The back door to my brain is open

Stack took a few weeks off in August, but the September magazines arrived today so we’ll be putting those together along with some lovely free newspapers and flyers and mailing it all out to subscribers next week.

And in the meantime I’ll be trying to catch up with all the stuff that went on while I was away, beginning with Longshot, the magazine made in one weekend by the people who were behind 48HR Magazine.

I’ve always been a bit sceptical of this stuff – surely the great thing about magazines is that a group of talented people can take their time to bring lots of interesting ideas together in a considered way? But then I read the Columbia Journalism Review’s Q&A with founder Alexis Madrigal and got excited. I love the idea of “an event that is also a magazine”, and I really want to see what somebody who spends most of their time working online makes of editing a paper magazine. The way Madrigal sees it, printing gives an editor a lot more control than online publishing does, helping to “find the back doors into people’s brains”.

I’m sold – literally. I placed my order on Magcloud and apparently my copy of Longshot should be with me in 10 working days. This is the first time I’ve bought from Magcloud too, so I’m interested to see what the whole experience is like. That feels like a good way to start in on the end of the year.