MagBlog

Marcus Morris founded The Eagle comic, still remembered for Dan Dare and cutaway illustrations of exciting mechanical artefacts like racing cars and jet aircraft. He followed this with Girl, Robin and Swift; he became the managing director of the National Magazine company, introducing Cosmopolitan to the UK; the British magazine industry's most prestigious annual award is named in his honour – and Cardiff University has his personal archive!




I have worked at the university for 20-odd years and I had no idea this material was in our collections until last night, at the launch of the Tom Hopkinson Centre for Media History when head of the Special Collections & Archive section Alan Vaughan-Hughes revealed the riches available to researchers in the field of popular journalism.

Apart from Morris – a treasure trove for researchers and scholars in the field of Magazine Studies – Cardiff holds the archives of:

• Hugh Cudlipp – editor of the Mirror, chairman of IPC (one of the most significant magazine publishing houses in the UK)
• Joan Reeder – the first full time royal correspondent for a national newspaper
• Trevor Philpott – the Picture Post journalist-turned-broadcaster and onlie begetter of The Philpott File
• Keith Waterhouse – journalist, author, playwright, champagne drinker; this material is already being researched by Cardiff Magazine MA graduate and freelance journalist Will Ham Bevan for his PhD
• Richard Stott – editor of the Daily Mirror who stood up to Robert Maxwell

The Tom Hopkinson Centre for Media History aims to bring together "scholars, research students, journalists, photojournalists, documentary-makers, archivists, media activists and practitioners into an international, interdisciplinary network focusing on the evolution of media forms, practices, institutions and audiences within broader processes of societal change." (Source)

It is also a great opportunity to push Magazine Studies further onto the research and scholarship radar, as launch guest and distinguished visiting fellow Professor John Hartley noted. Citing his own connection with the Welsh radical magazine Rebecca

In the 1970s and early 1980s Rebecca took the form of “a radical magazine for Wales” and gained a reputation as an investigative, campaigning title.
The magazine — and its uncompromising Corruption Supplement — documented the decay of Labour politics in south Wales and helped to bring about a long series of corruption trials which resulted in many politicians and businessmen going to prison.
Rebecca was also in the forefront of UK investigations into the relationship between the Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan and the Welsh multi-millionaire banker, Sir Julian Hodge.
Many Rebecca articles were reflected in coverage in newspapers like the Sunday Times and in television programmes including Man Alive, This Week and Nationwide. (Source)

and the historic example of The Clarion,

This cover illustration was drawn by Walter Crane, an associate of William Morris

Professor Hartley noted that social movements often brought with them their own kinds of journalism and studying the archive reveals many different types of journalism and different ways of producing and supporting journalism. The Clarion certainly had a widespread influence on many areas of social life – the National Clarion Cycling Club (motto: Fellowship through cycling) is still very active, as is the People's Theatre in Newcastle. In an age when live events and brand extensions are becoming increasingly important sources of revenue, looking back to a time when they had a social and political purpose gives us a fresh perspective.

Other guests at the launch were Amanda Hopkinson, Sir Tom's daughter and a distinguished scholar in her own right, and Magnum photographer David Hurn.

Dr Glenn Jordan, director of the Butetown History & Arts Centre, was in the audience for the launch. Glenn's book Down The Bay


re-used Bert Hardy's photographs from Picture Post in a new context. I used it as the basis of a feature exercise for students on the PgDip (now MA) in Magazine Journalism for many years – it was a great way of introducing very nice middle class students to the past and present of a genuinely multicultural working class area of Cardiff and a lesson in how to use photographs creatively but for a purpose.

This is yet another example of how newspaper people *still* don't get what is different about magazines. Neither 24 nor The New Day were like magazines – they were the opposite of magazines. Just because a newspaper journalist thinks they "look" like magazines and the fact they were full of gossamer-thin stories about nothing in particular does not make them remotely like magazines.

Magazines are aimed at a very specific readership, which is why The New European is much more magazine-like. It shares this essential characteristic with successful magazines like The Economist (which calls itself a newspaper) and Weapons of Reason.



Magazines are about something, and whether that something is "A project to understand the interconnected challenges shaping our world" (Weapons of Reason) or real life stories and competitions (Take A Break), they have to offer value to a specific audience.

Print newspapers launched on a hunch, aimed at no-one in particular and about nothing in particular are guaranteed to fail.

It is a given of magazine publishing that content must be aimed at a specific readership. This enduring truth has resulted in a healthy spread of titles that cater for everyone from aspiring bass guitar players to the chief financial officers of global corporations. Everyone subscribes to this fundamental principle, including me.

