Carrier magazine’s community publishing
All the magazines we work with on Stack represent a niche to some extent. But Carrier magazine goes deeper than most, digging into a niche within a niche (within a niche?) to tell, “the human stories behind the cargo bike”. As editor Tom Parr explains in our conversation above, he is one of the organisers of the International Cargo Bike Festival, a position that meant he found himself literally surrounded by cargo bike stories from all around the world.
When I picked up the second issue of Carrier, I was struck by the picture it paints of the cargo bike as a tool for positive social change. The magazine is full of altruistic entrepreneurs who use their bikes to do things like help the homeless, provide disaster relief, and even offer a free removals service. (The photos of beds, fridges, and other household appliances being cycled through the streets of Santiago are totally crazy.)
That progressive agenda is clearly important to the magazine, but speaking to Tom I realised that it’s almost a byproduct of the thing they’re really trying to do, which is represent and reflect the cargo bike community. That’s why they’re not afraid to get pretty geeky with their coverage – there’s an understanding that if you’re reading this magazine, you’re probably already part of the club.
As you’ll hear, Tom is very open about the fact that he’s learning as he goes, and constantly pushing himself to make the magazine the best it can be. I hope you’ll enjoy this conversation with him, and of course if you’d like to hear more independent publishers speaking about what they do, take a look at our podcast archives for hundreds of hours of interviews with magazine makers. And if you follow us on Spotify or YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts, we’ll be able to deliver all our new episodes to you as soon as they’re ready.
