[Music] Lakeland Currents, your public affairs program for north central Minnesota.

Closed captioning is made possible by Bemidji Regional Airport, serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

More information available at bemidjiairport.org Hello, again, everybody.

I'm Ray Gildow and welcome to Lakeland Currents where tonight we have a first, we have never had this magazine on our show in all of our 15 or 16 years in business and it's pretty exciting for me to introduce to you two of the primary drivers behind the Lake Country Journal.

Gary let's start with you, who you are and what you do.

My name is Gary Guderian and I'm the art director with Lake Country Journal and I'm the one that does all the design, putting it together from start to finish.

So I help select the photography, choose the type fonts, help with the layouts for all the different pages.

And where are you from originally?

I originally grew up down by Glenwood, Minnesota, on a dairy farm and after graduating from art school at Alec Tech, I moved to Montana, worked for a national or regional agency for about 10 years before moving back to Minnesota, and actually Chip Borkenhagen, he started Lake Journal, hired me when he was with an agency here there at that time and worked there for about 16 years and then I kind of worked in the Cities for a couple years and then came back freelance for 10 years and then during that freelance time I started working on the Journal through Range Printing who owns the journal now and then eventually they kind of hired me on to work on the Journal plus other art projects there.

And you do art independent from the magazine I understand.

Yep I also am working on painting, trying to get better at it, but.

What kind of painting?

Mostly wildlife, wildlife acrylic is what I kind of ended up with doing.

Yeah so kind of.

In our February/ March issue 2025 we have an article about Gary, a profile of him as a painter that Jenny Gunsbury is writing and it features his paintings, five of his original paintings.

And you are a horseman, you have one horse.

I have one horse.

I've always heard you should never have just one cuz it'll get lonely.

I know I struggle with that.

Would you get a donkey cuz.

I've looked at that too, so that may be in the future.

And Tracey, let's talk a little bit about you and what your background is.

Well I have been a teacher and a writer/editor but I was doing freelance writing and editing in the Brainerd area back in the 1990's and that's when Chip and Jean Borkenhagen had the vision to start this magazine.

So I had the privilege of being one of the five on the startup team getting the magazine going a couple decades ago, very exciting.

So you were the first editor.

Yeah, the first editor.

And you came back and now you don't actually live in Brainerd, you live in Princeton, right?

Yeah we have a cabin in Crosby so sometimes I work from there and yeah sometimes I work from home remotely and come in for exciting events like this talking to you, but yeah.

I think of all of the magazines that have been around in my lifetime, most of them aren't here anymore, there are some of the big outdoor news ones, you know, maybe bass, the bass magazines and some of those that are very specific to a certain part of an industry, but so many magazines even like Look magazine, Life I mean they come out maybe once a year or twice a year with a special but they're gone I mean they're really gone and there's been a really a huge sea change hasn't it in this industry.

Yeah.

It's wonderful that we have loyal readers and subscribers and advertisers, you know, people just love it that it's a regional it's like our magazine we're telling the stories of our community and people and events and places and businesses and things to do and places to go and, you know, people really enjoy it.

People tell us that they keep back issues and they're so beautiful, you know, the great photography.

It's just a really, really high class magazine, very, very good.

The advertising is better than some of the photos you see in some of the papers around the world.

That's right.

But I look at the covers that you have and it's just absolutely beautiful, high gloss, high quality magazine.

What is it that people are going to find inside of this if they buy one and they're not a subscriber now.

They're going to find stories about what's happening in the area, people, businesses, profiles.

You wrote a great story for us on four of our local fishing guides so it's like things who knew about these great opportunities.

We had a story on all the places you can go in the area to find Paul Bunyan statuary so we called it a Paul Bunyan Selfie Tour so.

I think, too, what we try to do is try to find the story behind the story because it's beyond just news or just, you know, it's about this person it's like why is this person doing what they're doing, you know, why does this company start, you know, why are they, you know, living on this lake, why did they build this home, you know, that's kind of the key of what we really are trying to find is that story that people just don't know about.

You know they might be neighbors to these people but they just don't really know why or what brought them to this point in that story.

If you subscribe to the magazine how many issues do you get a year?

You get six issues a year every two months you'll get an issue.

So it takes that much just to put them together you know.

That's it.

How do you decide what's going into the magazine, do you make that decision Tracey?

