Amidst a resurgence of independently published print magazines, Take is born in Northampton, Massachusetts.
I’m the guilty party, I guess. This “start a magazine” idea is mine. I cooked up the idea of a new magazine about culture makers for an audience of New England readers while I was employed at an alt-weekly newspaper here in western Massachusetts. I really loved my job at the paper. It was the place where–as they say–I got ink in my blood. From my perch there I could see a real space for a new magazine in New England, but sadly the economy in 2008 had other ideas.
I got myself out of the newspaper business and back into public relations and marked some time until last year when it seemed that both the economy in general and the magazine business had started to dust themselves off and pick themselves back up again. There were more magazine startups here in the U.S., and around the world people were making beautiful, interesting, independently published magazines. It really felt like the right time to give Take Magazine a shot.
So here we are, giving this a go.
We thought it would be a good idea to give you a little peek behind the curtain of what it takes to get a magazine off the ground–at least the way we are doing it. So expect the regular update of how things are going as we work toward our first issue in print later this year. (“Later this year” is about as specific as we can get right now. We’re currently working to put all the different tasks we need to accomplish to get that first issue out the door on one timeline.) Already we’ve had a few surprises.
Case in point: we were really, really surprised by the response to our non-announcement announcement of a few weeks ago. We suddenly realized we had a decent-sized audience who is probably expecting something from us. To that end we’ve started releasing content a few times a week on our temporary website. Planned? Nope. A happy accident–to be honest, yes.
Here’s to more surprises and more happy accidents, and welcome to being a Take Magazine reader. We’re happy to have you join us.
