Introducing London New Journal
A narrative-led, non-fiction, digital magazine
In February, London New Journal will be launching for Newsstand for iOS featuring medium-to-long-form content, telling stories focused around London. Here, editor and founder Joshua Lachkovic explains where the publication is coming from.
Storytelling
Anyone who ever watched Aaron Sorkin’s short-lived Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip will remember a TV show focused on being ‘behind the scenes of a late-night comedy show’.
Sorkin has used the same formula in all four of his TV shows: Sports Night, The West Wing, Studio 60 and, most recently, The Newsroom. The shows are always about the relationships behind closed doors. The characters who make that workplace what it is. The story behind the story.
I am a huge fan of all four of those TV shows and the formula always gets me.
Tom Wolfe and New Journalism
In 1968, Tom Wolfe documented his personal account of hanging out with Ken Kesey and the Grateful Dead, and the explosion of LSD usage in America. Four years later, in New York magazine, he wrote an article entitled “The Birth of ‘The New Journalism’.”
A year earlier, Hunter S. Thompson wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which depending on what way you interpret it can be an reading into the disillusionment of the American Dream, a piece of journalism covering the Mint 400 race held in Las Vegas, or a heavily autobiographical work that documents sixties counterculture perfectly.
These were just a few of the writers (Sorkin included) that I have read and watched extensively since I was a teenager.
The media in 2014
It’s 2014 and if you’re a member of the Fourth Estate, then the past decade must have been a pretty rocky ride.
Like with every other industry that technology, or more specifically, the internet ‘disrupts’, the established brands generally fail to keep up. There are odd rare cases, The Daily Mail has become incredibly profitable online, but most success stories are with the likes of BuzzFeed.
And what is the cost for journalism? Writing and storytelling is reduced to animated GIFs, Top 15 Lists of Things You Must Read, and any other device that aims to garner your attention for the sixty seconds you might have to spare.
Page views mean more ad revenue. Virality means more page views. And whether you take the shock/troll tactic of the Daily Mail to draw a reader in and the wall of shame to keep them, or a meme and a list, the purpose is the same: to get you to the site.
And it depresses me.
It’s not that I think there’s inherently anything bad about those sites: they are very successful for a reason. It’s more that it seems to be the only way the media can be online. The traditional print press mimics the likes of BuzzFeed ignoring its own strengths.
It depresses me that media publications think the only way to succeed is to appeal to the shortest possible attention or resorting to shock tactics and moral outrage to get the hits.
But as long as you rely on advertising for your revenue, hits, clicks and shares will remain vitally important.
But, I hope, there might be another way.
Introducing London New Journal
London New Journal is a digital magazine publishing narrative-led non-fiction. The ‘New Journal’ part is borrowed from Wolfe’s new journalism, with the explicit aim of telling narrative stories. The kind that Tom Wolfe, Hunter S Thompson and Aaron Sorkin have told.
I’m testing the theory that people are beginning to be willing to pay for fantastic content that provides a broad interest to them. It’s ad-free and will only publish great writing, starting off at three pieces in the first month, and rising over the following issues.
I’m launching on iPhone and iPad through the iOS Newsstand. A platform that has all been doomed in many strands of the tech press and for relatively good reason — a lot of publications have simply repurposed their print magazine as a Newsstand product.
London New Journal is mobile-first, with user experience and readbility firmly in mind. It is monthly and is delivered straight to your phone or tablet, so that when the issue arrives, you can fire it up on the way to work and read through on your commute.
The average Londoner’s commute is an hour. I want — for the week of release, each month — for London New Journal to be something you read during that commute.
It’s an experiment for sure. I look at American publications that publish excellent long form like The New Yorker, or more recently and digitally, The Magazine, and am always impressed.
So I want to do the same in London. I want to read everything I possibly can do about what makes this city exactly what it is.
I want to read about businesses that are starting, new cultural attitudes that are emerging, trends that are spiralling out of tiny communities, and every other story behind the story that this city has to tell. And I think, that a few others might as well.
So if you would like to stay up to date, please register with our mailing list, follow us on Twitter or Facebook, and check back in with the website. And if you want to get involved or find our anymore, email me.
