Tone Madison is taking a summer break

We’ll see you in September!

The team here at Tone Madison is taking the rest of August to focus on some very necessary behind-the-scenes planning. As a result, you won’t see many new stories popping up here until the first week of September, and we’ll be pausing our weekly newsletters for a few weeks as well.

Here’s the thing about running a small and truly independent publication: It’s tough to balance our day-to-day editorial work with the long-term effort of maintaining a lasting support structure for our journalism. All of this puts a great deal of strain on our core staff—four people, all of them working part-time—and on our finances. In this line of work, it’s way too easy to fall prey to tunnel vision and a feed-the-beast mentality. We’re going for the opposite: An intentional, accountable publication that focuses on a few key coverage niches where we feel we can do our most valuable work. 

So, a couple times a year we find it’s healthy to pull back and devote all of our attention to the big-picture questions. How can we improve our internal processes? How can we make the most of our limited budget? How can we do a better job of connecting with our readers? Which of the bajillion little odds and ends on our website need updating? And why are we in this handbasket? The more thoroughly we address all these issues, the stronger our published work will be.

It’ll be quieter here for a bit on Tone Madison, but you can still email us at editor@tonemadison.com with your feedback. If you’re a freelancer with an idea for a story, you can still pitch it to us.