"It's print as an accessory" — Voice of San Diego launches magazine

A Knight Foundation-backed magazine, in print and digital versions, is part of the Voice of San Diego's new membership program. Seem backwards? After all, Voice of San Diego is a web-based nonprofit news organization.

However, said Scott Lewis, c.e.o., said on the Knight website, "We put several stories out every day. Some longer and more in-depth than others. When we gather them all up over the course of a month, we have reason to be proud. At the same time, not everyone can keep up with the daily chaos of news, let alone read some of our longer pieces."

Lewis heard about MagCloud, a self-service publishing platform, and pitched the idea to Knight. Voice of San Diego designs and uploads the magazine each month, supporters buy it, MagCloud takes a cut and sends the rest of the money along.

"If we can generate enough support for it," Lewis said, "through sponsors who want to put messages in it, people who buy individual copies and members excited to have it, then we can keep uploading new editions. And then we get to have this great package of our content that we can take around and show people. They can fold it up and put in their bag."