Angie McKaig - E-Business Consultant and Entrepreneur

open letter to CHOW magazine2006.03.14

I've been ravenously gobbling up every issue of your magazine since I discovered it last spring... only to find out that the winter issue is the last I'll see for an entire SIX MONTHS! (True, this announcement was made in January, and I've been stewing on it silently since then. But still.)

And to boot, it's not due to funding issues, a redesign of the magazine, a social protest or some other ridiculous-yet-more-reasonable purpose...

It's to redesign your web site.

With all due respect, a web site isn't the most important part of a magazine. The magazine is the most important part of a magazine. Doesn't that seem like the most simplistic statement ever, something so obvious it doesn't even need saying? And yet it somehow does need saying, in your case.

It pains me to say it, because the web has been my life for more than a decade, but dude, you have your priorities way wrong. Don't you realize how hard it is to find a loyal following? Why would you risk putting off that following with a hiatus of any kind, much less one this long?

Seriously. Rethink your business plan.

You guys have been getting rave reviews. Amazon, NY Times, all kinds of kudos (no small feat for a new magazine with, so I've heard, minimal startup dollars). Out of all the noise of the hundreds of new magazines that come out every year, you guys caught people's attention.

These things - they're currency. Loyal readers? Currency. Industry mentions and kudos? Currency.

What are you doing with this currency?
Taking the product off the shelves for six months.

Don't you see anything wrong with this picture?

4 comments