How I started a magazine
It’s pretty good, and I’m just some guy
By Ben Wolford
Foreword
I’m just some journalist from Ohio, which is where all the mediocre people come from (notable exceptions: The Black Keys, LeBron James, a bunch of presidents). I’m not delusional; Latterly isn’t likely to surpass The New Yorker’s readership for another six to eight months. But we are doing far better than I ever hoped and making important journalistic contributions that are worth supporting.
To summarize our accolades: We’ve been featured in the Columbia Journalism Review and VentureBeat, and we co-published with Newsweek. One of our stories was called “gripping” by a Washington Post foreign bureau chief and another called “required reading” by Chicagoist. We’ve published reports from Laos, Trinidad, several from the United States, Mexico, Lebanon, Turkey, Afghanistan and Poland. We’re working on stories from Ukraine, Egypt, India, Bolivia and Greece. And we’ve never once asked a journalist to work for free.
Pretty good for a publication that started with a few hundred dollars (my checking account balance) and a Squarespace site I built in five hours.
Part I: JFK to BKK
Starting Latterly wasn’t possible, for me anyway, in Brooklyn.
I went to New York because my girlfriend, Christina, who’s now my wife, got a job there as an attorney. I quit the South Florida Sun Sentinel where I was a general assignment reporter and moved without many prospects. I made some great contacts — I was a New York Times stringer and I started writing features for Newsweek — but broadly speaking I wouldn’t say I was a complete success as a freelance journalist. The freelancers who make it hustle in ways I cannot comprehend. They have a bottomless supply of pitches and courage; rejection doesn’t bother them.
I was spending more money that I was cobbling together, and my credit card balance was growing. I would need to find a real job soon. But neither of us wanted that. We had dreams of traveling and living abroad, and we didn’t want to strap ourselves down. So we broke our lease, bought two plane tickets, left our stuff on the corner of Fenimore and Bedford (it was gone in minutes) and caught a flight to Bangkok. We had some savings but no jobs waiting for us.
Part II: Want to start a magazine?
In August, I started working as a subeditor at the Bangkok Post, and Christina began doing what she does, helping refugees for an NGO. I was making about $2,000 a month, which is more than enough to live comfortably in Bangkok. My shift was 4–9, leaving plenty of time in the day for other things. Without all the financial pressure, I had time to think.
One Friday morning, Christina and I were sitting around our tiny apartment talking about journalism startups. One in particular, Compass Cultura, which publishes high-quality travel stories, had recently caught our attention because of how feasible it seemed. Here was a publication with no staff and no printing costs because it was online only. Its philosophy, which was also the philosophy of The Magazine, was to trim away the distracting aspects of magazines — ads, front-of-the-book frivolities — and leave only the features.
That day, Christina ran off to work, and I told her I’d have a prototype built when she came back. Five or six hours later, I had picked the name and the font (Yesteryear), purchased the domain and created the original website in Squarespace.
I should pause here to emphasize that this may have been the wrong way to do it. If I knew anything about creating a business, I might have developed a plan, mapped out a growth strategy, identified my target audience, formed partnerships, recruited early adopters, laid out a marketing plan and conducted surveys to determine consumer needs. I did none of these things. If Christina hadn’t insisted I run the numbers, I may have jumped into this not even having a cost estimate and a goal for break-even.
What I knew was that the journalism industry has problems, and Latterly offered possible solutions. Advertisers are pulling out of printed media, and digital ads don’t bring much revenue; Latterly would be ad-free and rely solely on subscribers. International news isn’t often relatable, and readers tune out; Latterly would make foreign journalism more relevant by using narrative form and focusing on people. Journalists aren’t making a lot of money; Latterly would offer the promise of fair wages if people who believe in that ideal are willing to get behind it and chip in for $3 per month. (Click here if that’s you.)
Christina came home, and I showed her the website. She said it was beautiful. And then we were like, “OK, so we need some stories now.”
