Sloane Citron

Citron has loved magazines and magazine publishing since he was a youth.[1] In second grade, he started his first publication entitled The Second Grade News,[2] and in junior high school, he subscribed to Folio, a trade publication about the magazine business.[1] "I must have been the youngest subscriber," he remembers.[1] He attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and was friends with Gary Lee, future director Peter Sellars, and acted in a performance with future television star Dana Delany.[3] While there, he founded a humor magazine entitled Muse, a secondary school equivalent to the Harvard Lampoon; he graduated in 1974.[3] He studied at Claremont McKenna and was heavily involved in journalism, and received an internship at Los Angeles magazine where he developed a strong appreciation for regional magazines.[1] He graduated from Stanford Business School.[4]

In the 1980s, Citron was general manager of Miami magazine and South Florida Home & Garden. In 1985, he founded Westar Media in Redwood City, California.[5] His first magazine Peninsula was an upscale monthly similar in format to New York Magazine[6] which focused on the San Francisco suburbs in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. He founded other magazines including Northern California Home & Garden and Southern California Home & Garden; the firm owned six magazines at one point.[7] In the 1990s, he launched 18 Media with journalist and business partner Elsie Floriani.[8][9]

Citron veered from the standard subscription model of magazine publishing, and pioneered what might be termed the "saturation delivery" model.[2][10]

Glossy high production magazines were sent free to every home in the highly affluent cities and towns of Silicon Valley.[11][12][13][14][15][16] The new format meant that he could virtually eliminate the entire subscription department, and avoid the fuss of renewals and insert cards.[4] His magazines Click Weekly and CAFE covered the lifestyles of people in Silicon Valley's high-tech industry.[17][18][19][20][21][22][23] In 2018, he launched Punch magazine, a publication that showcases new ideas and culture from the San Francisco peninsula.[4][1] While reading a Wikipedia article on defunct British magazines, he came upon the title 'Punch',[4] and chose that after considering more than a thousand different possible titles, to convey a sense of being both modern and hip.[1]

Citron is married with four children in a traditional Jewish family and he has coached T-ball, basketball, and soccer.[2]

• 18 Media website