Red-faced at Time

The US magazine Time is celebrating 90 years since its founding, which the managing editor describes as ’90 years inside the red border’ on his Editor’s Desk page. But Time did not introduce its red border until 1927. So much for accuracy. Before that, the earliest issues had ruled boxes, reminiscent of the British magazine Pall Mall 20 years earlier.

Pall Mall magazine from 1905

The first Time cover from 1923

In between, Time experimented with both a red and a green strip down the left side, the red being a ‘warm’ red as used by Pall Mall and the green similar to that used by Tit-Bits.

Green stripe Time magazine cover from 26 April 1926

There’s a video showing the progress of Time’s covers.

 

Spectator speaks out on Press control

Spectator magazine cover

A day before the Leveson inquiry report is published, the Spectator has set itself against any statutory scheme to control the press apart from self-regulation:

‘If the press agrees a new form of self-regulation, perhaps contractually binding this time, we will happily take part. But we would not sign up to anything enforced by government.’

Magazines have been given little coverage in the controversy, but several were called to give evidence to the Leveson inquiry, including Hello!, Heat and OK!

The Spectator has lived under government control – it was founded in 1828 – and Stamp Duty, which was used to control distribution of newspapers and magazines, was not abolished until 1855.

This change created a free Press, enabled expansion and a way of meeting demand for reading material from the public – it’s easily forgotten that the works of many of the great Victorian writers were first published in magazines, from Dickens to Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. In the newspaper world, the Guardian went from twice weekly to daily publication.

The fortunes made by the magazine magnates – Alfred Harmsworth and Arthur Cyril Pearson – built on the invention of the New Journalism in magazines to found the popular daily press – the Daily Mail, the Express and the Mirror.

Sam Delaney, a former editor of Heat, has warned that Leveson could end up muzzling the celebrity magazines:

‘Brace yourselves. By 2013, every title on the newsstand may well feature a gushing profile of Nancy Dell’Olio, lounging on a chaise longue “inside her beautiful home”.’

As the leaders of the political parties pore over the six copies of the Leveson report that were delivered to parliament this afternoon, the whole of the media awaits the next stage of the fallout from the phone-hacking scandal.

UK newspapers: Times readers run the country

Magazine timeline

IPC and the dangers of writing about Hitler

IPC has sent our press releases pushing the latest issue of NME, with the following at the bottom:

Please note, conditions apply to using the NME covers; the photographer and NME must both be credited, along with the copy ‘NME, on sale now’.

The company is on dodgy ground with such an approach. Who’s going to use the picture with that proviso? What happens next week when the issue’s no longer on sale?

The attitude of IPC was held up to ridicule after it claimed copyright over images of Hitler’s house from Homes and Gardens‘ November 1938 edition that the Guardian’s Simon Waldman had written about. IPC’s claims were exposed as spurious. The 1938 article, ‘Hitler’s mountain home’, by Ignatius Phayre describes the Berghof as ‘quite a handsome Bavarian chalet, 2,000 feet up on Obersalzberg amid pinewoods and cherry orchards’ with the funds coming from Hitler’s ‘famous book’ Mein Kampf, a ‘best-seller of astonishing power‘.

Ignatius Phayre wrote 5 pieces for the Catholic Herald in 1938-9 and did a profile of Edgar Wallace for Pictorial Weekly (‘Edgar – the amazing! A Henry Ford of fiction’, 16 Feb 1929). Amazon lists 6 books by that author, dating from 1911-33, with one being reprinted this year, America’s Day Studies in Light and Shade. The British Library gives his real name as William George FitzGerald.

Philsp.com has Phayre writing ‘War-Work of the King and Queen of Spain’ in The Girl’s Own Paper and Woman’s Magazine in Oct 1916.

A company like IPC has commerical rights to protect, but its business is built on journalism – and the rights of journalists need protecting too.

IPC profile

Books about magazines

When you’re writing a book, you end up researching and reading a lot of books. One place I looked is Google Books to see who might be quoting Magforum.com and so writing about magazines.  A search for “Magforum” suggests that no fewer than 73 books mention the site. However, like most Google searches these days, this one does not do what you want it to do and seems to return some results because they are books mentioned BY Magforum or are also about magazines!

Nevertheless, I know the following mention Magforum, some because I’ve lent them magazines for photography or provided quotations; others list Magforum as a general resource; and others quote from Magforum as a reliable source of evidence or to build an argument.

Among the many nice things said is this quote by Branded Male: Marketing to Men by Mark Tungate (Kogan Page, 2008): ‘The splendidly comprehensive Magforum.com’ in his chapter on men’s magazines.

