From City Sports, a feisty publication out of San Francisco. July 1980.
One column illustrated by the cover of our promotional issue.
Photo of my size-thirteen foot actually splashing a red Nike shoe into a Portland puddle.
Caption: The wet foot on Running‘s promo cover may portend a dousing in the crowded market.
No byline. And another thing, no mention of Running’s Editor & Publisher. – JDW
Don’t look now, folks: a new running magazine is on its way. Just what you always needed right?
This one’s called Running. It’s not new; for years this small Oregon publication has had a reputation as a “thinking man’s running magazine.” Then last April, Nike, the big running shoe manufacturer, bought lock, stock and barrel, and this September it begins bi-monthly publication with a glossy new look and a high-powered staff, aiming to compete with the major running slicks in what already seems to be an overcrowded field.
Runner’s World editor and publisher Bob Anderson has charged that Nike’s purchase of Running was “the major reason” for pulling its advertising from his magazine. (City Sports, June). Nike denies this, of course. But the question still looms: what is a running shoe company doing in the publishing business?
“We felt there was a place for a magazine to serve the desires of the serious runner, as opposed to the beginner,” said public affairs director Tim Renn on the phone from the company’s headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. He added the magazine is mainly shooting for runners “at the top of the heap” and that it could “build goodwill” for the parent company if done well.
The next logical question is, what hand will Nike play in editorial? Renn assured me there will be “complete editorial independence.” Other shoe companies will be asked to advertise, and the only edge given to Nike is a permanent home on the back page. [Nike had already locked in the back cover a year or two earlier. – ed.]
“Running won’t be a house organ,” Renn insisted. “The kind of people we’re trying to appeal to would see right through that and you couldn’t sign the authors we’re going after if that were the case.”
One of the authors on tap for the debut issue is Ken Kesey of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest fame. Also impressive is the presence of running wag Joe Henderson, dubbed “editor at large” of Running. Ironically, the executive editor is Paul Perry, a former managing editor at Runner’s World.
So what sort of magazine will Running be? Hard to say at this point. A singularly unimpressive promotional issue was distributed this spring, and if that’s any indication, Running – and Nike – has a lot to learn about publishing. But perhaps it’s not fair to judge them on something that was evidently thrown together at the last minute.
We’ll just have to wait for the real thing this fall.
Tim Renn was Nike’s first Director of Public Relations. I was his successor.
Found this interesting article Mr. Renn wrote some six years later.
CONFRONTATION FITS NIKE LIKE AN OLD SHOE
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1990-08-19-9003090352-story.html