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Professional-Quality Crowdsourced Magazine Created in 48 Hours

A new magazine called 48 Hours has just been published. Writers and artists had 24 hours to create their work, while the editors had 24 hours to put the magazine together.

By Kathryn Hawkins. Posted on May 11 2010
48 hours

The cover of 48 Hours Magazine

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Putting out a magazine can be a lengthy process. First, you’ve got to decide on a theme. Next, staff members or freelancers need to write the articles, take the photographs and create the artwork. Each element will probably go through a few editors before getting the okay, and it’s time to lay it out. By the time the edition finally goes to press, most of the stories are months old: in fact, if you’re reading about summer vacation destinations, the article was likely submitted somewhere around Christmastime.

The new magazine 48 Hours takes a different approach. Just as the name suggests, the entire magazine—a 60 page compilation—was commissioned and created in the space of a single weekend.

The project is the brainchild of a group of San Francisco-based writers, who thought it sounded like a fun experiment and were ready for a few sleepless nights. So they created a website and began to spread the word about the upcoming project: “We’ll unveil a theme and you’ll have 24 hours to produce and submit your work,” they posted on their site. “We’ll take the next 24 to snip, mash and gild it. The end results will be a shiny website and a beautiful glossy paper magazine, delivered right to your old-fashioned mailbox.”

Before long, thousands of people had signed up for the mailing list to be notified of the issue’s theme. Those who wanted to contribute would have just a day to come up with their submissions, and then the editors would take the next day to put it all together. Once the issue had been finalized, it would be printed on demand through MagCloud.

At noon on Friday, May 7th, the editors announced their theme: “Hustle.” They would take submissions of journalism, Q-and-As, fiction, art, and photography based around the theme, but the contributors would only have a single day to prepare their work. The editors received an influx of over 1,500 pieces, and whittled it down to the 30 works that would be published in the magazine.

The final product is now available to purchase and print on demand from MagCloud. As for the profits, they’ll be divided up in a unique fashion: each contributor will receive an even share from 25 percent; the top three submissions as voted on by all contributors will receive a bonus payment split from the next 25 percent. 25 percent will be reserved to help fund the next issue of 48 Hours, and the final 25 percent will be used to “do something crazy” by providing a grant to a cause that is yet to be decided.

It remains to be seen how many copies of 48 Hours will be sold, but so far, the project seems like a smashing success, even as traditional magazine publishing is flailing.

48 Hours isn’t attempting to replace the traditional magazine, but the editors do believe others may be able to pick up on lessons from their work. “We’re putting out a very high quality product in a short amount of time using a lot of crowdsourced tools,” editor Mat Honan told the San Francisco Gate. “That’s something that traditional publishers can and should embrace.”

Filed under: Arts and Culture, Business,

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