About Menta (magazine)

Menta (magazine)

Menta, also rendered Mentha, is a Hebrew-language health and lifestyle magazine published in Israel by the Yedioth Ahronoth group. Launched in 2000, the magazine focuses on fitness, nutrition and advice on health subjects, and it announced itself with a novelty that matched its name: the pages of its first issue were scented with mint. As the health title in one of Israel's largest media groups, Menta brought reported health journalism, including investigative articles that drew strong reactions from the medical establishment, to a general readership alongside the group's women's, entertainment and men's magazines.

Launch in 2000 with mint-scented pages

The magazine was launched in 2000 as a health magazine from the Yedioth Ahronoth group. It focused on fitness, nutrition and various advice on health subjects. The first issue was printed on paper scented with mint, a marketing device that made the magazine's name — Menta, the mint plant — into a physical feature of the product and marked the launch in the Israeli press. In November 2000 the Globes business newspaper reported the arrival of the new monthly health magazine from the Yedioth Ahronoth group when the advertising account for the title was assigned, noting that the account joined those of the Ynet website and the Pnai Plus television weekly at the same agency.

Editorial focus: fitness, nutrition and health advice

Menta's editorial territory was the practical health of its readers: fitness, nutrition and guidance on health questions, presented for a general Israeli audience rather than for medical professionals. That placed it in the service-journalism tradition of the Yedioth group's magazines, in which LaIsha covered family and consumer life for women, Pnai Plus covered television and entertainment, and Blazer covered men's lifestyle. Menta's covers in its first year presented a mixture of media figures, athletes and presenters associated with healthy and active living, and its online presence was hosted by Ynet, the group's portal, which carried the online versions of the group's magazines including Mentha alongside LaIsha, Pnai Plus, Blazer and GO Magazine.

First editors

The magazine's first editor was Liora Bona-Azulay, who later marked the magazine's fifth anniversary in 2005 with a Ynet article recalling its great moments, "Five years of Menta: the big moments". She was succeeded by Ronit Haber. In November 2008 Walla reported that Ronit Haber was leaving Menta, recording the editorial change at the magazine eight years after its launch. The succession of editors reflected the magazine's development from a launch project into an established title within the group.

The 2002 fertility investigation and the response

Menta published various investigative articles. Among them, an article published in 2002 claimed that a short treatment could solve the problems of women suffering from problems with their fallopian tubes, and that many gynaecologists were concealing this fact from them. Following the article, professors who ran a private fertility clinic responded fiercely. The episode demonstrated that the magazine's health journalism could provoke the same kind of public controversy as investigative reporting in a newspaper: a claim about medical practice, made in a consumer magazine, drew a sharp professional rebuttal and a public argument about what patients were being told.

Mini Menta and the Mei Eden partnership

In 2002 the magazine signed a cooperation agreement with the mineral water company Mei Eden under which a magazine called Mini Menta would be distributed to Mei Eden customers once a quarter. The joint magazine was reported by Globes when the venture was launched. The partnership fitted the magazine's health positioning: a water company's customer magazine was a natural extension for a title built on nutrition, fitness and everyday wellbeing, and it gave Menta a distribution channel beyond newsstands and subscriptions, reaching households through a health-adjacent consumer brand.

Five years of Menta

In December 2005 the magazine's founding editor, Liora Bona-Azulay, published a fifth-anniversary retrospective on Ynet, "Five years of Menta: the big moments", surveying the highlights of the magazine's first five years. The anniversary piece is evidence of the magazine's established place in the group's output by the middle of the decade: the health monthly had survived the risky launch period for new magazines and had accumulated the covers, investigations and reader relationships that a retrospective could draw on. Anniversaries of this kind also served the group by promoting the title to Ynet's large online audience.

Covers of the first year

The people who appeared on the cover of the magazine in its first year illustrate its formula. The September 2000 cover featured Orit Haber and Eldad Amir; October–November 2000 featured the presenter Miri Nevo; December 2000 featured Sharon Frans; the 2001 covers included Ivona Krugliak in January, Shelli Gafni and Ofek Kairey in February, Orit Berkovich in March, Melanie Peres in April, Isabel Adler and Oren Simantov in May, the footballer Bonni Ginzburg in June, Grace Mozes in July, Michael Tick in August and Betty Eldad in September. Presenters, models, athletes and media personalities fronted a magazine whose subject was health, signalling that Menta sold wellbeing as part of a lively, contemporary lifestyle rather than as clinical instruction.

Place in the Yedioth Ahronoth group

Menta was the health magazine of the Yedioth Ahronoth Group, the media group built around Israel's largest paid daily newspaper. The group's activities included the Ynet news website, the Yedioth Tikshoret network of local newspapers, the business daily Calcalist, the women's magazine LaIsha and the magazine Mentha, as the group's own histories list it. Ynet hosted the online version of Mentha together with the group's other magazines, integrating the health title into the portal that became the group's most profitable arm. For the group, a specialist health monthly complemented its general titles and gave advertisers in the health, food and fitness sectors a dedicated Hebrew platform.

The business arrival of the magazine can be dated precisely through the advertising trade. On 5 November 2000 Globes reported that the Shalmor Avnon Amichay agency had ended its engagement with the National Geographic monthly at the same time as it took the advertising budget of the Yedioth group's health monthly Menta, noting that the National Geographic title had more than 40,000 subscribers. The item captures the moment Menta entered the market: a new local health magazine was considered a significant enough account to report alongside an international title with a substantial Israeli subscriber base, and the same agency already handled the Ynet website and the Pnai Plus television weekly for the group.

The magazine's commemoration of its own first five years was written by its founding editor rather than by an outside journalist: Liora Bona-Azulay's December 2005 Ynet piece, "Five years of Menta: the big moments", looked back over the period from the mint-scented launch issue. That the retrospective ran on Ynet, the group's portal, again shows how the health title was promoted inside the group's own media. The later editorial change was likewise a matter of public record in the media columns: when Ronit Haber left Menta in November 2008, the departure was reported by Walla's media correspondent, treating the editorship of the health monthly as a position of interest in the Israeli magazine industry.

Menta's positioning can also be read from the company it kept. Histories of the Yedioth Ahronoth Group list its expansion as including the Ynet website, the local newspaper network, the Calcalist business daily, the women's magazine LaIsha, the magazine Mentha and the Russian-language Vesti site. In that list Mentha is the only title devoted to a single subject area, health, among general newspapers and audience-defined magazines — a specialist monthly inside a generalist group, dependent on the group's distribution while selling a distinct, advertiser-friendly subject to readers and health-sector advertisers alike.

Health magazines and Israeli readers

Menta's longer significance lies in what it represented: the arrival of a dedicated, group-published health monthly for the general Israeli public at the start of the 2000s. Its mix of fitness and nutrition advice, consumer health guidance and occasional hard-hitting investigation matched an international pattern in which health became a mainstream magazine category. Its mint-scented first issue, its anniversary retrospectives, its Mini Menta partnership with Mei Eden and its run within the Yedioth portfolio made it the most visible Hebrew health magazine of its period, and its name remains associated with the popularisation of everyday health journalism in Israel.