Fun and games at The Fence magazine
The Fence magazine is funny, and clever, and incredibly well connected. But what’s it really like to work there? That’s what I wanted to find out when I spoke with junior editor Ralph Jeffries, and the answer seems to be a sort of editorial nirvana.
As Ralph tells it, he and the rest of the small team spend their days knocking around ideas for the magazine and their newsletters, editing stories, and coming up with the little details and flourishes that make The Fence so much fun. Of course he was quick to assure me that there’s lots of hard work too, and the wheels might fall off every now and then, but taken as a whole, it sounds like a paradise of magazine making from a bygone age.
And I think that’s a big part of The Fence’s success. The energy and freedom he describes are absolutely on show on the printed page, and I love the fact that it addresses itself to a broad audience of readers, with no particular specialism or niche. It was great to hear Ralph speaking about the new advertising, which first appeared in the magazine in the issue we sent to Stack subscribers this summer. And likewise, he shared his thoughts on their “guerilla marketing” successes, like the Carbuncle Cup, and their videos with Snake Denton as the only paperboy delivering the UK’s only magazine.
You can see the whole conversation in the video below, and if you subscribe to Stack, we’ll choose a different magazine every month and deliver it to your door, and then we’ll invite you to join a Magazine Club evening where you’ll hear from the people who made it.
