Five Days in Lost Angeles.

I’m sitting in a café on Abbot Kinney in Venice, California with Mathew Gerson, founder of a new vegan, one-for-one condom company. It’s our office for the moment. In an hour, Kasey Luber, my female doppelganger, drives me to LAX.

I was shipped out here to cover Leaders Causing Leaders, a conference that included Ishmael Beah (adopted by Shambhala Buddhist Laura Simms, he escaped the life of a child soldier from Sierra Leone and now works through the UN and Unicef. I first got to know his work when he appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart re: his best-selling book).

It’s not often I get out of “the Boulder Bubble.” Given that I run elephant without much in the way of staff, it’s hard to travel. At all (I have to post to facebook once an hour, or we lose a great deal of traction with our readers who choose among our various blogs for the one or two they’re interested in, each day).

But all that will change in a week. In a week, we go from being a mid-sized, steadily-growing, unedited, unstaffed blog to a sustainable model for new journalism. We’ll hire an editor and an assistant editor. I’ll be free to reboot our Walk the Talk Show (which has featured Deepak Chopra, Michael Pollan, Dr. Andrew Weil and hundreds of other mindful heroes). I’ll be able to take our brand outside of Boulder, and work to build a truly, fully, madly deeply independent, national and international site devoted to bringing the good word beyond the choir and to those who may disagree with us. And that’s what we’re all about: fun, respectful dialogue.

What will enable this overnight change from glorified blog to actual journalistic enterprise? You. Of course.

Sustainability, Coming Soon: Want something? Pay a little. Glee ensues.

In one week, we’ll institute a weak, cheap, sweet paywall. You’ll still get to click on elephantjournal.com or any link via twitter or FB for free. You’ll then get a second article for free. But then, just as if you were browsing in a cafe or magazine shop, we’ll ask you to “consider” buying if you’d like to read a third article. (If you’re already a member, you’ll have full access). How much will elephant cost? $1/month. $12 a year—the price of a single yoga class or a movie and popcorn. As an ecopaper magazine, we were $5/copy once we went national—and I hope you’ll consider that our increased eco-responsibility and content is worth valuing. If you don’t, that’s fine: you’ll get another two articles for free, every day, and links through twitter and facebook will always be free, up to three.

Browsing in a bookstore.

I’m excited. Overnight, we’ll go from broke, relatively incompetent, unedited and unstaffed to a real, bonafide business—and a burgeoning force for good.

Yours in the Vision of Enlightened Society,

Waylon Lewis
editor-in-chief / host
elephantjournal.com / Walk the Talk Show with Waylon Lewis

PS: We have hundreds of new articles and videos on our site each week: you can see the most popular, commented and editor’s picks on our Front Page.