The challenge: Make a magazine in just 48 hours

A group of ambitious, creative and quite possibly insane writers, designers and editors has launched a seemingly impossible project: They're creating a magazine in just 48 hours. It is called, with elegant logic, 48 Hour Magazine.

On Friday, at noon Pacific time, they announced the theme -- the entirely appropriate "hustle." Writers, photographers and artists are invited to submit work that fits the theme until Saturday at 4 p.m. Pacific. And then, the plan goes, they will have the remainder of the 48 hours -- until midday Sunday -- to complete the selection, editing, design, Web version and -- really? -- the printing. The mad rush of individual and collective effort will slam to a halt with a genuine printed magazine, all in the course of a single weekend.

Typically, magazines work months and months ahead. Two days is about the amount of time it might take a traditional print magazine to coordinate editorial meetings for an upcoming issue.

Who would be crazy enough to invent such a challenge? Actual media professionals. Alexis Madrigal is a staff writer at Wired.com; Sarah Rich was an editor at Dwell Magazine; Derek Powazek is the editor of the long-lived storytelling site Fray; Heather Champ is former community director at Flickr; Dylan Fareed is a software designer with experience in print; Mat Honan is a freelance writer.

You might not know them now, but you could before this is over; they've begun streaming their manic  magazine production on Ustream (as of this writing, they look a lot like you or me -- people staring into computers -- but at some point, it's bound to get more exciting.)

I'd like to tell you more, but if I want to try to contribute, I've got to hustle.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: The town hall clock in Prague. Credit: kainet via Flickr.

Comments

[Elizabeth Madrigal]

Honestly? I swear Alexis Madrigal has been an original since the day he was born and the accompanying brilliance just keeps expanding exponentially. 48hrmag cannot be anything less than astonishing and fabulous with his involvement, Sarah Rich's, the rest of this incredible cast and thousands of talented contributors.

Full disclosure: I'm Alexis mom.