The [Start] and Fall of Matte

Noticed today that alt.culture magazine Matte has given up its domain and is no longer even in Google. A sad sight (site) because the folks at Matte were putting out one of the best magazines on the shelves. What did Matte do well? Well, for one, its design balanced text with art in interesting ways (like a black and white Print almost). Here's a sample. Tied to that, it was terrificly readable. The writing was handled maturely without being too heavy-headed, and the design was enough to draw you into an article you might otherwise skip over. Plus, there were just a lot of in depth articles. Reading 30% of the magazine was like reading everything in two issues of Rolling Stone. Even aside from these basic foundation points, Matte had a lot going for it. A large advertising base with pricey rates (for a small press publication) was in place from the very first issue. They had a publisher belaying, at least, part of the up-front cost. And distributors. A large staff and what seemed to be a good support structure...

So what went wrong? Well, I have guesses... The change in printing between issue 2 and 3, moving from a thick, unfinished heavy stock like The Believer to a more traditional paper quality, seems to hint at the economic plan of the magazine falling apart. I'd gander that the magazine wasn't able to pull in subcribers with its $20 for 4 issues plan. I also imagine its abstract covers weren't able to attract the eye of buyers on a newstand end. The third side of effective distribution for a print pub these days is the web, but Matte's website was static and fairly minimalist. The readership for Matte should have been much larger, but its most basic draws for building that readership were fairly impotent.

In my dreams, I imagine co-editor Anne Elizabeth Moore's seeping-through-the-pages pretension (which may or may not be fair to her outside Matte) to have turned enough people off to lead to the withering of Matte. But, I'll place my bet in reality on the business model collapsing because of the mag consistently turning its back on effective marketing techniques. I don't know who is at fault for that. Still, Matte's collapse has an important lesson in it for the small press... Even if everything goes right, it can still be blown.