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ArtsWatch plus Artslandia equals a new arts magazine!

By Barry Johnson
May 20, 2014
Culture

Print

Today, Artslandia and Playbills NW publisher Misty Tompoles announced the birth of a new arts magazine, Artslandia at the Performance, which will debut this fall, in time for beginning of the 2014-15 season. The magazine will “wrap-around” the playbills that Playbills NW produces for many local arts groups, and its content will change every two months. And it’s free.

All that is good news by itself, but ArtsWatch has signed on to be part of the action, too. I will be editing the magazine and writing a column for it, and ArtsWatch writers will be contributing some of the stories. Many of our writers started in the print business, at newspapers and magazines, before making the march to the web, and this will be a homecoming of sorts to the medium of their/our birth. Hey, where’s my old pica pole*? OK, we won’t actually be entering the Wayback Machine**. (That’s TWO absolutely puzzling references for most non-newspaper and non-Boomer people: Sorry.) But it promises to be exciting for all of us and we hope you’ll like it, too!

Printer's line gauges, otherwise known as Pica Poles.

Printer’s line gauges, otherwise known as Pica Poles.

That’s not the end of the Artslandia-ArtsWatch collaboration, either. ArtsWatch is going to be writing some reviews for the Artslandia website every month, for example, and we have a lot of podcast and event ideas we’re mulling over, too. We should have announcements about those soon. As ever, our aim is a simple one: To discover new elements of and ideas about our shared culture and talk about them in an engaging way, a way that deepens the experience for our readers. We think this partnership will help us reach more of you more often, in new formats and new places. And that’s going to be fun!

Naturally, we will be conducting our business here at ArtsWatch as usual. Well, maybe as “unusual.” And so will Artslandia. We’ve just discovered a way to work together that makes sense for both us and, we hope, for you. We’ll be letting you know more about the magazine as we get closer to the first issue in September. Stay tuned.

Sherman and Mr. Peabody enter the Wayback Machine.

Sherman and Mr. Peabody enter the Wayback Machine.

* A Pica Pole is a printer’s ruler for measuring type, 12 points to the pica and roughly 6 picas to the inch.
** The Wayback Machine (aka WABAC Machine) was invented by the cartoon dog Mr. Peabody for the purposes of time travel with his boy Sherman in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, circa 1959-60.

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