But what if, in an age of multiple platforms and fragmented social media, it's not true any more?

I spent an interesting afternoon listening to students on the MA International Journalism at Cardiff University presenting their ideas for new, pure-digital, magazine concepts. One called Planet Reboot was so full of energy and ideas that it leapt out of the screen – a bit messy, slightly hard work to navigate but fizzing with life and interest and contrasting story formats. I loved the concept but my conventional magazine self found fault with the targeting – looking at the website, it was not clear whose interest this electric, ecletic content was intended to capture.

But the students responded with an interesting point – the targeting would be done on social media. They would use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and other social media platforms to attract very specific demographic/psychographic groups to very specific stories.

Then one of my colleagues made another interesting point – the website at the heart of this concept would act as a content hub, a digital container that could hold an infinite amount of material related to Planet Reboot's mission to alert people to climate change and other environmental challenges.

We have known for the last 20-odd years that in cyberspace there is no limit on pagination but wearing the blinkers of specific targeting has limited the way magazines explore the possibilities that digital publishing offers.

The ideas in Planet Reboot apply to literally everyone on earth but a conventional magazine interpretation of it would limit both content and reach by aiming for a segment of "everyone". Weapons Of Reason, for example, is a lovely example of using the magazine form to analyse and discuss environmental issues but each iteration covers a specific problem and the project as a whole is aimed at a particular kind of reader (print oriented, solvent enough to pay £6 per issue, appreciative of the production values ...) – deliberately limited in order to increase the chances of success.

But by incorporating a core multiple-social-media (1) strategy into a digital magazine concept it becomes possible to outsource the targeting – it does not have to be built in to the central hub. The targeting can be exogamous rather than endogamous.

Of course the magazine still has to be about a particular thing – it's not a universal encyclopedia – but it can be about many different aspects of that thing and can encompass many different approaches for different audiences. If those who are brought to the content hub go on to explore it, great, if they find more content that appeals to them or which they can share with another, different, audience (perhaps their children or their parents) even better – but if they don't, their attention can be caught again through the agency of strategic layered social media targeting.

This concept might also appeal to adherents of COPE (Create Once Publish Everywhere) and could have the potential to attract a wider range of advertisers – the loss of specificity might be a drawback but there would be more types of consumer to target and a lot of social media activity to draw on.


1: The concept of polymedia outlined by Madianou and Miller is useful here.

Kati framed her talk with two questions:

Anyone old enough to have been buying music in the 1980s will remember that, almost overnight, vinyl LPs and singles disappeared from record shops, to be replaced by jewel-boxed CDs.

Three years after Apple unveiled the iPad and revolutionized the way consumers interact with content, tablets still account for a tiny share of magazine readership-just 3.3 percent of total circulation. Not taking into account the top-selling digital title, Game Informer, which boasts nearly 3 million digital copies, the number slips to 2.3 percent.

After a summer of looking like this


The Cardiff MagLab has now been populated by a new intake of keen young people who will be part the future of the magazine industry and it looks like this


Let the good times roll!

Magazine brand extension takes another turn as Condé Nast looks for film/drama/soap spin-offs.

Anyone got good titles for a soap based on Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair or Tatler?


Older readers may remember Compact, but that's probably not the right demographic.

Flicking through these two magazines from Hubert Burda (Landlove) and Bauer Consumer Media (Landscape) is an exercise in instant deja vu: whatever one magazine has, the other has too.




To wit:
• logo with straight type plus scripty bit – check
• guide to bluebell woods – check
• feature about willow weaving – check
• feature about lilac – check
• feature about a cookery writer's delightfully quaint country cottage – check
• seasonal recipes – check
• feature about the Brecon Beacons – check
• seasonal garden tasks – check



It's uncanny. Strangely enough it's easier to tell the difference between these magazines with your eyes shut – Landlove is printed on a nicely tactile grade of matte-finish paper while Landscape uses a semi-gloss.

One other odd thing – while Anna-Lisa De'Ath  (L-love) highlights content and page numbers in her editor's letter, Sheena Harvey (L-scape) does not refer to any content at all in hers. It's almost as if she had no idea of what was going into the magazine.

There's another echo of deja vu in that these magazines are a bit Country Living, a bit Good Housekeeping, a bit Gardeners' World a bit Countryfile and even a bit Living Woods.

