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Magazines under attack

Posted in Media, Arif Durrani, Latest reporters' blogs August 7th, 2008 by Arif Durrani

Who’d want to be a magazine publisher right now? With just a week to go before the industry’s biannual circulation report, which is expected to be bloody and already has commentators sharpening their talons, and the nation’s weeklies and monthlies find themselves fighting on other fronts.

It started two weeks ago when Retail Newsagent lifted the lid on some heavy handed threats being made by the supermarket giant Asda. To cut a long email short, the country’s second largest supermarket decided it was time to hold publishers to ransom for thousands of pounds, in exchange for shelf space.

The revelations were followed a week later by Media Guardian highlighting that among the demands, made by Asda’s magazine buyer Jane Smale, was an audacious request for two pages of editorial or advertising space each month, in titles of Asda’s choosing.

The supermarket chain has since climbed down from its aggressive and unprecedented requests, insisting they were merely the “start of negotiations”, but its motivations remain clear: Asda is looking to boost the value of its ‘News and Mags’ space, a notoriously low profit area for supermarket retailers. 

No sooner had the industry rallied itself for talks with Asda when the Tories decided it was an opportune moment to take their seasonal swipe at men’s magazines.

This time it was not one of Ann Widdecombe’s moral crusades, but rather Michael Gove, the shadow education secretary nonetheless.

His claims that men’s magazines “such as Nuts and Zoo” are responsible for turning young men into feckless fathers were as simplistic as they are outrageous, but he got good mileage out of it, and has found himself new supporters to boot.

Meanwhile back in Holborn, something was stirring in the auspicious offices of the Periodical Publishers Association (PPA), or was it? The body for Britain’s magazine publishers has been uncharacteristically quiet throughout all of this. 

Four-month old chief executive Jonathan Shephard has issued a sentence or two comment after each burst of headlines, but it’s been a far cry from the proactive, chest thumping, counterpunching of PPA of yore.

Magazine publishers will be forgiven for feeling a tad isolated as they parry and block in the corner.