I’m not certain I can distill what has transpired and changed and fermented to cause this magazine effort to come back. But I owe an Editor’s Note and therefore, shall try.
It’s been just over 20 years since the last issue of Midnight Mind Magazine was released. I can recall that time in our loft in downtown Chicago. The magazine was going great — we had a team of writers writing often for us. Writing for online, writing for issues. Words were passed back and forth and put out to the people to enjoy and read and share. We were talking about getting into publishing books (leading to one of my only regrets with the whole thing). There was energy and good ideas and really good writing coming from people we had never met but now considered part of our effort. We had a giant “idea wall” in the loft where we worked, and it was plastered with notes and clipping and photos and articles and and and … But I can recall the end.
The business of Midnight Mind, at the end (of the first round), suffered from many things that would be addressed in the years that followed. I’ll paint a picture for you: It’s 2004 and there is no easy way to take orders online. All sales must be from someone mailing in a check or (better for taxes and lunch that day) cash. It’s 2004,and blogs don’t exist, even though our website was acting as one. Every morning we would move the story that was released the day before from the homepage to its own page, mimicking a blog before software came along and made that instant and by design. It’s 2004 and spam filters barely exist.If you owned your URL and had your email coming down from the server,every excommunicated Nigerian prince is looking to you for help with their family fortune. A college degree from any college in the nation is just a few clicks away. This grows exponentially the better you do with getting the word out.
And the mail. Good lord the mail. Our PO Box would be stuffed full. Most days someone mailed us a book or 2 to review which, while awesome,necessitated a 20-minute wait in line at the post office. And, as I recall (it’s all a little blurry), our PO Box was actually a few stops away on the El, so the journey was like an hour and a couple bucks given to the CTA. The mail stacked upon our multiple desks and tables like snow. People unaware of what we did stopped by and were blown away that this much mail actually existed, let alone was sent to one small team.
The end was near. I could see it coming after spending a few hours cleaning out the spam from our inbox and getting the mail each day. I don’t know exactly what made me make the decision to shut it down. We were about halfway done with Midnight Mind Number Seven which was to focus on the culture of sports. We had good writing (I still have the files!) but it wasn’t as, seedy? revealing? exploratory? as I wanted us to be.
And, honestly, I was spending a decent amount of time sailing. Getting on a sailboat and leaving the mounds of mail and spam behind was… freeing. An excuse. Permission. I somehow decided. It was an evening and it was that quick. We’re done, I thought. And I went over to the work area in the loft and started taking everything off the “idea wall.” I was throwing stacks of paper with tape sticking them together — I remember nothing about them now — into the trash. I went and wrote our last website post entitled, “Tearing it off the wall”. It was an anti-manifesto. A declaration of indifference. We were done. The Nigerian princes would need to unfreeze their family fortunes without us.
So why come back now? The world of media is certainly different and, frankly, one would say it’s not a good time to publish a magazine. I guess that’s true if you are trying to make a living at this. But my goal is simple: publish really good writing, explore topics we find interesting and try to better understand the world I’m living in through the opinions and insights into those worth reading. Simple, right?
If that sounds like something you are into, join me. The ticket is cheap, and the ride is fun. I have a suspicion there are more of us out there than we all know.
-Brett, Napa, CA, May 24, 2024
