The Demise of Pagan Magazines
Physical magazines are dying out for four main reasons:
1) Most people in Western Society under the age of 30 learned to type on a keyboard right along with learning how to write on paper. Folks are just as comfortable reading on a Kindle or PC as reading a book or magazine. Also digital information can be stored on a single, small external hard-drive whereas magazines fill boxes that take up much more space and can become fire hazards. The days of keeping old magazines in boxes for decades are coming to a close.
2) Magazines are made of paper. Paper is made of trees and deforestation is bad. Also most magazines are made of that glossy stuff you can’t even recycle, compost properly, build a decent fire with, or lay down to paper train your puppy.
3) There’s a recession going on. Rather a lot of us are trapped in dead end entry level position jobs because a certain generation didn’t save up and thus retire when they were supposed to. Now that they are retiring, they are expecting us to help take care of them, and our own families, while stuck in dead end entry level positions. Also most of them have remarried so most of us don’t have two parents, we have two sets of ageing parents. That’s if you have a job at all right now. My point? Magazines take up disposable income people just don’t have.
4) Most stuff found in Pagan periodicals are opinion pieces, 101 re-hash, “what I did for Beltaine” articles, advertising and bad poetry. In short, it’s all crap I can get for free reading people’s blogs.
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Wow! I think that first blogger has a really good point!!
I think I’ll take that to heart
I’ve been looking for good magazines and I’ve only seen a few that
are coming out of England. I can imagine that you’re right though.
Just like a lot of books, they rehash a lot o introductory material
that you can get other places . . . but there must be more that they
could write about. I mean, all the other religions have magazines and
newspapers, don’t they?
Regarding the second point–information transfer through the Internet is not exactly environmentally friendly either. It seems minimal at the user’s end; at the other end, not exactly. For example, I’m told that the two server farms required to run all of Yahoo’s services draw more electricity than all of the televisions in the world combined.
Agreed. But that shiny paper shit is a pet peeve of mine.
One also has to take into account the shipping of said magazines, all that gas and what not.
I really hate the shiny paper though! LOL
I think Point #4 is really what does it for me.
I used to read a number of Pagan magazines, but I found most of them didn’t really speak to me.
Being a woman in my twenties, I didn’t identify with most of the authors or the subject matter, being parent, a Mother, a Crone, a HP, earning your third degree.
Even when they write about being a maiden, its all for teens or twenty year old in university.
Or older women looking back on what it was like to be in your twenties *twenty years ago*.
Nothing for a 22 year old single woman trying to build a career, or a 24 year old woman trekking across the country just she and her dogs, or a 26 year old woman making the decision not to marry the man she loves and having to start all over again with nothing but what fits in her pickup truck. Nothing for the unmarried, non-parent, solitary practitioner, woman turning thirty.
Nothing for the solitary who has been practising for 5 to 15 years. No longer a newbie but not an Elder either.
I used to submit stuff but was always told they wanted someone with more experince, meaning not a young woman or Witch who’s been practising less than 15 years.
Or they were too Wiccan for this non-Wiccan witch.
Or they are very American.
The Crooked Path Journal had showed promise, but the editing and layout was terrible, it too seems to have died out.
I’d actually say there’s more Pagan periodicals then ever before as it is right now with Pagan podcasts. The only ones I can think of that have recently gone under are the short rebirth of Green Egg, PanGaia, and NewWitch – but the two latter were merged and didn’t really die. The funny thing is very few of the periodicals out there right now are online – they’re all in print. Some are smart and also have pdf options though. I could give a big long list, but many aren’t good so here’s some you and your readers might really like:
Hex Magazine, Sacred Hoop Magazine, Shaman’s Drum Journal, The Cauldron, The Pomegranate, The Witches’ Almanac, and White Dragon Magazine.
Slainte!
Sarah
Thanks Sarah!