Several books on culture, gender and sexualisation quote Magforum’s pages on men’s magazines and women’s magazines, including:

• The Sexualization of Childhood (Childhood in America) by Sharna Olfman (ABC-CLIO, 2009);
• Sex Before the Sexual Revolution: Intimate Life in England 1918-1963 (Cambridge Social and Cultural Histories) by Simon Szreter and Kate Fisher (Cambridge University Press, 2010);
• The Day of the Peacock: Style for Men 1963 – 73 by Geoffrey Aquilina Ross (V&A Publishing, 2011); and
• Women’s Work, Men’s Cultures: Overcoming Resistance and Changing Organizational Cultures by Sarah Rutherford (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

And the property magazine pages on Magforum are recommending for global investors: ‘Magforum lists all magazines published in the UK, together with circulation figures and some pithy comments on reliability. The site is put together by hand and the editor, Tony Quinn … processes everything’, says Colin Barrow in The Global Property Investor’s Toolkit 2007-2008: A Sourcebook for Successful Decision Making (John Wiley, 2008). Obviously a man who recognises the results of a lot of hard work.

Of course, Magforum is a big source for people in the magazine industry, academics and students. Some of the books that use it as such are:

• The Media: An Introduction by Daniele Albertazzi and Paul Cobley (Pearson Education, 2010)
• Magazine Production (Media Skills) by Jason Whittaker (Taylor & Francis, 2008)
• Get Your Articles Published: Teach Yourself by Lesley Bown (Hachette UK, 2010)
• Setting Up a Successful Photography Business: How to be a Professional Photographer (Setting Up Guides)  by Lisa Pritchard (A&C Black, 2012)
• Mapping the Magazine: Comparative studies in magazine journalism, edited by Tim Holmes (Routledge, 2008). Tim runs the magazine side of the postgraduate diploma in journalism at Cardiff University
• Editorial Design by Yolanda Zappaterra (Laurence King, 2007), who teaches at Central St Martins in London.

More eclectic users of Magforum include:

• Magic Moments: Life-changing Encounters with Books, Film, Music… by John Sutherland (Profile Books, 2008), former Booker prize chair, Desert Island Discs subject and  former  Emeritus Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College, London – the name of the founder of Answers and the Daily Mail lives on in that title
• Personal Reputation Management: Making the Internet Work for You by Louis Halpern and Roy Murphy (Halpern Cowan, 2009)

Finally, I don’t know what this means, buy, heh, it must be good! I’d be grateful for a translation:

Bewertung crossmedialer Verflechtungen im Medienkonzentrationsrecht: Eine rechtsvergleichende Untersuchung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung Deutschlands, Großbritanniens sowie der Entwicklung in der EU by Harald Bretschneider (Peter Lang, 2010)

Brooker’s Dark Mirror

Great piece in today’s Guardian G2 from Charlie Brooker on his drama series, Dark Mirror.  Here’s a sample:

Just yesterday I read a news story about a new video game installed above urinals to stop patrons getting bored: you control it by sloshing your urine stream left and right. Read that back to yourself and ask if you live in a sane society.

Couldn’t agree more.Though the rest of G2 seems to have lost its way – 4 pages on Amazon’s warehouse! How many times have I seen that piece before? PR, pure and simple.

Someone even tweeted: ‘Charlie Brooker’s Dark Mirror has a twist that made them physically sick’.

Dark Mirror, Channel 4, Sunday 9pm.

Shortlist hits 200 with Steadman / Depp cover

Ralph Steadman cover for Johnny Depp interview talking about Hunter S. Thompson in Shortlist's 200th issue

Free city men’s weekly Shortlist is celebrating its 200th issue with a Johnny Depp article promoting a film adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary. On the cover is an exclusive (to all 523,665 copies) Ralph Steadman cover. Steadman was the Gonzo artist who illustrated several of Thompson’s articles and books, such as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Lords to quiz editors on investigative journalism

A House of Lords committee is to take evidence tomorrow from some of the leading investigative journalists.  Private Eye editor Ian Hislop, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, Nick Davies – author of Flat Earth News - and Paul Foot Award winner Clare Sambrook will be quizzed on the future of investigative journalism.

The sessions will cover:

• how investigative journalism is done;
• the role of social media;
• funding;
• the role of investigative journalism in society;
• opportunities and threats;
• the importance of conducting investigations in the public interest.

The Communications Committee sessions start at 3.30 on Tuesday 11 October in Committee Room 2 of the House of Lords and will be webcast live at www.parliamentlive.tv. The sessions are open to the public.

Guardian to publish news lists

Incredible to my ears, but the Guardian is to publish its news lists – which show what stories the paper is working on for the next day or week. Giving advance warning of all its scoops? Showing where it is focusing reporting resources? Letting all the competition into its thought processes?

Of coures, it turns out it’s an experiment and ‘We won’t quite show you everything’ … ‘but most of our plans will be there for all to see, from the parliamentary debates we plan to cover to the theatre we plan to review.’ The paper ‘would love to know what you think’.

Even if this is an edited version of the process, it gives a great insight into how the news agenda works on a paper for the public and especially journalism students.

