If someone asked us to do a daily magazine for a month, we’d say no.
We would think of the pressure of having remarkable content every day, every day, every day. We’d think about late, sleepy hours trying to stay up with current events. We would wonder how we could be that consistent for an entire month. Weren’t there places to go, things to do, demands that would turn us away from that daily grind? A month of publishing a magazine daily would just be too much. Nobody could do that—and who would want to?
This week marks our 25th anniversary of doing Meridian Magazine, which means, of course, that what we wouldn’t have volunteered to do for a month, we have done for 25 years. That’s daily issues that have been published Monday through Friday for 25 years. Imagine.
Our initial goal was to do a paper magazine once every two months. Instead, this dailyness has been a bit frantic and always with us.
How could we get so hooked to do this? Because it’s absolute magic–the best kind of magic. It is spiritual magic, watching small and large miracles unfold before our eyes, day after day. It is finding out that the Lord is on your team, when you attempt to point people to Him. It’s been a mission for us and, often, we have been able to feel the angels round about to bear us up.
Brigham Young once said, “I feel like shouting Hallelujah, all the time, when I think that I ever knew Joseph Smith.” Like Brigham, there are so many things we could shout Hallelujah about doing Meridian Magazine. We could shout Hallelujah about the stellar writers we have whose ideas bring hope, insight, brilliant articulation and love into our lives.
Some, like Wally Goddard, who is now our senior writer, have been with us nearly since the beginning of Meridian. Here’s how this association began. We were both at a conference on families down at BYU and there were practically no seats left. Just before it began, I sneaked into the vacant seat next to him, and with his characteristic generosity, he introduced himself and then began to ask questions about me. I told him we were founding a magazine that would examine, among other things, the myths that we are told in the media, as if they are true. The mainstream media champions unmarried sexuality, the self-esteem and self-gratification movements, the trend to constrict religious freedom, the idea that your desires are the guide to all things and on and on.
“Do you mean you are doing something like this?” he asked, and opened his notebook to a series of titles for articles, all grouped around the myths we come to believe because they are repeated so often. “Exactly like that,” I said, and we were fast friends immediately. He now had a place to write his great ideas, and we had a writer who would loyally stick with us for 25 years. That’s magic. That’s a gift. If there had been any other vacant seat in that hall, I may have taken it and never had that conversation with Wally Goddard.
In these 25 years, we have successfully published over 1,400 authors with more than 40,000 original articles. One of our individual articles by Orson Scott Card received nearly 1 million unique views and one of our temple dedication series—Nauvoo—received millions of visits.
Along with finding gifted writers, we could shout hallelujah that so many people stepped forward to help us financially so we could get started. Our major funding for a paper magazine fell through five times, so when we went online, finances were thin. We had magically been able to corral the best writers possible, but we had no money to go far. We truthfully told the likes of world-renowned columnist Jack Anderson, Academy-Award winning Kieth Merrill, legendary Truman Madsen, and many more, that we would love them to write for our brand, spanking-new magazine, but then in the second breath, we’d have to add that we had neither audience nor funding. That wasn’t such an elegant offer, but magically, all said yes, they would write.
We would all pitch in and make something happen.
We survived because some people stepped forward to support us with dollars. Rhodes Bread, Nu-Skin, and R.C. Willey agreed to be sponsors just because they believed in our vision. A large thank you to them.
Then, as the years passed, we began to turn for support to our readers, since we had always felt that the magazine belonged to them. We have told you before that Madison Avenue is never going to jump on board with us to advertise with big national advertising dollars in a Latter-day Saint magazine.
We have felt that we’re all in this together, seeking to bring the best possible content to the minds and hearts of ourselves and each other. We seek to have an influence in the world.
For Meridian’s financial health, some suggested we start a paid subscription plan, giving only a few articles to a reader who had not subscribed, and then blocking them from everything else. We didn’t want to do that to our people’s magazine.
We wanted it to belong to everybody.
That’s when we created the voluntary subscription plan. With this, our readers could give what they could with the more affluent stretching themselves a little, but everyone doing something. Meridian really exists because of your voluntary subscriptions. It is easy to suppose that you don’t need to remit a paid subscription because surely everybody else is doing it, but that isn’t true. Only a very small percentage of voluntary subscribers keep the magazine running for everybody. You know who you are. We appreciate you. We love you. Thank you!
