John H. Johnson lived just the sort of life his magazines celebrated.

Johnson, who died Monday, was the founder of Ebony and Jet magazines, which gave black Americans a way to stay connected and made him both famous and wealthy.

I have to admit I'm one of the folks who sniffed that Ebony and Jet were too fluffy and light when I thought they ought to be tackling the hard issues that still hamper so many black Americans.

I still enjoy looking through them, though.

The August edition of Ebony, sitting next to me on my desk, has Toni Braxton on the cover wearing a bikini. I can't really say I object to that.

Johnson knew what he was doing. Look and Life petered out, but Ebony keeps coming each month, offering its readers a window on the world of black folks who know how to dress and how to live. It's full of photographs of beautiful people and gorgeous homes, loving families and high-achieving professionals.

Johnson started Ebony in 1945, in the midst of segregation, and it showcased people whose lives weren't the regular fare of Look or Life, or the white-owned newspapers that, when they showed anything at all, showed only the worst.

Our nation has changed dramatically since 1945.

Hip-hop is the music of the day, black actors win more than one Oscar a generation and newspapers that once banned black celebrities from their society pages splash their pictures all over.

The Los Angeles Times has a new editor, Dean Baquet, a black man. Newsweek's editor, Mark Whitaker, is black. The CEO of Time-Warner, Richard Parsons, is black.

America has grown a lot, but not enough yet to make Ebony unnecessary. The favored media image of black folks is the gangsta. If you want to keep up with black business people and celebrities, you still have to flip through Ebony.

Let's see what's in the September issue. Holly Robinson Peete is on the cover. There's a story with lots of photos of her husband, Rodney, and their four children, an intact, loving family, and well-to-do, too.

The advertisements have lots of black folks in them, something that's new in the white-owned press. It was hard for Johnson to get big companies to advertise in his magazines early on. It took years of persistence to persuade them to come and get the money black folks have to spend.

There are ads for cars, skin creams and cleaning products. Most of the ads seem geared to women. There are a bunch of ads for various hair relaxers. Straighten that stuff and look beautiful. Hmm.

Royal Caribbean has a cruise ad with lots of black couples dancing on deck, and some white couples on the periphery. Just the opposite of a lot of Caribbean travel ads I've seen elsewhere.

Some of the ads in Ebony have only white people in them. Diversity is good.

This edition has a special section on colleges. It's all about historically black colleges.

The Travel section lists interesting events happening around the country. None is in the Northwest, again.

In each edition there is stuff you won't get elsewhere. In May, Ebony lists the 100 most influential black Americans, and in June it lists the country's top high-school seniors. I'd just bet "who likes whom" has something to do with those lists, but I'm not the one choosing. Anyway, it gives people in the barbershop something to argue about.

Did you know Jackie Robinson's son David is living in Tanzania running a coffee-exporting business? And Dionne Warwick's mom died recently.

It's still fun to flip through. But Johnson always sprinkled in some of the serious world, too. Johnson's decision to run graphic photos of Emmett Till's mutilated body in Jet has been credited with giving the civil-rights movement a push forward.

In the '60s, while the mainstream media was wondering what was wrong with black folks, Johnson ran a cover story headlined, "The White Problem in America." Perspective is everything, which is why Ebony and Jet still make me smile.

Johnson's magazines always carried tidbits of black history and news amidst the fun photos. After all, he had two missions; filling a gap and making money. He was a model entrepreneur.

In 1982, he became the first black business person on the Forbes magazine list of the 400 richest Americans. A good journey for a poor boy from Arkansas.

Jerry Large: 206-464-3346 or jlarge@seattletimes.com. His column runs Thursdays and Sundays and is found at www.seattletimes.com/columnists.