"SAVE PASTE": A fellow publisher's fight and success

NEED’s co-founder Kelly Kinnunen talked with Josh Jackson, editor-in-chief at Paste Magazine, about Paste’s struggle to keep the much-loved music magazine afloat during the economic downturn. “Save Paste” is the campaign that formed after dedicated readers expressed their concerns about the magazine and asked what they could do to help. Like the “screwtheman | savetheworld” campaign, Save Paste gives power back to readers who love a magazine and don’t want to see it fold.

Kelly: So, why Save Paste?

Josh: We had experienced such a drop in magazine advertisers like a lot of people did over the course of the last year, and we had been trying to react to that from a business standpoint and change our business model quickly, but we just couldn’t quite react quickly enough and we were left with an inability to keep moving forward without a little help. … A couple readers emailed saying “hey, let us know if you ever need help, we don’t want you to go away.” And so we followed their advice and went to them and explained what the need was and just tried to be as transparent as possible.

[Artists we’ve worked with] were very generous in offering these rare, exclusive songs for our donors to download. So the way we set it up is anybody who donates $1 to $1000 gets access to all these tracks. We have about 75 different artists and we’re up to 150 now, so if somebody donates they get rare, exclusive tracks from folks like Neko Case, The Decemberists, Of Montreal, The Avett Brothers, The Indigo Girls – just all these cool artists that have offered their music to help us.

Kelly: I thought that was a really cool feature of your campaign – to offer your readers something unique. Tell me more about readers’ responses.

Josh: It’s been mostly positive. One of the things we didn’t know is if we’d get lambasted for being a for-profit company acting like a nonprofit, you know, asking for donations. It’s kind of an odd place to be. But yeah, it’s been in the press, people have blogged about it, Twittered and shared it on Facebook, so everybody’s been pretty positive and trying to help. … There have been so many great magazines that folded during this downturn and people are sick of seeing that happen. By doing something a little bit different, we could be a success story and I think that rallied a lot of people around us. It’s been really affirming for everyone on staff that people don’t want to see this thing go away and so we’ve got a renewed vigor to not let it die, to come back stronger, to really offer as much value as we can to our readers.

Kelly: If your readers and donors see this article, what would you like to say to them?

Josh: Oh, just a heartfelt thank you. It’s been such a humbling experience to share our position in need, but also such an encouraging one. Just their responses have lifted spirits over here and given us renewed energy.

- Ellen Frazel

Official "ScrewTheMan" News Release

Download a PDF of the official "ScrewTheMan" news release

SCREWTHEMAN, SAVETHEWORLD? What is this all about?

The best photographers in the world want to inspire people to action by taking photos where people are suffering. NEED magazine wants to tell stories about our heroes who are saving the world through humanitarian efforts. Readers crave inspiration from stories like these. So why is it difficult for a media organization to publish these stories?

Advertising dollars fueled print media in the past. Publications go to great lengths to drive up their circulation numbers in order to entice corporations to buy advertising space. This money comes with a price. Because advertisers control a large portion of publications’ revenue, they can easily dictate the content within written media. During this recession, many media organizations are discovering how unstable advertising money is. As corporations go bankrupt, so do publications that rely on these companies for advertising money. In response to this, NEED magazine is saying, “Screw the man.”

NEED magazine is a small, independent magazine which tells uplifting stories of hope about humanitarian aid. The publication was started by a couple who sold all they had to help humanitarian efforts by inspiring others. The “ScrewTheMan, SaveTheWorld” campaign is a push to drive up subscriptions so that NEED will not have to rely on advertisers for revenue.  If we reach just 25,000 subscribers, NEED can kick advertisers to the curb for the length of these subscriptions. Since all the money sustaining the publication will come directly from subscribers, NEED will not be influenced by outside corporations, and the driving force of the magazine will be the readers themselves.

With every ad removed, NEED will have more space within each issue. We want to fill these pages with readers’ stories. If a reader has volunteered building a well in Sierra Leone, we want to publish it in the magazine so that this story might influence someone else to take a similar action. In this way, every reader has the power to join the founders’ goal of inspiring others to help. ScrewTheMan, SaveTheWorld is about making readers the lifeblood of NEED magazine and expanding its impact.

What’s more, of every 5000 new subscribers gained during this campaign, NEED will randomly choose one to win a PLAY it Forward Adventures trip. PLAY it Forward Adventures combines adventure sports with volunteer relief in exciting destinations all over the world. We are excited to possibly have the opportunity to provide people with the travel experience of a lifetime all while furthering our goal of publishing a magazine that inspires everyone to do their part to save the world.

standing in traffic

Scott Schmidley prepares to jump into traffic.

The NEED crew arriving at the photoshoot.

Day four at a new job is usually too soon for an employer to ask you to stand in traffic, but apparently not at NEED. On my fourth day as an intern for NEED magazine, I went along with the staff on a photo shoot for the “Screw the Man, Save the World” campaign. We held signs in different parts of the city while photographer John Abernathy took pictures.

It was fun to see how the lunch rushers at Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis made unexpected cameos in our pictures. We held signs that read “Screw the Man, Save the World” above the mobs of busy people on escalators, rocks, busy sidewalks, skyways, in intersections and between cars. I stood in an intersection while John shot pictures from a skyway. The light was red, but still!

 

John Abernathy photographing Rachel Yuen.

John and the team at NEED came up with some great ideas to capture the campaign’s message. I was really impressed. John is an old friend of NEED magazine who has photographed for four of NEED’s past issues. After a passing motorist howled at Stephanie, our Editor in Chief, John told her, “Only when you are getting yelled at do you truly know, you’re doing something right.”

After the shoot we went out to lunch and agreed that overall the photo shoot was a success. The only letdown was that the Minneapolis segway patrol cops zoomed by too fast for us to get a shot with them.

- Scott Schmidley

Scott Schmidley's final shot.