BACK IN THE LATE 1980s I helped launch a young people’s magazine called Fairly Serious Monthly (FSM).
We were based at a youth centre by Old Street, in Islington, called the King’s Corner Project. The idea was simple — to create an open-access media project that would give contributors their first chance to be published. I was already a working journalist, but I knew the hardest hurdle was to break through the Catch-22 that made it almost impossible to be published unless you were already published. Our slogan was “Buy It, Read It, Write It”.
Our instinct was correct. Through the doors they poured, young would-be writers, reporters, artists, photographers, designers, even advertising sales people. Out there, where real people lived often gritty, hard-scrabble lives, there was a deep wellspring…
