Chicago Art Magazine has survived a malware attack but may not survive the next one. 

Chicago Art Magazine (chicagoartmagazine.com) was the most widely viewed visual art news source in Chicago between 2009-2012. After it closed in 2012, all 1,000+ articles remained online. Last month, the site went down due to a malware attack. Interestingly, it was the critics, artists, influencers and gallerists who noticed the problem – a testament to how valuable the articles in the archive are.

It cost several hundred dollars to restore. It will need nearly a thousand dollars over the next two years to update and protect the suite of websites from the new attacks that are created every day. Chicago Art Map (chicagoartmap.com) is also at risk, but a more complex site to support, so our stretch goal will include an audit of that software utility. 

The Impact

Even years after closing, the traffic to the magazine remains high due to the continued interest in our content. We showcased thousands of artists, who often link to their articles and reviews on their own portfolio sites, and those links will break if the archive goes down again.  For many artists and closed galleries, it is their only presence on the web. Over 2,000 sites currently link to Chicago Art Magazine, which is one of the many factors as to why it performs so well in terms of search engine optimization. 

The Chicago art scene between 2009-2012 was an odd time for art and the true wild west of publishing.  As I worked on the New Art Examiner book, a decade after the closing of the magazine, I realize how these moments in time, no matter how imperfectly we documented them, have great value, and the value of the content increases over time as the past stretches farther into the distance.

Risks & Challenges

Technologically, from an internet/website perspective, the online magazine is now like a little old rickety boat in a sea that is infected by malware, spammers and hackers. The internet always moves forward, so even though the website remains unchanged, it becomes increasingly more vulnerable as new security flaws are exploited. Old Wordpress websites don’t age well and often vanish from the internet. For a few hundred dollars, we can protect the site, but not rebuild it. With a stretch goal of $3,000, we could give the entire site a face lift, manually re-format the articles, and re-launch the new website design, while preserving all the current hyperlinks to articles.  

Team

Kathryn Born- I am the founder and creator of the site. Chicago Art Magazine actually launched my career as a web designer and social media strategist. When we launched, we had no money for graphic designers, web designers, or system administrators, so I wore all those hats. Social media was in its infancy, and I feel like (along with millions of others) we pioneered the idea of “pushing” out our content through this newly popularized site called “Facebook”. Social media was the cornerstone of our distribution. 

Chicago Art Magazine was a massive paid team of writers and editors. I could list over a hundred people, but there are two people I must name.  Stephanie Burke, with whom I began the site, launched site and pulled the original editorial team and gallery review system together.  As the years went by, Robin Dluzen went from intern, to writer, to editor, to managing editor, to Editor-in-Chief. She transformed the magazine into an edited an elegant journal, and she took over completely when I fell ill.  Both of these partners have continued their art careers and are formidable forces in the contemporary art scene today.  I’m connected to dozens of our writers through social media and IRL friendships and enjoy watching their careers flourish as well.  

We closed the magazine due to my health issues and the fiscal impossibilities of running a local visual art magazine.  Occasionally I work on a series of short pieces entitled, “The History of Chicago Art Magazine”, which tells the story of the insanity of doing a local art magazine in a new wild west of online publishing. The stories of how we slugged through a newly fragmented media landscape tells not only the story of Chicago Art Magazine, but a time capsule of Chicago art and the media landscape during those years.

FAQ 
I'm broke but want to help, what can I do? 
That's easy- post the campaign to social media. Even one posting is worth its weight in gold in the age of social media. So please share.  

Why is the goal so low? Isn't tech security stuff really expensive? 
It doesn't take a lot of money because I do most of it personally. Since I built these sites, I've probably built about 20 more sites for clients and small businesses. So I'm very good at 90% of it. For the remaining 10%, if we hit the goal, I can bring in some experts who will fill in the knowledge gap. I don't think we'll hit $3K, but if we do, I can take the time to rebuild the site. I would need some temp work for re-formatting the articles - there's no automated way to do some of these tasks. 

UPDATES

Note: updates are only visible to funders, so I'm putting some where so they can be seen by everyone

11/18/14

UPDATE: The process has begun and we've extended this to the other sites in the Chicago Art Machine, which include

Chicago Art Map
Chicago Art Magazine
TINC Magazine (Technology Industry News – Chicago)
Tech Startup Catalog
Computers After School (teacher blog, still active)
Chicago Art Machine
DIY-film.com

I'm excited this campaign was a success - the hosting bill has been paid and we're working through the first attempt to build a clone site (for additional backup) -- this process has helped uncover corrupted databases, and I'm grateful to this fund - it has given us the resources to dedicate to this project and work slowly and carefully. 

11/7/14

We are at 90% with 28 days to go. I don’t know what to say except thank you, and I am honestly a little stunned. And I also say WE thank you – I include Robin Dluzen and all the writers and artists when I say “we” because Chicago Art Magazine meant so much to us - and we believe in our hears we did something unique with the online publication. One piece of trivia: when a critic reviewed a gallery we had never covered before they were paid double. We did this, and things like this, because we were fascinated not just with the trendy galleries, but the full ethnic and geographical range of the city. I’m also proud of the ten-article series “40 Artists Over 40” in which we savagely bucked the youth-fetish trend and featured some of the best, seasoned artists in the city.

So once the goal has almost been hit, we can look at the stretch goal, which is the  modernization of the magazine, and include some tools that help sort and search,

Anyway, I could link to articles all day, but … just thank you. Years after the closing of the magazine, I’m fighting for these websites and asking, “Why am I doing this? Who even cares? Does anyone want this?”

And now I know.

Thank you.