''Flak Magazine'' was an early American

online magazine An online magazine is a magazine published on the Internet, through bulletin board systems and other forms of public computer networks. One of the first magazines to convert from a print magazine format to being online only was the computer mag ...

, founded in 1998 by James Norton, Benjamin Fowler, Justin Knoll, Nicholas Coleman and others, mostly alumni and students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The chief editor was James Norton, the managing editors were Ben Fowler, Eric Wittmershaus and Joey Rubin. , it reported over 250,000 unique visitors monthly. In 2008, ''Flak'' suspended publication.

History

The '' PC Magazine'' wrote that ''Flak Magazine'' was "founded on the back of a placemat, prides itself on covering a little bit of everything. Topics vary wildly from music and book reviews to a feature story on the Unclaimed Baggage Center." The content of ''Flak ''was classified into features, opinion, books, film, music, web, TV and miscellaneous. It was an independent publication whose owners claimed that making money was not among their goals. Among the list of writers wrote for Flak were

Will Leitch William F. Leitch (born October 10, 1975 in Mattoon, Illinois) is an American writer and the founding editor of the Gawker Media former sports blog ''Deadspin''. Leitch is a national correspondent for MLB.com, a contributing editor at ''New York ...

, author and journalist Rob Walker,

Kickstarter Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, K ...

cofounder Yancey Strickler

Yahoo Sports Yahoo! Sports is a sports news website launched by Yahoo! on December 8, 1997. It receives a majority of its information from STATS, Inc. It employs numerous writers, and has team pages for teams in almost every North American major sport. Be ...

blogger and author Andy Behrens,WorldCat
/ref> Forbes.com columnist Bob Cook and actor Kevin Murphy. Over the years, it published interviews with artists including

Daniel Clowes Daniel Gillespie Clowes (; born April 14, 1961) is an American cartoonist, graphic novelist, illustrator, and screenwriter. Most of Clowes's work first appeared in '' Eightball'', a solo anthology comic book series. An ''Eightball'' issue typi ...

Bruce Campbell Bruce Lorne Campbell (born June 22, 1958) is an American actor and director. He is known for portraying Ash Williams in Sam Raimi's ''Evil Dead'' franchise, beginning with the 1978 short film '' Within the Woods''. He has starred in many low- ...

David Eggers Dave Eggers (born March 12, 1970) is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He wrote the 2000 best-selling memoir ''A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius''. Eggers is also the founder of ''Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern'', a lite ...

James Schamus James Allan Schamus (born September 7, 1959) is an American screenwriter, producer, business executive, film historian, professor, and director. He is a frequent collaborator of Ang Lee, the co-founder of the production company Good Machine, and ...

Seth MacFarlane Seth Woodbury MacFarlane (; born October 26, 1973) is an American actor, animator, filmmaker, comedian, and singer. He is the creator and star of the television series ''Family Guy'' (since 1999) and '' The Orville'' (since 2017), and co-creato ...

and

They Might Be Giants They Might Be Giants (often abbreviated as TMBG) is an American alternative rock band formed in 1982 by John Flansburgh and John Linnell. During TMBG's early years, Flansburgh and Linnell frequently performed as a duo, often accompanied by a dr ...

. Its Sunday Comics section included contributors such as Stephen Notley,

Nicholas Gurewitch ''The Perry Bible Fellowship'' (abbreviated to ''PBF'') is a webcomic and newspaper comic strip by Nicholas Gurewitch. It first appeared in the Syracuse University newspaper '' The Daily Orange'' in 2001. The comics are usually three or four ...

and David Malki!. In 2006, ''Flak'' began producing a weekly podcast featuring James Norton, Taylor Carik and

The Al Franken Show ''The Al Franken Show'' was the flagship talk show of the former talk radio network, Air America Radio. Hosted by Al Franken, it featured commentary and interviews arguing for liberal positions on the issues of the day, and comically poking fu ...

producer Joel Meyer. In 2007, the podcast was nominated for a regional Emmy for "Online Personality."

References

{{Reflist 1998 establishments in Wisconsin 2008 disestablishments in Wisconsin Defunct magazines published in the United States Magazines established in 1998 Magazines disestablished in 2008 Magazines published in Wisconsin Online magazines published in the United States