The Huffington Post details the best-selling magazine covers of 2009. This is one of them.
Isn’t that brilliant?
As you might expect, most of the other covers were about Michael Jackson. There’s also a slideshow of the worst-selling covers. Surprisingly Rolling Stone’s Shakira cover is one of them.
One of my world-weary .net columns has made its way online:
I’m not suggesting that social networks are bad. But again and again I’m finding that I seem to be living in a different world to the tech triumphalists [with] their sunny Californian positivity.
The decline of the so-called “lad’s mag” – a sniffy name invented by the posher men’s titles, who know their readers are no older or wealthier but are in the business of selling luxury advertising – is not down to a sea change in society. It’s down to Photoshop.
Between now and the 17th of March .net’s giving away free subscriptions via the mag’s Twitter account. More details here.
Arena’s confused – it can’t make its mind up whether it’s going after GQ readers or Loaded readers, and falls flat between the two
Today’s Guardian reports that Arena is to cease publication after 22 years.
In the same post, I wrote this:
Perhaps the problem is that there’s no real need for a men’s magazine, because most other magazines are for men. Computer magazines are largely read by men. Car magazines are almost exclusively read by men. Music, film… men men men men men.
I think that’s still the case. Any sign of this?
A magazine that isn’t aimed at sniggering schoolboys, that doesn’t write ten-page features on the correct way to wear cufflinks, that doesn’t tell me that I need to spend 18 hours a day in the gym to get the perfect body, that doesn’t cover a single subject (cars, gadgets, books, music) and that doesn’t hate, fear or envy women. A magazine that doesn’t make me skip 90% of its pages. A magazine that I wouldn’t be embarrased to have in my house.
I’ve been reading Q Magazine for as long as I can remember, but last year I finally stopped buying it. That was partly because I’d reached the age where I had absolutely no idea who any of the bands in it actually were, but it was mainly because Q became crap. Lists of songs are funny when you’re doing a collaborative playlist on Spotify; they’re dull as ditchwater to read.
But now – as Smash Hits might have put it – it’s back! Back! Baaaaaack!
Credit where credit’s due: rather than head further into Heat territory, editor Paul Rees (formerly of Kerrang, I think) has taken the magazine in the opposite direction. I’d hate to see the freelance bill, but Rees seems to have looked up the Big Book of Good Music Writers, hired them, and given them enough space to do something interesting. The result is a magazine that’s as good as, if not better than, it was in its heyday.
If you’re a lapsed Q reader, it’s worth picking up again. The current issue even manages to get an interesting feature from a Take That interview. Really.
A while back, I mentioned that taking baby steps into “proper” photography made me weep hot salty tears of frustration and rage, until a bit of informed advice and a few magazines cheered me up and translated the crap into plain English. It turns out that the world of digital photography is the simplest thing in the world compared to video.
It’s entirely academic at the moment – I’ll probably have to mug some schoolchildren at lunchtime in order to afford a pint or two tonight – but at some point in the near future I want to buy a video camera. I’ve learnt from my previous mistakes – best summarised as “don’t buy on price” – and I’ve got a pretty good idea of what I want.
It’s not complicated. I want a camera that has these features:
* High definition, because if I’m going to shell out on a camera I might as well get one that’s reasonably future-proof.
* Card storage, because I hate DVDs and like the security of being able to carry a few spare cards around.
* Mac compatibility.
And naturally, I don’t want to pay a million pounds for it. Even window shopping is suffering from the credit crunch.
So off I trot to the wonderful world of manufacturer websites and product spec sheets. And what a confusing load of crap it all is.
In no particular order, here are some of the things you need to know about:
* HD means different things depending on what you’re looking at. This camera here is HD, with 720p HD! This camera here is also HD, but it has 1080p HD! But this 720p one has better pictures than the 1080p because it has better fps and that one is better than the other ones because it is not interlaced and over here this one is the very bestest camera ever because it has magic space pixies that live inside it!
* The jargon around video cameras is even worse than with still cameras. In addition to all the f-stop stuff and JPEG profiles you’d expect, there’s CMOS and CCD and 3DDNR and BIONZ image processors and X many frames per second and face detection and AVC/H.264 and DIS and OIS and OMGWTFINEEDALIEDOWN.
