What Living Single Taught Me About Running an Indie Magazine

I started rewatching Living Single purely for comfort: the Brooklyn brownstone, the four friends, the theme song I will sing in full, with choreography, if provoked, and the jokes I can finish before the characters do. Somewhere in season one, though, I realized I was taking notes, and every single one of them was about Khadijah.

Khadijah James, editor in chief

If you somehow missed it, Living Single ran on Fox in the nineties and followed four Black women sharing a Brooklyn brownstone, plus the two men who lived upstairs. Queen Latifah plays Khadijah James, who runs Flavor, an independent magazine, out of a tiny office with an even tinier staff and a budget held together with determination and, I suspect, a little tape.

She writes, edits, sells ads, chases invoices and manages her cousin, who also happens to be her receptionist. She goes toe-to-toe with bigger publishers who want to buy her out, because she believes her readers deserve a magazine that actually sees them. A Black woman owning her own magazine on prime-time television in the nineties! When I was a kid, I thought she was just funny and bossy, but now that I run a magazine of my own, I understand exactly what that meant, and it hits very differently.

What Khadijah taught me about running a magazine

Know exactly who you’re making it for. Every decision Khadijah makes goes back to her readers, not to advertisers, investors or whatever happens to be trendy. When I’m stuck on a decision for A Million Little Delights, I ask myself, “Who is this for?” and the answer usually makes the choice for me.

Independence costs something. Khadijah is often broke, frequently stressed and constantly juggling, and she never once sells out for comfort. There’s an episode where someone tries to buy Flavor and she simply says no, and I think about that a lot. Independence isn’t glamorous, but it’s worth it.

Your friends are your first readers. Synclaire, Regine and Max are her focus group, her cheerleaders and her harshest critics (mostly Max). Every magazine needs a Max, the friend who reads your draft, says, “This is boring,” and is unfortunately right.

Have a point of view. Flavor isn’t trying to be everything for everybody. It’s trying to be honest and specific and to sound like the people who make it, and honestly, that’s the whole assignment.

A magazine is a promise to a very specific reader. Khadijah kept hers, episode after episode.

Why this rewatch felt so personal

Running A Million Little Delights is equal parts vision and spreadsheets, faith and follow-up emails. Some days I’m editing a beautiful essay, and other days I’m in my office printing, cutting and stapling zines for the Mail Club by hand, covered in paper scraps and wondering what I’ve done with my life. Finding the blueprint for all of it in a sitcom I loved when I was eleven was strangely moving. I didn’t know I was studying back then, but I was.

It also reminded me how rare that kind of representation was, and still is. Watching Black women run media, build something from scratch and be funny, flawed and ambitious all at once on a network sitcom meant something, and Living Single walked so a lot of shows could run.

The episodes that hit hardest now

As an adult, I watch the episodes about money completely differently. When Khadijah worries about making payroll, I feel it in my chest, and when she has to decide whether to take an ad from a company she doesn’t believe in, I put the remote down and stare at the wall. When I was a kid, those were the boring parts between the jokes, and now they’re the parts I rewind.

The friendship episodes hit harder, too: the way Khadijah and Synclaire take care of each other, the way Regine and Max fight and still show up, and the way the whole house rallies around anyone who’s having a hard time. That’s what makes building something survivable, honestly. A magazine is a team sport, even when the team is mostly your cousin and your college roommate.

Should you rewatch Living Single?

Yes, immediately! It’s funny and warm, the fashion is incredible, and Regine’s wigs alone deserve their own museum. It’s also the perfect comfort show for when your brain is full, which is why it sits near the top of my list of Black sitcoms that made having friends as an adult look so good.

And yes, I still want that brownstone. Some things you just don’t outgrow.