Glens Falls Chronicle Serving the Glens Falls/Lake George region; Warren, Washington and northern Saratoga counties since 1980
By Cathy DeDe, Chronicle Managing Editor
In 2020 Queensbury native Mike Rogge bought a storied but defunct magazine called Mountain Gazette for $5,000.
Six years later it’s nominated for a prestigious National Magazine Award in the category of Feature Writing vs. industry heavyweights The New Yorker, New York, The Atlantic and Harper’s, plus Texas Monthy and a specialty medical mag called STAT.
The American Society of Magazine Editors awards will be presented at a gala in New York City on May 19.
Mountain Gazette is nominated for a story called “The Bear Suit,” by freelance writer Owen Long about a man’s lifelong quixotic quest to design wearable armor “able to withstand a charging grizzly,” says the subtitle.
Mike, Queensbury class of 2004, lives now in Lake Tahoe, California with his wife (and company vice-president) Meghan and their children.
He began his journalism pursuit as an intern here at The Chronicle. A self-described hard-working/hard-playing ski “bum,” he has been pursuing a career covering outdoor sports all his adult life.
The oversize 11-by-17-inch magazine publishes two 192-page issues a year. It charges $80 for an annual subscription. It’s in print only, no online edition.
“My expectation,” says Mike, “was maybe we get 800 to 1,000 subscribers in the first couple of years. It’ll be like a really arduous book club project, a little community project. It took off pretty immediately. The business was profitable in its third week.”
He says they now have 33,000 subscribers and that their staff of four at the time of the magazine award nomination has grown to a dozen, with more than 120 freelance contributors “from around the world,” among them the comedian-author-musician Steve Martin. (See cartoon sidebar.)
Mountain Gazette is defiantly print only. They are evangelists for the message — “Print Ain’t Dead.”
It was the title of their 60th anniversary anthology and the cheeky assertion repeats on much MG merch.
“We call it the grammatical nightmare t-shirt,” Mike laughs.
Mike says, “We’re the only [nominated] publication with a single ownership, and the only one that does not have a URL to the story, because we don’t publish digitally — which I learned from Mark Frost at The Chronicle.” (The Chronicle does have both print and digital editions now.)
Mountain Gazette prospers on paid subscriptions. “Advertising is less than 10% of our revenue,” says Mike. “We think of our advertisers as partners. “
The magazine was founded in 1966. Over time it had several, “maybe a dozen” owners.
“It died in 2012,” Mike says. He became interested and approached the most recent owner, Blake DeMaso
“He wanted $50,000 for it.”
After six months of discussions, they met one morning at a bar in Denver, during an outdoors trade show.
“I put a personal check in an envelope I picked up from my hotel lobby, and wrote what I could afford, which was $5,000, and I slid it across the table, like in a movie. He looked at it and said, ‘If this check doesn’t bounce, it’s yours.’”
Mike said they wrote the bill of sale on a napkin and celebrated over Coors beers.
Now, Mike owned dozens of boxes of back issues. “It was a perfect pandemic project to go through the history, to learn that Hunter S. Thompson had written for the magazine. (Environmental activist) Edward Abbey was workshopping the Monkey Wrench Gang on pages of Mountain Gazette. Tom Benton, an early artist, designed the first Earth Day poster.”
Mike says that “aside from maybe a couple corporate owners in the 2000s,” individual entrepreneurs like the founder Mike Moore owned Mountain Gazette.
“They just felt like it was worth having this, but they didn’t know exactly how to position it.”
Mike obviously did know.
“I felt that, if we found the right stories and they were great enough, people would pay for them. We could be transparent with our readers, say we’re going to charge this much money and we’re going to use that money to pay incredible writers, photographers, artists. And since you paid for it, we promise we’ll never give it away for free.”
Six years into it, Mike says, “We’re one of the largest independent magazines in North America.”
GF’s John Coleman is the art director
After Mike Rogge bought the Mountain Gazette in 2020, he says, “John Coleman was the first person I called” — to become its Art Director.
Mike and John, who lives in Glens Falls and works remotely like other Mountain Gazette contributors, are lifelong friends, starting as players on opposing Little League teams, then sharing into adulthood a passion for skiing.
John, formerly of the Post-Star, Finch Paper and Trampoline Design, is a freelance graphic designer, gig singer-songwriter-guitarist, and avid skier too.
Mountain Gazette is about 30-40% of his current work. “As it’s grown, I’ve grown with it,” John says.
He started by designing mock cover proofs as Mike was shopping the revived magazine around.
“That quickly evolved into, Hey, we have stories coming in. Why don’t you just lay out and design the whole issue?”
“We have something pretty special here,” John says. “I’m excited to be involved with the team. It’s a small team, but we all play big roles.”
“Just working here in Glens Falls, it’s opened up these opportunities. It’s cool to work coast to coast with people that are absolutely the best in outdoor industry, the best photographers, the best writers.”
“I’ve gotten several clients through the magazine,” but Mike has top priority, he says. He says, “Mike’s been incredible, bringing me along for the ride here.”
“I think Mike is born with sense of confidence in what he does. He just knew that he would have the connections, wherewithal and experience to get this thing to where his expectations are.
“He has a very high expectation for being authentic.” Regarding any work at hand, John quotes his friend and editor. “He says often, ‘I don’t want to just do this, I want to do it right.’”
How Steve Martin came to write for Mountain Gazette
Mike Rogge brought in cartoonist Harry Bliss of Burlington, Vt. as a Mountain Gazette contributor, after following Bliss on Instagram.
One summer, when Mike was east, visiting from his new home in Lake Tahoe, he took the drive to have coffee with Mr. Bliss.
“At the end he goes, ‘I’d like to introduce you to my partner, Steve Martin’,” as in the famed comedian, writer, musician.
Mike says he asked Mr. Bliss, why?
“I met you and realized, you’re not some crazy kook,” he replied.
Mr. Bliss, who does the drawing, and Mr. Martin, who writes the text, already create one-panel cartoons for The New Yorker.
For Mountain Gazette, they’ve done several multi-page full color stories.
“What I like about Steve is he loves to work,” Mike says. He said that Mr. Martin, stepping off the set from doing his monologue to open Saturday Night Live’s live-broadcast 50th anniversary show, emailed Mike with a cartoon story idea.
“I think all creative people like a good canvas, and that’s what we provide for them,” Mike says. — Cathy DeDe
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