This is the project development queue for Flak Magazine. Items are sorted from highest to lowest priority. In some cases, emails have been reproduced in the Notes section at the bottom of the page.

Send all comments to edits@flakmag.com

Dear Justin,

Thanks a million for helping out with the Flak redesign. We could
certainly use it, and your stuff has kicked ass in the past.

I’m cc:ing flak@flakmag.com so anyone with a keen insight can throw it
out to you and the group.

As I said this morning—It would be very helpful if you could throw
together two loose sketches for a new front page. A note to the staff
—these sketches aren’t binding. While the minimal sketch may seem
radical, I’d like to see what the site looks if its front page
presence is much more elegant and streamlined, even at the cost of
content displayed. I think people would check it far more often /
bookmark it if it were easier to read.

1 MINIMAL

The concept: Very easy to load. Not at all distracting. New content is
extremely visible, and the chronology of what’s been posted in the
past week or two is self-evident. Elegant and very bookmarkable.

—Cut out the art or reduce it to slivers / tiny (50×50?) thumbnails
—Lose the section archives
—Reduce Audio and Photo down to tiny thumnail icons
—Drop down to last 5 items posted
—Cut the about the magazine / mailing list / other stuff that’s
redundant with the internal page navs

2 REFINED

The concept: A retrofit/buff of our current look.

—Somehow tweak or shrink the thumbs so they’re more
stylish/attractive—preferably without adding production time for
people posting.

—Downplay We Like It; trim or completely remove the section archive links

—Experiment with making the blogroll more uniform and readable—
are there other sites we should be using as models for this?

Obviously, these are a little vague—I’m not a designer, and can’t
really articulate what I’m looking for other than to say I wish the
page looked crisper, lighter, and cooler… and that maybe a radical
slash is the way to go. Few people check our front page (relative to
people who link in to specific stories)—maybe a much smoother /
lighter entry will help with that.

Let me know if you’ve got questions about this, or if you’ve got
another idea about how to proceed. And thanks again.

at your service,

Jim

Hey Editors,

We talked about this months ago—linking on our reviews to sites
where reader’s can purchase books/music and we get some money. I think
it’s time we either do it or pass it on. Basic choices are Powell’s
and Amazon; if you know of other enticing choices, do tell the list.

Below is a summary of the two main choices. Let’s start a dialogue.

For purchases made through Flak, Amazon offers “up to 8.5%” on
products (http://associates.amazon.com/gp/associates/join/104-6936030-1294316
)—which really means 4% most of the time, and higher depending on
the amount of people who buy books and CDs on Amazon via Flak. It’s a
nice incentive, but depending on how many items we expect to push, it
doesn’t seem like it will apply to us. (1-20 is at 4%, 21-90 is at 6%,
91-330 is at 6.5%, etc; based on how many you sell per three month
period.) Even if we publish, say, 10 book/CD reviews per month,
totalling 30 in a quarter, I don’t imagine we’d push more than 90
products. (Unless, of course, we add links to our archives or some
such…?!) I could be wrong; I could be grossly underestimating the
consumer lust of Flak readers. It only really matters in relation
to…

Powell’s which, while not offering music or DVDs, does offer a flat
rate of 7.5% for any and all books sold via Flak.
(http://www.powells.com/partners/partners.html ). And frankly, their
system just seems a lot simpler. No bullshit. Just 7.5% on everything
and anything. Plus, they claim they’ll help you make custom links for
your site. Though, I think it’d be best to just do ours like this:

http://flakmag.com/books/greedyheat.html

Though other, more/less obtrusive, ways could be devised.

So, um, that’s all I can think to say right now.

Please send any ideas/reactions to the list.

Joey

Dear all,

I’d like you to consider another option for contributing to Flak.

Write a review of something timely. Add a memorable twist—a great
joke, a novel thesis, a novel format, a fresh comparison to something
unexpected—and keep your piece to 500 or fewer words. Example: When
Alissa described the new Jeff Goldblum
psychic-cop-who-talks-to-the-dead show as “The Ghost Stutterer”—
with a few paragraphs of context, that could have been a great TV
commercial review.

One of the bits of feedback I got when I asked people about writing
for Flak was that the magazine needs to be lighter on its feet. We
need to hit more big, current movies / CDs / books / TV shows / news
events in order to appear plugged in and relevant to our readers.

This idea has a couple caveats.

One—this doesn’t preclude long, thoughtful, powerful essay-reviews,
the kind that Joshua Adams (in Books) and Steve Himes (in Film), among
many others, have really developed into a Flak mainstay. These are
always legit, and I don’t ever want them to go away.

Two—if you’re amped for writing a quick-hit piece, consult your
editor. Some section editors may love this idea. Others may only do it
under certain circumstances, others may hate it. Rather than check in
with all of them personally, I thought I’d through this idea out there
to get people moving on it.

Editors—feel free to chime in to the list with your own thoughts
about this vis-a-vis your section. And writers—especially
long-dormant writers—please consider this new form of contribution
as a way to reconnect with the magazine.

Oh, snap. Yeah. http://flakmag.com/tv/wendys.html is totally what
we’re talking about here.

Many thanks,

Jim

Dear all,

Here’s a quick run-down on stuff we talked about in Chicago. I’m still
waiting to hear from Jessica (or have Jessica check in with Noam)
about the Noam->Jessica handoff, so that’s definitely still
provisional.

