By Bruce Klauber
Atlantic City Magazine, The Boardwalk Journal, WHOOT!, Atlantic City Weekly, Atlantic City Boardwalk Illustrated News, and several others, were the forerunners of the magazine you are, hopefully, now reading.
Although those entertainment/leisure/lifestyle-focused publications of past years are now a part of history, all of them made contributions, in their own ways, to the shore’s landscape.
Some lasted for years and some didn’t. Some are fondly remembered and some are simply forgotten, and the whys and wherefores of the reasons for success and reasons for failure are almost impossible to determine. Such is the business of newspapers and magazines. But they all had two things in common: They were all ambitious, and they all had something to say.
Not much is known about a magazine called Atlantic City Boardwalk Illustrated News, except that it was in existence from around 1920 to 1930. It sold for 10 cents, meaning that distribution was likely via newsstands, and it was quite ambitious for its time.
It may have started as a weekly, but in the latter 1920s, it probably became a monthly. Features within the 64-page September 1930 issue, which may have been among the last to be published, included photos of Shipwreck Kelly’s record-setting, 49-day stay atop a flagpole over the Steel Pier; a number of hotel and restaurant ads; and a two-page centerfold ad for the Steel Pier. Geared to tourists – “Send a Copy Home” was the catch line on the cover of each issue – it likely ceased publication because of the Depression.
WHOOT! was a free entertainment weekly which was published from 1974 until 2023. Lew Steiner and his family were the original publishers, and they really took a chance with something like WHOOT! in 1974 given that legalized gambling was still four years away.
It took off post-1978, and its coverage of Atlantic City entertainment, dining, gaming and everything else “leisure” was comprehensive. The listings section was superb and the paper continued to grow. WHOOT! was acquired by Philadelphia’s Review Publishing in 2000, and the name was changed to Atlantic City Weekly.
In 2015, Review got out of the newspaper business and sold it to The Press of Atlantic City’s parent company, BH Media. It was never the same and AC Weekly began a slow, downward spiral which ended in 2023, when BH divested itself of AC Weekly, its sister publication At the Shore, and several other area weeklies.
Shore Local’s own Doug Deutsch was a major and longtime contributor to WHOOT! and he could, no doubt, write volumes about the history, rise and fall of WHOOT!
The Boardwalk Journal was a monthly glossy that billed itself as “The Official Lifestyle Magazine of Atlantic City and the Jersey Shore.” It was founded by local lawyer James J. Leonard around 2009, and it published 60 issues until it suspended publication in July of 2014. The Journal was a free, and quite attractive, monthly which was distributed at area Wawas, supermarkets, casinos and other bulk-drop locations. In the neighborhood of 20,000 copies were printed each month.
In an effort to expand, and attract new advertisers and readers, the magazine entered into a unique, content-sharing partnership with Philly.com, a comprehensive, Delaware Valley news source circa 2010. The idea, said James Leonard, was to “expand the reach of both The Boardwalk Journal brand and our published content beyond the traditional confines of Atlantic City and the Jersey Shore, and take us into the Philadelphia region.”
As innovative as the concept might have been, it just didn’t work. The cover of issue 61, which was never published, featured a piece of art that depicted a Monopoly board on fire. Note: Philly.com will now take you directly to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Award-winning lawyer/entrepreneur/publisher/consultant Frances F. Freedman also jumped into the magazine publishing business at the shore before the first casino opened.
The first issue of Atlantic City Magazine was published in 1977, and those who kept track of such things in those days deemed it a can’t-miss proposition in that the first casino/hotels were on the horizon. Freedman had the smarts, the enthusiasm, and most importantly, the connections to make AC Magazine work.
Philadelphia Magazine’s Alan Halpern, mentor to many journalists, and the man who basically invented the concept of the city magazine with Philadelphia Magazine, was Atlantic City Magazine’s consultant. Halpern knew talent when he saw it, no matter how young they might have been. Noted writer/journalist Lisa DePaulo was one.
“Alan was the reason my career started,” DePaulo recalled. “I was at Penn, about 22 years old, when I heard about Alan Halpern. I knew I wanted to work with him. I applied for an internship and I got it. The first day I was there, he said, ‘You have a lot of talent. I want you to go and walk along the beach today. Interview the lifeguards and give me a story about Atlantic City lifeguards. I gave him the story, and it was the next cover. It was called ‘The Myth of the Atlantic City Lifeguards.’ That’s how brilliant Alan was. But Atlantic City Magazine turned out to be the farm team for Philadelphia Magazine, much to Alan’s chagrin.”
Founder Frances Freedman, whom DePaulo describes as “an amazing woman,” was responsible, in large measure, for the magazine’s success. In the beginning it was difficult. DePaulo remembers that Freedman and her husband, Ted, started it.
“When Frances was 42,” her husband died suddenly of a heart attack. She became a single mother with four kids and a magazine. Instead of doing nothing, she doubled down with the magazine. She did so much to get it distributed. It was her idea to approach the casinos and get them to put the magazine in every hotel room. That was really where the bulk of the circulation was.
“As more casinos came in, they all placed a copy of the magazine in every room. Think about that. It would be in every hotel room; the guests would take it as they left, and then it would be replaced. She had to do a lot to get it on newsstands as well. It was really tricky. Most of them wanted street money. I remember that the staff would walk around and see a newsstand with Atlantic City Magazine somewhere in there. We’d move them all to the front. Frances was remarkable.”
DePaulo stayed about three years before moving on as a member of “the farm team” to Philadelphia Magazine. The final issue of Atlantic City Magazine was published in 1990, ending a 13-year run.
Fortunately, history has proven that those who live at and those who visit the Jersey Shore like to read, and they like to read what is on the printed page. That’s only one reason – and a darn good reason – why Shore Local is here.
