Before we close up shop for the next couple of weeks, I thought I’d take this opportunity to bring you all up to speed on a couple of things we’ve been kickin’ around at our sometimes-weekly meetings.
After all, we’d be nothing but another blog if it weren’t for our audience treating us like the magazine that we are. As such, we feel like we can be honest with our readership, and let you all know what we’re thinking about, and what we plan to do with the future of the magazine.
When we started Smile Politely three years ago to the month, the plan was really that there was no plan; honestly, we didn’t even know what came along with running a magazine, let alone one that a good portion of the community has come to depend on for all sorts of information about our little towns.
So, with that said, we’ve had to work by committee and kind of fly by the seat of our collective pants, so to speak. For those of you who may not be totally aware, Smile Politely is an almost all-volunteer run organization. This past July, we were able to write our first checks to the people who had contributed to its initial development, as well as to our current staff of editors who make the magazine function week in and week out.
We’ve sold some advertisements, as you might notice when you click around on the pages here. But something to note about those ads: they are sold at truly bottom of the barrel prices. Literally, our rates are ⅓ of our most relevant “competition,” and the reason we keep them there is simply because none of us are really in this to make a living, as it were. We all have our own careers, and Smile Politely serves as an outlet for all of us — editors and writers alike — to feel more connected, and to participate in something greater than ourselves.
But here is something that we’ve learned about the human psyche and how it works, especially with regards to producing a craft like a culture magazine: paying reporters brings in the real good stuff.
And by that I simply mean to draw attention to the idea that, moving forward, we’ve decided to come up with a certain way to begin to pay our writers a little something in exchange for good, solid reporting on topics that are both relevant to our local culture, and entertaining for our audience to read. Of course, it will be a process, and while I can state for certain that not every story written will come with a price tag on it, some of them will, and I think it’s an important step for the magazine.
So, allow me to introduce to you what will simply be known as the Smile Politely Writers’ Fund.
It’s not a novel idea, really. Much in the same way radio stations like WEFT or WILL run a pledge drive, we’re simply going to do the same by asking our readership to help fund a portion of our content on the site to the best of its ability. Through Kickstarter, an online crowd-funding website that is devoted to getting projects off the ground, we’ll be devising a campaign sometime early in 2011, and we’re hopeful that you will consider donating a pinch of your hard-earned bucks to the pot in order to help us further achieve our goals as a magazine.
In exchange, we’re going to give you a few things, including our very first tangible hard-bound book, which will feature the Best of Smile Politely over the first three years. We’d like to think of it as a token of our appreciation.
As details arise, we’ll be sure to keep you all informed about how our progress is coming along. We wish to be as transparent as is possible with you. We want for our readership to feel both a sense of community as well as a big dose of honesty when it comes to how we are functioning as a true “community magazine.”
For now though, we’ll simply wish you a safe and happy holiday season. There is much for us to develop with regards to this project, and once we’ve finished opening up our presents and clinking some champagne at Midnight on the 31st, we’re going to dig in to this project even further. Hopefully come Spring, we’ll have something solid to show you.
Over the break, you can expect Illini basketball coverage to continue, as well as updates of the SPodcast, and perhaps even a little Illini football bowl game coverage, to boot.
But ultimately, dear readers, we’ll just leave you with a little preview of why we think that moving forward in this direction is a good way to go.
After all, where would we be without Smile Politely?