Both titles are based on magazines produced in their publisher's home market, Mein Schönes Land (Burda) and Landlust (Bauer) respectively. It is this that recalls the original burst of so-called "Panzer publishing" in the 1980s, when Bauer and Gruner + Jahr  took the women's weekly market by storm from IPC with titles like Bella and Best.

The big question is, do women over 35 (the stated target demographic for both magazines) either want or need even one magazine that seems to replicate large elements of what is already on the market without adding anything very new? As I was unable to see much of a difference between Bella, Best, Woman's Own or Woman's Weekly all those years ago I may be be the best judge of this.

Three launches on special display in Cardiff Central station's WH Smith.

Intriguingly, all three  – on the face of it – seem aimed at a similar demographic. More detailed review in the next post.

Quality of content, says Jay Lauf, is the “third filter” for online content, after search and word of mouth.

Lauf has the credentials to make such a statement – he’s publisher of The Atlantic, the American magazine that specializes in long form, thought-provoking features, and architect of that title's online resurgence. Quoted in Ian Burrell’s piece for the Independent, Lauf says, “There are too many choices and quality outlets are becoming a filter.”

I would like to think he’s right and that this process is a “natural” factor in consumer choice as expressed in a capitalist economic system, though it would take a deal more research to stand up my half baked hunch (pace Stephen Johnson). Take the automobile industry as an example. In the very early days both demand and supply were limited – cars were massively expensive and few people were making them (parallel: not everyone had internet access and few publishers were online).

Then came an initial boom with a lot more manufacturers, reduced prices and a bigger market in which the sheer novelty of owning a car was more important than the quality of the car (parallel: a large number of consumers got internet access, publishers fell over themselves to capture eyeballs … and consumers also became producers thanks to Blogger, etc)

The global car industry has now had a massive shakedown and, for example, mass produced British cars have been relegated to the history books as consumers look for quality, reliability and value for money (parallel: online consumers have so much choice that it is impossible to check out everything, leading to social recommendation and the re-imposition of brands that guarantee quality).

As I said, it’s half-baked, it’s incomplete and it’s wildly oversimplified but it makes sense. And an important thing about quality, something that manufacturers from Rolls Royce to Rolex to Krug have known forever, is that people will pay for it.

Sounds like the start of a business model.

The Mag-Dragons have decided. This year’s two course magazines for the Cardiff MA will be for –

• boys in the 12-13 age range, focusing particularly on those who rush to their games console as soon as they get home from school
• young entrepreneurs starting up their own businesses

Both are really interesting ideas for a number of reasons.

A couple of days before students pitched to the Mag-Dragons I had a conversation with Nick Brett, Managing Director of the BBC Magazine Unit and Cardiff’s Honorary Professor of Magazine Journalism, about the current Holy Grails of magazine publishing – a title that captured the attention of teenage boys was one such for many years. Professor Brett’s response demonstrated how times have changed – he hadn’t heard a “holy grail” conversation for a long time; it’s all about capturing the digital space at the moment.

Without any prompting, the teen boy development group did something that combined former holy grail and current concerns – they proposed their title should be screen-first; that is, not primarily a print magazine. It sounds odd to admit it, considering how fervently we preach the digital message to our students, but this is a first for the Magazine MA. Naturally it will require some tweaking of the assessment schedule and criteria – and thought about how to incorporate some print elements that test their editorial and craft skills – but nothing that we cannot and should not do. In fact it is an inevitable and necessary development.

The business magazine is another first by virtue of being strictly business. Another odd admission, since we stress the B2B career pathway from the very first day of the course. This idea feels very zeitgeisty though and the winning pitch came on the same day that David Cameron launched Start Up Britain – something our on-the-ball students included in their presentation.

There’s still a massive amount of development and refinement to do on both titles but they are very exciting ideas. Each of the six groups pitching had individual development sessions with Professor Brett the Friday before the Mag-Dragon panel and at the end of next week the two amalgamated groups will present their research and development findings to Mel Nichols, former Editorial Director of Haymarket and, like Nick Brett, the over-seer of countless launches, relaunches and projects that didn’t quite make the grade.

I hope the students appreciate the level of access they are getting with these and the many other people who will help them during the Magazine MA – I don’t think I even saw anyone that high up until I’d been working at Emap for a couple of years!

On the very day I tell MA Magazine Journalism students about Brand Definition, Bauer make this anouncement:

Bauer Media, the media group behind Grazia, FHM and Closer magazines, and radio stations Magic 105.4 and Kiss, is restructuring its commercial operations into platform-agnostic sales teams focused around individual brands. (via Media Week)

The move is not designed to reduce headcount, but instead aims to create commercial specialists who are able to knowledgably sell across a particular brand's integrated portfolio of digital, print and broadcast operations.

