From School Project to Online Magazine

Artist: Monica, who paints at the Neighborhood House in San Francisco.

This image can be found at: http://www.fulcrum-magazine.com/site/art_monica.php

“Does your dog smoke?” he asked every new person that he met.

This eccentric question became the title of a phantom magazine that a group of SF State students created for a class called Contemporary Magazine, in the fall of 2005. The magazine was supposed to target the 40 million people living with some form of disability and the people close to them.

The person behind the idea’ of the magazine, Maria Trombetta, who graduated from the journalism department at SF State in January, 2007, took that basic idea and started a real online magazine "...to tell the stories of these millions of people in an open and honest way, so that the wider world can understand the struggles, the nightmares, the creativity and the joy behind every human being."

Trombetta had worked with people with disabilities for about 15 years and brewed on the idea for a while when she finally put it into motion. The magazine was launched this past summer with a name that Trombetta feels more appropriately reflects her vision: Fulcrum.

The initial title, words borrowed from a guy she’d worked with who used them as “an icebreaker” in new social situations, was too long and weird for a real magazine, she says.

“I opened the dictionary and Fulcrum was the first word I saw,” she says when describing how she came up with the new name.

According to the dictionary, Fulcrum means: “the support on which a lever turns in raising something.” Trombetta felt that that captured the essence of her vision. “Tipping or not tipping,” she says. That depends on our awareness and engagement of an issue, she explains. And Fulcrum is here to act as the lever “for people who can move the world,” as stated under the “About” section on the Magazine’s website: http://www.fulcrum-magazine.com

Regular departments in Fulcrum are: “travel and adventure,” “arts and artists,” “free advice” and a remnant from the school project: “does your dog smoke?” for questions and answers. Then there are a couple of reviews and a few features—most of them both interesting and informative.

The magazine has six regular contributors so far and the flow of new pitches never stops. Despite that, she says that one of the biggest challenges right now is to find more people who want to write for Fulcrum. Trombetta and her three-people-staff’s goal is to put up 8-10 new stories a month, but eventually she would like to update the content every two weeks.

Getting more advertisers is another concern. Lesley Seacrist, managing editor at Fulcrum, has been successful in finding a few advertisers so far, one being Google. However, Trombetta estimates that they would need between 15-20 ads at any given time in order to cover all the expenses. “People don’t want to work for free,” she says. “It’s hard to balance this, my other job and other parts of my life.”

Trombetta works on Fulcrum out of her own apartment on her time off from her regular day job. Seeing an idea’ turn into something tangible makes it all worth while, she says.

“People tell me that the magazine is great," she says. "‘Something I’ve been looking for’,” people tell her. She has experienced a lot of growing so far— something she says she hadn’t expected. “I wanted it to be perfect from the beginning, but it’s not,” she says. “You have to let it become perfect.”

Trombetta’s dream is to get enough advertisement or investors involved so that Fulcrum eventually could become a print magazine as well. She believes that you can make more of a statement in print. Meanwhile, her optimism can encourage others who have only conceived the idea’ of a magazine and are yet to act upon it.

“If you have something that you care about, that you want people to read, then you can launch your own magazine on the internet because it’s so easy,” she says. “It’s not hard, nothing should hold you back.”


“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” - Archimedes, great mathematician and physicist 287-211 BC.