Analyst Tom Strudwick reports that this title must improve the relationship between online and print components.

Publisher:

Waddell Ltd

Category:

Lifestyle Style & Fashion

URL:

https://www.dazeddigital.com

Price:

Single Copy: £4.50

Editorial Profile:

National new-style title identifying new youth attitudes through its distinct visual and editorial identity. Q&A interviews profile the individuals shaping future cultural direction in fashion, music, film and art

Target Audience:

Stylish, innovators, media literate opinion formers. They know about styles, brands and products and look to D & C as a credible and reliable source of information

Frequency:

6 issues per year / Feb, Apr, Jun, Aug, Oct, Dec

Circulation

Rates

Audience:

-Hipster types

-Age 18-30;

-predominantly female, about 1/3 male. Majority of advertising is aimed at females but much of the work is not gender specific.

-Likely to have attended college or art college rather than sixth form. Likely to have A-levels or BTEC equivalent.

-Study art-based subjects (design, fashion, illustration), at Goldsmiths, Epsom, LCF.

– consider themselves fashionable, maybe even trend setters

– living in ‘Hipster’ parts of London: Shoreditch; Brixton; New Cross.

– regularly visits galleries like Tate Modern, Saachii gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum.

– In B-C2 class bracket.

– Can afford to spend £4.50 on a magazine,

(source: alexa.com)

 Alternative Covers

– ‘Changing the face of fashion’ by literally changing the face of the magazine three times.

– Making the magazine appeal to a wider audience with more covers as well as a more dedicated readership who may want to collect all three.

-Doesn’t tell the reader anything else in the magazine

– three covers for 13 pages of content… – doesn’t seem financially efficient

Recommendations

1- Move pages from the opening 25 pages of advertising and put them between stories.

= this will make the readers less likely to grow bored so early in the publication as well as giving articles more coherent endings. Also, the advertising will not be in huge blocks- pacing the advertising throughout the magazine will make them individually stronger which could mean you can charge more for it, thereby increasing revenue.

2- Move some of the more exhilarating content (nude photography on pages 112/113 &136-137; gaudy artwork on pages 196-207; cover article on pages 138-151) to an earlier point in the magazine.

= gaudy artwork peaked the focus group’s interest, but as it was at the back, some readers who may have put the magazine down, or have run out of time to read the magazine, will not see these memorable piece and will not associate what the readers like (according to focus group) with this magazine.

= nude photography should be more of a feature- Laura Mulvey’s male gaze teaches us that everyone consumes the media through the eyes of a heterosexual male, meaning even the female readers will engage with it. Everyone knows sex sells but some of the ideologies of the magazine (feminism, freedom of speech) mean that the context of the nudity is not necessarily sexual but artistic or in order to make a statement.

=Appearance of Kendall Jenner (Cover) should be far earlier than page 138 – Perhaps doesn’t place the intended importance on the cover story as it is nearer the back than the front. But it could also be a method of keeping the reader hooked until that point, making everything else build-up or come-down. Interest should peak at the cover article

3- Introduce more small images into editorial pieces to break up large blocks of text.

=all readers in the focus group said they found the large blocks of text unappealing to look at they felt challenged by the essay style of presentation. One member of the focus group, an art student at UEL, said she feels herself and other artists are not necessarily buying the magazine for the writing as it is easier to show fashion than to write about it. However she said she enjoys the subject of the stories and often reads the introductions but is put off by how long they are.

4-‘Head to Toe’ section of the magazine should be redesigned to prevent it from looking any more like advertisements.

=focus group liked the concept of this section once i had introduced it. Problem is that it did not introduce itself. Focus group mistook it for adverts so did not engage with it until they knew what it was. Its a unique way for the magazine celebrate clothes but its over-celebration of other brands and layout mean the message is completely lost. I would separate image from text, increase the amount of text and speak less specifically about the brands and more about the item. By doing this, the readers will engage with it more and their interest in the magazine will be greater, meaning they are more likely to buy the magazine again if they don’t already subscribe.

Focus Group:

4 female students: 3 journalism students; one fashion illustration student.

