Thirty years is a long time. Well, time is a relative construct—30 years is but a blink in terms of plate tectonics and continental drift—so let me be plain: Three decades is an outrageous amount of time for an independent magazine to have survived. Especially given the constant disruption that’s been continuously reshaping the media landscape since the late ’90s. (Thank you, internet, you frenemy you.)
The publication I refer to is none other than Chronogram, which turns 30 this year. You hold in your hands our 339th issue, the many-hundredth attempt to make meaning out of life in the Hudson Valley and to tell its story. And for the rest of this year, we’re taking a long victory lap. This will take many forms: Me prattling on throughout the year about our achievements, a special issue in the fall, an exhibit this summer of the art that has graced the magazine’s cover, and a celebratory gathering that will involve adult party beverages and dancing.
It’s difficult to understand the scope of what we’ve accomplished; we never look back, so busy are we plotting our course into an uncertain future. But this year, expect to hear us toot our own horn as we grapple with our legacy.
The Shock of the New
Does this magazine seem short to you? Can you tell we got a little trim? It’s only a little off the top. How noticeable is it to you? It’s a documented medical fact that after a period of growth and then plateauing, we shrink as we age. Chronogram is no different. Except the shrinkage we’re dealing with is caused by runaway paper prices. Since March 2020, our paper costs have increased over 40 percent. We explored a number of options to deal with this price spike. The solution we landed on was the size you’re looking at, 10″ x 12″, which is an inch shorter vertically than we were. It’s an elegant downsizing, keeping the magazine’s oversize feel while economizing in a meaningful way. And now that we’ve trimmed down a bit, I wonder if we weren’t too big all these years. Maybe our new size was the sweet spot we wanted all along but we just didn’t know it. A big shout-out to Kerry Tinger, our production director, for spearheading the resizing effort.
But, wait, that’s not all that’s new! We’ve also relaunched Chronogram.com. Here’s what Marie Doyon, our digital doyenne, has to say about our revamped website:
We’re joining the 21st century with a new mobile-responsive site (better late than never), which will be easier to navigate on your phone and infinitely nicer to look at. Like we did with our print redesign a few years back, the new website emphasizes white space, aiming to create breathing room around text and photos so articles are easier to read. We also tried to make the features and functions of the site you all use daily even easier to find like adding your event to our online calendar, signing up for Chronogram Conversations and other events, flipping through our family of publications, and browsing our top cultural event picks for the month. We even improved our deliverables for our ad partners, and yet somehow the ads feel less invasive. All in all, it’s an aesthetic breath of fresh air. What do they say? “New look, same great taste…”
Department of Corrections
In the February issue, we published a profile of Newburgh-based sculptor Daniel Giordano (“In a Creative Vein”), whose work is currently being exhibited at Mass MoCA. We neglected to credit Ernesto Eisner Photography for the photos of Giordano’s work. Our apologies to Ernesto Eisner.
Another story we published in the February issue, on the push for decriminalization and legalization of psychedelics in New York (“The Healing Mushroom”), contained a major error and revealed a flaw in how we approach covering the transgender, non-binary, and gender nonconforming community. A local group involved in this effort is the Hudson Valley Psychedelic Society. In the piece, we ran a photo of an event the society held last summer, which pictured a few of its members, including the group’s executive director, Li Wojehowski. In delineating who was who in the photo, the caption noted that someone was standing to “her right.”
Shortly after we published the article, I received an email from Li Wojehowski informing me that they were misgendered in the photo. Wojehowski is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns. Finding this out, I fixed the error online, wrote Wojehowski a brief apology, made a mental note not to assume anyone’s gender in the future, and moved on to address the 387 other emails in my inbox. Mistakes happen. We fix them, note the error, and tweak our process if needed.
Wojehowski responded to my apology: “Thanks for quickly fixing it online. I want to stress how important this is. One of your editors assumed my pronouns, and now I feel disrespected and humiliated by an article written about my own organization. Many people will see the print version, and if that caption is in it, it will undermine a lot of the work I do every day to get people to understand my non-binary gender identity. It might seem like no big deal to you, but I promise you it is. It points to a systemic issue in your publication that your editors are unaware and insensitive to the LGBTQ community.”
Which gave me pause. I was the one who wrote the caption, making an erroneous assumption about Wojehowski’s gender. Suffice to say that Chronogram can do better. Moving forward, we will not make any assumptions about anyone’s gender, and we will ask subjects their preferred gender pronouns in advance. My apologies to Wojehowski and my appreciation to them for helping us along in our evolution. Even after 30 years, we can still learn a thing or two.
This article appears in March 2023.
