Discovering 'Found Magazine'

The world of independent magazines can be a vicious place. Publications are in constant danger of dying—if they get made and distrbuted at all—even if a zine's output is maintained, it's unlikely that it will reach a broad audience. Potentially revolutionary ideas easily go unnoticed.

But Davy Rothbart and his Yale collaborator Jonathan Kidd, GRD '04, editors and self-described "prime conspirators" of FOUND Magazine, have no aspirations of becoming counter-culture iconoclasts or mainstream celebrities. They would simply like you to be "aware of your surroundings, like the paper that's tumbling around you, or the note on the floor of the bus."

FOUND Magazine, a Chicago-based independent magazine, stopped by Koffee, Too? last Tuesday evening while on its promotional tour, which includes visits to Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, and San Francisco. The magazine, $5 per issue, comprises a broad amalgamation of found objects.

COURTESY FOUNDMAGAZINE.COM

Its website (foundmagazine.com) displays its mission statement with pride: "We collect FOUND stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework, to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills, doodles—anything that gives a glimpse into someone else's life."

The idea of a magazine that publishes what its contributors and editors come across by way of chance is not entirely new: it has its precursors, such as Abi Bridge's Other People's Mail, and You Found It, a similar venture based out of New York City. But Rothbart, an amicable twen-ty-something who went to the University of Michigan with Kidd as an undergraduate, is decidedly focused on reaching as large an audience as possible. Part of this effort is establishing distribution cells and expanding FOUND's contributor base, as most of what it publishes is sent in by contributors unaffiliated with the magazine's production. "There's no better way to really feel someone than to read a note they've written filled with subtle shades of what they really want and what they're most afraid of," Rothbart said.

The magazine, which required three months to print, didn't take off until June of this year. Five thousand additional copies were printed after an initial run of 1,000, each with a different cover. Both runs sold quickly. National media coverage helped spread the word, especially the NPR program This American Life, on which Rothbart has worked. Kidd and Rothbart hope that if the tour is successful the publishing process will accelerate.

Are the found objects compiled for the sake of humor? Of melancholy? For recontextualization? Rothbart found the following note one winter on the windshield of his Toyota Camry: "Mario, I fucking hate you you said you had to work then whys your car HERE at HER place?? You're a fucking LIAR. I hate you I fucking hate you. Amber. (PS Page me later)."

FOUND leaves the interpretation up to the reader. The magazine's construction may follow in the way of the readymade, but there is much stronger emotional valence to these scraps than mere randomness might hold. In flipping through FOUND, one discovers angry break-up notes, rueful confessions, and even posters of missing persons who were victims of the attacks on the World Trade Center.

FOUND's content encourages the rediscovery of the common ethos that binds humanity through shared experience; such a testament may not yet be fully realized by the magazine, but it's on the right path.

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