The scantily clad women were supposed to save the magazine, but in the end, even they couldn't do it.
Yolk, a pop culture magazine for Asian Americans, has folded after 10 years of scrambling to stay alive. The editors tried everything during the magazine's 31-issue run. They tried humorous articles and serious pieces. And finally, hearing the death rattle, they tried sex, adopting the photo-laden formula of racy men's magazines such as Maxim and FHM.
But the periodical never turned a profit, and now the Alhambra-based Yolk is the latest in a line of Asian American publications to fold. Like others before it, the magazine, which reached a circulation high of 50,000 in 2000, had trouble convincing advertisers about the worth of its readers: English-fluent, college-educated Asian Americans coming from vastly different cultures.
Jade, one of the first Asian American magazines, started in 1974 and lasted 13 years until a dearth of advertising killed it. New York-based A magazine lived 12 years and finally turned a profit in its 10th year with a circulation high of 200,000, said founder Jeff Yang. It went under in 2001 as the economy hit the skids.
Yolk was supposed to be different. Its focus was on young Asian Americans, a generation often ignored by the mainstream media and by Asian-language publications that targeted new immigrants. Its writers covered controversial issues affecting the Asian community as well as its rising stars, and they were unafraid to poke fun at Asian stereotypes.
But in some ways, Yolk's goal was its undoing.
"Yolk simply stands for the color of our skin," wrote then-Editor Larry Tazuma in the first issue. "If you think about it, our skin color is really the only thing that connects Asians...."
That connection wasn't enough to keep the magazine afloat, and it may have been the very thing keeping major advertisers away.
"It's hard to say, 'Let's target Asians,' " said Liming Dai of Muse Cordero Chen & Partners, an Asian-focused ad agency. "Even just culturally, Chinese is very different than Filipino."
Advertisers, Dai said, are increasingly eager to tap into the Asian market because it tends to be a high-education and high-income demographic. But the majority of their ads run in Asian-language media, as opposed to English publications.
According to Dai, the advertisers' rationale is this: "If an Asian American can consume English-language media, why spend dollars creating specific ad vehicles for them?"
