Letter from the editor – unabridged and unedited
Dear readers, or should I rather say, those who haven’t forgotten
about us…
First of all, I would like to say, that this letter has been
a long time coming, and not an over-night epiphany that came about to alleviate
boredom. My decision to publish it today however came about last night, when I
realised that there might indeed be a bit of a void left, in the LGBTI
community; and not just within me, by our absence (for those of you that have
actually noticed).
In this letter, there are a few talking points I would like
to touch on:
·
Why did we leave and where did we go?
So there’s a few answers to this question.
A few things happened. Some of the models stopped rocking up for photoshoots
and less people volunteered (I will delve deeper into this a bit further on),
some of the writers stopped making deadlines, promises from corporate sponsors
and advertisers weren’t kept…the list goes on. I also take personal
accountability because round about the time The Modern L’s quiet departure
came, I was trying to find myself, and time, to juggle being a mom and wife in
a young family, writing 6-8 articles a month, doing all the principal
photography and layout and having a very stressful and demanding day job with
long hours. It also cost me a lot of money with no financial return or
compensation.
The first hack set us back tremendously. We
lost our .com and with it, a global community of over 50000 views per month.
Then it was put up for ransom and how these things work, is that the more views
a site has, the more money the hacker wants to return it. Price-tag at the time,
around $60000.00 US. Needless to say, we didn’t have that kind of money. What
it did however force us to reinvent ourselves, twice, becoming bigger, better
and stronger than ever before.
Then we got hacked and ransomed again, and that’s
when I found out that we had, most likely, the worst web hosts in the world.
Not only did they “lose” all our data along with all the backups, we couldn’t
reupload from our own backups and they could not guarantee that we wouldn’t be
hacked again, as their templates were now compromised. I was tired, frustrated and
heartbroken. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and we decided at
the time, not to put humpty dumpty together again.
·
Money talks, and the lack thereof SCREAMS!
Just to make it clear, The Modern L never
made a cent profit. It was a labour of love and a service to the community that
cost me, in 6 years, in the region of a quarter of a million rand. All the
models, hairdressers, make-up artists, photographers, dressers, security etc,
did what they did for The Modern L, out of love for the mag and the community. They
were never paid more than a drink or a few shooters and very few once scored a
weekend of two away when we shot on location. That came out of my pocket as
well. The writers and content contributors also weren’t paid and did it for the
same reasons. And even though we didn’t pay them, we were still strict with
what they delivered and with what we published.
So imagine running a fully functional
online magazine, with at least 20 articles a month, quarterly photo spreads, a
management team of 3, an editorial crew of 12 (local and international), over
30 models, at least 5 support crew, 2 graphic designers, 2 DJ’s, 4
photographers and a web developer, without a payroll. Again, what we did, we
did for the upliftment of the community.
In all the time the magazine ran, we had a
total of 3 sponsorships. That’s exactly one sponsorship for every 2 running
years. It also wasn’t much and not did not even cover a fraction of the costs
we incurred. One sponsorship was for a venue for a photoshoot, one was for accommodation
for an event, and one was for clothing and props for another photoshoot. That
was it. We even paid for the charity events we ran ourselves.
But what about the advertising revenue? What
advertising revenue? Each and every single ad we posted, picture we shared,
review we did, and event we went to, we did so for free or as a type of barter
system for mutual benefit. Again, for the sole purpose of uplifting the
community. And as the promise from businesses, event promoters and advertisers
came in a dime a dozen, we passed those same promises on to our contributors.
When the mag starts making some bucks, we could start compensating them for
their contributions to the mag. But alas, those promises were as empty as the
Modern L coffers. Coffers that are still empty by the way.
·
So, what now?
Herein lies the double edged sword…People
always complain that there isn’t enough out there for the LGBTIQ community and
the people trying to create things for
the community always complain that there isn’t enough support for these things.
I have seen both first hand and to be honest, I’m still trying to figure out
why. Has the world become so tolerant that we don’t NEED our own things or is
the niche so small that there isn’t a viable market for it? I simply do not
know.
What I do know, is that in the magazine’s
heyday, we had over 50000 views a month. I know that we were loved the world
over, even in arb places like Brazil, and a large component of our audience
logging on from Russia! I know that it is easier, being in the closet, to log
on to a website rather than risking it putting a print mag in your shopping
cart. I know that we gave much needed support to many lost souls, we gave our
readers joy, we made people laugh and we gave the lesbian community a place to
call home. I also know that a little lesbian blog grew into WOMEN’S magazine
and gave a voice to the entire LGBTIQ community:
A voice I can no longer ignore.
Someone I look up to and admire once told me to not let
Martha’s dreams die with her, but to be honest, The Modern L wasn’t just her
dream, it was mine too. Only, to me, it was more than a dream. It was my safety
net, my sanity, an outlet for creativity and something I could watch as it grew
and something I could give back to a community that gave me so much. It was an
escape and a friend I could turn to whenever I felt alone and deserted. And
that is the vision I have…for the Modern L to be all this for all of its
readers. But I can’t do it alone…
So now I ask, are there still any readers out there waiting
for us to make our comeback? Are there any contributors looking for a creative
outlet? (Keep in mind our pockets are still empty) Let us know on the following
platforms:
E-mail us: themodernlinfo@gmail.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/themodernl
Twitter: @themodernl
Or simply add a comment below.
As always, I look forward to hearing from you!
Kind regards,
Miss Jones
Managing Editor
