By now, you may have heard about the Save KoreAm campaign. If you haven't, KoreAm is a Korean American magazine that's been around for 18 years, a lifetime in Asian Am magazine years. Staffers at the magazine recently launched this campaign to reach out to the wider community for support.
I talked to the President of KoreAm Journal, James Ryu, on the phone yesterday, to clarify some things about what's going on at KoreAm. If anything happens, we may be short of not one, but two Asian American publications, since KoreAm also publishes Audrey, an Asian American women's magazine.
Basically over the last year and a half, they've had a huge dip in advertising -- nearly 30 percent -- which makes up 70-75 percent of their revenue, according to Ryu. He said the staff met as a whole to see what to do -- cut 20 percent of the jobs, or cut everyone's pay by 20 percent. The staff decided they would all take the pay cuts to save their jobs. There are currently 11 staffers at KoreAm and Audrey, based in Los Angeles.
"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.
Posted by momo at September 3, 2008 12:26 PM
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i saw this coming. the content, layout, and relativeness is very narrow. i first heard of this pub from mainstream interview and it was bland. audrey rep was in audible and dry, for me a window. gave it a chance and ordered several back and current issue. personally, there was an lifestyle, ethnic and visual age disconnect very finely drawn out. basically, it mirroed a korean cutesy pub translated to english. blah, blah, blah. can not relate, lived in the US for over 20 years.