Piers Hernu, launch editor of Front magazine for Cabal, has cast an eye over the monthly lads’ mags for Press Gazette. He finds a revived Loaded, a Maxim in terminal decline, ‘a tedious, nippleless nightmare’ in FHM and his old title ‘the cheekiest and most charming of the bunch’.
As joint founder and editorial director of customer publisher Redwood (not to mention former Daily Express editor when the job was still worth having), Christopher Ward was one of the most powerful figures in the industry, so - as one of his protégés - it’s a pleasure to be able to show the lad as he looked as a Petticoat columnist in 1971.
Larry Viner of the Advertising Archives tells me that the Oz complete collection went for $5,700 in New York (estimate $4,000-$6,000). So anyone who paid the £9,999 asking price for an Ebay buy-it-now over here would be feeling really hard done-by!
‘Sara Cremer, the former editor of such consumer titles as New Woman and Eve,’ writes Ian Burrell in the Independent, ‘has been lured across the great magazine divide to become editorial director of Redwood Publishing.’
‘Great magazine divide?’ What divide?
Redwood was started 25 years ago by former Daily Express editor Christopher Ward and Campaign publisher MIke Potter. Its editors in the 1980s included Peter Crookston (Nova and the Observer Magazine), Paul Keers (GQ), Tony Hilton (Times Washington correspondent) and Richard Barber (Woman’s Own and TV Times).
These editors and many others bounced between the two sectors - Keers worked on Cosmo, later Redwood, then newspapers before GQ and then back to Redwood before founding contract publisher Axon with Redwood production director Ellen Brush.
Redwood wasn’t unique in this respect then and the phenomena hasn’t gone away. Cremer is just one example among many.
A slim-looking Kelly Osbourne fronts today’s Independent Extra feature on digital retouching. This is how she looked on the cover of Fabulous in February:
Other examples include:
The article discusses the work of Pascal Dangin and the Dove advertising campaigns, which featured photographs by Rankin. The Hayward gallery held an exhibition in April that featured manipulation of images as far back as the 1920s by photographer Alexander Rodchenko.
How Kate Winslet appeared on GQ - one of a series of images at the Indpendent website
Below - how the Mirror reported the treatment of Eugenie’s image
Guardian Media Group and private equity firm Apax - the joint owners of the business arm and the Emap Communications name since March - have restructured the company as four divisions:
The company name will change from Emap Communications to just Emap.
David Gilbertson, 50, chief executive of B2B publisher Informa, was appointed to head the group last month.
Guardian Media Group said last month that the proportion of its revenues gained from print had fallen from about 85% to 65% since the Emap purchase.
The emap.co.uk and emap.com sites were down this morning.
The BBC plans to launch BBC Knowledge Magazine in the US in August. The magazine will be published by BBC Magazines Bristol, offering features on science, history and nature.
The 100-page title will be published six times a year and will draw on articles from Focus, BBC History and BBC Wildlife.
Magazines have long had merchandising pages, but few can be as eclectic as Monocle’s. The website is selling products branded with its logo that include: a Comme des Garçons perfume; a bicycle; bags; and a Danish-made table. Media Week reckons the site has sold 2,000 bags.
TalkSport is to launch a weekly digital-only TalkSport Magazine in the summer, says Media Week. The radio station has taken on James Mallinson, former publisher of Dennis’s Monkey e-magazine to run the title.
Digital magazines history
Barnes & Noble is to start selling subscriptions to more than 1,000 magazines, in both digital and print formats through its website. The US bookseller claims prices will be up to 90% cheaper than buying the magazines from a newsagent.
BN.com is using Zinio for the digital versions and M2 Media to send out magazine subscriptions. Readers will be able to use a ‘see inside’ feature to preview some magazines. Also, 12,000 back issues of hundreds of titles will be available as single copies in digital format.
