Today we’d like to introduce you to Madison Lauterbach.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
A few years ago, I was spending my holiday break in Australia with some friends. I stayed up one night staring at the ceiling, panicking about my future. At the time, I was in the middle of receiving my journalism degree and I wasn’t exactly excited to enter the workforce.
After several hours of thinking about what kind of stories I wanted to write, the concept of Ms. Mayhem came together. I came to the conclusion that I wouldn’t be able to write the stories that I wanted to if I worked for an established media outlet. Simultaneously, I was tired of spending hours trying to find women in the alternative fields that I enjoy, like tattooing, skateboarding, graffiti, and motorcycles.
There was no single place I could go to learn about women in those fields. So, I figured I would just have to create the type of outlet I wanted to see myself.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
It has not been a smooth road. Getting all of the logistics like business organization, tax documents, and contracts was not an easy thing for me. I have no business knowledge or background whatsoever. I also don’t consider myself a self-starter, so I had to dig really deep to find the motivation to get this off the ground.
Because of the nature of our business, finding revenue streams is a difficult task that was only made worse during the pandemic. We really focus on small businesses, many of which can’t afford to spend much in the way of marketing.
We’re still fully self-funded, which has also prevented us from growing as much as I would like. For over a year, I’ve been paying to work a full-time job because we still don’t have money coming in. But I would rather see our writers, photographers, and videographers get paid for their hard work than take home a paycheck myself. They’re the ones keeping Ms. Mayhem going.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Ms. Mayhem is an online, Denver-based news outlet. We began as a way to not only explore issues important to women but also highlight femme-identifying people who are making waves in what are traditionally male-dominated fields.
However, as the pandemic unfolded and demands for social justice exploded our scope expanded as well. We started covering stories and issues that are important to marginalized and underrepresented communities. Although our niche overlaps with other local outlets, we really try to challenge ourselves to report the same city from perspectives that aren’t typically the go-to’s for a lot of more established news organizations.
I am most proud of our ability to report on stories from this different angle due in large part to the diversity of our staff. We all have different upbringings, experiences, and identities that we bring into reporting our stories. Where other outlets might view these experiences as biases, we view them as assets. We believe that by employing writers with diverse backgrounds, we can cast a wider net and find stories or angles that would otherwise be easy to miss if we all possessed the same racial, gender, sexual identity, or socioeconomic background.
I want people to know that Ms. Mayhem is a news outlet for everyone. We try our hardest to be as intersectional as possible, telling stories for different communities rather than about them. Our stories don’t have a paywall because we want the information to be available to everyone, regardless of income.
What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
Wow, this is a tough question! I still don’t really consider myself an entrepreneur because I’m a journalist first, so I’m not going to throw out any business buzzwords. One word I can think of that overlaps the two is confidence. As a journalist, confidence is key when it comes to standing up to sources when they’re being pushy or unreasonable.
We also have to believe in the words we write and our ability to do more public good than harm. As a business owner, I have to have confidence in my team, myself, and the stories we’re putting out in the world. I still struggle with the self-confidence part sometimes, but I’m getting there.
Pricing:
- Paid content packages start at $450
Contact Info:
- Email: mlauterbach@msmayhem.com
- Website: https://www.msmayhem.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/msmayhem_mag/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/msmayhemmag
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/MsMayhem_Mag
Image Credits:
Carl Glenn Payne, Ali Mai, and Polina Saran
