You can read some good background about the IPA here at this post by Jeremy Smith over at Other magazine.

The IPA was founded in 1996 to support free speech and social justice. Under John Anner’s leadership, it grew rapidly from a scrappy little nonprofit into a multimillion-dollar social venture that provided business services to a membership of periodicals that included Mother Jones, Sierra, Utne Reader, The Nation, and, at one point, over 500 indie magazines, including Other Magazine, many of which were threatened by the consolidation of the distribution and retail ends of the magazine industry.

At its height, the IPA handled the distribution of almost 100 members, made them loans, financed investigative features by journalists of color, ran a paper buying co-op, and provided technical assistance and a sense of community for magazines that were until that point pretty fragmented.

(More info here at Utne's site).

What’s going on? Is there no room at the newsstand for magazines that explore social justice? As the founders of Clamor wrote in their farewell letter, “the financial obstacles involved with publishing an independent magazine have become too great, and it’s time to move on.”

The magazine business is a notoriously hard business. Even for more mainstream magazines backed with lots of dollars, the failure rate is high. (Remember JFK Jr’s George, anyone?) According to Samir Husni, a frequently-quoted journalism professor at the University of Mississippi, nearly half of new magazines don’t make it to their first anniversary. And 70 % don’t make it to their second issue. After a decade only 1 in 10 new titles is still publishing.

Now take a magazine that covers more underground, subculture, or minority content and you’re talking about an even harder time. For us, ad revenues are even harder to come by. Getting into bookstores is a costly endeavor. So is finding subscribers.

For some of us indie publications, we probably didn’t think it all the way through to begin with. We started on the editorial side with an idea we were excited by and we got to work on our first issue, only to realize that running a magazine is as much about business as it is about coming up with story ideas. We had staffs full of editors and designers, but few with MBAs. We are an optimistic, idealistic bunch, those of us who start up indie magazines. We think if we do what we love, other people will love it. But love can only get you so far. Lip and Kitchensink were not-for-profit, volunteer-run operations, just like Hyphen. But there’s only so much effort you can keep putting into something that takes so much of your time that you’re barely or not getting paid for. And of course, even being paid to do what you love is no recipe for success.

Sometimes I’m asked to sit on panels about starting magazines. And I say I don’t recommend it at all, and that no one should start a magazine without a million dollars. I’m joking, sort of. If I knew what I know now, would I have started a magazine? I don’t know. I understand now that an indie publication is much like public radio; it needs an involved, supportive audience that is willing to not only subscribe, but donate. But is even that enough? I don’t know.

So there’s a reason why we’re always exhorting you to subscribe, take our reader survey, and donate. And there’s a reason why we cost $18 for 4 issues while you can get 12 fat issues of Glamour for $12. We’re not constantly asking you for money because we’re trying to get rich. We’re just trying to survive.