A note from Nathan, 1964 co-founder and publisher.
Whether you received this issue in the post, picked it up from one of our distribution racks or found it in a café, shop or backcountry hut, thank you for reading 1964: mountain culture / aotearoa.
1964 is all about unique content, beautifully presented. We tell the stories you’ve never heard before from Aotearoa’s rural, remote and wild places, and we share and support the talents of the people who seek them out. We render all this in delicious print because we believe in the value of authentic tactile reading experiences. The positive feedback we receive daily from you, our readers and our supporters, tells us that you agree.
But making a journal like 1964 costs money, and in order to be sustainable, we are asking you, our readers, for your support.
The cost of content
The media industry is in trouble, and we are not immune. According to Radio NZ’s The Detail, in the five years since 1964 launched in 2019, magazine sales in Aotearoa New Zealand have dropped by 40%, from 16 million per year to 10 million.
The disruptions of the Covid years upended industries, including publishing, and the spiralling cost of living has meant consumers are spending less on non-essentials. Meanwhile, the price of postage, paper stock and printing have all shot up.
The biggest factor, however, continues to be the internet. Millions of pages of easily-accessed content are churned out daily online, and most of it is free to view. When it comes to words and pictures, as with music, we’ve gotten out of the habit of paying.
In Aotearoa New Zealand, this has come to a head over the past year. Magazines and community newspapers have been shutting down their print operations, while others, like our colleagues at New Zealand Geographic, have made very public pleas for support.
Many of us spend so much of our working life squinting at screens; it’s the last thing we want to do in our leisure time. And when it comes to free content, we all know now it’s not actually free. You pay with your privacy and data, which is mined and traded so you can be served with ads tailored to you on every device you touch. Also, you get what you pay for. The quality and authenticity of writing and images is getting worse, thanks to social media and the proliferation of badly-written keyword driven blogs, and AI-generated content. Robots, it turns out, write poor prose.
We know there are a lot of voracious readers of 1964 out there. We get your emails, you slide into our DMs, we talk to you every day. Thank you so much for reading our work and for telling us how much you enjoy it! If you haven’t already, we would love it if you would subscribe to ensure we can keep doing what we do. It’s only $74.95 for all four issues.
We have a plan.
We are committed for the long term, and we are not going anywhere. But we do need your help.
1964: mountain culture / aotearoa launched in December of 2019. As of the start of 2025, we have 700 subscribers, which makes up 28% of our revenue. The other 72% comes from our advertising sponsors. The number of subscriptions we have right now are enough to break even, but not enough for us to make a living or for 1964 to grow.
The 1964 community is incredible and we have amazing support from our advertisers. Without them, we wouldn’t have made it this far. But in order to offer a quality reading experience, we do not run advertorial or sponsored content, and we limit the number of ads in each issue. Because of this, our advertising revenue is static, and growing subscriptions is the key to 1964‘s viability.
Starting today, we have a three-year plan to not only make 1964 a sustainable future-proof publication, but to further improve an already-high-quality product.
Year 1: 2025 With the exception of me, everyone on our team is compensated. I used my savings to start 1964, and have been working full-time unpaid for the past five years. I believe in 1964, and what it can become. But working full-time without pay is not sustainable, and my second job distracts me from making the best product for you.
Goal: Over the course of 2025, ideally this month, our goal is to double our number of subscribers from 700 to 1400. This would represent just 2.8% of our readership, which is up to 50,000 people. This would help provide me with a very modest salary.
Year 2: 2026 Our co-founder and editor Laura Williamson produces an amazing product with limited budget, salary and time. Laura works two to three other jobs to make ends meet. Laura needs to work for 1964 full-time and needs to be paid a living wage. We want to support her to do what she does best, curate the hard-to-find stories that you love.
Goal: 2500 total subscriptions by the end of 2026. If we do this by the end of 2025, even better. This still means only 5% of our readers would be paying subscribers. That’s one in 20, which we think is very achievable.
Year 3: 2027 We are proud that we pay all of our contributors reasonably, but we want to be able to pay them more. Their great work deserves it. A further growth in subscriptions will allow us to increase our content budget and compensate our contributors for travel and field work so they can get out there and get amongst.
Goal: 3500+ subscriptions by the end of 2027. 1964 is viable, sustainable and getting even better every issue.
Join team 1964
The media industry has changed, but what hasn’t changed is the value of a great read, beautifully presented. In the current environment, authentic publications will only continue to exist with paid subscribers.
Your subscription makes 1964 happen, literally. Please join our team and subscribe today for only $74.95 for all four issues.
Nathan Weathington