We work together but we have certain categories, like every time we try to have one article about a home, an interesting unusual home, sometimes they're gorgeous lake homes, sometimes they're cabins in the woods or do-it-yourself A-frames, you know, we have a wide variety but every time there's going to be a home article.

Every time there's a recipe that's something unique that often people create a recipe for us.

There's going to be.

Well we do like we often do like a business profile, that's typically in there or a personal profile of somebody.

Art is another thing, art and culture, we'll try to find somebody that either like music we did a story on music where we had instead of just doing the general one we actually found four specific musicians and did kind of a story on each of them.

And then theater we had the different people involved in local theater and.

So, yeah, it's just a variety of, you know, people beyond, you know even though it's called Lake Country Journal, actually talking to a person the other day where, you know, he was talking about a story that didn't have to do anything with the lake well, that's really not I mean not really what we're focusing on, we have a lot of lake-type stories, but I mean they're just different types of stories from different walks of life that people have that are in this area that maybe don't go on the lake that much or don't live on the lake so.

We have a theme for each issue and so that's one way we decide which stories.

So we had the theme for the October/November 24 was An Open Door and the lead story was on three different businesses in the area that do custom doors like handmade wood carved doors.

This is a photo of a door.

Yeah Felicia Schneiderhan did that story and interviewed some local door makers.

In this one we also had the results of our very first poetry contest, the winners are in here, and then we had a poetry reading at CLC at the Central Lakes College in collaboration with Verse Like Water which is Jeff Johnson runs a visiting poetry, a visiting poet program there and he and Donna Salli and Charmaine Donovan were our judges and Krista Soukup helped organize it with Blue Cottage, her agency, and so we had a big event with the poets coming to read and really well attended and a lot of fun and we'll be continuing that with another poetry contest.

But the photo contest.

Yeah the photo contest is really a key and a great way for us to get some great photography.

Yeah.

The people that are willing to submit photos to that.

Is that a once a year event?

Yeah.

It takes a year for, you know, that we allow entries for each year and we usually get about 400 applicants, entries.

Wow.

So out of that we have to cull it down to 14 winners, you know, which is not easy to do, you know, and then the last couple years we've had some photographers as judges that kind of help pick out which ones are the best and then that's why you get some, you know, you get great covers, you get, you know, great photos to work with in terms of like different stories.

Then, you know, our photographers are willing to work with us, with our budget and stuff like that to, you know, because we love to use local photographers, you know, to actually brought in photograph stories, we just had a gal go down to the Foley mansion this last weekend because it's all decked out for Christmas and again she took pictures of that so that's going to be in next December/January issue, so there's some pre-planning on that.

And I know you have a lot of places, like where I go I live in Staples, and I go into a lot of the businesses like the hospital and I'll see your magazine in the hospital or I go to the dentist office and I'll see the copy of that in the dentist office so it's spread out to a large area.

How broad an area do you have your subscribers?

Well they're actually kind of all over the United States, even like Alaska and Hawaii, and in one issue we created this map, which was kind of cool, to kind of show where our magazine is distributed to so that's kind of a neat little thing to see about how far reaching it goes and how people will cuz we'll get even like for photo contests we'll get submissions from Wyoming and Utah and all over the country because they come up to Minnesota, has to be a Minnesota picture, but they'll come up to Minnesota and photograph.

Vacation maybe you know people who have some kind of connection to Lake Country.

They've lived here, moved away.

Yeah something like that yeah they visited.

The people in the Lakes Area there's an unbelievable collection of resources isn't there.

I mean we don't even know half the people that are here.

Yeah.

I used to do some fish guiding and I remember one of my customers lived on Gull Lake and he was a designer for Walt Disney, right here, and nobody knows, I don't think his neighbors even know.

That kind of thing.

Yes, so, there are quite a few freelance writers out in the area who have their ear to the ground and like somebody would hear that story and then they would send me an email with a pitch and say hey I've got a story and so all of our writing is done by freelance writers in the area and they're widely distributed so they're catching story ideas from all around.

So are you the one that has to put the kibash on it if it's not a very good story?

Well I might say how about if we just change this a little bit, and my daughter Betsy is our assistant editor and so she and I work together, brainstorm the themes, and that's one of the most fun aspects for me that I get to work with her because we share a brain kind of and can come up with fun things and so we'll both go through the stories and she'll see things and I'll see things and, you know, we might make some recommendations to the writers and sometimes we'll come up with an idea and then find a writer.

