BREAKING:
LEGACY MEDIA IN CRISIS!
In a world where social media algorithms are controlled by unstable billionaires, governments across the world are attacking free speech and advertising models are failing to sustain publications, it's clear that radically new approaches to media distribution are needed.
The sudden shutting of outlets that once defined youth culture, like VICE and BuzzFeed News, have alarmed us – and highlighted the dire need for reliable platforms in the media industry, particularly for young folks.
A diverse and competitive media landscape benefits everybody. Young people are beginning to trust social media more than traditional news-media. With all of the issues with polarisation and extremism on social media, we feel this will develop into deeper problems if nothing is done to address it.
The dwindling of reliable and open media is a threat to the freedom of speech that a new, diverse generations like Generation Z and beyond need in order to flourish.
So with COSY MAG, we strive to create an accessible, inclusive, and empowering publication that platforms marginalised perspectives, meaningful stories, and impactful discussions.
What does that mean for you?
A clean, uninterrupted reading experience.
No ads, no paywall.
We acknowledge publications need money to function, which is an especially difficult problem when we have come to expect content for free these days.
But current solutions force readers to compromise far too much.
By building COSY as a non-profit organisation (limited by guarantee), we're able to avoid problems caused by financial and corporate interests – enabling us to build a publication that prioritises freedom of speech.
Paywalls make writing inaccessible to those who need it the most.
We believe high-quality media is important to everyone. But forcing people to pay before they can read makes journalism needlessly inaccessible – particularly as we face this economic recession, where many people can't justify spending money on high quality media.
That's why COSY will always remain free to read.
Ads on articles are annoying at best, and harmful at worst.
Visual clutter gets in the way of reading – and can ultimately discourage it, especially when people are already reading a lot less nowadays.
More troublingly, ads can seriously compromise the rights and privacy of users whose sensitive data is often sold without their consent or awareness.
We don't run invasive ads on COSY MAG, and we never will.
We need to make sure COSY MAG is a reading experience designed for everyone.
Speaking to disability activists online, we quickly learned that the internet is inaccessible to people who struggle to see or read.
With colour options, text size controls, and the choice to use a dyslexia-friendly font, we've consciously designed a reading experience that can adapt to everybody.
We will continue to invest in making sure our publication is accessible to everyone.
If you have feedback on how we can make COSY MAG more accessible in any way, please fill out the short survey below.
talk to us about accessibility
Introducing the COSY Dictionary. Now nobody is left out of the conversation.
Our articles speak on important subjects, so we recognise the need to define words constantly. Some terms are ambiguous or come with preconceptions, so it’s important that we have a shared understanding of what they mean.
Simply hover or tap on any word with pink dotted lines, and we will provide a quick definition to keep you engaged without being distracted from the content. These also include trusted resources online if you want to learn more.
We're committed to showcasing high-quality, independent perspectives.
Our editors are compassionate, talented individuals who meticulously fact-check and source all claims in our articles without compromising the authenticity of our writers.
We focus on showcasing diverse, high-quality, independent perspectives in an age where finding such content is increasingly challenging.
We also want COSY MAG to be the best publication for independent writers.
Breaking into the journalism and writing industries is tough. Virtually all careers with the pen require years of experience, degrees, references, and a professional portfolio.
For newcomers, it has never been more difficult to break through a gate-kept industry.
So we want to make sure that COSY caters to the need of each of our contributors – no matter their credentials. Everyone is invited!
Writers, submit your drafts.
We've made it easy to submit your drafts to us in minutes – wherever they are.
We recognise that people have already written and submitted articles on a blog, Medium, or another publication. Or they've got a note sitting on their phone that they've been meaning to develop into a story and share at some point.
We know first-hand how painful the submission process can be on other platforms, so we've developed a simple submission system to save you valuable time and effort.
You can import your draft and submit it to an editor in just a few clicks – ready to be reviewed by editors. Piece of cake!
We're always open to submissions from the community. If you want to get involved, just click Submit!
We're working with AI to streamline the publication process with ROBY, our friendly assistant.
We never want AI to undermine the human voices, but think there's a lot of room for AI technology to save writers and editors a lot of time, allowing us all to focus on what we enjoy doing.
For example, our friend ROBY can identify which categories your article belongs to, help with SEO and make everyone's articles more discoverable, and summarise articles to make them more accessible.
As time goes on, we will implement more ideas on how ROBY can enable us to achieve our mission, and help shape the way AI is perceived by the masses. Stay tuned!
We collaborate with visual artists to make our MAG beautiful, dynamic, and representative of the community we are building.
A great joy from the start has been giving visual artists exposure by matching their artwork with articles from our writers. It makes our MAG truly representative of the community we are building, and goes a long way in make our publication beautiful.
We also think it looks really cool when an article has moving images – we're still not over the magic of GIFs, and it makes a massive impression on our readers!
We're always open to submissions from the community. If you want to get involved, just click Submit!
Many of our articles come from people who have never written before.
Everyone has a story to share, even if they wouldn’t consider themselves a writer.
In fact, our most popular articles come from those who feel they have something important to say, even if it’s the only thing they will ever write. We’re careful to ensure we honour those who share their vulnerability with us.
We appreciate that we are an English speaking publication, and some feel intimidated writing to us because of that.
Our editors mentor those who need support showcasing their voice regardless of these obstacles, celebrating the courage and talent taken to have their writing seen by the world.
We give everybody a portfolio to show off our hard work (and wow employers).
We provide contributors with a customisable portfolio that honours all of the work they have done with us at COSY – making them look great for future career opportunities and their other hustles.
Everyone has real estate on cosy.land with a customisable URL (cosy.land/@username) on our eye-catching domain name.
Over time, we want to expand customisation options even further – to allow COSY Portfolios to fully match their owner's personal brand.
We also change the way editors are honoured in a publication.
We’re so lucky to have built a team of editors who, after editing other publications, told us how we could make a publication that radically changes outdated processes in the past.
Giving credit where credit is due.
Editors deserve credit for the often unseen, meticulous work they put into making each article the best it can possibly be.
That's why editor's receive credit on each article they help publish, right alongside the writer.
It also lets us be completely transparent about the editorial process to our writers and readers – never hiding the individuals who help make COSY MAG great.
A peer-reviewed editing system built from the ground up.
We've tried many content management systems and platforms, and none of them suited a open, democratic publication like ours. So we built our own system from scratch.
Not only is it tailored to align to our values and needs, it's easy to use for our editors because it has them specifically in mind.
It's important that our editor system is self-sustaining, so if our editors decide to move on to other things, we can hand over responsibilities to other volunteers seamlessly without interrupting our operations.
To avoid bias from our editors, submissions are reviewed multiple times to ensure both the high-quality editorial standard we promise, and minimise any prejudice in the process.
If we ever need to update or change the system, we can – because we hold the keys to the engine behind it – something we call COSYPress.
