HerbalEGram: Volume 5, Number 5, May 2008

Herbs for Health, a consumer magazine focused on medicinal uses of plants, will be re-joined with The Herb Companion, its sister publication from whence Herbs for Health originated, in a redesigned form that will hit newsstands in June 2008.

“The subscription numbers weren’t where we needed them to be and The Herb Companion also had reached a point where newsstand sales weren’t growing,” said KC Compton, Herbs for Health’s Editor-in-Chief (oral communication, May 2, 2008). “We felt the time had come for a redesign and that it made sense at this time to fold Herbs for Health back into The Herb Companion.”

Herbs for Health was originally a section inside The Herb Companion that contained re-written versions of articles from HerbalGram. The intention was to make the more scientifically oriented HerbalGram information more accessible to consumers. Mark Blumenthal, founder and executive director of the American Botanical Council (ABC), and Steven Foster, a well-known herbal author and ABC Board of Trustee member, were involved in this editorial process for the initial project.  They each also served on the Herbs for Health editorial Advisory Board once the section gained enough Herb Companion reader interest to be spun off into its own magazine in 1996.

“The Herb Companion had more to do with horticulture and gardening and cooking and crafting with herbs. The readers who were interested in those pursuits weren’t necessarily interested in medicinal applications,” said Linda Ligon, the original Editor-in-Chief of Herbs for Health (oral communication, May 5, 2008). “At the same time, the medicinal herb industry was burgeoning and needed a magazine that gave editorial support to its products. Starting Herbs for Health was our attempt to satisfy two different camps.”

This consumer magazine focused on easy-to-understand information on using herbs to improve health. However, Compton suggested its subject matter is what made it hard to sustain: “It was such a small slice of the pie that it was hard to make it work on the newsstands,” said Compton explaining that perhaps medicinal herbs was too narrow of a scope and a magazine that covered the multiple uses of herbs would have a wider audience. Uses such as cooking, gardening, and beautifying the home are all included in The Herb Companion. That’s what led Ogden Publications, which publishes the herb magazines in addition to a number of other titles, to the decision to recombine them into one entity, under The Herb Companion title, since that magazine’s scope is more general.

“Our team was looking at where the country is culturally with herbal medicine and I really think the media has scared the general public with negative stories about adverse reactions to things like St. John’s wort and Ephedra,” said Compton. “There’s been a shift away from herbs used for health and though I believe strongly that it will shift back one day, I think now there’s a huge interest in food and gardening.”

But Herbs for Health won’t disappear. It will become its own section again, and medicinal herb information will also be interlaced within the improved Herb Companion which Compton hopes will become a “one-stop shop” for the subject of herbs. The redesigned Herb Companion’s page count will increase with the June/July issue and the plan is that the magazine’s page count will continue to expand as its appeal to readers and advertisers increases. “I’m hoping for a much thicker magazine in the next two or three years,” Compton said. “Our mission has not weakened. It’s just changed direction and focus.”

Herbs for Health readership also won’t be neglected. Those that subscribed solely to Herbs for Health will be supplied with the new Herb Companion for the remainder of their subscription. Those who subscribed to both will have their subscription increased by the number of issues left on their Herbs for Health subscription at no additional cost.

Located in Topeka, Kansas, Ogden Publications, Inc., also publishes Mother Earth News, Utne Reader, Natural Home and Grit rural lifestyles magazine, as well as a number of other smaller publications.