M/C Turns Ten Today!

Some ten and a half years ago, David Marshall - then lecturing in the English Department at the University of Queensland - had an idea. Academics around Australia, and around the world, were still coming to terms with this new-fangled thing, the Web, but publishing academic work was more often than not still linked to the slow processes of print publishing - so, David suggested, wouldn't it be great to set up a new, purely online journal that would combine rigorous academic peer review with the speed and reach that only Web-based publishing could provide. "Why not organise each issue around a one-word theme?", he asked.

David put this idea to his Honours class on New Media. Along with Nick Caldwell, Joseph Crawfoot, Kirsty Leishman, and Felicity Meakins, I was in that class - and though we didn't have much of a clue about what exactly the process would entail, we were enthusiastic about the suggestion, and got to work. We formed the first editorial team for M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture - and a few months later, on 23 July 2008 (David's birthday), M/C was officially launched at The Hub Internet Cafe in Brisbane.

The Hub has long since disappeared (and so, I'm sorry to say, have the photos from the launch). The original editorial team completed their Honours studies, went on to various other degrees, and dispersed far and wide. After a stint in Boston, David himself is now based at the University of Wollongong. M/C itself, however, is still there, and will launch issue 4 in volume 11 in about a month from now. Themed 'publish', the issue is co-edited by long-time M/C editor Peta Mitchell, and David makes his return as well. Acknowledging our origins, we might even see the return of one of the famous 'spaceship' covers by Nick Caldwell that graced many of our earliest issues.

It's been a long road. I've been continuously involved in M/C in various forms (as a contributor, editor, Web designer, production editor, and now as General Editor) since the start, and in fact I think I'm the only survivor from the first generation of M/Cers still to work on the journal. I feel at least ten years older. We've gone through our ups and downs, and I'd like to think we've become a little wiser, a little better at what we do (don't look too critically at our first editions, please...).

Some things have remained the same - a few authors are still struggling with the need to meet deadlines, and the fineries of academic referencing; we're still publishing at what (in comparison with print journals) is the breakneck speed of six issues per year, with a turnaround of two months between article submission and issue launch; and we're still following the one-word theme approach that David suggested all those years ago. We still "take seriously the need to move ideas outward, so that our cultural debates may have some resonance with wider political and cultural interests", as M/C's first editorial put it - and we've yet to run out of words for our issue themes.

But it's easy to forget how different the Web environment was for scholarly content in the late 90s. Look at the archive of our earliest issues, and compare them with our site today, and you'll see what I mean. Back then, we hand-coded our HTML; over the past month, we've finally moved our site to using the Open Journal Systems platform (which, personally, I hope will make my life a great deal easier as I manage the month-by-month flow of M/C Journal issues).

So today, on this tenth birthday, I'd like to thank all those many fabulous authors, reviewers, issue editors, cover artists, and staff who've contributed to M/C over the years. I'd like to thank our readers, who give us a reason for continuing with what we do. I'd like to thank the many library and other sites that link to us, the National Library of Australia which has archived M/C content since early 1999, and the Creative Industries Faculty at QUT which now provides our server space.

I may regret saying this - but I look forward to what the next ten years will hold for M/C.

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