– Love the cover- recognise Kendall Jenner from various aspects of the media. Focus group said they would buy the magazine for the person on the cover. However, they thought it could do with a little more colour, as it is currently not very exciting. May be worth adding some colour to make the cover more enticing.

– Did not like that the first 25 pages consisted of adverts, although they did expect it.

-Thought several of the adverts were unlikely to appeal to the target audience of the magazine: Timberland, Jameson Whiskey, Ralph Lauren.

-Thought it was strange that the credits were so early in the magazine before any proper editorial. Thought it is quite self-promotive that they place the people before the actual work. Also, they expected to see it towards the end.

– Didn’t notice ‘Head to Toe’ section of the magazine, confused it for adverts because of the frame on the pages.

– Not a great deal of clarity in the fonts between titles and body.

– House style of writing is good, easy to read. BUT its ruined by the huge blocks of text. Focus group said it is not a magazine they could ‘snack’ on.

– No clear break between stories. – Not particular coherence.

– Feel like stories are rather squashed up next to each other, no time to breathe between stories.

-Lo-Fi filter on photography could be to stay true to 90s roots – not trying to show off technological developments, but instead the art form of photography

P59 (Emerging Artist Award) – brand cross over with Converse; not sure its the best brand to crossover with. Also it seems quite late in the magazine to invite readers to do engage with the brand for the first time.

P64, 89 – responded to nudity: even though they are all girls they all commented on the physique of the subject of the photography. (Laura Mulvey, Male Gaze) – SEX SELLS!

121-128 – did not really know many of the Dazed 100 Artists. And when they did recognise someone, there was very little said about them. – audience may respond better to less obscure artists.

-Loved the cover article, surprised to see it closer to the back than the front.

– Treats fashion as a cultural product or an art form as well as a consumer product.

– Really enjoyed the artwork on the last 10 pages. Not sure why they were at the very back of the magazine.

Main Competitor:

VICE

MAGAZINE

Advertising Rates

Publisher:

VICE UK Ltd

Category:

Lifestyle Style & Fashion

URL:

https://www.vice.com/en_uk

Established:

01/11/2002

Price:

Subscription: £35.00, Single Copy: Free

Editorial Profile:

Covering music, fashion, politics, culture and sexual perversity. It’s intellectual non-journalism

Target Audience:

Urban, educated, trendy, interested in fashion and music and young (18-34)

Frequency:

Monthly

Circulation

(Source: bradinsight.com)

Commercial Analysis

Retail Sales Value:
£4.50 x 99,000 readers = £445,500.00 per issue

Advertising income

13 single pages of advertising x £6,902 = £89,726.00

13 Double Page Spreads of advertising x £11,727 = £152,451.00

Total Advertising Income

£89,726 + £152,451 = £242,177.00

Total Nominal income

£445,500 + £242,177 = £687,677.00

Total Annual income

6 issues x £687,677 = £4,126,062.00

Online: Dazed Digital

Recommendations:

1- Use the magazine to promote online content and vice versa.

=The print and online versions of the magazine are quite separate in that the magazine makes no reference to online content – BUT the online content makes reference to upcoming issues of the magazine, the most recent issues and some completely separate content that isn’t in the magazine. In this way it seems the online content promotes the magazine but the magazine doesn’t promote the online content- though it should to boost audiences and viewer-ships. For example, mention if something in the magazine is available online.

2-Use social media and social networks to encourage engagement from readers: submissions, more competitions.

=for instance, ask readers for feedback, or use polls as a way of involving the readers in decisions for the brand. This may encourage paid for circulation as there will be more for readers to be excited about. They will feel as though it is something they are more actively involved in.

3- Broaden target audience with more varied content; more categorised YouTube channels.

= As VICE have, i believe broadening the YouTube audience will be beneficial to the DAZED brand. As you can see from the chart, VICE have over 10 million subscribers – due largely to the fact they have 12 channels, each publishing differently categorised videos. As well as a cooking show, VICE produce spectacular documentaries, a medium that could very easily be used to present fashion and art to audiences. Broadening the audience could also lead to an increase in paid for circulation as we see an increasing number of people engaging with the brand.