There were a couple of other interesting snippets in the release too:


• Clare Chamberlain has left Immediate Media, the lovechild of BBC Magazines and Magicalia, to take up a role at Bauer as Sales Director.
• Mark Frith, the guiding hand behind Heat for so long, has re-joined Bauer as an editorial director.

When I was much younger I had a wooden chest full of Meccano, the metal version with proper nuts and bolts; when my son was a bit younger he had a big box full of Lego, standard bricks and special kits all mixed up together.

In both cases we could build things, make structures that were stable or unstable, see how to fit pieces together to achieve a particular end – and learn about the physical world through play. The toybox became a toolbox without us even realising.

I got the same feeling watching our postgraduate Magazine students put together podcasts under the watchful eye of Broadcast tutor Emma Gilliam. The toybox was full of microphones, buttons, knobs, faders, flashing lights – all the paraphernalia of a radio studio control board. Under Emma’s practised eye the students built soundscapes that began to fit together into a structured whole; they adjusted bits that didn’t work and reinforced bits that did. Just like playing with Meccano and Lego, the words and voices and technology merged into a tremendous learning experience.

I loved being in the studio, listening and watching as Emma brought everything together. It was a great example of what we strive to do in the Cardiff postgraduate journalism courses – break down silos, work together and adapt the techniques of one medium to the needs of another.

But – and this was an uncomfortable thought – would we have been doing this if Rupert Murdoch hadn’t battered down the walls of trade union demarcation at Wapping?

Image via WikipediaLeafing through last week's Economist (you know how it is, always too much to read in seven days) I settled into a very interesting feature about the economic advantages of diasporic communities (Weaving the world together, p 76, 19/11/11) – only to find myself somewhat distracted by the cross heads.

Whoever subbed it had used:

The immigrant song
In through the out door
Bringing it all back home
Going to California
Ramble on

Need a clue? Two words – Led Zeppelin




Whoever you are, thanks for a case study I can use in the second edition of Subediting For Journalists.

To celebrate the centenary of Woman’s Weekly, Radio Wales invited me to contribute to a breakfast show slot discussing the magazine. Naturally I said yes even though I know next to nothing about the title. My first reaction was to rush out and buy a copy (good move – the 1911 launch issue is replicated inside) and my second was to email Diane Kenwood, the editor, to ask her what the secret is.

Diane was kind enough to refer me to the editor’s letter in that first issue. At considerable length the editor had set out a manifesto for the magazine, which was to be a practical publication for ordinary women, not the lady in the mansion. Down the years, the editors had stuck to that mission until the line reached Diane, who was clearly doing the same – Woman’s Weekly was one of two titles in the sector to increase its ABC figure in the most recent audit (the other being Hello, which is interesting).

But sticking to the last does not mean turning out the same style of shoes – clearly editors had adapted the magazine to reflect the changing needs of its readers. Open the centenary issue and the first thing you see is a QR code that takes you to a mini-documentary charting the development of the publication you have in your hands – these readers are not stuck in the past.

1) Think creatively

http://youtu.be/Fe9AAfGgJuU

2) Set yourself a crazy time limit and push print to the limit (USA version)


Longshot (48hr Mag Project) - a pocket documentary from ricky montalvo on Vimeo.

After all that effort they got a cease-and-desist notice from CBS, who have a current affairs programme called 48 Hours.

You can read all about it in my forthcoming book!




3) Repeat the idea in the UK
http://www.flamingomagazine.com/a-48-hour-magazine

4) With this result
http://issuu.com/tcolondon/docs/make-shift




5) And this insight

Power of print

The nearly-always-reliable David Hepworth has come up with an interesting thought about reading journalism on the iPad, and that thought is: keep it simple.

On the one hand, we have new ventures like The Atavist presenting long form stories in innovative ways and on the other we have the need for what Hepworth, referring to a very plain story from The Economist's iPad edition, calls

"Self-contained, looks long enough to read in kettle-boiling time ..."

This immediately reminded me of one of the findings in Joke Hermes's study of the way readers actually use magazines, Reading Women's Magazines. A key point was that they were "easy to put down" -- that is, if a more urgent task came along, the magazine could be abandoned without worrying about finding one's place again or losing a line of deep thought.

As far as iPad content is concerned, it won't be EITHER one OR the other, of course. Print magazines run short kettle-boiling pieces mixed with longer sit-down and concentrate reads and there's no reason why that principle should change.