There are few people who have the opportunity to turn their passions into full-time careers. Josh Jackson, founder and editor of Paste Magazine, is one of the few. In the 1990s, Jackson and some friends started pastemusic.com, a website devoted to music they loved. The website soon evolved into an award-winning print magazine, which highlighted the best of what pop culture had to offer – in the way of not only music, but books, movies, games and television – for eight years. With ad sales on the decline, Paste suspended the printing of its magazine in 2010, continuing to use the Web as a portal for covering thoughtful art.

While the publishing industry struggles to stay afloat, Jackson & Co. remain innovative. In June, they unveiled a brand-new weekly digital edition of the magazine that combines the best of both print and digital. Jackson recently sat down with Halogen to talk about the latest evolution of Paste, future challenges and the state of the magazine industry.

What does Paste provide for its readers?

Josh Jackson: We’ve always just hoped we could introduce people to new art they are going to fall in love with. We see ourselves as a curator of our little museum, and hopefully it’s a place of discovery for our audience.

Do you feel like you are providing a platform for “independents” creating art?

When we were starting out, I think the kind of music we loved was not filling as much of a void in the culture. That’s changed. We’ve been grateful to be a part of it. Now you can find out about the bands we love in a lot of places, but we’re still definitely trying to shine a light on music people don’t know about and movies people may be missing. We call it the “signs of life,” because that was our original goal – to point people toward the signs of life in culture.

With your new digital platform, you’ve managed to combine what people love about print with digital technology to create something entirely unique. How can you combine the two to form a healthy balance that’s beneficial for both the magazine and the reader?

We decided to start from scratch and not try to transfer what we were doing in the magazine to a digital format. Beyond that, we thought, What do readers want? The main difference from our existing website is that we’re trying to bring back the long-form writing we had in the magazine. The idea is that you open the Paste mPlayer and take time to see what interests you and sit down with it like you would with a newspaper or magazine. That gives us a chance to surprise and hopefully delight our audience with things they weren’t expecting. We can describe it all we want, but there’s nothing like being able to hear the music as you’re reading about it or watch a video and see the band play. When we first launched the magazine, we launched it with a sampler CD, and that’s [been] a huge part of our identity. This takes it another step where it’s tying everything together more directly.

What do you feel your biggest challenge will be in this new dynamic moving forward?

Well, personally we went from having a monthly magazine to now doing this weekly, so that’s a big challenge! [Laughs] Beyond that, I think it’s to constantly be evolving. There’s an opportunity to make it feel like we’re delivering special content that you can’t get elsewhere.

Do you feel like there’s still a place for print magazines?

I subscribe to about eight, so I’m still a believer in the format. I don’t think print is going away any time soon, and I certainly don’t think the kind of experience that really only magazines can give you will ever go away.

As we launched the magazine and learned about that world, we also realized how much is broken in that industry – how wasteful the newsstand is where a 35-40 percent sell-through is considered “good.” The subscription price doesn’t even begin to cover paper cost, much less all the writing, editing, staffing and everything that goes in to it. So there’s a lot of challenges that this industry faces, but I think the core of what they’re delivering is such a strong thing that it will adapt and thrive.

What advice would you give someone who wants to combine their passion with their daily job, like you did?

It’s definitely a wonderful thing to take a risk and have it work. It’s hard; it’s a lot of work; and it’s a lot of stress. Find people who have done it before and pick their brains. Find mentors and try to do it with excellence; and the rest will follow. That’s life.

To experience the new Paste mPlayer for yourself, visit www.pastemagazine.com.

-home page photo by Gideon Tsang