It took 18 years of marriage for David C. Wright to decide there was nothing wrong with being single.
Now this 65-year-old divorce is trying to help other unmarried people embrace their lifestyle and shed the stereotype that they're lonely bachelors or cat-loving old maids.
A serial entrepreneur, Wright recently launched Singular, a Los Angeles magazine for singles that doles out advice, travel suggestions and profiles of unmarried people who travel to Tonga, collect vintage sex manuals and play polo when not performing acupuncture.
"We want people to not feel stigmatized," said Wright, who has started eight businesses in the areas of wealth management, real estate and technology, but never before in media. "Whether it's a chapter of your life or longer, it's all right to be single."
Call it a reflection of our times -- or a response to them -- Wright's new enterprise might strike a chord with the growing number of Americans who choose to marry later or not at all. About 42% of people over the age of 18 are single, according to the Census Bureau, and the proportion of one-person households increased to 26% in 2005 from 17% in 1970.
Los Angeles seems particularly ripe for a magazine aimed at the single community. More than half the adults living here are single, Wright said.
Of course, now is not an easy time to start a print publication, even an upscale one such as Singular. As advertisers retrench in an ailing economy, magazines across the country are cutting staff and pages. Some are even closing their doors.
In October alone, magazine giant Conde Nast announced it was reducing budgets across all of its titles and laying off employees at Portfolio and Men's Vogue. Upscale magazines Radar and 02138 folded, and Hearst Corp. said it would close CosmoGirl magazine.
Upscale magazines are reporting revenue figures that are down 10% from the previous year, and the slide will be worse next year, when advertisers rejigger their budgets, said Michael Kong, chief executive of Modern Luxury Media, whose publications include Angeleno, Manhattan and Dallas Interiors.
Industrywide, advertising revenue for the first nine months of 2008 fell 5%, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.
Worse news lies ahead, according to Forrester Research. In an online survey, the firm found that 18% of U.S. consumers who subscribe to magazines plan to cut back their subscriptions in the coming year, said Sarah Rotman Epps, a Forrester media analyst.
