In Like Binn - Interview with Gotham and Hamptons Magazine Publisher Jason Binn

It’s not a new idea in publishing: appeal to a high end demographic and advertisers will follow. Jason Binn and Niche Media, however, have executed it with extraordinary flair. Niche Media’s magazines — Hamptons, Gotham, Boston Common, Capitol File, LA Confidential — cover culture, fashion, society, fine dining, real estate and nightlife. Copies are distributed free (“controlled circulation,” in industry lingo) to readers who are firmly ensconced in the upper crust. Most earn at least $250,000 in household income, own homes valued at more than $1 million and have at least $1 million in liquid assets.

Binn started in publishing in 1993, as one of the founders of Ocean Drive, a Miami magazine where he honed an editorial formula that has proved highly transplantable. In 1996 he took over Hamptons (then 80 pages thick, now a hefty 200), going on to start other glossy city and regional publications. But Niche Media doesn’t just print magazines. It hosts events that are legendary — and score big public relations points. Celebrities like Christie Brinkley, Mariah Carey, Penelope Cruz and Kevin Spacey regularly grace Niche’s parties.

In June, Binn, 39, announced a partnership with Greenspun Media Group, which publishes controlled-circulation luxury magazines in Las Vegas. Ocean Drive Media Group will also be part of the combined entity, which will operate under the Niche Media name. Together the three will put out a total of 16 publications (including Niche’s existing magazines, as well as Ocean Drive, Vegas and others) and employ more than 300 people.

Recently, NY Report editor-in-chief Robert Levin sat down with Jason Binn to talk about Niche Media, its roots and its future.

Beginnings

RL: When did you start Ocean Drive, and was it your first foray into publishing?

JB: I started Ocean Drive a few years out of college, in 1993, at the age of around 24 or 25.

RL: What did you do between college and Ocean Drive?

JB: Out of college, I worked for D’Arcy, Masius, Benton and Bowles advertising agency, in New York. While I was in school, I interned for Hill Holiday [advertising agency]. So I always had this passion for advertising and marketing. And after that I worked for a dress manufacturer called the Warren Group, which a few years later led into moving down to Miami to start Ocean Drive.

RL: How did Ocean Drive get started? You were 24, and you had some advertising experience. But, of course, you’d never done anything like launch a magazine. So how did you get the resources? How did you build a team to put a magazine together?

JB: It was just a great time in Miami. It was really early, before it was as developed as it is today. It had a great buzz factor, and a lot of luxury brands were opening slowly but surely out there, and things were building up. It just was a perfect time. Michael Warren, whom I had worked for, was one of my investors, and he gave us the seed money to help develop it.

How did we put the resources together? It’s going to a lot of meetings with people in the advertising community, the retail community, the luxury community. I had to understand what the clients’ and the readers’ and the consumers’ needs were and familiarize myself with the marketplace of south Florida. I spent about six months to a year down there before the book came out.