“Print Only,” says the ad promoting subscriptions to Summit Journal magazine. There is no waste in its business model: “We only print the exact number of copies as our subscribers.” There are no newsstand sales, and every issue is printed with two different covers—one of which is sent randomly to each subscriber. If you want both covers, you’ll need two subscriptions. And for how much? Two subscriptions will cost you a hefty $120. Print-only is expensive, but it is permanent and lasting. It is yours, and you can prove it by holding the oversized magazine in your hands.

The person behind the resurrection of Summit magazine—now Summit Journal—after a 27-year dormancy is Michael Levy, a journalist, photographer, writer, and editor who is both a climber and a lover of ink on paper. I reached out to Michael to ask him about Summit Journal—why a young man would bring a magazine back to print, and not just print, but print only in 2025—and about the role he most enjoys in creating this beautiful publication, in which every issue is a collector’s item for today, tomorrow, and forever.

Surrounded by framed covers of both the old and new editions, Michael and I had a fascinating conversation about the magazine, print, art, digital, and climbing. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed having it. So, without further ado, here’s my lightly edited conversation with Michael Levy, founder and editor-in-chief of Summit Journal.

But first the soundbites:

On why print only: “With online it’s just like drinking from a fire hose. There’s too much stuff, a lot of good stuff but you get lost in the noise.”

More on why print only: “There’s an audience who really appreciates a boutique well-made and well-designed product and something you can hold in your hands and put on your shelf and come back to.”

Even more on why print only: “I love print.  I used to work at a couple other climbing magazines, so my dream was to start a print magazine and that’s how it goes.”

On picture curation: “Then the curated photos, I see so much good photography these days, being able to choose exactly what we want to put in a magazine, there’s a lot of intentionality to it.”  

On more reasons why print only: “Big part of that is to protect the value proposition of the printed magazine. If you can read it online it undermines the value of someone subscribing to print.”

On the reason for two covers with each issue: “It’s treating it as a novelty item, it’s closer to a coffee table book than a magazine.”

On his love of climbing: “I have been a climber for 15 years.  I’m obsessive rock climber and mountain climber.  For people who know climbers we tend to be very obsessive about it.”

On his biggest competitor: “The closest competitor I have is a magazine called Alpinist which is focused on highly technical mountaineering and alpinism and icy snowy peaks.”

On the magazine model: “Mountain Gazette for sure was the model I based it off.  Summit, same as, Mountain Gazette is an old property that’s resurrected and just like Mountain Gazette you hold in your hands a beautiful magazine.”

On what keeping him up at night: “Basically, how the magazine, which is a climbing magazine, can be a vehicle with an interesting mode to tell human stories, interesting characters, and consider things in the world through different lenses.”

And now for the lightly edited interview with Michael Levy, founder and editor-in-chief, Summit Journal:

Samir Husni: My first question to you is 27 years after Summit magazine folded you decided to bring it back in 2023 as a print only publication. I guess you did not notice all the changes that took place in the digital world since 1996. Why print only?

Michael Levy: There are a few reasons:

One, with online it’s just like drinking from a fire hose. There’s too much stuff, a lot of good stuff but you get lost in the noise.

It’s the curation that is an important thing has gotten lost with the ability to have everything at your fingertips at once. So, in a print magazine you only get so many pages that you can only put so much in it, so, it forces, by design, to curate and let the cream rise to the top unless you want to put out a bad product. So that’s one.

And then another reason I would say like vinyl. There’s an audience who really appreciates a boutique well-made and well-designed product and something you can hold in your hands and put on your shelf and come back to. It’s this kind of an effect, kind of cool, a little bit counter cultural to what you know the general mainstream is doing, same as vinyl.

Number three, the reading experience is just different.  When I find myself reading a book or The New Yorker or whatever, you’re forced to sit down, and you don’t have the distractions of online. You can’t go check your social media and you can’t go see what the headlines are on the other site. You’re making an intentional decision to spend time with this piece of writing and print forces you to do that.

I love print.  I used to work at a couple other climbing magazines, so my dream was to start a print magazine and that’s how it goes.

Samir Husni: On your website www.summitjournal.com you say the magazine carries crafted stories and curated pictures. Explain.

Michael Levy: Yes, like what we’re just talking about with online, there’s a need, a compulsion to feed the beast.  You always got to churn out the next thing, even for longer things when you hit publish these editors and publishers they must fill the quota for the next day. You can only spend so much time.  I’ve published two magazines a year, which is not a lot, but I’m looking for the stories that I want to tell or that people send to me, and then we’re really drilling down on them and going through many rounds of edits, many rounds of reporting and research, and completely turning them inside out changing structure. These aren’t spit out onto a page; they’re really labored over, crafted like that.

