emphasized were food, home and travel.

“Those were really tough decisions to make,” Trowbridge says. “History is important to New England, and New England has the strongest literary history you could imagine. The deal we made was to continue to talk about history by infusing it into all of the stories of the magazine. It was a tradeoff we felt we had to make based on changing consumer taste.”

Some readers were upset at the change, as was Clark, who spent 17 years as Yankee’s fiction editor. Fiction and poetry do not bring in advertising dollars, but they had always been a part of the magazine’s history.

“To do away with that I thought was short-sighted,” Clark says. “The number of pages it took up were minimal compared to the enjoyment I heard about. I’m a die-hard for literature, and I loved that Yankee had that.”

The Farmer’s Almanac

Apart from the magazine, Yankee’s main brand has been the Old Farmer’s Almanac, which has driven a majority of the revenue for the company.

“I’m enormously proud of the 55 employees that publish Yankee and The Old Farmer’s Almanac,” Trowbridge says. “It’s not just the 75th anniversary of the magazine, it is the 75th anniversary of this company, and half of what we do here is the Old Farmer’s Almanac.”

Purchased in 1939, just a few years after the magazine was started, the Almanac turned 200 in 1992, and remains the oldest continuing publication in America. It was started by Robert B. Thomas, whose motto “useful, with a pleasant degree of humor” is still on the cover today.

The Almanac was popular before Yankee took over. In 1815, a volcanic eruption caused a cooling in the atmosphere that led to what was later called the “summer of no summer.” The Almanac’s long-term weather forecast predicted snow in July that year, long before anyone knew what would happen, and the Almanac rose in fame.

At one point, an oversight caused Sagendorph to omit the weather forecasts from the Almanac, but a major shift occurred when he devoted more energy to the weather formula, which has to do with the positioning of sunspots. Sagendorph decided to have outside scientists and serious examination be a part of the long-term forecast.

“We watch what’s going on and we do very well,” says Sherin Pierce, publisher of the Old Farmer’s Almanac. “It’s a combination of science and folklore.”

The formula is used to predict weather 18 months in advance.

To give advice, one must be humble to resonate with people. That is how the Farmer’s Almanac functions, according to Pierce.

“We poke fun at others, but more often poke fun at ourselves,” Pierce says. “People are far more apt to listen when you use a sense of humor. The advice is always practical, useful and not esoteric stuff.”

Even the way in which the Almanac is sold is practical. It fits on supermarket shelves and has a hole punched into it so it can hang from display racks. Even in the age of the Internet, the Almanac is present and available online and in print.

“A lot of magazines have had to cut back, but something about the Almanac, the magic and the resilience, that keeps it going,” Pierce says. “We find new and better ways to keep selling it. Anywhere a magazine or book can be sold, you can find the Almanac.”

A congenial home

Almost from the beginning, Yankee has been located exactly where it is today — in the center of Dublin. Formerly produced out of a rented room behind the post office, Yankee now encompasses the entire three-story building as well as an adjacent building.

“It has been left on New Hampshire’s doorstep because we know it will find a congenial home there,” Sagendorph wrote in his essay. “In that environment, it can not fail to become typical of the great culture and heritage out of which it has been born.”

Walk into Yankee’s headquarters or call its phone and the person you will most likely encounter is Linda Clukay, who has worked for Yankee for 43 years.

“Yankee Publishing, how can I direct your call?” she says, smooth as silk, when she answers the phone.

She takes her role as Yankee’s first impression seriously, maintaining a professional standard, but also has fun with it.

“People who come in here mostly are predisposed to like us and so they always come in happy,” Clukay says. “Even the people who are upset with something like the magazine.”

Clukay has had eight or so jobs with Yankee over the years and has stuck around because she loves both the work and the area.

“If Yankee was in Boston or Portsmouth it would be different than what it is,” Clukay says. “The Monadnock area is beautiful in so many ways, and beautiful at all times of the year. It is not always an easy or comfortable place to live, so it kind of tests your mettle a bit, but it’s a special place, too.”

Clukay originally hailed from Maryland, Clark is from New Jersey, Allen and Hale are also from away. All of them stuck with the Monadnock region.

To Hale, Dublin is the perfect place for the magazine, special and centrally located in New England.

“Dublin was an art colony, Mark Twain used to come here and there is the Abbot Thayer house,” Hale says. “Dublin has a certain sophistication about it, and coupled with being a small New England town, it’s the perfect combination.”

Every so often, someone suggests that it is hard to hire people who want to live in the area, Hale says. They question how to get people to move from New York City to live in a town Dublin’s size.

“I’m not sure they’d be right for our magazine if they didn’t want to live here,” Hale says.

Allen describes the Monadnock region as a perfect microcosm of New England. In fact, he often has to steer clear of stories about the region for fear of overloading Yankee with them.

“It’s home; that’s how I define it,” Allen says. “Few magazines in the country have the longevity of staff we do and I believe that’s because of the Monadnock region.”

