Jefferson Hack is the founder and editorial director of Dazed Media, the independent publishing company responsible for Dazed & Confused, Dazed Digital, AnOther Magazine and Another Man. Hack teamed up with Rankin Waddell in 1992 to launch Dazed & Confused, then a black and white, self-distributed fanzine, positioned as a “cultural alternative” to both mainstream publications and cult style magazines of the moment, i-D and The Face. “We were complete outsiders,” he told BoF.
Dazed & Confused began as a way of “legitimising what was fringe or niche culture” but ultimately gave rise to “the trans-disciplinary integration of fashion, music, art and film, a template that has become de rigueur in alternative culture magazines around the world.” It is now one of the most respected fashion youth culture titles in the world.
In 2010, Hack co-founded Nowness, an independent luxury lifestyle video channel in partnership with LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. In 2017, Dazed Media and the Chinese group Modern Media (which later rebranded as Meta Media Holdings) formed a joint venture titled Modern Dazed and acquired a majority stake in Nowness.
Hack believes, “the future of magazines is niche and independent.” Accordingly, he started a Dazed Media initiative, to create a series of incubator-like “satellite blogs,” within the Dazed brand for niche content creators and contributors in cities around the world. It is a typically forward-thinking move, which applies the philosophy of open software development and open platforms to content creation and magazines, proving that Hack understands digital media at a level that many of his peers do not.
“The old media model is a frozen moment in time; a monthly magazine, a seasonal trend — it’s over,” he said. “Digital culture is a constant stream. Either you adapt to it, or you are a dinosaur and you will die.”
In 2016, Hack released a book on publishing, creativity and collaboration titled "We Can’t Do this Alone: Jefferson Hack the System," published by Rizzoli.