Dazed Digital

– Sticky test:   14/24

How the Website links with the magazine 3/5

-next issue                                                          y

-online submissions                        n

-Archive                                                                               y

-Writer Blogs                                                      y

-for advertisers                                  n

Site Features – 6/9

-Search                                                                 y

-Unique news                                    y

-video                                                    y

-unique features                               y

-sales of products            y

-lounge                                                 n

-voting on issues                               n

-cross selling                                       y

-webseach                                          n

User-generated content – 2/3

-forums                                                                y

-text blogs                                           y

-video/images                    n

Reaching Out – 2/5

-Emailed newsletter                                        y

-iPod downloads                                                              n

-Mobile phone downloads                           n

-radio links                                                                          n

-RSS Feed                                                                            y

Play – 1/2

-Competitions                   y

-Games                                                 n

Twitter

– 826,587 Followers

-recognisable brand logo

-cover photo of next magazine’s cover issue

-links to Dazed Digital

-similar plain, simple layout as in magazine

source: https://twitter.com/DazedMagazine

YouTube

– 38,782 Subcribers

– 9,210,989 views

-recognisable brand logo

– consistency through use of same image

– links with next issue and also previous issue

BUT nothing to suggest in mag that content

Would be available online

Source: https://www.youtube.com/user/dazeddigital/about

Facebook

-636,459 likes

– more consistency with use of same

Image of next issue’s cover

– links to instagram and email

Subscriptions.

VICE Online:

-Has a much stronger online presence to make up for the weaker magazine.

– perhaps shifting from a predominantly print-based magazine to a much wider network of print, online, video, documentary etc.

– changing with the times, making the most of modern technology.

Summary of Recommendations (Print)

-Move pages from the opening 25 pages of advertising and put them between stories.

-Move some of the more exhilarating content (nude photography on pages 112/113 &136/137; gaudy artwork on pages 196-207; cover article on pages 138-151) to an earlier point in the magazine.

-Introduce more small images into editorial pieces to break up large blocks of text.

-‘Head to Toe’ section of the magazine should be redesigned to prevent it from looking any more like advertisements.

Pick Me Up Audit

by Paul Darigan

Pick_Me_Up_Audit_PaulDarigan

Essays in Magazine Media, No 5, December 2012

Richard Sharpe

The 1930s were a particularly turbulent decade. The year before it started the world economy entered one of its periodic crashes: there was too much production for the levels of consumption. This led to a smash on stock markets and the failure of many banks. Unemployment skyrocketed. It looked as if the liberal, democratic capitalist model was broken. There were alternatives, on the right and the left. The Communist Party in Russia had beaten off foreign and domestic opposition in its civil wars of the 1920s and had started to build up its heavy industry. On the right Mussolini had seized power in Italy in 1922 and was making sure the trains ran on time. These two examples of alternatives to liberal capitalism excited the imagination of many. At the same time the Nazi Party in Germany gained more votes as unemployment rose. In the UK a fascist party was formed in 1932 under Mosley.

A National Government was in power in the UK from 1931: it was supported by the Conservative Party and a rump of Labour right-wingers led by the Prime Minister Ramsey MacDonald. The UK devalued the pound 30% by going off the gold standard, lowered interest rates, and invested in infrastructure. Wages in the public sector were cut; unemployment benefit was also cut. Tariffs were erected around trade within the Empire.

What was the individual to do? Either withdraw into domesticity or engage with the public life. Two magazines launched in the 1930s took these two, very different paths. Woman’s Own was launched by Odhams Press in 1932 and The Week was launched by Claud Cockburn in 1933.

A clutch of women’s magazines were launched in the 1920s, mostly copies of established US titles. They included Ideal Home (1920), Good Housekeeping (1922), Harper’s Bazaar (1929), Modern Woman (1925), and Woman and Home (1926). Women were getting the vote: they were being ejected from industry to make room for the returning male soldiers, sailors and airmen demobilised after World War I.

Odhams already published Horse and Hound (1884) and a strongly nationalistic magazine John Bull (1903). Odhams also published The Daily Herald newspaper, a supporter of the Labour Party.

