Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Support a Bitch



I recently bought the fall issue of Bitch, after a few years' break from reading it. I'm still totally annoyed by the non-writing content--ads for LunaPads, fancy socks, P-Mate (because "Real Women Pee Standing UP!"), WeMoon wall calendars, naked lady cross-stitch kits, "Hard Edge Fashion for Deviant Dogs" and so forth not having any place in my reality whatsoever--but a few of the articles in this one really resonated with me.

So now's the time to share some news I just heard- that the mag is in danger, like so many others, of going under in 2009. Having seen beloved NW-based mags like ROCKRGRL and No Depression, as well as Chicago's venerable Punk Planet recently disappear, it's just a sad state of affairs. Here's some of what's going on with Bitch:

"First the bad news: The print publishing industry as a whole is staring into a void. Across the board, newsstand magazine sales are in a slump, subscriber numbers are down, and paper and postal costs continue to rise. But it's not magazines like US Weekly or Vogue that you'll see disappearing from the newsstands—they have the parent companies and the resources to weather industry ill winds. It's the small, independent magazines like Bitch that will disappear, because the odds are already stacked high against us. And simply put: We need to raise $40,000 by October 15th in order to print the next issue of Bitch.

Now the good news: While it's true that $40,000 is a lot of money, we know the number of you Bitch supporters is in the hundreds of thousands. And we're asking each of you who values independent, nonprofit media and intelligent feminist cultural analysis to contribute what you can to ensure that Bitch thrives. And while we can't say what form Bitch will take in the future (our direction will depend, in part, on your feedback), we can say that we've been hard at work to find an innovative publishing model that will allow us to maintain the spirit and integrity of Bitch while also reflecting the changing world around us.

As a nonprofit, reader-funded media organization, our fate really is—and always will be—in your hands. We don't need a parent company. We just need you!"

More here!

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