Right now, in addition to the site, we have a very cheaply printed broadsheet circulating around all the DC campuses (well not Catholic U., but who cares about them?) funded by a few local student associations. But in the past week I've received a generous subsidy offer from a local-ish printer and enough donations to do a glossy quarterly of /Jacobin/.
The logistics of the venture have been poured over, so don't worry about that. The design would be stellar, print-quality is super high, and we've already put together something nice in Indesign. I wasn't entirely pleased with how uneven the first issue was, but things will be better going forward.
The question is whether it's worth the investment in time to produce content for print. If we've reached thousands of people on the web, is there any point to having a pretty magazine in a few indie bookstores on the East Coast and in the mailboxes of a hundred or so financially secure readers? Is it just a vanity project, pointlessly limiting how much content we can include, and unconsciously shaping that content by subjecting ourselves to certain market pressures?
(Typing this message on Chinatown bus from DC to New York, a good venue for bad ideas.)
- Bhaskar