If you write about new media and haven’t heard of BKLYNR, you might want to start revising next week’s column about paywalls and ad revenue. The brainchild of Thomas Rhiel, Raphael Pope-Sussman, and Ben Cotton—former classmates of mine at Columbia—BKLYNR “will publish in-depth stories about the political, economic, and cultural life of Brooklyn. Each issue will contain three pieces—something light to start, and then two longer articles.” A $2 monthly or $20 yearly subscription buys “quality journalism” “produced by a talented group of writers, photographers, multimedia producers, and artists.” Like most everything made in Brooklyn these days, BKLYNR is small batch, sustainable, etc., and it shows: the website design is beautiful, the copy pristine, pedigree unimpeachable, too small to fail. And potential readers are taking notice. BKLYNR set out to raise $10,000 prior to launch, and with a little help from The New York Timesand Reddit, it has already met that goal. A niche publication with a built-in readership, a focus on quality, long-form galore, funding scheme straight out of Kickstarter: this product presses all the right buttons. But don’t discount it as dogging the trend-line. BKLYNR’s strategy suggests a sexy alternative to the painful print-to-digital transition.
BKLYNR seeks to fill an open market, one with ample demand and lagging supply. Where’s the smart writing about Brooklyn, the in-depth coverage, the gritty reportage, Thomas, Raphael, and Ben ask. Although “big media” offers timely news content, the borough hungers for more magazine-length essays about unusual suspects, or so goes the BKLYNR hypothesis. The interesting twist of BKLYNR is not its thesis, which may or may not be true, but rather its commitment to the values of print journalism, the fundamentals so-to-speak. BKLYNR attempts to import the characteristic quality and feel of newspapers and magazines, the really good stuff (if you’re a believer), into a digital format. By recruiting contributors from struggling “big media” outfits and repackaging their work in a sleek web style, BKLYNR promises all the taste of, say, The New York Times, but without the calories. BKLYNR is slim and realistic about its scope, but it’s not a diet magazine. Digital publishing is more analogous to barefoot running than Slimfast. It hurts more to switch from sneakers to skin than to never wear Nikes at all. I’m trying to argue, by way of that tortured analogy, that it might be better (and less expensive) to rebuild from zero than to remodel print media. We’re on the cusp of a next wave of start-up publications that will outpace rebooted print media.
Some web-only publishers have rejected the principles of traditional journalism, what might be called dogma, in order to privilege nimble, witty, and lively reporting. Yet the desire for high-quality long-form content continues to grow. BKLYNR walks a middle-road between blind adherence to convention and extremist innovation. To lean on cliché, old wine in new bottles never tasted better.