How how many people do you think in a typical year write for you?

Well there's about 20 articles in each issue and so in a year, you know, that's maybe 120.

Some are small articles and some are larger and we have maybe a dozen or so writers that write very regularly and are, you know, maybe they're professional freelance writers who are always working on articles and always sending ideas or taking assignments, but then there are quite a few who might just write one-time story, well, so you've written two for us, right?

Probably before you came I wrote some other ones.

Okay, yeah.

Yeah so there are people like you who might do one or two in a year and then maybe there's a year where you wouldn't, so there are a lot of people like that, and then there are the ones who write quite regularly.

That's really interesting and I think do your writers usually live in the area?

Yeah.

Okay, so you don't have people that are writing from New York or anything like that.

No we don't actually but you know there might be oh well we have some snowbirds, you know, some people who are here for part of the year and then elsewhere part of the year, so we have a number of people like that.

Okay, yeah, are there any contests statewide or national that you guys submit the magazine to?

No, that's a good idea, yeah.

I just was curious, I don't know if such a thing exists.

Yeah I don't know.

But it seems to me that the quality is there and if you could enter it into something, I mean we have the book of the year or whatever it is in the state, you know, but I didn't know anything about that.

There used to be something for magazines, but as you say there are fewer magazines but I agree.

And you know because Range Printing owns it and they do it on high quality paper and really great job printing it yeah I think it would do well compared to others.

And I know you try to keep the stories close cuz we did a story on the Wildlife Science Center in Stacy and I remember you said that's a little bit out of the range so you wanted to make it a kind of destination.

Yeah.

So we do, like people who might want to do a day trip or a weekend trip, we'll do something a little outside of the Brainerd Lakes Area, maybe a 2-hour drive, you know, something because people like to go on adventures or sometimes we do travel like people from the area like Tom Kavanaugh took a group to Italy and did an article on that trip, he took a culinary tour, so we'll do a little from time to time that sort of thing.

Okay, and I was going to ask you if you did you have a collection of photographers that you work with Gary or how does that work?

We have some pretty key core photographers that we use, they're all local photographers.

Photographers in the area.

They're very good photographers and we really appreciate what they do for us and, you know, there's an occasion where like a writer, you know, will find, you know, somebody will have a well sometimes even our writers shoot the photography when they're out there so there's quite a bit of that.

We have some, a few core photographers that we send out.

I've actually had to go out and do some which is kind of fun to go do it so kind of get to really meet the people and stuff like that.

So if someone's interested in writing for you and they see this program what do they do?

Send an email to editor@lake countryjournal.com and that would go right to me.

Photography, too, probably.

Yeah.

Or would you have them sent to you or if they were interested in doing photography.

I think they could just kind of all go through that one, it's easier to remember to go through editor@lakecountryjournal.com.

And how long has the magazine been in publication now?

19, this first issue came out it came out March/April of 1997 so we started working on it.

You know Chip and Jean had to start getting investors and getting things going a year or two before that, but that was the very first issue.

I don't know if we can see that or not but that's Jon Hassler was our local and Joe Plut wrote the story.

Oh Joe wrote the story, okay.

And then a couple months later Joe Plut was on the cover and Jon wrote the story.

Oh yeah cool, very fun.

Jon was my neighbor.

That's great.

And all the entire collection is housed at the Crow Wing County Historical Society, and that's available to the public, so that's the only place I know of where the public has access to the entire collection.

So you don't have, do you have a walk-in place, any place where somebody could come in if they want to see you, Gary or is it just something you'd have to do through a website.

Or through my email.

Well, Range Printing is where.

On Madison Street.

On Madison Street is where, in Brainerd, where I'm housed.

And it's the second generation of owners at Range I think that's been with this cuz Steve.

Third actually.

I worked with him way back when and I think it's his son now.

Shawn and Mary.

Yeah.

So what do you got coming up this spring, what are you going to be doing, what's your next series of articles going to be about?

Well the February/March issue is the theme is Whatever the Weather and that's the one I was mentioning we have Gary's paintings in and we're announcing the theme for the poetry contest and the theme is The Sweet Life and those winners will be published in the October/November 25 issue and we'll have another public poetry reading but that will be the theme of the poetry contest and also the theme of that issue and then the photography contest goes on, the deadline is always October.

We'll be switching out, well we'll be announcing the winners of this last year in the February/March issue and then what we do is because Brainerd Regional Airport sponsors that, we have these big canvas prints made and they're hung out at the airport so we'll be switching out.

