Why is Nerve still around? Good question. In the last couple years we've felt a bit like a sprightly red-cockaded woodpecker — one of the last of the species independentes publisheris online with a pulse. We've had some tough months in the last couple of years, but we are resolutely alive and growing for a few reasons: (1) Because two million of you love us (or hate us, or watch us skeptically, like a juggling baboon, but visit us all the same every month, which is what matters to our advertisers); (2) because you seem to like each other, and some of you pay to contact each other in Nerve Personals (thank you!); (3) because we refuse to die, we were born to do this and don't know how to stop.

We started Nerve six years ago because we thought magazines were things people started when they were passionate about something (in our case, exploring the bizarre beauty of human sexuality). Quaint, isn't it? We didn't realize back then that the magazine business is like the fast food industry — an ongoing laboratory study of the most broadly appealing combination of sugar, fat and salt — or in the case of magazines, pictures of things you can buy, celebrity gossip and recycled self-help tips. Most magazines today have about as much spine as a Hostess Twinkie (and less nutritional value). And hey, there's a place for that, we all like our chili cheese fries. But we need a few alternatives!

There is hope — most of what is good on television today is on premium cable. It's amazing what happens when people put a few bucks a month behind content with some balls, labes, moxie — whatever you want to call the stubborn belief that you can find a business to support your editorial mission rather than vice versa.

Our editorial mission has evolved since we wrote our mission statement in 1997. Nerve was a great little publication then but a bit stiff and pretentious— we'll admit it. We wanted to prove the seriousness and respectability of our intentions. Well, we've either accomplished that or stopped caring, depending on who you ask, but the upshot is that Nerve is now sexier, funnier and more outrageous, while still retaining its literary ballast (we will continue to publish great fiction and personal essays that will bore half of you to tears). In short, Nerve is growing into its name, and there are great things to come, both in Nerve Premium (think first class air travel with lounge and masseuse) and standard Nerve (coach).

So why subscribe to Premium other than to support a spirited group of ne-er do wells? Because by doing so you will enable us to bring you more extraordinary international reporting, and a new series of Nerve video features, and you will have special access to a new, more irreverent and arousing collection of photography every two weeks (soon to be every week). If a Nervier Nerve appeals to you (or if you just want to prove the skeptics wrong and help a smart magazine about sex grow), then please, for the love of literate smut, subscribe to Nerve Premium!

Shine on,
Rufus Griscom, December 2002