Trowbridge has always called the area home and the business has always been his family’s business. Rob Trowbridge, his father, and Sagendorph, his grandfather, both ran the company before him.

“Every day I feel that coming into this building,” Trowbridge says. “I feel the history not just of my grandfather and parents, but of all the employees who have worked here over time.”

Its great heritage

Sagendorph knew that starting Yankee was going to be an uphill battle, and wrapped up his essay with a plea.

“Above all, see that he makes friends and does everything he can to keep them. His future more or less depends on them.”

The first 25 years of the magazine’s history were spent slowly and patiently building circulation. Sagendorph’s family lived off of his wife Trix’s family wealth in the early days, and in the 1940s, he was recruited to serve in the Bureau of Censorship in New York.

With the hires of Hale in 1958 and Jamie Trowbridge’s father Rob Trowbridge, who was Sagendorph’s son-in-law, in 1964, the magazine took off, increasing its paid subscriptions from 40,000 to 400,000.

Sagendorph died of cancer in 1970, shortly after appointing Hale editor and Trowbridge publisher. “But don’t grow the company any more, boys,” he said. When they asked why not, he replied, “The plumbing won’t take it.”

They spent the next 18 years going against his advice, raising editorial standards, switching the magazine to color printing, making hires and purchasing other publications. Its paid circulation rose to close to 1 million in the mid-1980s, but by the end of the decade, the company was in debt and had to return to its two basic brands — Yankee Magazine and The Old Farmer’s Almanac.

Linda Clukay, who was then working in the books division, was laid off during that time. The books division was sold, but Clukay was asked to return as the front-desk receptionist.

“It was hard to see so many people leave,” Clukay says. “I was losing people all through the summer and saying goodbye a lot.”

Clukay was glad that Yankee was responsible about the layoffs, automatically registering its employees with unemployment and scheduling counseling. Some were able to walk right into other jobs.

In the 1990s, the magazine was managed for profitability for the first time to try to get out of debt. At the same time, trends in the magazine industry favoring national over regional advertising worked against them.

“It’s always been fun,” Hale says. “Even when we were in debt in the late ’80s and looking at dark days ahead, I don’t know why but it was fun, even though we were serious about getting out of that situation.”

On the eve of the new millennium, Jamie Trowbridge was appointed president. The company established websites, winning online awards in 2005 and 2007.

Mel Allen was appointed editor in 2007,
the same year the magazine switched from monthly to bimonthly and to its larger
format.

Its present and its future, too

This year’s September/October issue will be Yankee’s official 75th anniversary edition, containing features such as the top 25 foliage experiences in New England and the 75 things every New Englander should do.

But readers can participate in the 75th anniversary well before then. For the whole year, at archive.yankeemagazine.com, there will be posts every weekday of Yankee favorites, which appeared in the magazine over the year. Each day has a different topic — Monday, adventure; Tuesday, history; Wednesday, food; Thursday, people; and Friday, three-minute reads.

The site also features video of “Jud’s Journal” read by Hale and a collection of old covers, six more of which are added each month. In a section of the site called “Memories” are the stories of Hale’s first day and of Clark’s 32-year Yankee career.

But while Yankee celebrates its 75th year, thoughts of its future are not far away. Trowbridge believes many readers will begin gradually reading more on electronic devices such as iPads. Trowbridge sees benefits to this — including more photos from travel shoots; being able to include audio to complement a story about a musician; video demonstrations of techniques for preparing food — to name a few.

“We’re excited about the changes that are happening, but it’s a very precarious time because the industry is changing very rapidly,” Trowbridge says. “The real question is how we get our business from here to there.”

Trowbridge says Yankee will continue to offer the print version of the magazine as long as there is a market for it.

On the editorial side, Hale and Allen both say that the way people receive the information will change, but the essence of what makes up Yankee Magazine will not. Allen says he still expects Yankee will have great stories and great photography when the magazine reaches its 100th anniversary.

“I’m hoping that whoever is the editor then will love New England, because you can’t do it without loving New England,” Allen says. “I hope the editor will want to know where to go, what to do, what to see and want to go deeper than just that day’s events.”

For Allen, the first magazines were cavemen drawing on the walls, and he does not think that storytelling will ever end.

Clark’s experience working for the magazine showed her how relevant it was and yet how much of a respite it offered its readers.

“It’s more or less a happy magazine, and I don’t mean that in a frivolous sense,” Clark says. “You can believe there’s a lot of good out there when you read Yankee, and I think the country needs that.”

By focusing on the never-ending supply of worthy and interesting subjects, Clark thinks the magazine could continue forever.

Ultimately, it is Sagendorph’s vision of Yankee’s role that has sustained the publication. All agreed that his words, now 75 years old, defined the magazine’s focus and would be its beacon for times to come.

“His destiny is the expression and perhaps, indirectly, the preservation of that great culture in which every Yank was born and by which every real Yank must live.”