Oh so that's where you hang them.

Yes.

We'll be switching it out there.

Yeah, they're there now, the winners from the 2024.

So how many are hanging out there roughly?

14.

All 14.

Wow that's pretty cool.

The grand prize, first, second, third and then the 10 finalists.

Yeah so let's say I've got an idea Tracey of an article I want to write, do I need to kind of send an outline to you as a start?

That would be very helpful but sometimes people just send the basic core of an idea and then I ask them questions and I also have an email that I send out that says how we would like the pitch to be, you know, with a little bit of an outline and then saying what would be your source material and where would you get what would the photos be.

So somebody could just reach out to me very briefly, you wouldn't need to have something put together already, and we can go from there.

And roughly how many words per article?

We have three sizes.

So the largest are the features and those are always in the middle of the magazine that feature well without advertising and those are 1,000 to 1,500 words and then we have department articles which are the midsize and those are 7 to 900 words and then we have short reads that are just one page articles and those are like 350 to 500 words with one or two photos, so we have that range.

We also do book reviews.

Yeah so we usually have one per issue and we do local writers or a book that has a local connection, so it might be William Kent Krueger who is writing about northern Minnesota and even if he lives in the Twin Cities we count him as one of ours because they take place in northern Minnesota but, you know, Bill Meissner, we have and Jeanne Cooney and she does murder mysteries with recipes and there's a play being written about her first murder mystery that the community college will be putting out this spring and in our February/March issue we're reviewing her newest book in that series.

So, yeah.

I commend you guys because this isn't a huge money-making industry anymore, I mean even Life and Look and those kind of magazines just come out maybe six months, every six months or so, so you're doing a lot of this out of the passion for the industry, aren't you, I mean you really do.

You take pictures, you enjoy taking pictures.

Yeah, it's creative work, it's fun.

Well, I think you got to give a compliment to Range Printing for investing in it and, you know, keeping it going because I think that's a big part of why it's able you know to be owned by a local.

Yeah, they believe that in it, they believe in the community and want to tell the story of the community.

They can order off your website and what is your subscription worth, what does it cost?

Is it $29.95?

$29.95 for 6.

Which is a pretty good price for the quality of these and I've been I think a subscriber, my wife and I, since it started, so we've got almost go all the way back to when Chip and Jean started it because Chip used to work at the college where I did too so.

That's right.

That's pretty cool.

Yeah.

So when you subscribe to this, you said you've got readers all around the country but the core of your readership would be in the area.

Yeah basically from Little Falls north to Bemidji, Duluth, Walker, Detroit Lakes, but centered in Brainerd.

Centered in Brainerd, but, I mean, I would say, you know Minnesota is kind of the core, we kind of, you know, go into Wisconsin, little bit in Iowa, as far as like the majority of our subscribers.

And you have very high standards for your photography and for your writing.

Yeah.

Have you ever had to turn down someone?

Well, yes, we don't like to.

We do really want to give our readers the best, so we do work hard at that, yeah.

And let's see a couple things I wanted to ask you here.

The website, we should say, lakecountryjournal.com.

And that's how they can subscribe.

Okay.

Order or even just order one issue or order a back issue.

Yeah.

Oh, okay, and is there any, well, they can actually go to local drug stores and find copies, too.

Right yes Morey's in Staples and in Baxter are always resupplied sometimes the store will run out but Penny Nelson, who sells our ads, always is sure that those are restocked so you always can get them at Morey's.

How about someone is interested in advertising how do they what do they do?

They could call Penny and her information is on the masthead but it's Penny Nelson.

Do the people that subscribe as advertisers provide their own photos or do you have somebody take them?

One more time?

If I'm a home builder and I want to do some advertising with you would I have to provide the photographs or do you have someone come out and take pictures?

Oh for the advertisers we've kind of done it both ways most of the time, you know, majority of the time, they're supplied by the advertiser.

There's been a few instances where, you know, with my experience in the advertising agency for you know 30-40 years, you know, I can produce the ads for them and that's something too that when an advertiser comes and he wants to advertise doesn't have an ad, you know, we provide the design without charging them unless there's like a full.

We're out of time, but thanks for jumping on board with us, and it's a great magazine keep it going.

Thank you.

You've been watching Lakeland Currents.

I'm Ray Gildow, so long until next time.