RiseUp, a weekly magazine with race-related content, is set to launch June 22 in major newspapers, carrying a four million circulation.

“The mission of RiseUp is to provide an ongoing conversation for all races and ethnicities to better understand each other and to build stronger communities, cities, nations and a better world,” founder and executive editor Janice Ellis tells FOLIO:.

RiseUp, which will be driven by national advertising, has secured several newspapers—including the New York Daily News, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and the Houston Chronicle—to distribute the magazine. Ellis says she plans to look for additional partnerships and to increase RiseUp’s circulation to eight million this fall. By the first quarter 2009, circulation could be as high as 12 million, she says.

“Our goal is to spread this important conversation as broadly as we can.”

Printed on newspaper stock, Ellis has no plans to make RiseUp a glossy.