8 Reasons Matador is Launching a Print Mag

Today Matador officially launches BETA, a necessary imitation mag for those committed to transport as a approach of life.

FROM THE EARLIEST days of Matador, my mental condition has been to see a stories in print, to qualification stories worthy of printing. Ive wanted a magazine. we could roughly see it, cover wrinkled, smudged, sitting upon tip of a mantle in a hospedaje in Buenos Aires, during a vessel shop in Salida, in a friends garage. Its something youd find not upon a internet, though during belligerent level.

There have been alternative reasons Ive wanted us to create a imitation mag (some of which Ill get in to below), though what it unequivocally comes down to is this: weve never seen a transport repository as fucking good as we know there could be.

For so most of us, transport + letter have been a dual things we adore some-more than anything. But nowhere has there been a repository unconditionally invested in us, in a culture. Instead, it seems similar to a opposite. So much of what passes for transport letter is similar to an attack upon all sides: places marked down to brands as well as positioned in a market. Beaches as well as sunsets ranked. Cultures as well as peoples objectified, treated with colour similar to ego-props or scenery. Experiences finished similar to fast food. History as well as context simplified, buried under cliches as well as fallacies. Our attribute to earth forgotten, commodified.

Cairn [kairn] n. a human-made raise of stones, mostly in conical form, built for navigation, to symbol mountain summits, food caches, funeral sites, or for ceremonial purposes.

Travel letter in its highest form is similar to a cairn. Its tangible. Its formed out of a internal landscape. It registers as well as measures ones attribute with place. Its meant to sojourn for a prolonged time. It can guide we during belligerent level. And it can guide upon alternative leve! ls too. This is a prophesy during a behind of creating a new imitation magazine, BETA.

Even yet Ive been fervent for imitation all this time (jealously watching progressions during Wend, for example), Ive believed in Ross Bordens instincts to build Matador online first, as well as felt fortunate wed selected this arena when old-school (read: print) media proposed removing beat down massively around 2008.

Cairn in a Alps, by marydw1

I wrote a small notes about a beatdown last year as well as comprehend which launching a imitation repository is still ballsy given a prevailing upsurge of magazines starting pennyless as well as having to call it.

With all which pronounced though, here is an aspiring roundup (which, ironically is exactly a kind of essay we WONT find in BETA) of 8 reasons because were stoked to launch a imitation mag:

1. Its about sharing, giving away, withdrawal behind. we remember sitting during a kids residence in La Ticla as myself as well as a bro as well as might be 5 alternative Mexican kids took turns removing a heads shaved by a a single kid in locale who had clippers. While we waited we looked during roller mags people had brought down, as well as (as per custom) left down there. A few weekends ago we brought along an emanate of The Surfers Journal for a car float to a internal ski area with my neighbors. Magazines concede we to share enlightenment in a approach which molds in to a upsurge of a day. The shade alters which somehow. And how how could we leave it with people? You might even be means to traffic it for a prohibited meal, if it came to it.

2. Not everyone has access to a computer (and those who do could probably make use of a break, especially whilst traveling). Lets contend youre in Turkmenistan, which Ken Silverstein recently reported (in Harpers) to have usually dual internet cafes in a total! nation (due to a liberality as well as forward meditative of President Berdymukhamedov) though very small attendance. Perhaps due to a soldiers during a doorways or to a hourly fee, which runs about $10, some-more than a average Turkmens every day income. What have been we starting to read? A full emanate of BETA will slip easily in to your pack, provide hours of rich entertainment, as well as run we about a same as an hour online in Ashgabat with a infantryman looking over your shoulder.

3. Some stories merit some-more than being engrossed during shade time. I dont know how most times Ive read something upon shade (say an letter by David Foster Wallace) in between emails, tweets, as well as alternative tasks during part of my ass-to-chair time. It usually feels similar to Im doing a disservice both to myself as well as a author, similar to Id be contextualizing it, remembering it, feeling it deeper if we had it upon a page in my hands instead of just finishing it as well as clicking upon to something else.

4. Magazine Artwork, layout, as well as pattern is badass. Or during slightest it can be. we adore a approach opposite magazines have opposite textures, opposite paper, opposite smells. Think of how photos demeanour in a repository compared to upon a screen. In a repository we can make them huge, borderless, occupying entire pages. You can fool around with captions, text, illustrations, as well as a chain of opposite elements so which a readers eye can transport anywhere, opposite a page for example, as well as not just down a screen. You can create layouts which lend movement or citation to a approach a reader practice a story. For example, in a new Surfers Journal (TSJ Vol. 19, No. 1), an essay called A Roll of a Dice used coop as well as ink illustrations as well as content from a authors journal overlaid upon a photos. It gave multiple perspectives within a s! ame same story, creating this clarity which we were with their crew in Indo joking with a vessel captain. Webdesign can be clean or minimalist or grunge though its still aesthetically limited, not pleasing as well as directional a approach a repository can be.

5. Magazines have a kind of hold up span, together with their own journeys. Its regularly felt slightly enchanting a approach books as well as magazines have seemed to find me whilst traveling or living abroad. Earlier this year we got an emanate of BOMB in a mail down here in Patagonia (thanks again Julie). The actuality which it had physically trafficked down here, had been packed up in a sure way, had been thumbed by by a friend (and had gummy notes attached) all of this done a receiving of it take upon levels which never couldve existed in an email with url or attachment. Magazines have been similar to artifacts, apropos a part of ones library, a participation in ones house, or during a cafe, hostel, meeting place.

6. Your repository is not starting to die upon a 30-hour train float down a Ruta 40.Ive found as a ubiquitous rule which a some-more Im in a place we unequivocally wish to be, a reduction possibility theres starting to be constant Wifi, or electricity for which matter. Your repository doesnt need wireless networks, batteries, or swapping current. Nor is it starting to reduced circuit as a result of a libation spill. You can fan yourself with it, hit insects, make use of it as proxy shade, make annotations, de-seed marijuana. Under sure conditions (probably bad knowledge of terrain as well as / or miss of dry tinder) we can make use of it to start a fire. Similarly, desperation might call for a crumple as well as uncrumple method to produce backcountry toilet paper.

7. It feels moral in these times to provide a decent paying marketplace for writers as well as photographers. we done $50 for my initial printed thousand-word piece. Thats 5 cents a word. Were charity ten times! that2 U S quarters per word for a good stuff. It might not get a collections dude off your back, though it could cover a deteriorate pass during A-basin or a roller outing to Baja.

8. Because we consider we can pull it off. we find small in media some-more banal as well as useless than articulate about a death of print. There have been dozens of magazines (look for essay forthcoming subsequent week) sustaining as well as thriving because they have a prophesy to prerogative their readership in a approach which no a single else can. This same thought has been during a core of Matador from a beginning. It was simple: there was no meeting place for a tribe. We indispensable a community as well as so we built it together from a belligerent up. Weve regularly used a communitys voices as well as ideas (and very small money) to develop a vision, rather than impose a single from above. Looking downstream, we know there have been dozens of intensity partners out there who would benefit by being compared with a code as well as a million plus visitors a month online. We will usually partner with companies whose products as well as services we make use of as well as whose ethics we respect as well as admire. We dont have an office or rent due in a small midtown NYC office building, though live all over a world, each of us upon a group driven as well as committed to transport as a approach of life.

Community Connection

What do we consider a worlds most appropriate transport repository ought to be?
What sorts of things do we miss or wish we could get which youre not removing with whats out there now?