Long Island Parent magazine celebrates first anniversary

PUBLISHINGLiza N. Burby, children's book writer, Adelphi professor and journalist, has been able to accomplish what many others in the media industry have not: She has kept alive her magazine - Long Island Parent - and it is celebrating its first anniversary.

In an industry where success is measured in teaspoons these days, keeping a publication alive for a year is considered special.

Long Island Parent, edited from Burby's Huntington Station home with a staff of about 27 - most of whom are parents and all of whom also work at home - celebrated its first anniversary with its February/March issue.

In a publisher's note, Burby says she started Long Island Parent after Newsday terminated its Parents & Children magazine in 2008. She had been the editor. The magazine is published every other month.

"With family and friends, we banded together to keep the magazine alive in a newer, friendlier format," Burby told readers.

In an interview, Burby said her free magazine has a circulation of about 65,000, up from 55,000 when it started.

It is available through home delivery and at more than 1,400 locations, including 119 CVS drugstores, and is aimed at parents who are between 25 and 45 years old, Burby said. The online version, liparentonline.com, offers updated calender event information and gets about 9,000 hits a week.

The magazine, supported by ads from pediatricians, summer camps, toy stores and dentists who treat babies, offers such parenting advice as feeding options, what to do with your child on a winter day, and the ups and downs of popularity.

"I knew if I did not [publish] this magazine, someone else would," said Burby, a mother of two. Indeed, two Manhattan-based children's magazines have expanded onto Long Island. Burby started the publication with $50,000 from family and friends. Burby said the publication is profitable.

"My goal has always been to provide parents with information they can use to make the job of parenting easier," Burby said. She likes to make her staffers' lives easier, too.

"One of my goals was also to make sure I was parent-friendly, so I never required anyone to work" 9 to 5, she said. "For the most part, the staffers are parents. I say to them, 'If you have a school meeting or your kid is sick, I want you to have the opportunity to take care of things." The staff responds in kind.

"I send out e-mails at 2 and 3 in the morning," Burby said. "The scary part is that the people who work for me answer them back in minutes."