Longshot Magazine

The theme? Very topical: debt.

The project, born over a beer at San Francisco's Toronado by then-local writers Alexis Madrigal, Sarah Rich and Mat Honan (who still lives here), is an experiment in using new media tools for that old-fashioned print product, a magazine. They dreamed up an editorial process by which a theme is announced on a Friday afternoon and contributors have 24 hours to submit material —could be written, drawn or recorded. Then a volunteer team of editors will spend another 24 hours putting together the material, which will then be available in print, thanks to print on demand service MagCloud, or online. (If you follow any of the principals on Twitter, expect to have seen lots of references to coffee, whisky or the two mixed together, over the weekend.)

After their triumphant first run in S.F., they went to Los Angeles last summer — with somewhat less pomp, losing a bit of money. But this time, with a massively successful Kickstarter effort (they raised $17,007, more than doubling their goal of $7,500), Longshot seemed reinvigorated. In addition to the impressive work submitted by magazine vets like Wired's Steve Silberman (who did a piece on Allen Ginsburg), Longshot added a radio project and illustrator Wendy MacNaughton (a Rumpus regular who is now appearing in the pages of the New York Times) to their in-house offerings. There's also a "nag wall," rather than a paywall, to encourage donations online. (One doesn't need to pay, either: sharing a story is a form of currency, as The Awl noted.) The physical magazine, designed by Dwell Magazine's Kyle Blue and former Dwell-er Geoff Halber, retails for $12. 

The money adds up, too: as Culture Feed wrote last week, the cover story contributor was slated to get $2,000.

But just because it all got done doesn't mean making it all happen —print magazine, website, radio — went smoothly. From Madrigal's post on The Atlantic:

It was 2:45 p.m., fifteen minutes before the end of the 48-hour period we'd assigned ourselves to complete the third issue of Longshot Magazine, a project I cofounded. As we surveyed the offices at Gawker, checking in on our digital team, which had built a website from scratch, and our print designers, who had done the same, we realized something: we weren't going to make it.

Everything was 99 percent done, but that last percent was tough enough that we weren't even going to be close enough to declare victory and go have a beer before applying the finishing touches later in the afternoon.

Longshot ended going up a bit later than expected, but disaster was averted. 

According to co-founder Sarah Rich, the two biggest additions to Longshot were the enhanced digital offerings, led by Adam Hemphill, and Longshot Radio, which became a "23-minute podcast, as well as dozens of short pieces, and a video of the whole experiment."

Additionally, to make the transparent magazine-making process even more clear, Longshot will be dumping all 700 or so unedited contributions to a downloadable document. "I think in a way it's a good demonstration of the value of the editorial process which sometimes gets undervalued these days," she wrote over instant message, writing that the goal of putting the raw material online is "to see the final product in contrast to the raw ingredients and understand the curation and selection and design and editing that went into its refinement."

For now, the Longshot team has scattered, back to their day jobs and normal sleep schedules. But plans are already afoot for Longshot #3, which Rich said would probably —although not definitely —be taking place where it all began, in San Francisco.