Hey everyone,

So we’ve decided to report you our news. Sorry it’s taken so long for us to realize that–well, we really should go ahead and just make this all a little more transparent already.

Allison Hurwitz, Editor|Publisher

We’ve had a tough climb so far, but we’ve had a lot to celebrate too. And we’ve tried to really prove ourselves and be proud of what we’re making. Along the way, Allison and I have become best friends and like family, to then like family that we never wanted, and back to being like family and best friends.

The reasons why we damn near killed each other trying to do this are varied.

And yours truly, Hannah Serrano, Editor|Publisher. Photos by E-yage

First of all, making a magazine is really hard. Of course we already knew this having been editors at PFW, where it is not unheard of to put together a 100-page book under the gun on Friday at 5 with a 4-man team and the printers on the phone screaming at someone for that last file. But when you are responsible for every last detail, from editing to writing to art directing, designing layouts, selling and designing ads, dealing with printers and developers, figuring out our own distribution and trying to recruit sales.

(By the way, if you’re interested: we offer a 20% commission on a closed sale and split commissions on leads resulting in sales. We’ll be hosting a sales orientation for anyone interested in checking out the products and/or getting involved. It will be next Tuesday evening at the Norfolk Zoo’s conference room. Please email us for details: ads@24SevenCities.com.)

Not to mention the amount of preparation we are doing for 42SevenGranby. But honestly, that is such an exciting project and so close to home for us obviously; it’s hard to not enjoy the time we invest in that space.

The second thing. We are perfectionists. We don’t let things go, we obsess about details. We are control freaks. We put on ourselves a lot of pressure to get things right. Which is not bad necessarily–we’re ambitious, and we are protective about a certain vision that we have.
But this is definitely also our major downfall.
Third. Okay, if you’re a kid, here is where you stop reading so that you’re not in trouble with your parents for repeating what I’m about to say.
Fuck this economy.
We’re all thinking it; I’m just saying it.
Sorry folks. I won’t be making a habit of it, don’t worry.
(But seriously.)

We realized how much we are hitting our heads against the wall trying to sell our ads at a fair price and push the print product that we really believe in.

If you’ve held that thing in your hands, you know. It’s luscious, this paper. We used to rub the sheets against our cheeks to judge the different satin textures when we were first meeting with printers. But as we’ve all been not reading in the newspapers, print’s been having it rough. And that paper ain’t cheap.

42SevenGranby: We're restoring this...

So we took this past weekend to really re-evaluate our model/costs/plans.

I think that what we have come up with for a revised plan is a much more realistic and streamlined way to approach our publishing strategy. The details are not yet finalized, but the gist of it is this:

By April 10 we release a quarterly print edition of SevenCities magazine.

It will be a thorough directory of business listings, broken down by title: taste, haunt, shop, sound, inhabit and create.
Each section will open with the cover of the respective magazines. On that page will be included a prompt to view that magazine’s digital edition where the full editorial is included.
The only other editorial will be beautifully laid out photographs and blurbs, prompting the reader to view the entire article/issue/video on 24SevenCities.com.

...to this. Photo courtesy of the Library of Virginia

The other main chunk of pages is of course the directory. These will be a nicely styled listings section of key retailers and advertisers. Allison has mocked something up for that, so we will be finalizing a version tonight to post and send out to all of our contributors and friends and business owners so that we can start collecting their info/aggregating content, ratings and reviews.

Of course being the clever little girls that we are, we’ve decided that these will be kind of like a mix between a Zagat Survey and a real locals’ take on the area. We’ll include a survey that will highlight quirky details about the establishment. An example for taste: A perfect spot for: a. A hot first date. b. Your mom’s birthday dinner. c. Beers and a big group of friends. d. A late-night run for munchies.

We really want to develop our user-generated content this way.

And speaking of which, if any of you have any suggestions about what kinds of questions we should include on our polls, please comment them below. Yes, you have to be a user to post a comment. But  the only required info is a username and email. What do you think is important to know when you’re thinking about where to go tonight or what to do?

We’ll be building the content for our quarterly print directory simultaneously with an online database. Allison and I have been working on a directory and a calendar. It’s tricky because we’re working within the limited means we have at the moment, but as soon as we have things up we’ll be asking for all your help getting it filled out.

We really think this approach will provide something tangible, practical and meaningful for people who want to hold that magazine in their hands and have it around to flip through now and again. While at the same time, we want to focus on utilizing 24SevenCities.com as more of the primary space for our alternative features and content.

On this space, we’ll be focusing on building streams of daily and weekly content, and establishing regularity in our web publishing schedule. Now’s the time to tell us what you want to see on 24SevenCities. What kinds of daily stories are you interested in reading? What kind of functions would you like this site to provide? You know you have a comment in your head; just post it.

An example of a web directory listing; Pasha Mezze, one of our faves.

We have not yet made an ultimate decision about what we will do with the individual magazines. We’ve considered a million plans of action: ceasing print versions of those altogether, and only producing digital editions; printing miniature pocket guides of each; creating ‘seasonal catalogs’ as ad supplements with nearly all advertorial or ad-sponsored content; publishing them solely for subscription and limited-release in select retailers and at 42SevenGranby… There are a lot of options, and we may very well do a hybrid of these.

The thing is, print is important to us. We love it. We think this area needs it. But we’re not interested in disposable newsprint, and neither are the rest of you. So we’re going to continue to try to flesh out a way to make cool and beautiful print magazines with those titles, but to be honest we’re not totally sure what they will evolve to.

Right now we have the ability to be flexible and really find a way to provide something substantial for this area, and still do something we love. Granted, when a chef opens a new restaurant he expects to put in many, many 14-hour days; and I doubt he’d take pleasure in cooking a late-night dinner after on of those. Likewise in starting this magazine and taking on the kind of endeavors that we did, we have long since given up on getting to do the one thing that drove it all to begin with: write.

We really want to write. We really want to serve this area with words and stories.

So we hope that this new plan develops into a solid, successful strategy, and that we avoid the sad fate of so much print media that fails due to inflexibility. Please keep your eye on 24SevenCities and 42SevenGranby, as both will move quite a bit forward in the coming weeks. And look out for SevenCities magazine, our quarterly print edition in a couple weeks.

Thank you for caring about what we do.

Tell us what you think. Do you still value print magazines? What would you do if you took over? What do you think the Seven Cities needs in regards to local media?