Woman’s Own was launched as a weekly. It offered a vision of domesticity for its women readers. Recipes, fashion and the arts of domesticity were its standard fare. The first issue had three skeins of wool as a cover mount to entice women to buy it: a clear emphasis on women’s domestic skills. Many companies in the 1930s would not employ married women; if a woman married she lost her job. The reasoning behind this was that married women should be supported by their husbands and not be on the labour market. Their labour would be in the home. Whereas Charles Dickens’ Household Words was about the outside world, Woman’s Own was about the inside world of the family. There was no mention of unemployment, the gold standard, Empire tariffs, the slump, Communism or Fascism.

Most people rented their flat or house in the 1920s. The low interest rates encouraged house ownership in the 1930s, fuelled by the credit available from Building Societies. The economy, especially in London and the South East, soon bounced back from the crash of 1929. The parts of the UK dependent on heavy industry and mining continued in a slump but the South East experienced a boom. This was partly fuelled by the house building boom and also by new lighter industries such as the radio and gramophone manufacturing industry and the consumer goods manufacturing industries such as Hoover and Gillette. These were clustered around London.

The house building boom relied mostly on ribbon development: building houses along the arterial roads out of London and on estates beside them. Strings of mock-Tudor style houses, many semi-detached, were built by private builders as speculative investments. They soon sold. Prices ranged from about £380 (£20,600 in today’s purchasing power) to £650 for a semi-detached house with a front and back garden. There would also be a drive for a car. This ribbon development caused concerns about the countryside and a green belt around London was proposed as early as 1935.

Carpets had to be bought; curtains selected; wallpaper chosen; furniture bought for every new home built. This demand kept the boom going. And kept the domesticated woman busy in her new role as consumer as well as homemaker. Woman’s Own guided her in her selections of colours and styles of furnishing.

The Woman’s Own editorial team looked at the objective world and took a domestic slice of it. The team packaged that slice and delivered it in the pages of the magazine weekly. Its women readers could upload themselves into this domestic world, selected by the editorial team, and be guided in their domestic roles as a result.

Woman’s Own hit an important target. Its circulation rose to over 2 million in the 1960s. By 2004 it was down to 435,000. It had not responded well to the rise of women’s issues. It continued to be optimistic and was overtaken by other women’s magazines which would give a more realistic picture of women’s roles. It had kept to the mantra which Margaret Thatcher had voiced in an interview with it: there is no such thing as society, only individuals and their families.

This private, domestic focus was one response to the turbulence of the 1930s; another was taken by Claud Cockburn in The Week: a focus on the public life and what was happening behind it. Cockburn called his publication: “Unquestionably the nastiest-looking bit of work that ever dropped onto a breakfast table.” It was duplicated with dark brown ink on six sides of foolscap. There were no illustrations. Words told the story and drew the picture. And it was a picture which no other publication at its time was willing to tell. Cockburn had resigned from The Times in disgust at its policy of appeasing the new dictators of Europe. Be decided that he could use his many contacts to tell the story of behind-the-scenes manoeuvring to a select band  of subscribers. His was a limited audience, so small that the first issue gained only seven subscribers. But it soon grew. Journalists who could not get their stories into the mainstream press told him what they had heard. He checked. And he delighted in details. The big picture could be told by anybody, but only The Week could get the inside details. He launched it from a small office by Victoria Station only weeks after Hitler gained power in Germany.

He argued that main-stream newspapers needed a wide audience to sustain their income. And so needed to appease a wide audience. He would focus on a small audience, but still people who needed to know what was going on. The circulation built steadily as a result of the quality of his coverage and his insightful analysis grounded in his left wing beliefs. He liked to predict what would happen. He also liked to print rumours as they were as important, he argued, as established facts because people act on rumours. He covered politics, the City and world events.

The breakthrough came during an international economic conference called by Ramsey MacDonald to try to find a way through the depression of the 1930s. The main-stream papers were publishing the official line that the conference, held in secret, was a success. Cockburn was told by his contacts that it was failing and told his subscribers. MacDonald called a press conference and denounced The Week only to have reporters at the conference clamouring for details of the publication. Its subscriptions trebled overnight. It was posted on Wednesday and would be in the hands of London subscribers on Wednesday evening. Well ahead of the weekly magazines. As one subscriber said of it: “The equation of rumour with fact made The Week an intoxicating newspaper: written for the knowing by those in the know…in the august and persuasive language of The Times.”

