Herbivore Magazine - Editor's Blog

Hello friends and fellow herbivores. We have a big announcement and I’ve been laboring over how to say it without much luck so I’m just going to put it out there: after an absolutely amazing 5 years we’ve decided it’s time to close down the magazine. We’re going to complete 2008 and then move on to other projects. This decision was really hard to make, but it’s the right thing for us to do.

The fact is, we’ve had a lot of great help over the years and a lot of talented people have made huge contributions to the magazine. The gratitude I feel for these people is endless. But the day-to-day goings-on of the magazine are something I’ve always done solo. It’s a daunting amount of work, but work I’ve always been happy to do. Yet, as there are only so many hours in the day, a lot of projects I’ve wanted to take on, both personal and Herbivorous have sat on the backburner for a long time. It seems like a good time for me to step back and focus my creativity on those other projects�mainly book publishing, and other media related stuff. (One thing that hasn’t changed, sadly, in the five years we’ve been doing this, is the painful lack of vegan, vegetarian, and animal rights media. We are still dedicated to changing this!) A lot of the issues and topics we want to focus on require a format different than the magazine, but we simply can’t do it all. As our focus has shifted to those other formats, we’ve come to realize the magazine has run its course.

While this realization comes with a certain amount of sadness for me, it feels more like our future plans are built on 5 years of publishing the magazine and the experiences that has provided us. Our goal is the same, we’re just growing into a new direction and form and it’s hard for me to feel too sad about that. Hopefully, as we get some of these new projects off the ground, you’ll agree.

I can’t thank enough the countless people who have pitched in either with writing, design, art, editing, and all the rest over the years. The magazine would have never even begun without the generous help of others. I also can’t thank enough all the great support we’ve gotten from readers. Those kind emails and chats we’ve had in person were a great boost, and a huge inspiration.

Everything has a lifespan, and while I think Herbivore magazine has run it’s course, the ideas and community that make it up will certainly continue on in what we do next. Thank you all for this!

We have three really awesome issues planned for 2008 so watch your mailbox this spring, fall, and winter! We are not taking any new subscriptions, but we will fulfill all existing subs.

Thanks again for all your support and I hope you all keep up with us as we move into new directions. Please feel free to get in touch, I will try and respond to everybody as best I can.

-Josh Hooten, Editor, Herbivore magazine

You know how sometimes you do something that seems like a good idea and then you realize down the road a bit it might not have been such a good idea?

Several weeks ago I loaded our Netflix cue with tons of movies. It was a long, wine-fueled evening of putting things in the queueueue.

Weeks pass, the flix start coming, I did ok for the most part. Then today I get the email notification that Beverly Hills Ninja is shipping to me today.

What was I thinking? How far into the wine bottle was I to have thought THAT was a good thing to put in the queuaueua?

What: Vegan Mini-Mall Grand Opening Party
When: January 6th, 2008, all day
Where: 12th and Stark in SE, PDX

Join us as we celebrate the official grand opening of Portland’s own Vegan Mini-Mall! Come down and visit Sweetpea Baking Company, Herbivore, Food Fight Vegan Grocery, and Scapegoat Tattoo. While you’re checking out our new digs, take in some live music by Cars and Trains, Old Growth, Superbad, and Rough Chukar (music starts at 6 pm) and eat yourself silly. Herbivore will have food samples from the cookbook they just published, Yellow Rose Recipes by Joann Vaught (food at 3), and Sweetpea will be up and running with the delicious you’ve come to expect plus a whole bunch of new menu items. Stock up on your grocery needs at Food Fight while you bust out a karaoke song or two, and book your next tattoo appointment at Scapegoat.

Many months in the making, The Vegan Mini-Mall is now fully operational. Come celebrate with us!

Ok, these aren’t the best photos but, if I do say so myself, I am really happy and proud of how this book came out. It’s gorgeous! I love it!

Oof! Big truck! The Big Truck came!

We got our delivery of cookbooks from the printer and holy crap do they look good! I’ll post some photos in a moment of the insides but this is a quick note to let you all know we got the books, we have the envelopes and the postage and we’re forming unions between those two things as quickly as we can. Every order that has been placed will go out by Monday morning, Priority Mail and should be delivered in plenty of time for Christmas. Woo!

Hey gangk,

We posted the first official episode of Naked Vaygun last night. That is the podcast I do with Isa Chandra MoskowOnTheHudson. This is the second podcast, but the first was a tester pilot episode.

We talk about a bunch of stuff and play a Brownbird Rudy Relic song. Woo!

The RSS feed is:
http://www.herbivoremagazine.com/podcast.xml

It’ll show up in the iTunes podcast section today I think.

So…Isa and I made a podcast and we just posted the pilot episode. We intend to do this every week, as do all podcasts, so expect a hard hitting 5 minutes of content stretched out over an hour every 3rd week or so, like all podcasts.

We intend to talk about serious animal rights issues. The reality is we will most likely devote much of each episode talking about Ted Danson and the groundbreaking sitcom Becker. Which I doubt either of us have actually seen.

You should listen to it, but only at work, on the clock, so you get paid to listen to us talk about Becker and insult our friends.

Here’s the link:
feed://www.herbivoremagazine.com/podcast.xml

Now, if you have iTunes, it will be in the iTunes store in a few days I think, but you can subscribe now, just go to the “Advanced” window then go to “subscribe to podcast” and then enter that link and it will download to your podcasts library.

We have a site on the way where you will be able to leave comments. For now, you’ll just have to suffer in silence.

I think? Maybe they’re saying dick meat is the only meat it’s ok to eat? So maybe it’s pro-vegan and pro-blowjob? Maybe they got run off before they could put “Not Cow Meat!”

Or maybe they’re telling us to eat dick meat as a put down? More likely I suppose but I’m always trying to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Oh, right, what am I talking about. The graffiti (how do you spell that anyway?) in the photo below was found on the mini-mall this afternoon.

Please support us in our time of need, we are trying to raise the money to get a roll of paper towells so we can wipe it off.

We all thought this was kinda funny.

Hey gang, we got all the subs packed and to the mailing house. They need a few days to fiddle with em and work their magic and they’ll be headed your way next week. As always, we beg of you to be patient as they ship bulkmail and that is a painfully unpredictable delivery method. They ussually arrive with no problems, the unpredictable is how long it takes so please give us some time, thanks a million.

This issue is the travel issue and it’s 208 pages with articles on places as far flung as Japan, Mexico, Tanzania, Prague, New Orleans, New York City, Thailand, Portland, San Francisco, Milwaukee, Seattle, Chicago, Germany, and Cambodia. Woo! It also comes with some beautiful full color postcards.

Single issues are on sale now on the magazine site as well.

For folks who got online only subs, we will make the content of the print editions available online for you and folks who want online only will still have the ability to subscribe this way. This is beneficial to foreign readers as sending print internationally is really expensive as well as people in the US and Canada who would rather read online.

We’ll still be doing online content as well, I’m not exactly sure what form it will take yet. In the poll we posted a few months back people said they preferred print overwhelmingly but also said they spend several hours a day online and get most of their news and information online. So I need to figure out what kind of info suits online better and what is better as print. Perhaps another poll is in order?

So, online subscribers, you’ll still get all the content we publish online and international and folks who prefer online, you’ll still be able to subscribe and get the content this way in the future.