your take
on the mcosm journal
on average, our readers give the journal
4.6 stars
Most of our readers say their favorite section is:
✨vibes
Followed closely by: 📝 this much is true
Here was the full ranking:
#1 ✨ vibes
#2 📝 this much is true
#3 📔 prompt
#4 🧶 aesthetic
#5 ⚡️ reminders
#6 🌳 culture
and here’s what we’re doing about it:
We decided to say goodbye, for now, to ⚡️ reminders—and instead, to incorporate its essence in other places. The 🌳 culture section is controversial—some people love it, but many of you aren’t as hot about it as you are about other sections. It will be reimagined later this year.
“Just right”
Overwhelmingly, our readers say the length of the journal is “just right”. A few think it could still be a little longer. Together, these readers make up 82% of our audience.
% of readers who say the typical length of each issue is...
“Sustainability”
🌏 90%
Our readers really care about shopping sustainably: over 90% of you agree or strongly agree that you care whether a product or brand is sustainable…
✊🏾 …but you’re less united on social issues, with a strong but smaller majority caring about how a brand addresses social issues (78%) or about supporting businesses led by people from underrepresented or marginalized backgrounds (65%).
what we’re doing about it:
Because they’re our pillars, we will always center racial justice, ecology, cyclical living, and soul.
The phrase “underrepresented backgrounds” is very broad, and will mean different things in different contexts—but we intentionally didn’t break it out further to simplify the survey. This made things more managable for our survey takers, but lost some nuance.
For us, we always bring it back to our pillars. Brands we partner with will have some important element of sustainability, and when we encounter small businesses with leadership from underrepresented or historically harmed backgrounds that are aligned with our values and pillars, we will go the extra mile to elevate them to our audience.
Your top 3 requests
The most common things mcosm journal readers said they wanted
1) “Bring back 🫦 ‘well, actually…’ f.k.a. ‘how to be hot’”
This was by far the most common request from this year’s survey. Because of you, as of Issue 40, it’s back! This is an example of how important this survey is—because it helps you engage with us and makes sure we know what you love most.
2) “More frequent (weekly) issues, OR a shorter issue in-between issues, OR longer issues”
More, more, more! We love this. This was the second most common ask. Ensuring the journal meets our sky-high standards for quality with a 6-person, part-time team is a challenge—especially because the journal is a 100% free offering. It’s also important to us that people are spending time with it—rather than allowing it to become too “content-y”. In a development that’s highly relevant to this, we’re introducing two new platforms related to what you care most about:
Lifepunk—a home for spiritual counterculture, by our founder, Pedro. It has interactive, written guides, and in-depth audio collections for growth and wellbeing. It’s an invitation to go deeper, get spiritual, and be more honest. Among other things, you can subscribe to the Lifepunk newsletter, which has short, weekly emails by Pedro with insight for nourishing the life and spirit ꩜
Moonbeam—a holistic, subversive women’s health platform founded by our head editor, Sabrina, Moonbeam recently joined the mcosm universe. Among other things, you can subscribe to notes from the underworld, a biweekly newsletter exploring cyclicality, body literacy, & holistic wellbeing ☾
3) “More wellness tips/wellness-related content”
Heard. Bringing back Well, Actually… was one important part of this. The other part, which we’re excited to announce later this year or early next, is reintroducing our new and improved digital magazine—with help from some of you(!). More on that soon.
btw—
more than one survey respondent was concerned about “paywalls”. We wanted to clarify that, currently, no mcosm journal-original content is behind any paywall.
We sometimes link to articles written by other organizations (like, traditional media), so wherever you see the word “paywall”, that just means that the organization we are linking to has a paywall on their articles. We’re not the ones putting paywalls on it.
We also briefly offered a premium membership, the depths, which we discontinued because it wasn’t what we wanted to make for you all. Our upcoming digital magazine will be a new and improved version, and its development will be coordinated with some of our best readers. Stay tuned for it. ❤️