Hart Up North

Stephanie and Kelly Kinnunen are seated amid stacks of magazines in a bright white, high-ceilinged space carved out of the corner top floor of an an old brick warehouse in low-rent Northeast Minneapolis. Outside, 18-wheelers grind gears. Inside, volunteer editors stare into big computer monitors, tapping keyboards, talking quietly on the phone. Page mockups lining one wall comprise the sum total of adornment.

This is world headquarters for Need Magazine, where, its motto says, “We’re not out to save the world, but to tell the stories of those who are.” I’m here to find out how and why the Kinnunens came to scrape together enough money to co-found a new magazine that counts some heavyweight shooters among its “founding photographers.”

“We just called them up” after seeing and admiring their work, Kelly says.

I stumbled into Need one afternoon perusing the stacks at Common Good Books, Garrison Keilor’s fine little bookstore in nearby Saint Paul. The cover story was about bringing aid to Darfur, and was illustrated by the photography of Ron Haviv. Intrigued, I took it to the cash register, plunked down the $9 cover price, and was then treated to a two-minute testimonial extoling the magazine’s purpose and did I know that it was published right here in the Twin Cities? Not too many magazine titles elicit that kind of spontaneous praise.

Stephanie, a former caterer who now also serves as Need’s CEO, and Kelly, a commercial graphic designer, came to be magazine publishers after visiting an orphanage in Russia that looks after children rescued from the sex trade. Appalled by its very need for existence, inspired by the dedication of its staff, and astounded that no one they talked to had ever heard of the place or its good work, they realized there was a need to connect humanitarian work with the world at large.

“We asked ourselves, if we could do anything, what would we do?” Kelly says. And they asked a lot of aid organizations, “what do you need?”

The answer was exposure. And Need Magazine’s mission was born. The Kinnunen’s dream was to tell the stories of aid workers and their subjects in a dignified and artistic manner, as a way of inspiring and directing donations to those organiztions. They say they both knew the best medium for making that connection was photojournalism. In print. So they started looking for work that grabbed their attention. And then they reached out.

Steve McCurry was one of the first people they called because of their admiration for “that picture of the Afghan girl,” Kelly says. VII members Haviv, Gary Knight, Antonin Kratochvil and the late Alexandra Boulat, as well as Ami Vitale, Leslie Spurlock, Adam and Oliver Broomberg, and others lent their names and expertise. The magazine-format media kit was published in October 2006, national distributors have picked it up, issue No. 4 is in production, and the awards are coming in. Most recently, Need took a Gold Medal Ozzie in September for “Best Use of Photography: Consumer under
250,000 circulation” from the Folio: Show.

Many humanitarian efforts these days seek to leverage communities on the Internet (Bono’s One campaign comes immediately to mind), but the Kinnunens intentionally kept their publication old-school print. “This is for everyone, not just everyone online,” Kelly says, pointing to the intimacy, longevity and timelessness of magazines — qualities missing from Web sites that can only be accessed through a computer and that can’t be thrown in a shoulder bag.

The magazine is gorgeous. Rich, detailed images reproduced on heavy white stock leap out at the reader — a great tear sheet. In most cases, the stories that accompany the images are short and to the point, and they are always paired with sidebars of information about how to contact and contribute to the aid organizations mentioned in the stories. The Kinnunens say they’ve been floored by the positive response from photojournalists in the field. And their hope is to eventually pay all contributors to the magazine.

Stephanie says the edits aim not to elicit guilt or sadness but to inspire with a sense of optimism; her intention is to make the publication accessible and inspiring. And the work that appears covers the aftermath of disasters, debacles, or unhappy circumstances, when the tough, hopeful business of rebuilding lives and societies takes place.

Hurricane and earhtquake recovery, famine relief, emergency surgeries, sheltering the homless abroad and at home; volunteers and aid workers in all these situations get much-deserved visibility in the pages of Need.