Then the curated photos, I see so much good photography these days, being able to choose exactly what we want to put in a magazine, there’s a lot of intentionality to it.  Some of the pictures are not necessarily the flashiest photos but they’re saying something and they’re in conversation with the other articles and the issue, so yes, just obsessing over it and figuring out what photos will bring the issue alive.

Samir Husni: Why did you decide on print only? No online magazine?

Michael Levy: Big part of that is to protect the value proposition of the printed magazine. If you can read it online it undermines the value of someone subscribing to print. They’re like well, why do I need it. It’s simple; I like print; I wanted to do print and so by not having it online it forces people, if they want to read it, you got to subscribe. It’s simple.

Samir Husni: You publish two covers every issue and if you want to get both covers you must have two subscriptions: instead of paying 60 bucks you must pay 120 bucks.

Michael Levy:  Yes, it’s not cheap, but there’s not a lot of people who do that.  There are a few. It’s treating it as a novelty item, it’s closer to a coffee table book than a magazine.  Unlike magazines with thin paper that’s not perfect bound, the ones you might see on the magazine rack at the airport, there’s lots of great writing and photography, but they’re not as much tactile items that you’ll savor, so you read it, put on the back of the toilet, throw it out, whatever, Summit Journal is meant to be displayed or put on a shelf and really savored. For the collectors they might want both covers. Some people might say why don’t you let people choose which cover they want, the simple answer is it becomes much more complicated logistically and from a forecasting and business perspective.  I print the two covers in a50/50 split and the shipping is random, that way one cover is not more or less equally popular.

Samir Husni: You appreciate your covers so much that you sell limited prints of the cover art.

Michael Levy: I do.  One of the great things about the old Summit magazine, which was started in 1955 by two women Jean Crenshaw and Helen Kilness, is that they had incredible aesthetic artistic sensibility, so, there’s avant-garde art deco bright colored covers that mix illustration and photos and people climbing and beautiful mountains. With the new covers we’re both trying to capture a bunch of that spirit and honor the original magazine from the 50s 60s 70s. We are also pushing into new territory, so the covers are minimal and the goal with each cover to be iconic. We want people to look at the covers and go whoa I haven’t seen that before, as a climber or as a not a climber, and so with that in mind the covers make great cover they make great wall art as you can see; I have a few of them behind me the old ones in the middle and these are two of the new ones and they’re very graphic and very geometric.

Samir Husni: You are a writer, photographer, climber and now publisher and editor.  Are you putting all your eggs in one basket Summit Journal?

Micheal Levy: I have been a climber for 15 years.  I’m obsessive rock climber and mountain climber.  For people who know climbers we tend to be very obsessive about it. It’s one of those things it gets in your blood, and you can’t stop thinking about it and what are you going to climb next.  It’s a wonderful lifestyle sport.

Then about 10 years ago, I started writing about climbing. I worked for two other climbing magazines Rock and Ice magazine and Climbing magazine, which were the two largest print climbing magazines in America, probably the world.  Neither of which is in print any longer which is sad.  They were great magazines.

So, as I’ve gotten older, I still love climbing, but it’s not quite enough to sustain me as my creative outlet. The storytelling has given me a new connection to the sport and arguably more important to me than actual climbing right.  I was an English major in college and I’m a big fan of novels and narrative non-fiction. I tear up The New Yorker every time I get it.  With that in mind, and the media landscape for other climbing publications is shrinking and trying to think about what I wanted to do with my time, energy and effort I decided it seemed like there was an appetite for this kind of magazine or I hoped that there was. I might as well take a crack at it and this, in in my perfect world, is how I was going to be spending my time and luckily, it’s working out enough that I can do it.

Samir Husni: Who is your main competitor today?

Michael Levy: The closest competitor I have is a magazine called Alpinist which is focused on highly technical mountaineering and alpinism and icy snowy peaks. They do some great stuff, but Summit Journal has a bit of a wider mandate. I cover all kinds of climbing from bouldering which is climbing on small rocks, to climbing on El Capitan, to climbing the snowy mountains. We’re just doing things a little bit differently.

