Putting the past online

Digital archives are in the news at the moment with the British Library putting newspapers online from the 1800s and the Economist putting up 160 years’ worth of its articles. There’s a but though: we have to pay for access to the Economist and the newspapers are for students.

But there are some brilliant free archives around too. Most UK newspapers let you some way into their historical bowels and that for US news weekly Time has been a boon. Why the Economist couldn’t have done something similar is a mystery to me.

And if you don’t know the Wayback Machine - which is archiving the web - take a look. I can see what Magforum pages looked like going back to 2002. In fact, I used it to help set up Magforum by looking at pages I ran at West Herts College in 1999 - years after the college had taken them down.

Why are UK mags so expensive?

A few minutes in a magazine kiosk at Geneva airport left me asking: why are UK titles so expensive?

The figures speak for themselves. German Vogue CHF10 (about £4.20); French Vogue CHF10.90. Perhaps you would expect them to be at the cheaper end - not so far for transport; perhaps German and French titles sell more. But US Vogue is even cheaper - CHF9.70. Then in comes UK Vogue at a stonking CHF17.70 (£7.37)!

And it’s not just Vogue. Tatler and GQ were CHF17.70; Elle was CHF16.90 (US Elle was CHF9), Marie Claire CHF16.70 (US CHF12.90).

Anybody know what’s going on here?

Arculus plan for Emap ‘a tall order’

The Financial Times has described as ‘a tall order’ the attempt by a former Emap MD (and former IPC chairman) Sir David Arculus to turn Emap investors against its proposed break-up.

Arculus told the FT: ‘Emap is a great company with a strong management team at the divisional level, but a board that appears to have lost its way and not to understand the media.’

The paper identifies bidders for the group as:

• The trade division: £1.3bn offer from Apax Partners with contributions from Guardian Media Group, Candover Partners, Cinven, Permira and Providence Equity.
• Consumer magazines: offers of about £700m from a group comprising Hearst (owner of Cosmo publisher National Nagazines in the UK), Quadrangle Group, Exponent Private Equity, Exponent, as well as Apollo, Cinven and Providence.
• Global Radio for Emap’s broadcasting assets.

A takeover by Hearst could threaten several Emap titles such as Arena, NW and Closer because NatMags has competing magazines, according to the Press Gazette.

Murdoch outlines plans for WSJ

Rupert Murdoch has told the Times (a paper he also owns) that he wants to bolster the international coverage of his new acquisition the Wall Street Journal and broaden it out from finance into the arts, culture, and fashion.

Such a strategy would see it come up against the New York Times, but would probably be a relief for the Financial Times. The FT came in for a criticism two years ago that it was moving away from its business base, most prominently from Andrew Neil, a former editor of Murdoch’s Sunday Times.

The present Times editor, Robert Thomson, would appear to be an ideal candidate for such a broadening of the Journal, however. He left the FT for Murdoch’s paper after missing out on the pink paper’s editorship.

At the FT, he led a relaunch of the weekend paper, turning How to Spend It magazine into a money-spinning monthly and the Saturday edition into the best-selling of the week - a model  other papers followed.

Kelsey on black cover models

Former Cosmopolitan editor Linda Kelsey has blamed the conservative nature of the industry for the lack of black models on magazine covers - and the fact that there are so few black celebrities. Speaking on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, She recited an anecdote from when she was Cosmo editor that distributors had warned her off using a black model because such covers did not sell. The magazine used the black model and she said it had no discernible effect on sales.

Nowadays, such titles no longer used models, but celebrities instead, she said. Also, Kate Moss would be used rather than Naomi Campbell because she was guaranted to sell copies.

The interview comes after a Guardian report earlier this month asking ‘Why are all the models white?’

See about 250 covers at Magforum.com

All-singing magazines

Expansive Media has announced ‘the world’s first’ magazine on DVD and US publishers are investigating animated advertising.

Expansive is to give away 200,000 copies of Entertain as a covermount on a tabloid newspaper and a men’s magazine next month.

Media Week in the US is talking about ‘a creative and technological revolution in print ads’ with publishers exploring pages that feature video. Prototypes have used electronic paper to show an animated image powered by a coin-sized battery.

Unfortunately, no one has yet managed to generate much demand for such things. CD-Rom magazines failed and talking adverts and lenticular covers have tended to destroy the magazine-reading experience so are rarely wheeled out.

The occasional ‘breathing‘ magazine or talking advert as a gimmick is fine, but it’s difficult to see them catching on in a big way.

TV Week freebie from ACP-NatMag

ACP-NatMag has dipped its toes into the TV listings sector with TV Week, which will go out free with Best and Real People each week. The magazine is based on the Australian TV Week and will have a circulation of 640,000.

But with 5m such magazines sold each week and many millions more going out free as part of other weeklies or as newspaper supplements, how much can the market take? It will certainly irritate newsagents who have been complaining for years that such titles are too cheap.

Now Future quits France

Playstation and .Net publisher Future has sold its French arm for €18m (about £13m) to a management buy-out. The company will continue to license 8 of its titles to the buyer, WM7.

WM7, is jointly owned by LMBO, a buy-out specialist based in Paris, and members of the management team of Future France, including Sari Zaimi and Jane Wray, respectively the managing director and finance director of Future France.

The pull-out follows Emap withdrawal last year.

FT woos the bloggers

FT.com has introduced a change to its subscription-based business model. Subscribers still pay for full access but everyone else can read up to 30 articles free each month.

The reason the Financial Times has made the change is to attract more bloggers. News websites pick up far more hits when stories are talked about, particularly if they are Drudged.

So the FT gets a lot more free promotion at little cost to itself (except perhaps some peeved subscribers).

Business sums do not add up for FHM

Andrew Neil’s Business covers the online battle among men’s magazines this week (Beleaguered men’s magazines start to battle it out online, 29 September). Media columnist David Crow declares: ‘FHM.com boasts an audience of over 1.7m unique users a month, a figure the print title could only dream of, even in its heyday.’

Hmmm. In its heyday, FHM sold almost half that figure in a month. As for readers, they numbered 3.2m - almost twice as many as the website can chalk up now. Even today, with sales down at 311,590, NRS puts FHM’s print readership at 2.4m.

Mr Crow may have some good points to put across, but don’t take the numbers at face value.