Snapchat starts an online tech magazine called Real Life

The company is funding the publication, but will not exercise any editorial control

As a tech reporter, I can tell you that there's a lot of competition out there, from publications both large and small. Everybody wants the scoop, everybody wants to be first, and there's honestly a finite number of eyeballs that can be drawn.

Now there's going to be yet another entity for me to compete against, and it's coming from an unlikely source.

Snapchat is launching its own tech magazine called Real Life, it was announced on Thursday. Starting on July 27, the company will start publishing roughly one article each every weekday, though other mediums and formats are a possibility going forward.

"Real Life will publish essays, arguments, and narratives about living with technology. It won’t be a news site with gadget reviews or industry gossip," Nathan Jurgenson, a researcher at Snapchat, who will serve as editor-in-chief of Real Life, wrote in a blog post. "It will be about how we live today and how our lives are mediated by devices."

Some of the topics that will be covered include identity, power, privacy, surveillance, relationships and beauty, as well as "the political uses of technology, including some of the worst practices both inside and outside the tech industry itself."

Snapchat is taking a hands off approach to the project. The company "now funding Real Life," but has given the magazine full editorial control, according to Jurgenson.

"The support means we can focus on writers and writing rather than clicks and shares. At the same time, there are inherent complexities attached to being funded by a company in the field of what we’re publishing about, sometimes critically. When you see the full site, the content will have to speak for itself," he said.

In addition to Jurgenson, Real Life's staff will include Rob Horning, Alexandra Molotkow, and Sarah Nicole Prickett as its senior editors, and Soraya King is the managing editor.

This isn't the first time that Snapchat has launched a platform for its own original content. The company launched Snap Channel, which hosted videos, stories, and shows actually created by Snapchat itself, on its Discover platform. Less than eight months later, though Snap Channel shut down. The company also let go of the team involved in Snap Channel, including Marcus Wiley, Head of Program Planning and Development.

While that failed, there's a major difference between these two initiatives: in the previous case, Snapchat was putting its own content right up against professionally made content from its media partners, including ESPN, Comedy Central, Cosmopolitan, Daily Mail, Food Network, National Geographic, People, Yahoo News, CNN, Vice and Warner Music.

Secondly, this seems like a passion project for Jurgenson, who obviously really cares about technology and how it's reported.

"Popular discourse on technology has sustained the idea that there is a digital space apart from the social world rather than intrinsic to it, while popular tech writing is often limited to explaining gadgets and services as if they’re alien, as well as reporting on the companies that provide them," he wrote.

"This work is crucial, but writing about technology is too often relegated to the business section. On this site, it will be the main event."

(Image source: snapchat.com)