5 Questions for Shelby Hartman & Madison Margolin

Shelby Hartman and Madison Margolin had been circling each other for years. They both attended Columbia Journalism School, and shared an interest in reporting on cannabis and psychedelics. “Have you talked to Madison?” people would ask Shelby — and Madison, in turn, would hear suggestions that she get in touch with Shelby. After journalism school, Hartman and Margolin both covered cannabis for the LA Weekly.

So when Hartman decided she wanted to start a psychedelics publication, Margolin was her first call. The two founded DoubleBlind, a biannual print magazine and media company that offers online classes and events. Its name is a nod to the scientific process of “double-blinding” studies to minimize participants’ and researchers’ biases from tainting results. “We’re all blind in some ways — blind to our biases, blind to our needs, blind to our habits. That’s what good journalism is for,” the magazine’s “about” page explains. The Microdose spoke with Hartman and Margolin about their vision for the publication and its role in the psychedelics community.

What would you say is DoubleBlind’s north star — the idea that ties everything together?

Hartman: Our initial “north star” was introducing nuanced conversations about what's happening within the psychedelics industry to the mainstream, because we really weren't seeing very much of that. We were seeing a lot of the same stories over and over: about clinical trials looking into MDMA, or psilocybin and end-of-life distress. Madison and I were writing for publications like Rolling Stone and VICE, and we were also knowledgeable about the psychedelics industry and doing psychedelics. We were seeing that there were a lot of conversations beginning around equity and access, the lack of LGBTQ+ representation, the way that clinical trials are designed, and Indigenous reciprocity. The first issue of the magazine actually captures our goals really well; it has all the different elements of what we were trying to cover. We had an interview with researcher Monnica Williams about using MDMA to treat racial trauma. We did a piece on how psychedelics can not only make us feel more connected to ourselves, but also to the ecological crisis. 

Margolin: We're using psychedelics as a jumping off point to explore social equity, environmental justice, spirituality, sexuality, culture, politics, science. I think it's really important to notice that psychedelics are really never just about themselves; it's about how they get you to think differently about all these other systems in the world, about ourselves and our own feelings, and the relationship between the two.

This is a difficult time for journalism, especially print journalism. Many publications are struggling to stay afloat — yet DoubleBlind seems to be expanding its reporting and other offerings. What does the publication’s business model look like?

Hartman: I always knew that I wanted to start a magazine, long before I knew Madison. The vision was to start a magazine with my best friend from college, David Good, who actually is the designer of DoubleBlind, and an unofficial founder. But I didn't want to do it unless I thought that we could come up with a business model that was going to be sustainable and scalable. I didn't want us to have a business model that I thought was going to compromise the integrity of the journalism itself. Madison and I both worked in a lot of content creating publications that do a lot of sponsored content, especially in the world of weed — they took money from cannabis companies to do product reviews of their vape pens, to say their vape pen is great when maybe their vape pen isn't so great. 

Our first question was, “What's the business model that's actually going to allow us to maintain the integrity of the thing and to maintain editorial independence?” And then the second was, “What's a business model that is going to allow us to make enough money that we can actually scale and pay our writers?” Ultimately, we came up with the idea to focus on psychedelic education and harm reduction, because as soon as we started posting information on Instagram, a lot of people were emailing us saying, “Hey, I'm a veteran and I've read that ayahuasca could change my life, but I don't have the money.” Or, “I'm a mom and I have postpartum depression, and I want to microdose but I don't know if it's safe.” And so we realized there's just a giant need here for information. People wanted to try psychedelics, wanted to know, “How do I actually do this?” So we launched our courses and our webinars. We do provide scholarships for all of them because we never want to shut anyone out. And then the proceeds from those educational offerings go back into funding our journalism.

Speaking of David’s design for DoubleBlind — I’ve noticed the publication has a distinctive style. What was your vision for that aesthetic, and what did you hope to convey with it?

Margolin: We're all millennials at DoubleBlind. But we feel our aesthetic might allow us to reach different audiences in a way that something that looks more stereotypically “psychedelic” might not be able to do, because that could deter people who wouldn't necessarily be into it already.

We've always said we're not trying to evangelize to people who are not into psychedelics. Our readers are people who maybe read an article about psychedelics on Rolling Stone or Vice and they want more of the bigger, deeper picture. We have a joke at DoubleBlind: no fractals. The idea there is that we want to sophisticate and expand on the way people think of psychedelics. That includes not just the aesthetic of DoubleBlind, but the journalism itself: the stories that we cover, the people we interview, the people who write for us, and the artists that we work with. We really want to expand what people think of when they think of “the psychedelic community.” The stereotype has been the Grateful Dead, Timothy Leary — these pioneers from the psychedelic 60s. We're not against that original culture and community, of course, but we really want to expand on it to be more feminine, to be less white, to include more people across the age spectrum. 

DoubleBlind’s design is even more striking in print copies of the magazine. Why did you all decide on publishing a magazine in print?

Margolin: We've had people say that sitting down and reading a print magazine was such a different experience than reading online — it’s this act of mindfulness. We want the ways that people can interact with DoubleBlind, whether through the magazine, a course, or an event to feel like they’re engaging with the essence and ethos of psychedelics: to feel like their spirits are being ignited through what they're reading, that they feel inspired by a story, or empowered to have the tools to go live their own psychedelic life and grow their own mushrooms.

Hartman: I just love print, and I really value longform reporting. One of the things that was always really hard for me while working at publications is looking at the analytics of stories online and seeing how many people will like a story on Facebook or Instagram without  actually reading it. Or if they do actually click to read it, they'll drop off after like the first two or three paragraphs. If you're reporting something in depth, you're spending weeks and weeks writing it and perfecting every sentence and every little word. And then people don't actually really read the thing — it’s just a bummer. 

Print is a way to combat that. I can't tell you how many people we've had tell us that they take the magazine with them to the beach or they take it with them while they're hiking or on a camping trip, and they read it front to back. Many of our readers actually collect DoubleBlind issues and it's the only thing on their coffee table — that's really special.

What’s next for DoubleBlind?

Hartman: We certainly want to keep doing the print magazine, and collaborating with other publications outside the psychedelic space to do some deep investigative reporting. We’re also both excited about the prospect of doing a docu series; we have like a whole document of documentary and podcast ideas.

After we saw how important psychedelic education was, and how much it was needed, we want to continue offering webinars and trainings. We keep hearing from people that they want community — we've built this amazing community online, and people want to meet and hang out in person. These are people who have had their lives changed by psychedelics and don't know where to go to find other people who have had their lives changed by psychedelics. Because of COVID, we haven't really fully explored in-person events, but we're doing our first festival this summer. We haven't announced it yet, but we’re hopeful it will happen, but with the pandemic, who knows. But right now, we’re thinking about ways that we can get people together to just bond and commune. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.