Pepperdine alums learn business and friendship don’t always mix.
By Cory White
Staff Writer
Will Johnson sits on the floor in front of his computer in his tiny Santa Monica apartment. Surrounded by dirty clothes, haphazard stacks of paper and random computer equipment, Johnson types a Web address into his computer’s browser. A Microsoft error screen pops up, with a message reading, “We can’t find www.turnoutmag.com.”
“See,” Johnson says. “It’s completely gone.”
Johnson then closes his Internet browser, and clicks his way to a prototype of the front page of the now-defunct Web site. The page is simple, with a circular Turnout logo, a large photo of urban graffiti, and links to poetry, literature, art, music and calendar.
“This is what it looked like,” Johnson mumbles while he studies the screen seriously. “I always loved that logo.”
Johnson then abruptly stands and leaves the room. In the kitchen, he grabs a drink from the fridge and checks on his chili, which is simmering on the stove. He seems to have immediately forgotten his trip to the Internet graveyard.
“Probably 20 more minutes on the chili,” he says matter-of-factly. “Want a drink?”
Later on, after the chili is all gone, Johnson admits that rehashing the demise of the Web site he created bothers him.
“I put so much time into Turnout that it still stings a little bit to think that we hardly got anywhere with it before we gave up.”
Turnout Magazine, an online literary journal, was started in the fall of 2000 by Johnson and several friends who all went to Pepperdine University and lived in the same apartment complex in Calabasas. Inspired by his disgust for most of the online journals he was familiar with, Johnson set out to create an e-zine that was “more concerned with quality content than with ad space and gimmicks.”
After assembling the staff and crafting a mission statement, Johnson went to work designing the Web site.
“Everything went smoothly, until we had to choose our initial content. That’s when some problems started to arise.”
Dissension among the editors almost killed Turnout before it had even debuted. But the staff worked through their differences, and Turnout launched its first issue Jan. 1, 2001. That first issue included photography from Art Editor Nick Mah, poetry from Literature Editor Richard Doughman, Johnson and fellow Pepperdine poet Gina Braca, and a short story by the Florida-based writer Clenton Troy White.
Despite the fact that most of the content had been produced by his staff, Johnson quickly worked to enhance his Web site’s credibility. He arranged a partnership with Amazon.com. Though he refused to sell out to advertising, Johnson did add a link to Amazon on the site, and Turnout received a 1 percent cut of any items purchased at Amazon through the link at Turnout.
“We made maybe two dollars through that affiliation,” Johnson said. “We had to find new ways to build profit, because we knew we needed a little flow to really get the thing going.”
On the heels of their launch, the Turnout staff threw a fund-raising party at the Malibu Inn. Johnson’s idea was to charge a cover, and then have raffle drawings for various Turnout merchandise.
“It worked out pretty well,” Johnson said. “The place was packed, and we had people fighting over our Turnout T-shirts. We would have made around 500 dollars that night.”
Unfortunately, the staff spent most of that money on drinks for the party.
Despite their financial troubles, the Turnout staff continued updating their site. But adding new material wasn’t always a pleasure. Johnson and his editors were shocked at the amount of “garbage” they received in their submissions mail.
“It said very clearly in our submissions guidelines, ‘we only want good art and literature,’ ” said Johnson. “Yet for some reason, people felt compelled to send us this crap. And we hardly got anything that wasn’t crap, so we just started posting the crap.”
“Will was really picky,” Doughman said. “We were all picky. We couldn’t agree on anything, and we would argue just for the sake of arguing. It got to where we were just putting content up out of spite.”
As time passed, the creators of Turnout realized they were better suited as friends than as business partners. Johnson continued to update the site periodically, but Turnout steadily dropped down his list of priorities.
“It was like no one else cared, so why should I?” Johnson said.
In December 2001, nearly a year after he had launched Turnout, Johnson didn’t pay his Web-service fee for the first time. Two months later, only a fragmented version of the site could be viewed on the Web. Johnson did not have the money to pay his overdue balance for server space.
Then, sometime in mid-February, Turnout Magazine just disappeared.
“I tried to look at the site, and it had vanished,” he said. “My server company just canceled us. I guess that’s what happens when you can’t pay the bills.”
Though the experience left him bitter, Johnson learned a few lessons.
“First of all, making decisions democratically is probably the wrong way to go. You need a visionary, someone whose judgment has authority over all others. Secondly, the online literary journal business is not booming, no matter what anyone says,” he said.
Last time he checked, Johnson knew of more than 400 online journals and e-zines.
“There’s just not enough good writers out there to fill that much space with quality content,” he said. “It’s not that you can’t produce a good mag, it’s just that you need a strong reputation to do it.”
The Turnout staff has since dispersed. Doughman is back in his home state of Ohio, working on his writing career. Mah is in Kansas, trying to raise money to build a darkroom. Music Editor Alex Bustos is selling insurance in San Diego.
As for Johnson, he is working full-time at a securities firm, and constantly coming up with ideas for Web sites. He hopes to give the Web another go round in the near future.
“But next time,” he said, “I want to work with people who take themselves seriously.”
— Cory White is a creative writing major at Pepperdine’s Seaver College. You can e-mail him at Cory.A.White@pepperdine.edu
April 03, 2003
