(An ancient mosaic depicting Odysseus’ epic travels in Homer’s “Odyssey”.)
Napkin Notes and Dreams
are only Ideas…
until we make them a reality!
– Jack Atkinson, Editor
How many great ideas have been jotted down, imperfectly, on a cocktail napkin? These diagrams, words, and sketches are often the seeds of big things to come.
My name is Jack Atkinson and through my company, Jack Atkinson Studios LLC, we publish ARTS&FOOD® MAGAZINE. It’s an online reinvention of the print magazine–created for the 21st Century using the newest digital delivery systems. I have been lucky enough to become an expert within the old school magazine business, the print model using offset, gravure, and letterpress printing. Then with the coming of the digital revolution and the world-wide-web, publishing has been reinvented seemingly overnight!
After centuries of similar products and thinking–publishing has been disrupted, making print “media” almost obsolete. (Remember, it will never go away, but its role has been diminished.) By the beginning of the 3rd millennium (2000), print publishing started a very slow and painful decline, but it was being replaced by some of the most exciting opportunities and processes only new technological approaches could deliver.
I have worked for some of the best major metropolitan daily newspapers in their features sections and Sunday magazines, also for some of the best national and regional print magazines in the USA. I tell you this mainly to say I have survived the transition. As this tectonic shift from print to online media proceeds at lightning speed I can tell you it is the most exciting business experience I have had in publishing to date.
I was one of the first print media types, to go “ALL-IN” for digital media for publishing and for my own personal artwork shown in galleries–which means I have resided in this digital age for decades now. I started publishing ARTS&FOOD® back in 2010 and I have been feeling my way through “what works and what doesn’t” for 12 years now. Finally, the kinks have been worked out and online information is now mainstream for advertising, communications, entertainment, and shopping.
Of course, how consumers want to receive their information and entertainment is constantly evolving-especially as various social media platforms rise and fall in popularity and those social media platforms have incomprehensible logarithms controlling how their content is distributed to consumers. Even experts in this field are somewhat baffled by the speed of change and also have trouble keeping up with this new world.
BUT our ship (ARTSandFOOD.com) seems to now be sailing through calmer waters, having found a path and a business plean that works.. Our name, ARTS&FOOD®, is also a USPTO Register Trademark & Brand Name and we proudly go back to our first issue being produced on November 11, 2010, as a “Blog/Online Magazine”.
Print magazines, usually take months to assemble, physically print, and deliver via distribution services on the ground and the US Mail to households. From the first list of stories, editors create, until the magazine being placed in the subscriber’s mailbox often takes hundreds of people within the process. During my time at daily newspapers, we had 3 pm and 7 pm daily deadlines (depending on the section) with the last of the print run coming off the huge press around 3 am, then all 750,000 copies of those newspapers had to be delivered directly to each subscriber’s doorstep, by a human-being by 5 am the same morning. That process still seems like a miracle to me, considering the logistics… and it’s done every day, seven days a week.
A change was obviously needed for publishing and this new digital delivery (online) provided that needed change. How to produce that new product and get people to look at it has taken the publishing profession time to figure out.
In today’s world, online magazines and newspapers are delivered at the press of a button–to all readers–instantly (this is another miracle)! This instantaneous delivery is the pleasure of online publishing, but hard-news outlets must publish 24/7, with updates being made every second as breaking news occurs around the world. Today there is not much time for proper review and discussion by editors before that news gets published. The news industry has always been pressure-packed and now it’s is a true pressure cooker. We have jumped from the frying pan into the fire with online publishing–but it’s here to stay.
Online “digital delivery” to various devices is replacing everything, Print Media, TV, Radio, and our old concept of a Telephone. Not since Guttenburg invented the printing press has there been a technological change like this one. I feel excited to be a part of building a digital publishing system for the next 100 years at least and for generations to come.
We are currently at that rare point in history, the very beginning of an epoch. The consumption of information, education, and entertainment for now and in the future will be mostly through a digital process!
Here at ARTS&FOOD®, after more than ten years of online publishing of a quality product, we have exciting, new, and big plans underway. With this new infrastructure, available to us online, we are able to produce the products we have always dreamed of creating. No product turns out perfectly on day one, yet turning napkin notes, and the dreams they represent, into reality is happening. We will continue to adjust and perfect our site over time.
Today is a whole new world and we are so excited to evolve along with these rapidly changing times… presenting to you very easy-to-digest ways to find your own personal happiness!
IF YOU ARE A LOVER OF THE ARTS, FOOD, AND CULTURE…
YOU ARE OUR PEOPLE AND WE ARE YOUR PEOPLE.
THIS IS YOUR PLACE!
Our Mission: “Helping every subscriber/member to be happy for the rest of their life.”
I hope all of you and all of your friends will join us on this journey. like Odysseus’ adventures in “The Odyssey”, it is going to be epic!
THANK YOU!
Until later,
Jack A. Atkinson
Founder / Publisher / Editor of ARTS&FOOD® SOCIETY’s WEBSITE & MAGAZINE
Jack Atkinson Studios LLC is the business entity publishing ARTS&FOOD®
From Jack A. Atkinson at ARTS&FOOD®… Let’s Do This!
ON THE COVER
Model: Soraya Eckes
Photo courtesy of Instagram user @sorayaeckes
Permission requested.
