Trails Magazine
Editor-in-Chief: Ryan Wichelns
Cover Photographer: Sarah Attar
Heidi: Now that you’re 4 issues in and poised for 8, what has been your biggest creative challenge as a team?
Ryan: We’re definitely continuously trying to innovate. I feel like a lot of corporate magazines can get a little bit stagnant. It’s more difficult for them to switch things up. I like the fact that we can take advantage of our size and nimbleness to try new things and deliver new things to our readers. So I’m definitely trying to encourage new ideas from our contributors.
Your team is fully remote across four time zones, with a distributed workforce what are some of the benefits and challenges?
Yeah, it’s easily the most geographically diverse team I’ve ever worked on. Our photo editor is on Alaska time, I’m on Pacific time, our managing editor is on Mountain time, our designer on Central, and our marketing director on the East. Scheduling obviously has its challenges but I like that we all get out to experience different places and different mountain ranges. We all have a little bit of geographic “expertise” I think. I grew up back East and used to think the big magazines had a little bit of a Rocky Mountain bias. Having our team spread out makes it harder to focus too hard on one spot.
How would define the editorial and photo direction of the magazine?
That’s an interesting question. I try not to pigeonhole our content too much, but I do think we try to put an emphasis on bigger, more research-intensive, more immersive, and frankly more important stories. Longform stuff. So much of journalism these days is quick-hit: Listicles, short reads, etc. We’re trying to fill the magazine with the kind of journalism that takes real work.
What words of advice do you have for others considering independent journalism?
Trust your readers. If you make a product for them and make it something that’s easy to like (good content, quality, etc.) they will read it. Print isn’t dead, it’s only that cheap, mass-produced brands of print not thriving. Readers are willing to support good print.
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