Looking for employment became a full-time job for Jon Horowitz after he lost his position as Web designer for The Wall Street Journal Classroom Edition in January 2003.

After six months of frustrated searching, the 26-year-old North Brunswick resident decided to become his own boss, launching Hatch Magazine (hatchmagazine.com), an online publication devoted to advice and commentary for people in their 20s and 30s still trying to figure out the adult world.

"That was the situation that... pushed me to starting my own business," Horowitz said.

Now he has a nationwide staff of 30, more than 100 writers seeking to contribute and a business that requires 50 to 60 hours of work per week, he said.
"Quarterlife issues," is the theme of Hatch, Horowitz said, including opinion pieces about "career transitions, dealing with job changes or unemployment. There's some financial and health content and then culture, which is a bigger area, anything from popular culture to family, whether starting a family or dealing with parents."

There are also question-and-answer columns, including interviews with author, reporter and Rutgers alumna S. Mitra Kalita and MTV news correspondent SuChin Pak.

Everything from the magazine's name to its content represents the Horowitz philosophy of keeping an open mind. Horowitz chose the name Hatch because it suggested birth or growth. He said many twentysomethings must face life events, such as marriage, buying a first home or finding a full-time job, that never arose during their college years.

But Hatch is also an "escape hatch" from the real world. "I let people interpret it as they want to," he said.

The site is big on advice, but often there is more than one correct answer, usually tempered with a bit of humor.

"We have a career advice column we just started called 'take two'," Horowitz explained, adding that two columnists answer the same question in different ways. "It's not
one person giving absolute advice. It gives a unique perspective. It's not only one way of approaching a problem."

Horowitz said he is not yet earning enough from Hatch to support himself but is hopeful the webzine will one day turn a bigger profit.

Since his unemployment payments from the Journal ran out in October, he said his only sources of income have been Hatch and his savings account.

When Horowitz graduated from Rutgers College in 2000, he said, The Wall Street Journal's online classroom edition recruited him to work as a copy editor.

He took in-house Web design courses and eventually became Web designer of the classroom edition. He lost his job in January 2003 during a series of job cuts in the editorial department.

In July, Horowitz decided to halt fruitless hours of job-hunting and devote himself to making his webzine vision a reality.

He scoured magazine and newspaper stands and realized that no hard copy or electronic publication came close to his concept.

Horowitz began making lists of story ideas and networked with former colleagues at the Daily Targum, the Rutgers newspaper where he served as editor-in-chief-He also bounced ideas off family and friends, including his girlfriend, who works as a graphic designer for Self magazine.

He asked former Targum writers, and a syndicated advice columnist, Harlan Cohen, whose column appeared, in the Targum, whether they would be interested in contributing.

He also posted job listings on several journalism Web sites explaining his need for freelance writers but warning that he could not pay.

Horowitz pays Cohen's syndicate, King Features Syndicate Inc., to post the "Help Me, Harlan" columns on Hatch.

In October, he officially launched the site, getting more than 900 hits the first day, he said.

Horowitz initially planned to update the site monthly, but quickly received requests via e-mail and through phone calls, asking him when new materials would be posted.

Since then, he said, he updates the site almost every week.

Horowitz envisions himself continuing as publisher and editor of Hatch five years from now, possibly with a syndicated humor column of his own. He said he also imagines himself writing a book one day.

Now when Horowitz wakes up in the morning, he shuffles from his
bed to his "office" wearing his "swishy" Adidas pants.

He initially feared an overabundance of writers from New York and New Jersey, but now realizes that Hatch's issues are global.

"We have a writer who lives in England. So all of a sudden we're
global. We might even get a comic strip from Australia. These issues permeate borders," he said.

Meanwhile, Horowitz said he is not totally liberated from the job hunt.

"I'm looking for freelance work or something to supplement my income while Hatch is taking off," he said.

 

Copyright 2004 The Star-Ledger