magazines

Nick Friedman is the first male editor of Scholastic’s Parent & Child, a magazine whose readership is 85% women the New York Times reports. Apparently, most magazines are run by the gender they intend to cater to (BTW, non-bitches need not apply!), and while homemaker mags have been run by dudes before (Good Housekeeping was founded by Clark W. Bryan in 1885), there seems to be a "mommy club" that men remain outside of.

If you haven't checked out Make/Shift magazine yet, I highly recommend it. 

From their mission statement: 

Make/shift magazine creates and documents contemporary feminist culture and action by publishing journalism, critical analysis, and visual and text art. Made by an editorial collective committed to antiracist, transnational, and queer perspectives, make/shift embraces the multiple and shifting identities of feminist communities. We know there’s exciting work being done in various spaces and forms by people seriously and playfully resisting and creating alternatives to systematic oppression. Make/shift exists to represent, participate in, critique, provoke, and inspire more of that good work.

Several months ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Nancy Gruver, founder of New Moon, a magazine aimed at girls ages 8 to 12. New Moon is great – they're ad free, have girl editors and writers. They have a girl blog. Oh, and they're also based in Minnesota. 

Today in my inbox was a message from Nancy sharing the news that on September 1, they'll be launching New Moon Girls web community – like the magazine, it'll be ad free, girl-driven content. In the meantime, they're trying to raise money.  

Help them out, won't you?  It's a rare thing to find media aimed at building up girls' self-esteem rather than tearing it down. 

Okay, so maybe it is the heat of the office making me unusually cranky on this Friday afternoon but I just have to write and ask, what is the deal with the Oprah phenomena, and particularly the magazine?

Now I know these may not be popluar thoughts to have these days, but I've got two questions (among many) that have been burning a hole on my mind that makes this whole love fest just not add up for me. 

I finally unpacked from last weekend's NCMR, and unloaded the special NCMR tote bag. I've learned from the past couple conferences I've attended that tote bags are apparently a necessary part of every conference. Am I being an ungracious a**hole when I say I find this ridiculous? Sure, tote bags are helpful in organizing all the conference materials and other items handed out at workshops, but don't people bring their own bags?

A new publication about sex/sexuality in Pakistani society from a feminist and gender-inclusive perspective has entered the publishing world. Read Bitch contributor Sarah Seltzer's interview with Chay magazine founders Kyla Pasha and Sarah Suhail in the current issue of INTHEFRAY magazine, an online magazine focused on identity and community.

Clearly I'm not one of those people who can keep my blog up-to-the-minute, but I want to mention two more things about my visit to Detroit, even though I'm actually two states beyond at this point.

Before I left town, I had lunch with some staff members of Labor Notes, an incredible and radical organization/magazine that provides a forum for union activists to honestly examine problems within the labor movement (i.e., not just ever-weakening labor laws and employer offensives, but problems like weak unions and union leaders not doing their job). Similar to Bitch, they're a nonprofit organization that publishes a magazine. They also publish pamphlets and books (including one of my favorites, The Troublemakers Handbook: How to fight back where you work and win) and organize a bi-annual Labor Notes conference. I highly encourage everyone to read what happened at their most recent conference in April. There's some f'd-up stuff going on in union organizing these days.

On the bus to work today, I read the new issue of $pread magazine. For those not familiar, $pread's mission is to build community and destigmatize sex work by providing a forum for people working in the industry. They publish interviews, feature articles, reviews, news, and personal stories of sex workers from all perspectives.

I awoke this morning to the news that the music magazine, No Depression, will cease publishing after its May/June issue. Citing many of the same reasons that other indie publications have closed their doors (check out the  story in Lost/Found issue of Bitch: Paper Cuts: Saying RIP to some of the best DIY), ND will move to web only content after 13 years of print publishing.

We are happy to be sending some magazines and love down to the Antigravity Alternative Media Expo in New Orleans next Saturday, February 23rd.

Here is the scoop in their own words,