John Blassingame publishes hip magazines for blacks

Kay Bourne

NEWARK— Magazine empire builder John Blassingame has a CEO slot many men fantasize about — he publishes the bi-monthlies that feature the barely clad lovelies you see in rap videos, runs the contests that supply the rap world with its models, oversees the fashion shows where designers vie to see whose fancy duds are the most alluring.

He didn’t get there by sitting home and dreaming about it, however.

Currently, Blassingame owns three magazines: his flagship publication “Hype Hair” with a circulation of 250,000; “Black Women” circ. 200,000, and his newest offering “Black Men” circ. 170,000. Additionally he’s associated with some 20 other publications as a consultant.

He started out with Hearst as the giant publisher’s local representative in the New York and New Jersey area for magazines that distributors were supposed to be displaying and selling at news stands. “I was making sure that Hudson and the like were putting copies out,” he said. He felt he’d hit “the glass ceiling” after eight years, so went in to the wholesale end with Metropolitan News.

“This was a dangerous situation because they were edging into selling territories already served by other organizations. But I was a young guy and I didn’t know better than to try to do the job,” said Blassingame, who gave this exclusive interview in the ballroom at the Newark International Marriott where sound men were setting up for the clothes designer’s competition Blassingame is sponsoring.

Blassingame did the work that put him in possible conflict with some rough people because he’d concluded that “if you’re going to go forward that’s what you have to do – life’s a risk.”

In the meantime, he was meeting people in the industry and learning both sides of the coin – distribution and wholesale. He next worked in a management position for Disticor, a Canadian operation hoping to make inroads in the U.S. Their major publication was “Hockey News.”

“But we also tried our hand at a (sexually explicit) magazine we called ‘Rustler,” relates Blassingame, “until we got a phone call from Larry Flynt (publisher of “Hustler”) who told us to cease and desist. So we did.

“He only had to call me one time,” adds Blassingame.

Blassingame said that he got the company to earnings up from $270,000 a month to half a million, but when a higher level position with the company opened up, “they brought in another guy.”

At that point, Blassingame says “I started my own business.”

He offers this advice to young people starting out: “the key is having determination and dedication. Without them, you don’t have longevity.”

Raised in Roselle, one of eight children, Blassingame praises his mother for his strong upbringing. “We were her life. I learned dedication from her,” he said, adding that all of the brothers and sisters have led productive lives.

”None of her kids had a problem with the law, and we were able to show our appreciation to her before she passed at age 83,” noting that he bought her a house.

Blassingame’s magazines could be sleazy but as you leaf past the scantily dressed gorgeous women and men, you realize the content veers more toward the wholesome. He describes his “Hype Hair” as an “Essence” sort of magazine but with coverage about man/woman relationships as well as tips on how to get ahead in business and keep your health up.

The same is true of “Black Men” and “Today’s Black Women.”

The magazines also have entry forms for the series of competitions Blassingame runs, including The Black Man of the Year. On page 82 of the 110 of the Oct./Nov. issue of “Today’s Black Women,” there is a profile of last year’s winner, Raphael S. Smith, a firefighter from Cleveland, Ohio. He is also a personal trainer as the full length photograph of him dressed in fashionable slacks and a silk vest suggests. His chief virtue, however, and probably what won him the title, is his community work which includes free fitness consultations, a dietary program he’s devised that he gives out at the gym where he works out, and volunteering for a program out of his station which gives children school supplies.

Blassingame, who takes great pride in promoting good works and accomplishments of young black men, also runs a competition where black women nominate a hero who is a friend or family member. The current winner who attends college in Florida brought his mother and sister South with him to share his small apartment rather than put up with the father’s abusive ways. “His mother sent in that story,” said Blassingame.

Blassingame writes a From The Publisher column for his “Black Men” magazine which in the most recent issue urged the black community to work toward re-enfranchising people whose felony convictions had lost them the right to vote. His argument promotes voting as a way for the African American community to regain a command with politicians which he feels has been lost. “We owe it to ourselves to vigorously defend the rights of all citizens to vote,” he writes.