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A real issue

Made for Norman.

This is the magazine we make for my father. Yours will read nothing like it: the questions are written from the lives you describe to us, and the rest of the issue is filled with what your reader follows anyway.

The October 2026 cover of Paper Route, made for Norman: the Seattle skyline and Space Needle at dusk, headlined Six Kids, Three Cities.
No. 2, October 2026. Circulation: one.

On the October cover

Back to school in Seattle, White Plains and Minneapolis, and the most honest first-day sign of the morning.

  • Six Kids, Three Cities
  • Elliott is eleven. Chicken for you.
  • Renata rides a bike, and is owed a 3D printer
  • Two round challahs, one a little raw

Inside an issue

Their people, and the things they follow.

Every issue mixes two kinds of pages: what family and friends sent, and reading written for the reader's interests. We keep them distinct.

Sample pages. This is the real print layout, set with stock photography and an illustrative family, so no one's private issue is on show.

Sample spread: on the left, a grandmother being kissed by two granddaughters on their way to school; on the right, a toddler in autumn leaves and a boy in a pumpkin costume, each with a short story.
From family and friendsTheir people. Photos and stories sent in that month, printed large, with a name under every face.
Sample spread: a page on Star Trek turning sixty, with a By the numbers box, and a page about Lake Michigan in October with a photograph of a dog on a beach.
Written for their interestsWhat they follow. Pages written around the reader's interests and hometown, from real results and real news, never presented as something a person in their life said.
Sample spread: a contents page listing nine stories with page numbers, and an October calendar with birthdays and plans, and a list of who made the issue.
Every issueStart to finish. Each issue opens with what is inside and closes with the month ahead and who made it.

How an issue gets made

One question, to one person, about one thing.

Each ask goes to one person, about one specific thing, and can be answered standing in a parking lot. A real one, from Norman's first issue:

To his daughter-in-law

"Send one photo from this month. A game, a dinner, a driveway, anything."

"We took Dad out on the Argosy cruise with Lynn. He ordered a Coke on the top deck and let me photograph him holding it up."

Start a magazine of your own.

Twelve issues a year, made for one person.

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A girl kissing her grandfather on the cheek on a park bench