Murdoch’s News of the World legacy

Rupert Murdoch on Guardian website

What will be Rupert Murdoch’s legacy in terms of newspapers in Britain? With the Sun, Times, Sunday Times and News of the World he had the most powerful newspaper group in Britain. He’s a throwback to the great twentieth century Fleet St barons – I’ve read of Northcliffe describing the young Murdoch as his favourite newspaperman.

He fought off Robert Maxwell to win control of News of the World and use it as the international stepping stone to form the world’s first global media group. His reputation for media innovation is unrivalled. However, today’s Machiavellian decision to close the News of the World throws a 168-year history, 200 journalists – and some legendary campaigning journalism – on the scrapheap.

Yet, even though Murdoch has acted with unprecedented speed to try to halt the damage, more is undoubtedly still to come. The fallout – a Rupertgate or Jamesgate – could leave the Murdoch name lying alongside those of Maxwell and a corrupt media mogul of the early 1900s, Horatio Bottomley.

Britain's most famous front page - the Sun's Gotcha

But Rupert brought us the topless redtop style of the Sun with its Page 3, along with Kelvin MacKenzie, and headlines such as ‘Gotcha’ and ‘Freddie Starr: I ate my hamster’ – as well as the later ‘Freddie Starr: I ‘ate my wife’ . And England team manager Graham Taylor as a turnip. How many other front or back pages are as well known? But that paper also plumbed the depths with its Hillsborough coverage – an example of falling in with the police – and is still paying the price in terms of its sales on Merseyside.

Murdoch took over the Times (on a Friday, the 13^th), and took it downmarket, shafting Harry Evans in the process, though he has bankrolled it to the tune of tens of millions a year for a while now.

His papers helped to turn round the fortunes of Margaret Thatcher when she was unpopular in her first years in power. The Sunday Times was hagiographic here, portraying her on the front of its magazine as Joan of Arc. Murdoch’s HarperCollins book arm later published Thatcher’s memoirs. And the Sun is seen as having saved John Major from electoral defeat in 1992 with its vitriolic campaign against Neil Kinnock – ‘If Kinnock wins today, will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights’ ran the front page on polling day.

Andrew Neil, looking on BBC TV these days as if his whole body is on botox, was working for Murdoch when he bought us never-mind-the-quality-feel-the-width journalism at the Sunday Times and adverts to recruit reporters who could write at length on any topic. That has certainly done journalism no good. As Matthew Engel writes in the British Journalism Review, ‘Over the past ten years the quantity has remained relatively stable,’ but ‘what worries me now is the quality.’ He was writing about newspaper sports pages in general, but it’s an argument that can be made for the rest of the Sunday Times.

Mirabelle launch cover

Murdoch failed to make much headway in magazines (remember the embarrassing Mirabelle?), but brought us Sky TV and the Simpsons – though ruined the game of football in the process.

He is also one of the world’s most successful tax avoiders, managing to make billions in profits but using complex offshore company structures to avoid paying tax.

But the activities at the News of the World take us back to Hillsborough in terms of awfulness. For the editor and executives to say they did not know what was going on is no defence. They should have known. The paper was, as Rosie Boycott said on Newsnight, ‘200 miles into illegality’.  To be paying £100K to private eye Glen Mulcaire and not know what he was doing just beggars belief.  Phone-hacking comes under the RIPA Act – Regulation of Investigatory Powers 2000.  It’s what was used to jail News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman and Mulcaire.

Boards of directors are paid to be responsible and ignorance is no defence under the law. It’s difficult to see Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson going quietly. Bigger fish than Mulcaire and Goodman are going to come into the frame.

Birthday honours for the magazine world

Colin Firth and Jennifer Earle from 'Pride and Prejudice' on the cover of 'Radio Times'

Some gongs for faces in the magazine world this morning (though not many). Top of the list is Helen Alexander – who becomes a dame – and recently stepped down as CBI president. She was chief executive of the Economist Group for 11 years and is chair of trade magazine group Incisive Media. Alexander followed Marjorie Scardino into the Economist job after ‘Marge in charge’ took over as chief exec of Pearson (and also follows Marge in becoming a dame). The Financial Times (a Pearson company) has reported that Alexander would love to chair a FTSE 100 company (Pearson is one of them), ‘one day’ but ‘I don’t think it is necessarily the right next step’.

Telegraph fashion journalist and US Vogue contributor Sarah Mower is awarded an MBE , as is Clive Collins, cartoonist and illustrator who contributed to Punch from 1964 to its closure, before becoming the Sun‘s political cartoonist and later moving to the Sunday People and Evening Standard.

Jenni Murray, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, also becomes a dame.

One for the female viewership is a CBE for actor Colin Firth. Although The King’s Speech is on everyone’s lips at the moment, it was the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice that established his heart-throb status. Letters to the Radio Times said:

‘Colin Firth is the sexiest person on the screen … The scenes with Jennifer Ehle are truly erotic, and they hardly touch each other.’

Full list of Birthday honours