Paste Mag Latest to Beg For Bailout

"We've dug a little hole and we have to fill it": magazine launches online Paste-a-thon to raise money to continue operating.

By Fred Mills

With consumer anger over bank and car industry bailouts still simmering, Georgia-based Paste magazine, apparently reeling from a steep decline in advertising sales and in danger of shutting down as a result, did the most logical thing it could do in the current economic climate: it asked for a bailout.

In an open letter posted to the Paste website yesterday, the seven-year-old magazine appealed to readers for cash donations (non-deductible, incidentally) for as little as $1 and as much as $100. "Every little bit helps," said the latter, "and you can be a part of continuing our efforts to help you find signs of life in music, film and culture. If $1 (yes, one dollar) came in from everyone on our e-mail lists (or $10 from 10% or $100 from 1%), we'll reach our goal and emerge from this recession as a stronger magazine and website."

That goal, incidentally, was confirmed by Paste Editor-in-Chief Josh Jackson (in an interview yesterday with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution), to be in "the low six figures," so you can do the math: if every one of the magazine's estimated 205,000 readers coughs up a buck, they'll net over two hundred thousand dollars. That's not just Decatur chicken feed.

"We have been trying to cut costs but apparently not fast enough," Jackson told the AJ-C. "We're at the point where we have to go to the readers for a little help. We hope it will be a one-time thing... We feel like even in the current ad climate we can break even for a while but we haven't for some months. We've dug a little hole and we have to fill it."

Also as part of "The Campaign To Save Paste" (a donations page has been set up at the Paste website), the magazine has rounded up a slew of "rare and exclusive" MP3s from artists - among them, Decemberists, Neko Case, She & Him, Of Montreal, Bob Mould, Shawn Mullins, Avett Brothers and the Cowboy Junkies - that will be offered to donating readers as a thank-you. (Earlier this week, sources tell BLURT, the magazine had been approaching scores of record labels and requesting that they have their artists donate free MP3s for the cause.) Various other giveaways and promotions are planned, including autographed posters from REM and Band of Horses.

As word starting getting out about the Paste situation, response from bloggers and various media watchers ranged from the "vaguely sympathetic" to the somewhat "snarkily gleeful" (some folks just like dancing on graves, one supposes). Atlanta blog DriveAFasterCar.com characterized the magazine's status as "on its last legs, trying to scrounge up" money, additionally publishing a tip from an anonymous source reportedly close to the magazine indicating that  Paste staff members were taking a 20% pay cut. (Jackson confirmed to the AJ-C that the 15-member staff was indeed taking a cut, but wouldn't indicate how much.) DriveAFasterCar.com subsequently was forced to backpedal a bit in regards to the tone of its postings, taking pains to point out that its intention was not to mock or belittle Paste.

Meanwhile, everyone's favorite reliable source of pop culture info, Gawker.com, characterized Paste as "not long for this world" in its announcement of the news. And over at Idolator.com, in a lengthy screed titled "Paste Throws A Hail Mary Pass," a number of valid points regarding the situation were raised, among them: (1) it confirms "suspicions that the economic crunch-not to mention the music industry's hard times-has adversely affected yet another music-related media outlet"; (2) that "losing a mass-distributed voice for music discussion and discovery is always a scary thing"; and (3) that when Paste launched its mimic-the-Radiohead-pay-what-you-like-model for reader subscriptions a couple of years ago, perhaps it should have thought out the gimmick a bit more fully (for example, offering PDF subscriptions as part of a tiered subscription policy rather than simply letting some folks pay, say, a buck for a sub to the print magazine).

All this provides food for thought, particularly the part about potentially losing another print outlet. Trust me - we at BLURT know of what we speak, having gone through our own shuttering of a magazine (we used to be Harp, in case you didn't know, and the magazine closed up a year ago en route to bankruptcy). So it will be interesting to see how all this plays out and whether the Paste plea will yield the necessary funds to remain solvent or if readers, mindful of their own economic woes and reluctant to support an entity that has steadily shrunk in size even as it moved significantly away from its original mission of covering independent music, will shrug a collective "eh" in a vote of no-confidence.

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CODA: None of this comes as any great surprise to folks who have been watching the magazine business, of course. And rumors of Paste's troubles were swirling as far back as March at SXSW in Austin where on four separate occasions I talked to an attendee who'd been writing for Paste and was having trouble getting paid. One of those four - a very prominent national writer with decades of journalism experience, incidentally - told me flat out, "As of the last issue I wrote for, they owe me [xxxxxx], and I'm not the only one. Writers are always the first to get stiffed, and that's usually the first sign of a magazine that's going down, don't you think?"

As if in answer to the aforementioned complaint, yesterday Paste Editor-in-Chief Jackson sent out a letter to the magazine's contributors - you can read the entire letter posted at Gawker.com - in which he disclosed, in general, their financial woes, outlined the donation campaign, and pledged to make good (or to attempt to make good) on outstanding invoices. For anyone who's ever worked at a magazine, either in an editorial capacity or simply as a freelance contributor, much of this rings true, unfortunately.

"I know you're all very aware of the financial troubles Paste has been in," Jackson wrote, "as many of you are still owed money for articles you wrote, illustrations you drew or photographs you took several months ago." Noting that in order to maintain operations Paste has to remain up-to-date on printer and U.S. Post Office bills, Jackson cited a number of cost-cutting measures they'd implemented, including "getting rid of the CD that accompanies Paste, cutting out most all of our travel, taking across-the-board paycuts, shrinking the page count and assigning less freelance work."

Asking for "patience" on the part of the contributors, Jackson concluded, "Our hope is that we'll raise enough to catch all of you up to current. Short of that, we'll be catching you up as much as we can. We've hated falling further and further behind with the people who've made Paste what it is, and we know most of you rely on freelance work for your living. We can't thank you enough for your patience... We look greatly forward to the days where Paste is growing in pages (and assignments) and is once again known for always paying folks on time."