Rob Orchard - Delayed Gratification
Tim Hayward - Fire & Knives
John L Walters - Eye Magazine
All three men are heads/editors of their respective independent magazines which they are all at different stages of starting up or doing business with. Each of the magazines, though similar in format all have completely different subject specialisms and with it, completely different approaches to the way they approach the running of their magazine.
Rob Orchard with Delayed Gratification has coined the term 'slow journalism' to as a direct reaction to the internet generation of journalism where every story must be investigated, researched, written and published all within a matter of minutes. His magazine is a quarterly publication of exquisite journalism and beautiful infographics, a modern almanac. Other than a website DG has no online presence whatsoever, launched only last year it'll be interesting to see what happens to them.
Tim Hayward with Fire & Knives has created the ultimate foodie magazine, based around his passion for food and journalism he gets people equally as passionate, interesting, literate as him to write his articles. By his own admission he is "basically printing a blog" taking talented writers who have not yet had much exposure and giving them the opportunity to have their work published for no fee which then leads to them having more work and the magazine gaining more exposure. They have a website and a twitter account which allowed them to get enough subscribers based on a mock-up issue to print their first issue and have gone on from there to bigger and better things.
John L Walters from Eye Magazine, I don't really need to explain their ethos. If you read this blog chances are you'll read theirs too and maybe even their magazine and have a very clear idea about what they're all about.
Despite their differences in topics, journalistic ethos and relationships with the internet each of the mags. and their directors/editors are passionate about publishing and printing. The magazines are their souls and it shows in printed form. When asked about 'the green issue' of the environmental cost of printing a magazine Tim summed it up nicely "No-one has ever thrown away a copy of our magazine" stating "We design a beautiful object as possible, it is not disposable media. People keep them. The first thing I see people do when they get the magazine is smell it, personally I think that is much better as a form of interactive media than facebook or twitter." All of the magazines tick those boxes. There was a small library of tonnes of independent magazines which we flicked through over a drink and were even given a couple of complimentary copies of Eye Magazine, Fire & Knives and Article (see the photo above). All of the magazines were beautiful, like popular magazines like 'OK' and 'Hello' they are printed media but overall they are in a world of their own.
My copy of Fire & Knives is just amazing. Overall well worth the fiver entry I'd say.
Chillin' with the guys below, John, Tim and Rob (right to left)....SWAG
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