As I like to say, it’s not nostalgia, it’s history.
This lovely piece gets at something phones and feeds have trained us to forget: a magazine has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It is a finite performance for the fingers, the eyeballs, and the mind. Paper, ink—the smells!— sequence, pacing, texture, surprise. No endless scroll.
I’m writing along parallel lines at A Photographic Memory, here on Substack, about the heyday of print, when magazines ruled the media and a ringing telephone could send a photographer, like me, almost anywhere, into a green room, a campaign scrum, a movie studio, a disaster zone, even the White House. The camera is my vantage point, not my readership category.
If you’ve got a niche, scratch it. Maybe some of these new specialty magazines will write new history.
I lived in Portland for a decade and thrived in its slightly avant-garde, slightly weird vibe. Still miss it! Also, I’m a recovering magazine junkie… those glossy pages, that special smell, the surprise revelation in a feature piece. I could blather on.
Damn dude how did nobody pick this up?! This was one of the best long form pieces I’ve read in recent memory. I love magazines and now, Karin! I miss newsstands. I was heavily influenced by discovering Bitch and Ms. magazines in the middle of nowhere ND in the early 2000s thanks to some bad ass who stocked them. Very inspiring read
Just as fascinating as your writing on music! I too, am a magazine freak. Alas, the drumming and music mags have all but disappeared even online. I need to visit Portland.
LOVE this! Also, you know, I super am into magazines ... <3 Please keep me in mind when you have something else you want to put into a magazine!!! Print mags forever!
I once had the idea for a Magazine of the Month Club. You'd fill out a form specifying interests, and you'd get a different magazine each month. You might latch onto something you'd want to subscribe to. Funny--I never got the concept off the ground.
Fantastic profile of a fantastic magazine stand — Karin's the best.
(Postscript: I did, in fact, finally get something published in Like the Wind, and Karin introducing me to the magazine had everything to do with that.)
As I like to say, it’s not nostalgia, it’s history.
This lovely piece gets at something phones and feeds have trained us to forget: a magazine has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It is a finite performance for the fingers, the eyeballs, and the mind. Paper, ink—the smells!— sequence, pacing, texture, surprise. No endless scroll.
I’m writing along parallel lines at A Photographic Memory, here on Substack, about the heyday of print, when magazines ruled the media and a ringing telephone could send a photographer, like me, almost anywhere, into a green room, a campaign scrum, a movie studio, a disaster zone, even the White House. The camera is my vantage point, not my readership category.
If you’ve got a niche, scratch it. Maybe some of these new specialty magazines will write new history.
I lived in Portland for a decade and thrived in its slightly avant-garde, slightly weird vibe. Still miss it! Also, I’m a recovering magazine junkie… those glossy pages, that special smell, the surprise revelation in a feature piece. I could blather on.
Damn dude how did nobody pick this up?! This was one of the best long form pieces I’ve read in recent memory. I love magazines and now, Karin! I miss newsstands. I was heavily influenced by discovering Bitch and Ms. magazines in the middle of nowhere ND in the early 2000s thanks to some bad ass who stocked them. Very inspiring read
Just thinking that. Library book sales are getting lots of these and don’t know where to put them. Granta comes to mind.
Just as fascinating as your writing on music! I too, am a magazine freak. Alas, the drumming and music mags have all but disappeared even online. I need to visit Portland.
LOVE this! Also, you know, I super am into magazines ... <3 Please keep me in mind when you have something else you want to put into a magazine!!! Print mags forever!
I once had the idea for a Magazine of the Month Club. You'd fill out a form specifying interests, and you'd get a different magazine each month. You might latch onto something you'd want to subscribe to. Funny--I never got the concept off the ground.
I miss Lucky Peach
Fantastic profile of a fantastic magazine stand — Karin's the best.
(Postscript: I did, in fact, finally get something published in Like the Wind, and Karin introducing me to the magazine had everything to do with that.)