Marvin Shanken, Leading Bev/Al Publisher, Dies at 83; An Appreciation

Marvin Shanken was smarter – and a better publisher – than the rest of us. While other alcohol beverage publishers focused on trade publishing, Shanken built a publishing powerhouse that encompassed both trade publications and consumer magazines, including Wine Spectator and Cigar Advocate. And before most publishers developed events, he did.

Shanken is one of three people in journalism whom I particularly appreciate because they did something entirely new. The other two:

• Barney Kilgore, who transformed The Wall Street Journal from a 33,000-circulation Wall Street trade paper into the nation's first national daily with a circulation of 775,000 subscribers, and more than 1 million readers who got their papers from eight different printing plants stretching from Chicopee Falls, Mass.; Princeton (technically South Brunswick), N.J., and Silver Spring, Md. on the East Coast to San Francisco and Riverside, Calif., on the West.
• Nelson Poynter, who transformed a 17,851-cirulation, second-rate St. Petersburg Times into Florida's best newspaper (and reportedly the nation's most profitable as a percentage of sales) by the time he died in 1978. Poynter was known for many things, including being the first publisher to use full color on the front page of every section every day, in 1954. USA Today was second, in 1982.

Back to Shanken. I was new to the newsletter publishing business in 1983 and met him at a Newsletter Publishers Association luncheon in a hotel in New York City. We chatted briefly, and he told me how hard it had been after he bought Impact in 1972. My recollection is that he described sleeping in the office many nights during the early years.

In 1979, he purchased Wine Spectator, at the time a newspaper given away for free at wine shops. He would turn it into a magazine with more than 3 million readers. He also founded Market Watch and Shanken News Daily, Cigar Aficionado, and purchased Food Arts and Malt Advocate, which he renamed Whiskey Advocate.

Like Nelson Poynter, who had relentlessly pushed the idea that St. Petersburg could be the best place to live, work and raise a family, Shanken sought to make wine a key part of American lift.

What made Shanken different was not just that he bridged the trade and consumer sides of the business, but that he also went into events. He established the Wine Spectator's Restaurant Awards program to encourage restaurants to develop strong wine programs.

He used his platforms to benefit charitable causes. Shanken launched the Wine Experience to bring together great wine producers and their devoted fans and to benefit wine industry charities. With Cigar Aficianado, he launch with "A Night to Remember" Dinner for Prostate Cancer, and both publications sponsored E is for Autism Ori ?Golf Tournament. And he established the Wine Spectator Scholarship Foundation to support education in the winemaking and hospitality industries.

There were other publishers who started in the newsletter business and expanded into related fields or crossed from trade into consumer publishing, but none of them remain active today. And now, with Shanken's passing, an era is closing.

For a more comprehensive obituary, read this from The Wine Spectator.