Lake Superior Magazine

Overview

Lake Superior Magazine is a bimonthly regional magazine published in Duluth, Minnesota, devoted entirely to the Lake Superior region — the communities, landscapes, history and working life that surround the largest of the Great Lakes. Established in 1979, the magazine has described its ambition as being an authority on Lake Superior living, the environment and entertainment, and as an insider's guide for both visitors and local residents. It is produced by Lake Superior Publishing, based in Duluth, the Minnesota port city that sits at the western tip of the lake and has long served as a gateway to the North Shore. Although its focus is firmly regional, the magazine is distributed nationally, reaching readers who live around the lake as well as former residents and travellers with an attachment to the region.

The territory the magazine covers is unusually broad for a regional title. The Lake Superior shoreline runs through Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and the Canadian province of Ontario, taking in port towns, fishing villages, mining and forestry communities, island settlements and stretches of largely undeveloped shoreline. Lake Superior Magazine treats that whole circle as its beat, reporting on the people, places and events of the region in both their contemporary and their historical dimensions. Its pages move between the lake's working waterfronts and its quieter corners — lighthouses, harbours, small-town main streets, state and provincial parks and the islands scattered across the lake's expanse.

History

The magazine was founded in 1979, and its own publishing house has marked that history in detail, including a published timeline of its first three decades running from 1978 to 2009. What began as a regional magazine at the end of the 1970s grew into an institution that has published continuously for more than four decades, surviving the same contractions that reshaped much of North American magazine publishing. The publisher's corporate identity has appeared in more than one form over the years: the magazine's books have been issued through Lake Superior Port Cities Inc., described as the company that produces the magazine, while the current operation trades as Lake Superior Publishing LLC in Duluth.

Across those decades the magazine's identity has stayed consistent. It has presented itself for more than thirty years as an insider's guide to the region and as an authority on regional travel, pairing reported features with the kind of large-format photography the lake's scenery invites. The magazine's longevity has made it a chronicler of the region's changing fortunes — the cycles of the shipping and mining industries, the growth of tourism along the shorelines, and the continuing cultural life of towns that many national publications never visit.

Content and Sections

The editorial mix covers travel, history, lifestyles, the environment, business and current events around the lake. Its regular departments give the magazine a recognisable structure. Homes looks at houses in the region, from historic properties to contemporary lakeshore building. Health and Wellness addresses wellbeing in a northern climate. Lake Superior Journal carries shorter observations and notes from around the region, while Wild Superior is devoted to the natural world — the wildlife, forests and waters of the basin. Heritage explores the region's past, Destinations guides readers to places worth visiting around the circle, and Profile introduces individuals who shape life in the region. Two visually led elements, By the Shores and ViewPoint, are built around photography, and the editors have singled out strong photography as something they particularly welcome.

Feature stories range widely. The magazine has published long profiles of regional figures such as the Isle Royale artist and storyteller Howard Sivertson, whose paintings and humorous stories about commercial fishing life were closely associated with the magazine and whose books were produced through its publishing operation. Food writing appears as well: the magazine's publishing arm issued a collection of recipes from Betty's Pies, the well-known North Shore restaurant, preserving dishes such as the fresh peach pie its founder singled out as her favourite. Shipping is a recurring subject, reflecting the lake's role as a working waterway for iron ore, grain and other cargoes, and the magazine follows the lakers, ports and maritime heritage that define the region's economy and identity.

Circulation and Audience

Lake Superior Magazine positions itself as a regionally focused publication with national distribution, sold by subscription and through its own retail presence in Duluth, where the magazine's operation has also offered lake-related gifts, books, puzzles, clothing and souvenirs. Advertising material published by the magazine describes a readership that is predominantly made up of homeowners with comparatively high incomes, many of them planning to buy, build or improve a residence or vacation home — a profile that matches the magazine's editorial attention to homes, land and lakeshore living. The publisher also notes that issues are typically read cover to cover and kept and referred to for years, a pattern common to enthusiast and regional titles whose readers treat them as reference as much as entertainment.

Because the region draws heavy visitor traffic — to Duluth, the North Shore, the Apostle Islands area, Michigan's Upper Peninsula and the Canadian shore — the magazine serves two audiences at once: year-round residents of the lakeshore communities, and the much larger population of travellers, seasonal residents and former residents who maintain a connection to the lake. That dual audience explains the balance in its pages between practical travel guidance and the deeper historical and environmental coverage that rewards long familiarity with the region.

Ownership and Publisher

The magazine is published in Duluth by Lake Superior Publishing, currently Lake Superior Publishing LLC, with offices in Duluth, Minnesota (ZIP 55802) and a mailing address at P.O. Box 16417, Duluth, MN 55816. The same publishing operation has produced books under the Lake Superior Port Cities Inc. name, including cookbook and art-book projects connected to the magazine's coverage. The company is a member of the Minnesota Magazine and Publications Association, placing it within the state's community of independent and regional publishers. As an independent regional publisher, it combines the magazine with book publishing, a retail gift operation and one of the region's best-known web addresses at lakesuperior.com.

Digital Presence

The magazine's website, lakesuperior.com, extends the print edition with articles, topic pages on subjects from forests to individual communities, and advertising and subscription services. A recurring online feature, Around the Circle This Week, rounds up news and happenings from around the lake, functioning as a running digest between print issues; the same series has carried obituaries and appreciations of regional figures, including the magazine's tribute to Howard Sivertson after his death in January 2023. The site also hosts magazine features in full, advertiser listings for each issue and information for prospective contributors and advertisers.

Contributors and Submissions

Lake Superior Magazine accepts work from freelance writers and photographers and describes itself as highly selective, while noting that each year it accepts a number of offerings from new writers and photographers. Market listings published by Writer's Digest have recorded its payment ranges at $200 to $400 for features of roughly 1,600 to 2,000 words and $75 to $200 for department and column pieces of about 800 to 1,200 words, with queries outlining a proposed story and its possible sources preferred over unsolicited manuscripts. The editors' standing advice to contributors is to read the magazine first to understand its approach — advice that reflects how specific its regional focus is: submissions are expected to be rooted in the Lake Superior region's people, places and events.

Recognition

The magazine describes its reporting as award-winning and its website as an award-winning companion to the print title. Its standing is also reflected in its longevity and in the regard of the regional creative community: artists and writers closely associated with the lake, including the Sivertson family of Grand Marais, whose gallery grew out of the same North Shore culture the magazine documents, have been part of its pages for decades. Within Duluth, the magazine's combination of editorial office, publishing house and gift retail has made it one of the city's recognisable cultural businesses, and its name is closely identified with the lake itself through its long-held web domain.

Availability

Lake Superior Magazine is published bimonthly and is available by subscription, with national distribution beyond its home region, and through the publisher in Duluth. Subscription, advertising and submission information is carried on its website, and back-issue and book offerings have formed part of the publisher's retail operation. For readers, the magazine functions both as a practical guide to travelling and living around the lake and as a continuing record of a distinct North American region — its shipping, its seasons, its small communities and its enduring hold on the people who live by, and return to, its shores.