Print Lives, with Vengeance

For all the loud-mouthed cynics who’ve been running around with “print is dead” on their lips for the last few years — here’s something for the believers to throw in your faces. And no doubt, L.A.’s new literary journal, with its 232 thick glossy pages, will make a nice dent.

Slake is the latest endeavor of former LA Weekly editors Laurie Ochoa and Joe Donnelly. The first edition made its debut last night as contributors and supporters sipped gourmet rum cocktails at Caña Rum Bar downtown.

Now, I hate to say I told you so, but I’ve been theorizing about the future of the print medium since I started journalism school to pursue a degree in “print” journalism. Professors and students alike laughed heartily at my opinion that yes, print journalism would continue to exist in a physical form no matter what technological crap came along. My theory was that publishers would have to make the most of the medium by taking advantage of what paper can do, rather than what it can’t. That would mean more money, not less, being poured into the production side of things. Print journalism would no longer be disposable. Newspapers would die, eventually, but well-crafted print products could survive if they earned their physical space. One great example of this concept in action is McSweeny’s — the quarterly literary magazine founded by Dave Eggers.

“To survive, the newspaper, and the physical book, needs to set itself apart from the web,” said Eggers. “Physical forms of the written word need to offer a clear and different experience. And if they do, we believe, they will survive. Again, this is a time to roar back and assert and celebrate the beauty of the printed page.”

And Slake is beautiful. From cover to cover, the journal packs rich, thick pages of photography, colorful graphics and text into a neat bulk of great-smelling pulp.

Content-wise, Slake is everything the LA Weekly was at its best — without the pages of ads or the listings no-one ever read anyway. The excitement has returned. The LA Weekly used to be all about those great L.A. moments captured by aspiring writers who still had the passion to produce something remarkable. Now there’s Slake.

Mark Z. Danielewski gets the issue started with a brief but beautiful account of why poetry still matters to anyone who writes even as much as a grocery list. He’s up to his usual tricks with format, bullet pointing the piece and throwing his characters around, and as usual, it works wonderfully. The photography is mesmerizing, and Geoff Nicholson’s account of being a Hollywood pedestrian hits home with the force of a tourist shoulder-shoving past you on the Walk of Fame. Slake brings creative journalism, art and fiction together in a stunning medley with the production quality of a coffee table book in a neat, holdable size.

Quality, however, comes at a price. At $18 per issue, Slake is by no means cheap. Subscriptions stand at $60 per year. But you get what you pay for in this new world of precious print. McSweeny’s is also pricey, at $55 per year, but every effort is made to have the product “earn its existence,” as publisher Eli Horowitz described it. Creating something beautiful takes imagination as well as financial backing. In the end, quality quarterlies earn a place on the bookshelf while the LA Times decays in a browning pile in the corner.

Print enthusiasts have every reason to celebrate.