Saying Goodbye To Gulfstream Media Group

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It was a month short of 50 years ago when we left Philadelphia Magazine, the outfit which pioneered the city magazine genre, and came to Florida to head a group buying a magazine then known as Pictorial Life, based in Fort Lauderdale.

For historical perspective, Chris Evert, already famous, was still a student at St. Thomas Aquinas High School. Don Shula had just taken over as coach of a new football team called the Miami
Dolphins.

The main newspaper in Broward was the Fort Lauderdale News, and Hollywood still had its own voice—the Sun Tattler. Jackie Gleason was mulling over the idea of starting a new golf tournament, which began two years later at Inverrary and is known today as the Honda Classic. PR man Jack Drury brought Johnny Carson in to promote a new town called Coral Springs.

 The board chairman of Pictorial Life was Theresa Castro and when people said “a Castro” everybody knew it meant a convertible sofa. She founded the Royal Dames of Nova to support the struggling young university. A few months ago, we were guests of her daughter Bernadette at the Royal Dames’ 50th anniversary ball.

Over the years, we changed the name to Gold Coast as our company expanded into Palm Beach County and then the Treasure Coast with Stuart and Jupiter magazines. We had six titles in all. We say “had” because this is the last issue under Gulfstream Media Group’s ownership.

Gulfstream Media Group’s magazines ran thousands of photos over the years. Bernard McCormick’s favorite is this 1971 shot of Don Shula leading his soon-to-be-legendary team onto the field on a cold New England December day.

The new owner of Gulfstream Media properties is Palm Beach Media Group, a subsidiary of Hour Media Group, one of the country’s largest magazine companies with more than 150 magazines from coast to coast. It already owns magazines in Palm Beach and Naples, so it is a natural extension into prime Florida markets. Hour Media’s properties include Los Angeles, Atlanta, Cincinnati and Hour Detroit magazines. They are good at what they do. We are confident that we are putting Gold Coast, Jupiter and Stuart magazines into good hands that will serve our readers for many years to come.

Our decision to sell was based on several factors. One, yours truly is pushing 20 years past the normal retirement age and has lost a step. More importantly, running multiple magazines is a lot of work. Our company president Mark McCormick handled that big job in addition to leading our software company, Mirabel Technologies, for the past 17 years. He founded that company in 2002 and has seen its products grow to serve 16,000 magazines in 22 countries. Our company will still contribute behind the scenes to these publications, as Hour Media is one of our many valued software clients.

We thank all who have helped us over the decades, especially our retired board chairman, Bob McCabe of Vero Beach. His long career in the investment business helped him attract many of the outstanding group of investors who supported our company over the years.

 We wish the new owner well, and although not active in the magazine, we will do anything we can to help them in this ambitious expansion.

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