The trouble with hippie publications

You can't have too many cooks in the kitchen. It totally ruins the stew.
This is true not just for stew but also for managing a magazine. When you get enough people that believe their work is the best and should be showcased most prominently, eventually someone's going to get mad. That's why it's best to have a select harmonious few in charge who will accept submissions from the heated artist types and let the artists wait until it comes out on the rack to get all worked up about how there is not enough of their art in the magazine.
This can be hard to do when your mandate is to provide a community outlet for creativity. People start to interpret this in ways that the inventor might never have even considered. Perhaps their version of creativity is to trump others. We would be creativity squashers if we told them to check themselves!
In my opinion, the ideal creative-hippie-everybody-has-a-say magazine would work like this: the publisher, or person paying for the thing (*ahem!*) would ask for submissions and decide what is suitable to publish. Once all submissions are in, the team of selectively chosen harmonious making-it-happen-ers would work TOGETHER to put everything on paper and make it look pretty. This does not leave it open to the submitters vying for the most exposure.
As with any new business, there are growing pains that one must endure in order to reach a state where the business is well defined (thanks to being forced to define it). Sometimes it's best to put aside emotions and be thankful for challenges like this, because it will only help to evolve and chisel and define our ideas.