The STACK Blog
Stack at the V&A
Tuesday, January 31st, 2012This is extremely short notice, but if you’re in London tonight and you fancy a bit of magazine chat, come along to the V&A for their V&A Connects evening on independent magazine publishing.
I’ll be there speaking about the magazines that have interested me lately, and I’ll be joined by Lucy and Tina from Lost in London, who’ll be giving a first-hand account of life at the sharp end of independent publishing, and organiser Alan Rutter of Clever Boxer.
The last I heard there were still a few tickets left, so get booking…
Come and work for Stack
Thursday, January 26th, 2012
Would you like to work with the best independent magazines in the world? Then the Stack internship could be for you.
We’ve got loads of exciting things lined up for the coming months and we’re looking for a magazine lover who will help us turn the ideas into reality. More specifically, that means:
// Blogging (yes, it’s been a bit quiet around here lately)
// Organising events
// Managing subscriber lists
// Keeping up with the best in independent publishing
You’ll need to be a confident writer, well organised and passionate about independent magazines. The placement will be based at the Stack office in Shoreditch, it will run for three months and will pay £20 per day to cover travel and food expenses.
If you’d like to be considered, please email us with your CV and a brief paragraph on your favourite magazine. Tell us why you like it, what makes it special and why everyone should know about it. We’ll close for entries on Friday 03 February, and will contact successful candidates by email.
Good luck!
Happy accidents
Friday, January 6th, 2012
Thanks very much to everyone who came to Printout last night, and especially to Alex, Dan and Davey (pictured second left to right, being frowned at by me). It’s Nice That, Spiel and Boat are all very different magazines doing very different things, but I’d hoped that there would be some overlap in terms of the way they saw the year ahead.
And I wasn’t disappointed. All of them spoke really interestingly about an approach that embraces happy accidents rather than strict planning, preferring to make mistakes and learn from them rather than staying safe and making something more comfortable (and, perhaps, profitable).
Thanks also to Rob, aka Supermundane, who played a brilliant and progressively more barmy set afterwards. I couldn’t help feeling as I slipped off home at 10pm that his music was slightly wasted on an audience still feeling the effects of Christmas and New Year. We’ll definitely have to bring him back later in the year when everyone feels a bit more like staying out late.
Printout tickets on sale now
Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012
Do you want to know what independent publishers are planning for 2012? Of course you do. On Thursday night we’ll be talking to three magazine editors to find out what they’re looking forward to in the year ahead.
There’s Alex Moshakis, editor of It’s Nice That, who will be filling us in on what the magazine / website / events organisers have got coming up next.
Davey Spens from Boat has promised to reveal all about where the next issue will be going and what they’ll be doing differently this year.
And Dan Byrne of Liverpool-based football magazine Spiel will be sharing the secrets of how they got big name advertisers from issue one, and how they’re planning to do even better before they reach their first birthday.
Oh, and Supermundane, the design hands behind Fire & Knives, Anorak and Cagoule, will be playing music. Come along, get inspired and make overly ambitious plans about what you’re going to do in the next 12 months. Tickets cost £5 and are available to buy now.
Words of the Year – Fast Company
Saturday, December 24th, 2011It didn’t seem fair to put all those editors on the spot and not come up with a favourite article of the year myself. But it’s harder than I thought it would be, and not because I haven’t read good things this year.
My first thought was Holiday, Gerard Donovan’s incredibly tense short story in Zoetrope – I read that at the start of the year and it’s stayed with me ever since. At the other end of the year was the bizarre story on sinkholes that I read in the first issue of Matter – I only read it a couple of weeks ago but its lightness of touch mark it out as one of the best things I’ve seen all year. There were also stand-out stories in The Wire, Fire & Knives, Delayed Gratification and lots of the other Stack magazines, but none of the ones that came to mind put their content online so I can’t share them here.
Instead I’m plumping for a Fast Company article by Farhad Manjoo. Little White Lies editor Matt Bochenski first put me onto it, and it’s a fascinating overview of the tech war brewing in 2012. I’d been vaguely aware that Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple were encroaching on each other’s territory, but Manjoo’s thorough, thoughtful assessment shows exactly where the battles will be fought and gives a sense of which of the giants are likely to triumph. Very exciting, and kind of alarming.
Words of the Year – V Magazine
Friday, December 23rd, 2011Johannes Reponen, editor of fashion journal Address, turns to Lady Gaga for his most memorable piece of writing from 2011.
“There has been a lot of discussion around criticism this year. Grafik dedicated 14 pages in issue G193 to graphic design criticim, whilst Design Observer has continued to publish interesting pieces about design criticism in general. As a journal for fashion writing and criticism, Address is of course interested in these discussions, but we were disappointed that in the field of fashion criticism the only real contribution this year came from none other than Lady Gaga. Her ‘Memorandum No3′ published in V magazine this autumn addressing what she calls ‘extreme critic fundamentalism’ is hence our favourite (as well as least favourite) article of the year.
Words of the Year – Spitalfields Life
Thursday, December 22nd, 2011Cathy Olmedillas, editor of Anorak, explains why, for her, the year’s best writing came from a local blog:
“My favourite online read this year has been the wonderful Spitalfields Life, which, even though it is online, is more like reading a book that magically updates itself every day. You really don’t have to live in the East End to enjoy this blog, although, yes, it does help. It tells the stories of the ordinary folk who live or have lived in the area with bags of respect and consideration, and gives them a voice that we would normally not hear. Amazingly it is updated every day and carries beautifully written portraits or interviews of local people, so that you discover who is behind the facades you walk by every day.
“Thanks to Spitalfields Life, I discovered a series of books called Ordinary Lives by Clive Murphy, which is based on a series of interviews he did with a few characters who lived in the area in the 1960s. The beauty of these memoirs is that they are recordings of interviews by the author – when reading them you really hear the protagonists’ voices and gain a great insight into their lives and personalities.”
Words of the Year – New York Magazine
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011He’s at the forefront of slow journalism, a discipline renowned for its ability to reflect upon and rethink the news of the day. So which article from 2011 will stay with Delayed Gratification editor Rob Orchard? He doesn’t disappoint:
“The best thing I’ve read by far was New York magazine’s 9/11 encyclopaedia. Definitely slow journalism – 10 years of reflection and hindsight by the best writers in America. Extraordinary.”
