Z Magazine is in its 21st year, with readership holding steady (through combined online and print). While sales and subscriptions for the print edition are still not growing, we have heard from many of you over the last months arguing for the importance of continuing print publication and we plan to do so. We have done some cost-cutting, which has helped stem financial losses.
Still, once again, we can use the help of our loyal supporters to keep the print operations solvent and will offer some ideas below.
First, some history and our current state of affairs. Work on Z Magazine began in 1987, with a mailing to potential subscribers followed by a first issue in early 1988. With no large donors, grants, or advertising money, Z has stayed in continuous production with the support of its dedicated readers and small staff.
Z Media Institute (ZMI) was founded in 1994, offering an 8-to-10-day school in radical politics and media in June taught by Z’s staff and writers. ZNet began soon thereafter, in the earliest days of the web, encouraged and assisted in large part by younger ZMI students knowledgeable about the new technology. In 1998 Z Video Productions began as a way to distribute ZMI courses and lectures, and expanded steadily to a catalog of more than 70 titles today, from many venues, including five new DVDs added just in the past few months.
In 2007 our focus was on a revamped website, with a goal to provide increased exposure of left ideas, alternatives, and activist efforts through additional offerings, especially multimedia. After many delays, our new website went live in early 2008 with improvements ongoing. As we hoped, our online "Sustainer" program increased with the web improvements providing us with a much-needed source of additional income.
(FYI: Z Sustainers create an online account at our website and agree to donate to Z on a monthly or yearly basis, getting increased access to content, including their own Z Space pages, blogs, and Z Store discounts. Free Z Member accounts are also available. The idea is to create an online "community of people committed to social change.")
With expansion well beyond the original print magazine, we have begun identifying ourselves under the name Z Communications. We would like to add other projects under this umbrella, including short Z Books on Vision and Strategy (filling a crucial need) and regular multimedia podcasts (to reach a broader audience).
The first new project, Z School, is being launched this summer with online courses and web-based faculty-student interaction; this will hopefully become an additional revenue source as well. (The popular Z Media Institute will again be held in Woods Hole, Massachusetts in June 2009.)
Regularly over the past 20 years, Z has had to resort to emergency fundraisers to keep its operations going. Thankfully, Z‘s supporters and readers came through every time, allowing for continued operations and even expansion. The primary method in the past of increasing subscriptions was through direct mail appeals to lists of potential supporters and current and past subscribers. This is expensive (even more-so today) and was often preceded by a fundraiser to pay for the significant costs of printing and mailing.
It’s been a few years since our last mailing. We’re considering this again, but would first like to ask our readers to once again try to expand the magazine’s print subscription base, and newsstand reach, through more direct means. We’ve set up a web page called Help Z (www.zcomm.org/zmag/helpzmag). For those not connected, we can mail you materials if you would like to help in this effort.
On this help page, you can download Z promotional materials (signs, logos, brochures), special subscription offers, and a form to give to newsstands and bookstores encouraging them to carry Z. We also have a special gift subscription form where subscribers can buy gift subscriptions at a discounted price.
Many of our readers are activists, who organize or participate in antiwar and other outreach efforts throughout the year. At many of these events, organizers have set up tables with Z materials: free magazines, subscription forms, DVD catalogs, etc. This is another way to help us, and you can contact us with a request for such materials.
Along these lines, we have suggestions on the webpage for how you can help get the word out about Z Magazine and the radical transformations of society we’re working for, through events such as discussion groups, DVD showings, speakers, etc.
As mentioned, Z Magazine is reader supported, with no large moneyed interest bankrolling our operations and no corporate ads (we instead offer free listings at the back of our magazine for worthy left projects). This has been good for our independence, allowing us to showcase the kind of analysis and advocacy that other media (including most U.S. "progressive" media) downplay or ignore. However, our distribution is limited within an increasingly monopolized corporate system that is, obviously, hostile to our message and facing an across-the-board crisis in print publications, as hard copy readership declines everywhere.
At the moment finances are holding steady. We may yet come back to you with an emergency appeal and follow that with a big mailing. But for now, we’re encouraging you to help get Z Magazine out to a lot more people this summer and fall through these other methods. As one example, if half of our readers managed to sign up two new subscribers, our readership would double, Z would be on firm footing, and much more would be possible.
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