NOTES:

1. Eric will take a hiatus from his position (length TBD).

2. Move the Flak account (if there’s anything left) from Jessica to Noam.

3. Have Noam move forward with Google AdSense.

4. Have Noam take up the post of contact person for Intelligent
Hosting, and check in with them about us exceeding our
storage/bandwidth and starting to host Google ads; see what the
recalibrated monthly fees will be.

5. Music section (after this current feature) should always get
clearance for posted music, even if it’s being streamed.

6. Music section should consult with Morning News to see how they’ve
handled rights on their streamed music.

7. Jessica Chapel should proceed with redesign, or pass the project off.

8. Andy Adams should work with individual section editors to add
interactive elements whenever/wherever appropriate.

9. Flak staffers should make a concerted push to recruit new writers,
both among friends and among good online / student journalism on the
Web.

10. Clay should pass our copyright along to Noam so he can consolidate
/ hold our business stuff.

at your service,

Jim

Dear all,

I received about a dozen replies to my query on why people aren’t
writing for Flak. Please give this a read…

Some particularly clear / cutting responses:

“one of the reasons I don’t refer people over to Flak is 1. the total
unresponsiveness of the editors, and 2. there’s not enough content.”

“it’s really a struggle to work with Flak’s editorial staff. You’re
the only one who consistently responds to my ideas or my pieces.”

“The biggest reason I have a hard time justifying it is because, swear
to God, unless I’m writing for you specifically, everything I write
gets lost and/or posted under someone else’s name when it’s found four
months later.”

“[in contrast to three other editors who dropped the ball] I really do
like working with Noam, who’s been very helpful on the opinion pieces
that I’ve sent.”

“certain sections are really weak and can seem irrelevant, and thus
aren’t attracting new writers. Film is basically Popcorn Picnic, which
is funny … but not really reviews. And also, music is so far behind.
I think there’s a lack of relevance in both those sections so I think
it’s hard to get good writers to take it seriously. No one who wants
to be a music writer is going to actively pursue writing for a music
section that reviews major albums (like, say, Get Behind Me Satan) two
months after they come out”

“when I told someone via email that I was in Chitown for Flakcon and
sent them the link to the page, they said that it struck them like
PopMatters, but with alternative media. I was like, no, there are
usually text pieces up there, but it had been awhile.”

Some other assorted commentary:

1. Reason not to write: Personal blog / paid writing work

2. Proposal: We should do more roundup / jam-sessions

3. Much interest (from multiple people) in writing shorter / more timely stories

4. Reason not to write: Kids

5. Proposal: Help wanted ad on front page, sorted out by Ashley

6. Reason not to write: Subject matter is too vague / general—
“[When trying to recruit people for Flak, they say]: ‘Flak’s cool and
all, but about what?” I guess subject matter is the stumbling block.”

Some thoughts on this—and I want to hear your collective reaction, too.,..

If you drop a piece, you drop a writer. When you don’t respond to a
query (or, worse, a piece), you risk losing that writer forever.

We need to get back on the ball in terms of timely responses to big
events within our sections (Books, Film, Music). We’re so off the ball
that a piece of culture of any size could be released, and we’ll just
ignore it. I think we need to consider publishing short (400-500 word)
summary reviews with 1-2 clever points / novel theses of big-ass
cultural events, rather than letting them slip into obscurity.

I know you’re all busy. I am busy. We’re busy people. But if you’re in
a position where you can’t respond / edit a piece, SEND IT TO ME. I
will always carve out another 15-30 minutes for timely content,
because I’m a fanatic. And I’m sincerely worried that we’re heading
toward another content / staffing crash if we don’t rally the troops
and start recruiting / retaining.

Many thanks,

Jim

I signed up for Powell’s Partnership today. In order to activate the partnership, and enter special “we get money from powell’s” links onto book reviews, follow these directions:

1) Go to the Powell’s homepage: http://www.powells.com/

2) Open the “Partner Program” link on the bottom menu

3) Log in as an “existing partner”

4) Type in our Partner I.D. (31148) and our password (n@@n#1234)

5) Click the “Make Links!” link on the top menu

6) Scan down to the “Make Links” option (it’s the second one)

7) The most effective way to make a link directly to your book is to choose the third option, “to Specific Books (by ISBN).” (Otherwise you may generate a link to a menu of related books.) Click that link.

8) Generate the link using the ‘31148’ number

9) Plug the link (say it was “http://www.powells.com/partner/31448/biblio/0375424024”) into the below table:

<!—PURCHASE LINKS—>
<!—COMMENT OUT THIS SECTION BY INSERTING COMMENT TAG AT START OF SECTION TABLE BELOW—>

10) Put this table in the html before the “Related Links” bar, at the top of the section for “right column”

I marked up a bad example here: http://flakmag.com/books/scanner.html. Notice how that link doesn’t go directly to the book purchasing page. My mistake. I used ” to Specific Books (by Keyword)” instead of “to Specific Books (by ISBN)” and now I can’t get on ftp to fix it.

If anyone has time, try to add a link to Jim’s review of Heat and let me know if it works.

Coming soon…a Guide to Our Amazon Affiliation!