‘We try to address all things local in arts, entertainment and culture. Within that universe, we try to champion the under-reported or under-covered stories.’
Mike, let me start by saying I have been a loyal Motif reader for years and I appreciate the many folks I’ve discovered in your pages who have participated in our Q&As. So, thanks. Let’s start with an overview of Motif for those who may not be familiar with it (undoubtedly a small number!). Please tell us generally about the content you publish. We’ll get into more detail later on.
Thanks Wayne! Motif boasts an audited 78,000 readers, and we’ve been around for 20 years. We’re proud of those numbers, but 78,000 is about 8% of Rhode Island, so there are still plenty of folks who are not familiar with us. I love introducing new people to the magazine, and what usually happens is that I tell them about it, maybe show them a copy, and after they’re aware of it, they realize that it’s been waiting all along in the corners of wherever it is that they go out on the town — be that a restaurant, a bar, a laundromat, a cafe, a nail salon. We’re in 1,100 spots, but a lot of times, people don’t notice us until they know us, and then I’ll get the feedback later: “Hey, since I talked to you. I’ve been seeing Motif everywhere.” That’s a fun trick, but we still are trying to raise awareness.
Motif’s official moniker is “the arts and entertainment paper for Rhode Island.” We used to describe ourselves as an alt-paper, but that’s when alt-paper meant alternative to the mainstream media. People back then would read the official paper and then read a paper like us to get a different take on the news. Almost nobody consumes media that way anymore. So we don’t describe ourselves as an alt often, but we still try to have that personality. Speaking truth to power is part of our DNA, but primarily we are about celebrating the arts, the uniqueness of our communities, and uncovering the stories that slip past other periodicals. We champion the underdog. We try to get the word out about exciting things that will help people open their minds. We try to encourage dialog across a spectrum of pre-existing mindsets, and we try to have fun doing it. We always work to present practical, useful information, but with a different attitude than you might see in other media. Hopefully, more authentic – that’s a big watch word here.
What is the history of Motif? It seems to have risen from the ashes of the demise of so-called “alternative” newspapers such as the long-gone Providence Phoenix.
Motif and the Phoenix actually coexisted for 10 years, and the Phoenix has been resting in that big periodical morgue in the clouds for exactly 10 years now. Motif was created by Jim Vickers, who was looking for an avenue to champion the local arts scene during a period when the Phoenix was focusing on politics and largely written in Boston. After eight years, he burned out on the low pay. I was working in corporate IT and burned out on not making a difference in any meaningful way, so we traded places. I’d been writing the film column and was involved in various local arts organizations, and had a few things I could bring to the table – like creating a website and social media. It was essentially a side hustle for me at first, but when the Phoenix went away we felt a much greater burden of responsibility for those under-represented communities and stories. The number of press releases we received doubled almost overnight. So we started taking it much more seriously. Since then, we’ve expanded our digital footprint, added weekly electronic editions, gone foraging for friends on social media and been producing videos for our readers and for various arts organizations.
Supported by advertising, your twice-monthly Motif is free. Where can readers find it around the state?
We have a distribution network – a dozen drivers bring Motif to about 1,100 locations around the state (and the Fall River-New Bedford area, which we feel Rhode Island has pretty much adopted). A lot of the drivers are also artists of various types, looking for side gigs, as artists so often need to. They’re a great bunch!
We are fundamentally supported by our advertisers, with no corporate or governmental support, so everyone takes seriously the duty of “bringing Motif to the people” – we want the stories and the ads to be seen, so we do a lot more locations and a lot of small stops other periodicals tend to skip.
We do run out in most locations. Here is a list of a few spots you’re most likely to be able to find us in each town: https://motifri.com/findmotif/
Where are your offices?
Our offices are in Pawtucket, a great city in terms of supporting the arts and affordable to arts organizations. Our contributors, though – they’re spread all over the place.
Let’s get into some depth, starting with the covers, which are invariably exceptional. How do you select the artists for them?
Thanks for the kind words! Our covers are always created by local artists. Our creative, artistic state has an embarrassment of riches in that regard. We have a few amazing artists we will return to for the right theme or occasion, but we also prowl a lot of art fairs, and we’re fortunate to have a steady stream of people sending us portfolio links. We pay what we can – not much – so we’re grateful and we’ve heard it can be a lot of fun. At this point we keep a list of around 100 interested artists, and our Artistic Director Olivia Lunger (design@motifri.com – feel free to send portfolios!) reaches out with a theme and starts brainstorming with an artist a couple of months before the issue comes out. We also try to profile the artist inside the magazine. There’s a whole collection of profiles on our website.
An overview, please, on what Motif covers.
We try to address all things local in arts, entertainment and culture. Within that universe, we try to champion the underreported or under-covered stories.
We are mostly a scrappy team of freelancers, so anything we choose to cover has to be something the writer feels intrigued by, excited about, or has a passion for.
We miss stories because no reporter is interested or has time. But we also gain a lot of stories because our wide network is out there living the dream and seeing the things that don’t make it to more mainstream media outlets, or don’t know how to approach media outlets.
We like to provide alternative takes on the news, something that’s different from what you might read anywhere else. That might mean satire, or just a fresh take on a current issue. But a lot of Motif really is a passion project that’s about representing the smaller entities, and that’s what draws many of our contributors.
