Time to Play
July 16, 2019 | by Jocelyn Hoppa
Hello kids, it's time for recess.
It's true: We’re giving a boot to the cool of daily/weekly publishing (and the sheer grind and feelings of futility it lends). For those outlets that do it, built the right infrastructure for it, we salute you. However, the rigors wrought from that type of publishing demand simply don’t fit the current constraints of our small but mighty magazine collective.
You may have noticed our slow creep back from publishing at a daily rate, and that’s because we have been spending time mulling over what we are and are not. This is not a full-time paying job, or a paying job at all — we all have paid work elsewhere, day jobs as it were, and that comes first. Period.
We’re craving to slow down a bit in this otherwise hypervigilant environment, and make the most of where we truly thrive. Pulling back for the bird’s eye view, we saw that spending time on long-form articles, really crafting an issue, and putting more emphasis on value for the reader are all pretty good ideas.
This definitely isn’t a whimsical move, but moreover facing a reality backed by actual data to make forward-thinking adjustments and create necessary boundaries. That’s called growth, and it’s healthy. We're stoked about the possibilities.
Of course, we’re gonna try and charge for it, because that's healthy too! Because there is value, and literally everyone involved deserves some type of payment for their work. I don’t feel the need to go on a tangent about this aspect of things, but yeah, we're done supporting a free distribution model.
If you’re currently scratching your head, asking “Who… No Recess the what now?” — allow me to point you to nearly 2.5 years of brilliant features, interviews, reviews, and more for you to read and be the judge. The current site will stay up, allowing free access to our archive.
If you have responded at all positively to our work, just wait until you see what we do with a few months of actual focusing!
At this point, we don’t want to divulge in too many details or put any stakes in the sand as to what we’re exactly doing. This is a time to close the curtain, sit down and do, emerging eventually with a new, better way to consume our content.
Thanks for reading, as always.
See ya on the flippity flop,
Jocelyn
PS. Any PR people, labels, etc. we work with, keep on sending us stuff. We are 100% still listening and working on content in the now/not-too-distant future.
