Monday, July 25, 2005

OYB: a General Interest Grassroots Magazine

What is all this OYB stuff anyway? If you visit the OYB website, which is the homebase for this blog, it looks like a mishmash of books, tiny stories about one guy's life and a buncha weirdo links. So what's up?



OYB is my 10-year project to create a general interest magazine that celebrates the everyday life of regular people. And a new issue is due off-press this week!

The category of "general interest" magazine today is dominated by materials that I suggest have no general interest whatsoever but is merely paid for by the biggest companies. They're about celebrity, fantasy and corporations. How's that general anything? It's specificly big biz, that's all.

I don't dismiss the big mags entirely: they do some good work, they pay the most. But their formula really does miss a lot of the most important and realest stuff out there.

For one thing, small independent owner-operated business gets shut out of general interest media. They can't afford to advertise in it. But I think that what the indys offer is key to our cultural survival.

OYB tends to be about the outdoors, but it also includes plenty of indoor action as well. When people are taking back their lives, doing what they do, where do you find them? --Everywhere but in front of a TV or at a stadium or stuck in rush-hour.

1 comment:

joel@j.appleseed said...

Well done young Potter.Keep on Blogging.