And of course, we also always try to be responsive to the interests of our readers. It’s exciting to know that readers want to read about something we’re covering, so most of our writers enjoy that aspect of it.
That’s led us to certain concentrations. Music is a big one. We are proud to be the only paper in RI that’s got a regular cannabis column, and we’ve had that since long before it was legal (the plant, not the column). We do theater coverage, restaurant reviews. We’re very proud of our beer column and ongoing local craft beer coverage and, of course, the fine arts.
We’ve also been embracing our cover themes more aggressively in the last couple of years, so we’re likely to have more articles that were inspired by whatever the theme is. We have monthly writer brainstorming meetings to think about how a given theme may interact with their area of interest. How does an issue on Summer Reading get reflected in a beer column? What does a Gift Guide have to do with an alt-music column?
How do we find out about a lot of this stuff? People will tip us off to things with texts, calls, or emails; we make every effort to keep our ears to the ground in the community. Our writers are prospected for their subject matter expertise, so they are usually in their local scenes. They’re going out to shows, they’re talking to booking agents, they’re talking to venues, they’re talking to bands or poets or actors or brewers, whatever they’re into. But we’re also all just humans who can only track so much – the biggest source of information for us is the community, and if members of the community weren’t taking the time to send us press releases and notes and invites and posters and flyers, we would have no chance of keeping up even as well as we do. And there’s so much more we’d love to cover if we had more manpower, but it’s the community that really drives us. All those incoming messages are a real responsibility, and we can’t cover them all. Rhode Island is so dynamic, and there’s so much going on in so many places and so many creative powerhouses doing their own things all over the state. We do our best to keep up.
I’m reading the Fall Guide now and see a lot of helpful listings for apple picking, corn mazes, haunted houses (as a horror writer, definitely in my wheelhouse!) and more. A lot of time must go into these listings and the regular calendar, correct?
It takes a village, for sure. Fact checking that sort of thing isn’t the most fun part, but the feedback we get is that a lot of people find it helpful. It’s probably the most time-consuming part of the issue, and still we’re sure we always miss something, but a lot of people put in considerable effort. Once we have the facts straight, we go back in and try to add some humor, including, alas, more than a few dad jokes.
How do you find the folks who write for you?
We get a lot of our writers from going out on the town and just talking up the magazine. And it turns out there are people who are interested but never thought they might contribute or could write. We also regularly hit social media asking if people would like to join us, and we’re involved with a number of writing groups and writing projects, like the Association of Rhode Island Authors. And we’ve had a robust internship program with a number of local colleges; quite a few of our contributing writers began as interns. We do try to cast a wide net. So while we have some writers who are incredible, go-to people who love it and will contribute a few articles a month. We also have a lot of extended collaborators who might contribute once a year, but are still part of the process and a delight to work with you. And shout out to some of the serious die-hards – John Fuzek, who missed only one issue in 20 years, Mark Clarkin, whose column is at around 18 years, and Shirley Prisco, our amazing astrologer for over 15 years, for example.
We always ask about the backgrounds of people we profile so please give us yours. Did you grow up in Rhode Island?
I moved to Rhode Island when I was one. I brought my parents along, and although I tried to escape a number of times over the years, like so many Rhode Islanders, I always ended up back here. And over that time, I think the state mostly improved each time, so ending up here hasn’t been a bad thing.
What about your education? What did you do before taking the helm at Motif?
I studied Psychology (Princeton), then Design (Rhode Island School of Design) and Marketing (Johnson & Wales) while I was working in advertising, trying to pay for all that educating. When the world wide web came along, I happened to be one of the few nerds who had learned HTML (before it was cool… I mean, if you think it ever became cool), which led me to segue into IT and entrepreneurism. So those degrees eventually add up to … arts journalism? I admit, probably no younger versions of me really saw that coming.
What can we expect from Motif in the future?
During COVID, we had a chance to re-examine the entire model, and we found that it works better if we expand. Rhode Island is a wonderfully intimate market, but not a robust advertising market. So our plans for the near future are either to grow to more cities or to shrink to fewer issues per year, depending on what kind of opportunities we’re able to discover in the next few months
We’ve also been doing more events since the pandemic cleared – as many as four or five a month. That’s a paradigm shift. And right now we’re pursuing nonprofit status, because that’s really what we are anyway. So there’s a lot of shuffling of good things going on right now, and I’m excited to see how each of them will shake out.
And finally, a fun question: What is one thing most readers might not know about Motif?
When I meet readers, what most surprises me is that so many think we’re a much larger organization than we actually are. We’re fortunate to have a lot of collaborating artists and writers and drivers and more, many of whom may work two days a month. The full-time workers at Motif are easily counted on one hand, and then everyone else is a part-timer, or some variation of volunteer freelancer.
I guess we look bigger from the outside. Readers, they think we have an entire administration and processes that we’re happy to aspire to, but haven’t actually even come close to achieving.
For me it’s validation that we’re punching a bit above our weight class and hopefully doing some things right with minimal resources. For example, I get a disproportionately fancy-dancy title of publisher, but in my day-to-day, I’m still delivering papers, trying to help with bookkeeping, contributing a layout or a story, just like everybody else. We’re a flat hierarchical structure because we’re too small to be anything else. Exciting, stressful, and a situation that challenges everybody to wear a delightful variety of hats.
