[ExI] Fwd: Blog? Cool. Magazine? You're nuts. - Re: write for the diybio.org blog

[Bryan Bishop]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Russell Whitaker <russell.whitaker at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 3:38 PM
Subject: Blog? Cool. Magazine? You're nuts. - Re: write for the diybio.org blog
To: diybio at googlegroups.com
Cc: sacha at chemhacker.com, "J. S. John" <phillyj101 at gmail.com>, Sung
won Lim <4phlebas at gmail.com>, Andrew Hessel <ahessel at gmail.com>, Jason
Bobe <jason at diybio.org>, Cathal Garvey <cathalgarvey at gmail.com>,
Charlie Schick <charlie.schick at molecularist.com>, Kim de Mora
<kim.demora at gmail.com>, contact at diybio.org


On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 9:53 PM, Mackenzie Cowell <mac at diybio.org> wrote:
> Hey Folks,
> I am committed to writing one short article for the diybio.org blog next
> week.  Would any of you like to join me in that commitment?
> There's been a resurgence of interest in a diybio-focused magazine, which I
> think would rock.  But I think there's a fairly long road from here to
> there, and in the meantime I'd like to tap into the enthusiasm of potential
> writers by lining up short posts for the diybio.org blog.
> These could blog posts could serve as short exploratory pieces that could
> become bigger features for the future magazine.
[SNIP]

I am confident that you will make a small fortune in this enterprise, Mackenzie.
What that will require is commitment, vast amounts of work, and a
*large* fortune
to kick it off.

Not to rain on your parade, because your intentions are laudable, but ill
informed by history. I suspect there are plenty of lurkers here who can pipe
in with personal horror stories about their own magazine enterprise efforts, but
the short of it is this: you are guaranteed to bleed money, lose friends, and
alienate potential collaborators.

Why on earth *anybody* would want to start a paper magazine given the
trends in publishing the last couple of decades is, frankly, beyond me. I
can put you in personal touch with friends in the industry - I have
lots of them -
who can tell you not to try. They're all scrambling to try to monetize their
operations online. They work at Condé Nast, the New York Times, and
other prestige marques.

I have been involved in amateur and professional press myself on occasion
since my own teenage days, about 25 years, and so have some of the
lurkers here, names some might recognize from *Wired*, *Boing Boing*,
*Mondo2000*, *H+ Magazine*, *Extropy Magazine* (I was a founding editor)
and others.

I have personally spent days of my past life in London, Los Angeles
and the SF Bay area pleading with bookshop owners to carry magazines on
consignment, thinking it would eventually pay off: issues would fly off the
shelves, distributors would pick up the publication, and on and on.

Do _you_ really want to find yourself cruising the magazine section of
your local B&N, hoping against hoping that the technically sophisticated
urbanites wandering the aisles will notice your magazine, the one you
maternally and helpful placed in front when the floor clerk thoughtlessly
placed yours somewhere in the middle alongside the astrology and
newage rags? Do you really want to live that life?

If any of us had started in today's climate, we'd have never lived in
that world. Instead, we'd have done what many of us have moved to: started
blogs, aggressively promoted on the web, etc. Now, you _do_ have a
sterling opportunity to apply the disciplines necessary to any news
organization:
doing a news _service_ and doing it right. If you're thinking of a blog
merely as a means to an (obsolete) end, then you won't have the commitment
and focus to do that one thing well. And it needs early, competent,
committed execution, because your readership will judge you on it.

Please know I think what you're proposing - and I did read the early draft
of the brainstorm sheet you mention later in this thread - is generally
a good idea, but only if you re-think what many of us can prove from
experience is a very, very bad business ambition.

Russell

--
Russell Whitaker
http://twitter.com/OrthoNormalRuss
http://orthonormalruss.blogspot.com/

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- Bryan
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