Hello from 48 Hour Magazine
Thanks for your patience these last few days. We hope it’s rewarded. So let’s get right to it.
The theme for our first issue is Hustle.
Hustle is where the quick-witted trickster meets the Protestant work ethic. It’s virtuous labor and the con artist’s graceful swindle. It praises the ratty and rough morality of making money, and the glory of giving it all you’ve got.
Hustle is the aging athlete who replaces ability with sweat equity. The reporter who beats the world to break a story. The entrepreneur living on credit cards and couches. It was also a popular folk dance in America at the end of the 2nd millennium.
Most hustles straddle the border between the legal and illicit: the grey market, the game, The Kennedys. The people clawing their way up or clambering down.
Hustle is Janus-faced, holding together meanings that want to fly apart. It still echoes its original 18th century usage, when it referred to “the act of shaking together” (usually dice in a game of chance). And that’s just what we’re doing now.
48 Hour Magazine bounces collective ingenuity against wild improbability, hoping for a hot roll. And yes, we also chose the theme because we’ve got two days to make a magazine that’s worth a damn and the only way that’s going to happen is with raw, ruthless hustle.
We want you to get right to the marrow of the word. Let’s do it.
CONTRIBUTOR’S GUIDELINES
We want submissions ranging from 140 characters to 4,000 words. We’re dying for strongly-reported narratives, design fictions, interviews, data visualizations, cartoons, family portraits, how to guides, maps, obscure histories, recipes, war reporting, photo-essays, blueprints, ships log’s, scientific papers, charticles, wood cuts, product reviews, and box scores. Photography, essays, flotsam and filth. Short stories. Even shorter poetry. We want unusual takes on our theme, and the most extreme examples of its obvious senses.
We want you to make it. We want to publish it first. We don’t want your rights. We strongly encourage you to submit work created during the submission period.
ON YOUR MARK! GET SET! GO!
Regards,
The Editors
48 Hour Magazine