Clamor Mag Ends 7 Year Run

Many of you know I was the Culture Editor for Clamor Magazine over the last year. The magazine, for financial reasons, has closed its doors. Details below…………………………

So, the rumors are true. We’ve decided to stop publishing Clamor. After seven years of bulldozing borders, defying dogma and inspiring instigation, the financial obstacles involved with publishing an independent magazine have become too great, and it’s time to move on.

Seven years ago — almost to the day — the WTO Protests in Seattle were shaking the foundation of the world and we were hunched over our keyboards editing, compiling, and designing the first issue of Clamor. That first issue set in motion a project that would go on to publish art and articles by over one thousand people throughout the world — many of whom had never had their ideas and work seen by a mass audience. Over the years we’ve heard from readers near and far that this little magazine we’ve created helped folks feel connected to a global community of individuals and groups working to make this world a little better. We can’t take that to the bank, but knowing we did that for seven years and 38 issues will have us forever beaming.

Clamor’s future seemed so promising earlier this year when we brought on Mandy Van Deven and Nomy Lamm to help with the publishing side of Clamor. With their help, we were able to deepen conversations about issues of power and representation regarding race, class, gender, queerness, and disability within our staff that we had not been able to fully engage. We put together an Advisory Board of people whose perspectives could help guide us in articulating a broadly defined movement while becoming financially sustainable. Mandy decided to merge her magazine, Altar (a forum for critical thought, coalition building, artistic creativity and activism) into Clamor in order to combine resources and communities. We began a process to transfer legal ownership of Clamor from Jason and Jen to Mandy and Nomy with the ultimate goal of creating a worker-owned cooperative. We published an issue featuring an exposé on American Apparel that was downloaded by over 11,000 people online and garnered us some “fighting words” from American Apparel’s public relations department. And we threw the second Clamor Music Festival in October to celebrate independent arts and media with hundreds of people across the country. We heard from many readers that the Body issue was our best work so far.

One of the saddest things about this is that the Food issue will never be released. So close to completion – literally in the final stages of layout - but thousands of dollars away from the printer, this will remain Clamor’s “lost issue.” We considered putting it online, but have chosen instead to allow writers to shop their pieces to other independent publications. Magazines like Bitch, Punk Planet, Left Turn, Herbivore, Tikkun, and others (Kitchen Sink, Colorlines, etc.) who are still managing to survive in this difficult market. Please support them.

Effective movement media doesn’t need to last indefinitely to be successful. We’re confident that many people have been inspired to do great things after reading about others doing the same in Clamor. We know this because we’ve been consistently inspired by the stories of struggle and triumph in Clamor. And while we’ll miss that, we’re also confident that there are independent media projects being born at this very moment with even greater promise.

The Allied Media Conference and our online distribution projects (infoshop and infoshopdirect), two important projects launched in conjunction with Clamor Magazine, will not be affected by the closing of the magazine.

Please go to the infoshop to order back issues and other merchandise, and consider making a donation, which will help us to pay off some of our debts, to writers, artists, independent media makers, and the like.

If you are a subscriber and you have not received a letter in the mail from us, please email us.

Thank you all. With this great project laid to rest, we trust that everyone in the Clamor family — editors, writers, proofreaders, artists, and subscribers — will have no trouble finding powerful things to do with their newfound free time and energy. Check out our bios to find out more about what individuals are working on.

Whatever we are up to, you can be sure that we’ll be taking our experiences with Clamor along with us. We hope you will do the same. Clamor is dead. Long live clamor.