Out (magazine)

Out

Issue #1, Summer 1992
Editor	Aaron Hicklin
Categories	LGBT culture, lifestyle
Frequency	Monthly
Circulation	203,000 (includes digital as well as print)
Publisher	Joe Landry
Year founded	1992
Company	Here Media
Country	United States
Language	English
Website	out.com
ISSN	1062-7928

Out (ISSN 1062-7928) is an LGBT fashion, entertainment, and lifestyle magazine, with the highest circulation of any LGBT monthly publication in the United States. It presents itself in an editorial manner similar to Details, Esquire, and GQ. Out was owned by Robert Hardman of Boston, its original investor, until 2000, when he sold it to LPI Media, which was later acquired by PlanetOut Inc. In 2008, PlanetOut Inc. sold LPI Media to Regent Entertainment Media, Inc., a division of Here Media, which also owns Here TV.

Out was founded by Michael Goff in 1992 as editor in chief and president. The executive editor was Sarah Pettit (since deceased). In 1996, owner Robert Hardman fired Goff and hired Henry E. (Hank) Scott, a former New York Times Co. executive, as president of Out Publishing Inc., with the charge to rescue the financially troubled magazine company. When Scott joined Out, the company had annual revenues of less than $4 million and expenses of $7 million. Scott changed Out's LGBT focus, arguing that gay men and lesbians had little in common other than political and legal issues. He fired Pettit and hired James Collard, editor of Attitude, a gay magazine published in the U.K., to refocus Out on an affluent and style-conscious gay male audience. Audited circulation grew by 67 percent to over 130,000 and the household income of the average Out reader, as measured by MRI, grew from $70,000 a year to $90,000 a year. With the help of Lou Fabrizio, a senior advertising executive whom Scott hired from The New York Times, Out began attracting major fashion advertisers and brands such as Saturn, which previously had not advertised in gay publications. Three years after Scott took control of Out, it had tripled its revenue and become the largest-circulation gay magazine in U.S. history. Those changes positioned the publication for a sale by Hardman to LPI Media in 2000.