 Beyond that the magazine I used to work for Climbing magazine no longer exists in print, but it exists online so they’re technically a competitor. They have a much bigger audience, but they are doing more of what I was talking about before, news coverage and quicker things, which is all great and useful. There’s nothing wrong with that but what we’re offering is carefully crafted stories and long form journalism. This takes more time and is a different beast. So, even though we’re all kind of competing with Climbing, Alpinist, and Summit Journal I think there’s room for all of us.

Samir Husni: I know you wrote for Mountain Gazette. Did it give you the inspiration to be that unique in terms of print only?

Michael Levy: I’m not sure if you’ve ever talked with Mike Rogge at Mountain Gazette. Mike Rogge is certainly a mentor to me for sure. I met him when I wrote something for Mountain Gazette and then when I was thinking about relaunching Summit as Summit Journal, I sent him an email. I was like I would love to pick your brain, and he was very kind with his time. I think he has too many people reaching out to him these days asking about that. But Mountain Gazette for sure was the model I based it off.  Summit, same as, Mountain Gazette is an old property that’s resurrected and just like Mountain Gazette you hold in your hands a beautiful magazine. I was like this is what I want to do.

Samir Husni: Tell me what makes Michael tick and click every morning? What makes you get out of bed?

Michael Levy: I get excited when I come up with a cool story idea that I want to have someone write that I know will make a great story, but I don’t know exactly where it’s going to go.  I know that I don’t want to write it myself because it’s going to be too stressful. I much prefer finding those writers who I think are brilliant and good at what they do and letting them loose on this idea. Trying to come up with these ideas that are going to be great is both a painful process, because I only have so many ideas, but then hitting on them and getting really excited about them and having a writer and photographer go and execute it. Seeing the finished product come back is exciting. I would say I’m a better editor than I am businessman. I overspend my budgets for the issues because I have so much fun putting them together.

Samir Husni: You mentioned pain, has your journey with three issues under your belt, and the fourth issue comes out next week, has it been a walk in a rose garden or you had some challenges that you had to overcome?

Michael Levy: No, it’s not. I’m an editor by training, the idea of launching a magazine a print magazine two years ago in 2023 and learning how to be a publisher, was a steep learning curve for me. There are all sorts of things I didn’t know.  Basically, at every turn I had to figure out distribution, profits and losses, and how to print it. That was a process for me, and are things are going well? It’s a viable business and I have so much fun working on it.  It’s not like I’m getting rich. No one who wants to get rich starts a print magazine in 2025. It’s just figuring out ways to keep the business healthy enough so that I can keep making the magazine. That’s not it’s a super existential crisis at every moment, but it takes a little bit of elbow grease to make things and find new ways to keep people subscribing and other revenue streams and stuff that kind of thing.

Samir Husni: Before I ask you my final two personal questions, is there any question I need to ask you I did not ask?

Michael Levy: Why I resurrected a title versus starting a new one? I knew I wanted to start a magazine and Summit magazine had been on my radar for a good while. I had read some things about it in the past and seen some of these cool covers and like Mountain Gazette I started thinking about the benefits of potentially resurrecting an old property versus starting a new one. I bought the rights to the magazine for very little money because it wasn’t worth much. It hasn’t been printed since 1996. The hardest part was tracking down the guy who owned it.  

I bought the name and the old covers. I didn’t the subscriber list or whatever. At the same time being able to tap into that history, the legacy of, and have the imagery of this old magazine that Gene and Helen built. Basically, this magazine that for 35 years told the story of North American climbing seemed invaluable to me. You can lean on that history and use it as you want while building a new brand. Not everyone is going to be able to resurrect new an old type of title.  There are only so many you could probably buy. In the case of Summit, it did not feel cheating, but rather a head-start which is cool.

Samir Husni: My typical last questions, if I come to visit you one evening unannounced what do I catch Michael doing to rewind? Cooking, having a glass of wine, watching tv, or reading a book?

Michael Levy: I’m having a beer and hanging out in the backyard with my 11-month-old son.  My wife is the cook.  I’m not a great cook and then he goes to bed we might watch a tv show. Then I go and read whatever book I’m reading and try to avoid the doom scrolling of the state of the US.  During the day, if I can sneak away, I go for a climb.

Samir Husni: So, you do still go climbing?

Michael Levy:  Oh yes, every week.

Samir Husni:  What keeps Michael up at night these days?

Michael Levy: The state of the world. The rise of fascism in the US and the genocide in Gaza and all this stuff.

Climbing is a nice escape. Basically, how the magazine, which is a climbing magazine, can be a vehicle with an interesting mode to tell human stories, interesting characters, and consider things in the world through different lenses.

Samir Husni:  Thank you.