Kent State alumnus Ben Wolford and his wife, Christina Asencio, launched the first issue of Latterly, a community-supported online magazine on Tuesday, Nov. 18 at 9:45 a.m. The response: more than 120 subscribers after three hours online.

Latterly will publish four deeply-reported narrative stories a month, all written and photographed by freelancers, Wolford said.

Wolford graduated from Kent State’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication with a degree in newspaper journalism in 2011. He was the editor of The Daily Kent Stater in the fall of 2010. Asencio is a human rights attorney from Miami.

Latterly creates the type of journalism people doesn’t see very often, Wolford said. It tells stories about people confronted by changes or pushing for change.

“Those are the two kinds of things that make this world interesting: the forces of push and pull,” Wolford said. “Latterly dives deeply into the thoughts and actions of these characters.”

Latterly is completely ad-free and is funded by donations and subscriptions. A subscription is $3 for a month and $8 for three months.

“We don’t think of our subscribers as our audience,” Wolford said. “We think of them as partners with a vested interest in what this magazine does.”

Wolford said that Latterly’s readers are people who want something more than what most news organizations are producing, and anyone can read one story before a subscription is required.

Contact Julia Kerchenski at [email protected].