A recent article on the upcoming changeover at Harper's -- Lewis
Lapham, the magazine's $315,000-a-year editor is stepping down -- bemoaned
the state of thoughtful periodicals in this country. "The Atlantic has
lost money for all of living memory, and The New Yorker was unprofitable
for most of the last two decades," wrote the piece's author. "So are
all the little weeklies. Call it cultural philanthropy or call it vanity
publishing, but without rich guys willing to take financial baths,
magazines of literary and political journalism and belles lettres would
scarcely exist in America."
It is true that these magazines have depended on the kindness of
endowments, foundations, anonymous million-dollar donations and such to
survive in a cultural environment hostile to considered thinking. But there
are other ways for such publications to survive with editorial vision
intact. Far be it from us to suggest that Arthur exists at the literary
or cultural level of Harper's, The New Yorker or the Atlantic. But,
that said, we do feel we have made a small contribution to the culture,
without the help of trust funds, rich donors, endowments or whatnot. (Not
that we'd turn any of those down, of course.) But what we've managed to
do has been achieved by following a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT model from
those three magazines. We've relied on our personal credit cards for
start-up capital, on our willingness to live with incomes below the poverty
level, and, most of all, we've been absolutely dependent on the
goodwill, labor and contributions of literally hundreds of people in our
first three years of existence: the network of volunteer distributors,
the magazine's barely paid "staff," the hardworking-on-deadline
contributors and columnists who work for barter, the many musicians and
artists who have contributed material for our various CDs and posters, the
loyal advertisers who've supported the magazine from the beginning, and
so on. Arthur has been a labor of collective love. That love is not
always pretty or perfect, but it is REAL. If you are willing to work
collectively, if you are willing to be poor (by the first world's elevated
standards), if you are willing to share any rewards equitably, you can
get a lot done in this country, even in 2005. You can even publish a
free magazine. And you don't need to pay an editor $315,000 a year to get
it done.
But we're not finished. We want to take ARTHUR into profitability, so
that everyone involved in the magazine's production and distribution can
be fairly compensated financially for their labor. We want to greatly
up our print run so that we can reach more people. We want to publish
more frequently. As independent, dissident voices continue to disappear
from the airwaves, from the newsstands and the streetcorners of America
-- silenced by foolish business decisions, small businesses' lack of
access to capital, corporate acquisition (see: New Times chain acquires
Village Voice Media chain), governmental mis-regulation (see: the level
of quality/miseducation on the public-owned airwaves), Pentagon and FBI
intimidation (today's LATimes: "The Pentagon has a secret database that
indicates the U.S. military may be collecting information on Americans
who oppose the Iraq war and may be monitoring peace demonstrations, NBC
reported Tuesday") and the perennial problems of personal cowar
dice, lack of imagination and/or inertia-born-of-despair.
So. To simultaneously strengthen Arthur and what's left of independent
America, then, we are proud to announce that the next issue of Arthur,
No. 21, out Feb 7, 2006, we will be inaugurating THE ARTHUR INDIE
PAGES: pages of LOW-COST advertising, divided by city or region, which will
be devoted SOLELY to independently owned and/or operated businesses in
that area. Bars, clubs, stores, salons, yoga centers: if it's local, if
it's quality, if it's indepedent, it can advertise with us for very
little -- and reach not just the neighborhood in which the business
operates, but the rest of the nation as well. We're gonna try to further
stitch together a network of no-compromise, non-corporate independents that
we've built with Arthur to date. We know we can do this because we
already are.
Send inquiries about the Arthur Indie Pages to:
[email protected].