* It’s not enough to go “no, Sony, your memory sticks are evil” and plump for something that uses SD cards. Different cameras have different levels of SD support, so some max out at a particular level of storage, others are utterly pointless unless you get SDHC cards. And of those, some of them don’t really work unless you go for Class 4 HD cards. Class what?
* Mac compatible doesn’t necessarily mean Mac compatible, because the combination of the highest HD resolutions and the AVCHD format used by some cameras isn’t yet supported by OS X software such as iMovie (although this may have changed by now. I’m too confused to keep looking).
Kudos to Techradar*, T3**, the Guardian*** et al for trying to explain all this stuff sensibly in reviews and product comparisons, but I can’t help thinking that this is the best option:
* Instead of buying an HD camera, take lots of still photos, print them out and wave them around really, really quickly.
* Vested interest: I write for it, albeit not about video cameras
** Vested interest: I’ve written for it, albeit not about video cameras
*** Vested interest: I’ve written for that too, albeit.. you get the idea
Asda has come under fire from independent magazine publishers for proposed alterations to distribution arrangements that include the supermarket being given editorial space in the publications it stocks…
Asda’s demands include a request for two pages of editorial or advertising space each month in titles of the company’s choosing.
And there’s an increase in the bribes – I can’t think of a better way of describing it – it demands to put magazines onto the shelves.
shop space given over to a distributor’s titles will be subject to a “space contribution” of £10,000 paid to the supermarket.
Asda is asking for a space contribution for each new Asda store opened of £2,500 per magazine title to be paid to the supermarket.
The supermarket company is also demanding that any new title distributed in its stores will be subject to an “item set up” charge of £2,464.
I know I keep saying this, but seriously: if you value a particular magazine, take out a subscription. It’ll save you money too.
In much the same way I love trashy pop music, Mrs Bigmouth loves trashy magazines – particularly the ones with soft-focus shots of impossibly good-looking celebrities and their impossibly perfect offspring. She particularly enjoys looking for the N-word, which occasionally sneaks into the article and depth-charges the portrayal of perfect parenting.
The N-word is “nanny”.
There was a good one last week (sorry, I forget the magazine) where it talked – after a few pages going on and on about what great parents Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were – about how the couple were having to manage with “just one nanny”.
Just one!
At least the article actually mentioned the nanny (or nannies, in the case of Hollywood royalty. Apparently three nannies per child is normal – one for daytime, one for nighttime and one for the weekends). Most don’t, so you’re left with a few thousand words about how brilliant parenthood is. It’s not tiring, you always look perfect, you can resume your career in a matter of days, and the whole thing is a big happy adventure.
It’d be funny if it weren’t such a fuck-you to real parents who can’t just do a baby dump and bugger off to the gym whenever the little ‘un gets annoying, and who can’t just leave the baby in a separate wing of the mansion when they fancy a nap.
I know that actors are in the business of acting and that magazines – particularly ones aimed at women – are in the business of distorting reality, but wouldn’t it be nice to have a bit of truth for once? “God, early parenthood sucks,” said Famous Lady. “Even with a nanny to help out, I felt like punching Chrysanthemum Space Cakes through a hedge loads of times. But you know what? That stage doesn’t last long, and when it’s over it’s a hoot”.
The Magazineer has put up an interesting post about MagCloud, a print-on-demand service designed specifically for magazines. The content available so far isn’t particularly inspiring, but the idea itself is quite interesting.
But there’s still something about paper. It’s not just because screens suck to read on (they do, but that hasn’t kept us from doing it all day). There is an intimacy about a good book, a pleasure to the glossy pages of magazines, and, ironically, a permanence to paper. (How many times has a website you really loved simply disappeared?)
So what if we could combine the best parts of the web (no waste, personalized content, open to all) with the best parts of print (sexy print quality, permanence, no batteries required)?
For the last year, I’ve been working on a project with HP Labs called MagCloud. The idea is simple, really. MagCloud enables anyone to start a magazine – real, live printed magazine – with no giant pile.
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