Part III: Stories and Kickstarter
That weekend, I paid $100 and posted an ad on JournalismJobs. Many writers responded. One of them was a reporter with VentureBeat. It was a Sunday, a slow news day, and he wanted to write something about Latterly, not for it. I gave him an interview, and he published an article called “Journalism startup Latterly doesn’t care about page views one bit.” The thing took off. While it’s true I don’t really care about page views (subscriptions are my main concern), I do look at them, and that article earned Latterly at least 2,000 hits within a few hours and tons of newsletter signups.
That’s the good part. The bad part was I hadn’t perfected my pitch. Nay, I was clueless. Josh Benton, the director of the Nieman Journalism Lab, remarked to me on Twitter: “I wish you guys the best, but I’d strongly advise coming up with better differentiation than ‘good stories.’” I was such a novice that his advice, which seems obvious now, was eye opening.
Ready or not, people were talking about Latterly. So I just went with it. I had a little bit of money to pay writers and photographers, but it wasn’t going to be enough. If subscribers didn’t pour in (and of course they didn’t), I was going to have to find some startup capital. Christina researched how to run a successful Kickstarter campaign, and we recorded a video outside our apartment on our iPhones.
We launched the Kickstarter on the same day, Nov. 18, as our first issue, which cost about $1,800 and which I paid out of pocket. Because I couldn’t pay much, I wanted to find people who had stories mostly ready to go. I asked a journalist in California to recast a piece he’d done about a polluted beach, but instead focusing on the homeless man who saved it. I asked a friend in Trinidad to write about a famous hunger striker there. I republished a story about sex offenders I’d written for Floridian. And I asked a writer/photographer couple to rework a story they did about a plane crash in Laos and the treacherous effort to salvage it from the Mekong River.
The Kickstarter campaign funded at 126 percent, and I reimbursed myself. It’s possible I’ll have to start subsidizing the magazine with my freelance wages again at some point. But we’re doing OK for now. (You can read more on our financials here.)
We’ve had three issues, and the fourth is coming out next week. We’ve partnered with a digital publishing platform called PressRoom that allows independent publishers to push their content in multiple directions (web, app, ebook, even print) from a single WordPress source. The team there has redesigned our website, and our iOS app is due out this month.
Part IV: My advice
Contrary to what CJR wrote in its piece about “longform overload” (my rebuttal, by the way), I think there’s plenty of room for more independent digital publishers to enter the field. This isn’t a zero-sum game. Competition not only makes us better, but it also helps readers become more comfortable with this business model. I’m not an expert, but I have been immersed in a journalism startup every day since September. So for what it’s worth, here are some thoughts in random order:
- Latterly’s biggest challenge is marketing. I spent the last decade of my life (I’m almost 27) working to become a decent journalist, and suddenly I’ve turned into a salesman. The big question is: How do independent publishers with no marketing budgets get people to notice their great stories? I don’t have an answer yet. So far my solution has been press releases, social media engagement, email newsletters and essays on Medium.
- Spend more time ramping up. Two months isn’t enough. If I could start over, I would probably spend four to six months doing nothing but focusing the message, doing research, gathering feedback, collecting newsletter signups and seeking partnerships. I’d let the excitement build a little longer. I’d recruit more friends willing to jump on board and work for equity. The benefit of waiting is that you can make mistakes before you’ve started having to spend money.
- Don’t forget about the stories. I’ve been so busy lately worrying about promotion that I’ve caught myself procrastinating on editing. The stories are the most important thing. “Above average” isn’t good enough for an indie publication. To capture interest, they must be phenomenal.
- Keep your day job, even though you’re going to burn out. A startup like mine carries a little bit of risk to personal financial stability. My advice is to minimize the risk at the expense of your sleep. Every couple of weeks, take one weekend day to go slower and re-energize. Sleep in, work a few hours, watch Netflix. You could also try delegating to the degree you’re comfortable.
If I think of anything else, I’ll add to this list. Meanwhile, contact me if you have any questions or need other advice. I’m happy to share what I can. Email: hello@latterlymagazine.com
Ben Wolford is the editor of Latterly magazine, an independent publisher of international storytelling.