Readers, can you send some money as a voluntary subscription to Meridian this year to help us celebrate our 25th anniversary? We really need you, especially in these tight times—and this is such a special anniversary for us. We are anxious to move forward as never before.
You can become a voluntary subscriber by CLICKING HERE.
We want to upgrade our email server platform—that takes money. We want to upgrade our hosts (the servers that actually handle all the traffic of Meridian)—that takes money. We want to be able to market Meridian in ways that we’ve never been able to before—that takes money. We want to grow our list as never before—that takes money. Perhaps most importantly, we want to hire a few regular writers so that we can get some assigned stories and coverage that we would never get otherwise—that takes money. And, with all our hearts, we want to have a stronger and stronger voice on the Internet, a voice not afraid to speak the truth, defend the truth, highlight the truth and raise a warning—that all takes money. That’s why we come to you.
It takes your subscription to help pay for editorial, staff, content, technical help, progress, marketing and more.
You can subscribe with what we hope will be a generous donation by clicking on THIS LINK.
You can pay once, or subscribe with a recurring payment or send a check to:
Meridian Magazine
PO Box 203
American Fork, UT 84003-0203
Meridian can only do its part in publishing peace if you help. In a world of controversy and division, let us bring forth the messages of goodness and light that Meridian publishes as far as we can. Let’s extend its reach. Let us tell people about it who don’t know that such content exists.
If you have a business, would you consider becoming a corporate sponsor as our friends did when we began? Please send a personal note to Scot at: pr*********@gm***.com with the subject line: Meridian Corporate Sponsorship.
We think we are achieving what we set out to do.
—Give people rich content to help them discern between light and darkness, goodness and sin in this chaotic world of shifting shadows.
—Make the scriptures come alive with in-depth articles and podcasts that illuminate.
—Create content that is relatable, that talks about the gospel where the rubber meets the road as it is translated into everyday life. We see authors talking about how they came to trust the Lord, how they handle the rifts and fissures along the trail of life, how they deal with the contagion of anxiety and depression, how the gospel can transform a tense situation, how to live joyfully and so much more.
—Report on the culture and shifting values of the world through the lens of the gospel and scripture and help our readers think about what is going on with intelligence and educated perception.
—Always support the Apostles and Prophets, no matter how controversial the issue. From the beginning, we made a promise about where we would stand—and that was always with the Restored Gospel and those who have been chosen to speak for the Lord. This promise we will always keep.
Choose to be a paid subscriber by CLICKING HERE.
Reporting on stories for Meridian has taken us to the front row of many of the Church’s top stories in the past 25 years.
We’ve taken you to the Nauvoo Temple dedication, the rebuilding that consecrated Latter-day Saints did, while they simultaneously crafted wagons so they could leave and never see their temple again. We’ve taken you to the heartbreak of the burning of the Apia Samoa Temple, and the first cultural celebration in Ghana, where 1,000 children, wearing white, walked around a track singing “I Love to See the Temple”. Not a dry eye was present, including President Hinckley’s.
On a very cold December day, just before Christmas, Meridian gave you a front row seat to the commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the Prophet Joseph’s birth in Sharon, Vermont. We took you to the Rome Temple dedication and introduced you to the original stalwart members of Italy. We’ve taken you to the White House, where President Hinckley received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
We’ve taken you to Bountiful, where Nephi built the ship. Meridian Magazine and the Khor Kharfot Foundation continues to do a dig there, with enormous results we are soon to disclose.
Our writers have taken you to meet Joseph Smith like you’ve never known him before. They’ve taken you to understand Isaiah. They walked with you to perceive the dynamics of family life, in “Your Hardest Family Question.” They’ve articulated the current scene, giving you ideas about why the foundation of our world is crumbling. They’ve created compelling podcasts on many topics.
On and on it has gone in such a wonderful way—covering the Church, and the gospel, for our readers on Meridian.
This doesn’t happen for free and it never could.
Now is the time for you to decide to give a voluntary subscription to Meridian, so we can continue to send you remarkable content that lifts your day and gives you reason to rejoice. We really need you. We really thank you.
Go to latterdaysaintmag.com/subscribe or send a check to:
Meridian Magazine
PO Box 203
American Fork, UT 84004-0203
