Write a magazine in 48 hours?
It’s happening! A bunch of super talented writers have launched the 48 Hour Magazine Project. Here’s how it works:
Issue Zero begins May 7th. We’ll unveil a theme and you’ll have 24 hours to produce and submit your work. We’ll take the next 24 to snip, mash and gild it. The end results will be a shiny website and a beautiful glossy paper magazine, delivered right to your old-fashioned mailbox. We promise it will be insane. Better yet, it might even work.
My immediate reaction to this was abject horror. I used to work in print publishing for a nationally acclaimed, and awarded artsy magazine. The amount of blood, sweat and tears that went into each issue was about 8 weeks long. The last 2 weeks of production were in a word: brutal. It was an absolute tour de force by our production team that was rigorously laying out, finalizing fact checks, copy editing, editing artwork. You name it, they did it.
So ok, 48 hours is insane. Insane in the “not possible” kind of way. So how are they going to pull it off? I’m not sure. I’d imagine there will be lots of white space, sparse unedited text (since you only have 24 hours to submit), large bold photography… in short, an artsy, hipster look and feel.
Despite all my skepticism about the project, I am actually very interested to see how it pans out. I hope that they exceed my relatively low expectations! Who knows, maybe this audacious experiment will teach a thing or two to publishers.
