Two distinct audience neighborhoods pull on Southern Living simultaneously — one rooted in regional lifestyle publishing, the other in Southern-inflected politics and sports media.

The shape is two-peak. Garden & Gun sits at the top of the neighbor set at 0.83, the only other magazine in the top 10 and the clearest expression of the lifestyle cluster. From there, the second peak emerges quickly: Tim Scott (0.82, Politician) is nearly as close, followed by Jim Cantore (0.80, TV Personality) and sports journalists Joe Schad (0.78) and Paul Finebaum (0.74). That second cluster is dominated by journalists and athletes — five journalists and two athletes appear across the top 10 — most of them tied to SEC football coverage or Southern political media. Booger McFarland (0.76, Athlete) and fashion brand Southern Tide (0.75) round out the set, with Bruce Feldman (0.73) and Laura Rutledge (0.73) — both sports journalists — completing the ten.

The cross-kind finding is the real story: only one neighbor shares Southern Living's own subcategory (Magazines), while eight of the remaining nine are Celebrities and Influencers, split between journalists, athletes, and a politician. The audience that reads a Southern lifestyle magazine also closely mirrors the audiences following SEC football reporters and a South Carolina senator — a pairing that would be invisible from the content alone.

This two-peak structure suggests an audience that bridges regional identity through two distinct lenses: curated Southern culture on one side, and Southern sports and conservative politics on the other.