Hyphen magazine - Asian American arts, culture, and politics

"We're hoping with the readers' help, it will help sustain us through next year through this recession we're having," Ryu said. He said advertisers expect things to get worse before they get better, but things should start looking up in a year and a half.

Things are not easy in the magazine biz, since publishing a magazine is expensive and people may be reluctant to subscribe when they can get stuff for free online, or get crappy mainstream magazines for really cheap.  

Ryu told me that he doesn't know what's going to happen to the magazine, but he hopes with the public's help, they will get through 2008-2009 and hopefully, the economy will improve. It's also possible they will need to make more cuts. But "it's not like we're going to close the doors tomorrow," he said. Ryu started KoreAm 18 years ago with three staffers; Audrey launched 5 years ago.

Ryu said the web campaign, which launched less than 2 weeks ago, has already brought in about $1,500 in direct donations and 100 subscribers. That's pretty good.

He said their goal is to get 2,000 subscribers in the next three months, and added that there are a lot of unpaid subscribers who could step up now to support.

This sort of thing is happening industry-wide in print media, as online content has increased and the economy has gotten worse. For relatively small Asian American publications like KoreAm and Audrey, they've been able to sustain themselves over the years from advertising, fundraisers and subscribers.

I'm curious if there are Hyphen readers out there who are KoreAm or Audrey readers/subscribers, and if so, what you think about this situation and also what you think about the magazines.