Cockburn said that The Week “reported exclusively on what was really being said sotto voce by informed observers… All sorts of people, for motives sometimes noble and quite often vile, would approach The Week to draw its attention to the most extraordinary pieces of more or less confidential information. Sometimes it came from frustrated newspaper men who could not get what they considered vital news into their own papers. More often such confidences were the outcome of obscure financial or diplomatic duels. They would come, for instance, from the Counsellor of an embassy who was convinced of the wrong-headed policy of the Foreign Office and the Ambassador and wished, without exposing himself, to put a spoke in the wheel.”

He was convinced that the fascists in Italy and the Nazis in Germany wanted war. He was an impulsive man: he suddenly announced he was going on holiday and left the office. He travelled to France and was sitting in a cafe trying to find something to write about for the next issue when he found a piece of paper in his pocket about an investment ring established to build a road in Abyssinia. He wrote, just in time for the post to London, a piece predicting an Italian invasion into that country along the road. He was right.

When Franco in Spain with the assistance of Mussolini and Hitler tried to overthrow the elected government Cockburn was smuggled into Spain and joined the government’s militia. He was persuaded by fellow Communist Party members that he would better serve the cause as a journalist. He returned and often acted as the foreign correspondent of The Daily Worker, the Communist Party newspaper. He travelled extensively in Europe, collecting information. He even travelled into Nazi Germany under a false passport to get some children of an anti-Nazi out of the country.

He lied for his cause: making up a story about a revolt in the heartland of Franco’s Spanish Morocco to persuade the French government to allow a train of guns and ammunition to pass to the Spanish government despite France’s policy of neutrality in the civil war.

He exposed and named the members of the Cliveden set, a group of English politicians and industrialists who supported Hitler. When war broke out The Week continued to attack the poor preparation for the war, the poor material supplied to the armed forces and the poor general ship of the political and military. For his pains The Week was banned in January 1941 following a long string of Allied defeats. The Daily Worker was also banned by the government. This restriction was later lifted, after Hitler attacked Russia, but The Week could only limp on: Cockburn had decided to have it printed rather than duplicated and the extra costs sunk the publication.

What had Cockburn done for his small group of readers? He had taken a slice of the world, mixed it with his analysis and presented it to them. They could see the world in a different way as a result of his publication: they could see the internal mechanisms of power which he exposed.

Cockburn, P (1968) The Years of The Week London: Comedia

Essays in Magazine Media, No 4, December 2012

Andrew Calcutt

Hello!  was launched in Britain in 1988. Then, as now, it was mainly made up of colour photos of young and successful people taken in a domestic setting – either at home, or with the children, or both. This is an unusually strict diet, which had never been seen before in the UK magazines market.

Hello!  turned out to be a huge success: not only in commercial terms, it also set the trend towards ‘celebrity culture’; but its appeal was not entirely straightforward. Hello!’s readers quickly learned to apply an extra layer of scrutiny, so that featured celebrities who were meant to be admired and even adored, also came to serve as a source of unintended amusement. Yes, readers revelled in the plush interiors and luxury lifestyles on display; also, in the magazine’s early days, in the new-found luxury of full colour photography. But their consumption of Hello! was more knowing than the straightforward celebration of youth, wealth and beauty which the magazine’s producers originally had in mind. Furthermore, Hello’s readers went on to apply this knowingness both to the magazine itself and to themselves reading it. Soon it was widely accepted that Hello! is almost irresistible but at the same time mildly though not inadmissibly embarrassing – something like the cream cake you shouldn’t be eating, or the cigarette you really shouldn’t be smoking. Readers catching themselves in the act of reading, became part of the guilty pleasure associated with Hello!

This essay explains both the initial attraction of Hello!, i.e. how it spoke directly to a particular moment in British social history, and the additional layer of critical self-consciousness which readers subsequently brought to it – even as they have continued reading and buying the magazine in large numbers. (The publisher’s website currently cites ABC-audited sales of 413,311 each week.) But in order to establish the particulars of Hello!, we must first recapitulate and then extend what we know about mediation.

Other essays in this series have established that magazines normally play a mediating role; moreover, this role has two dimensions. First, magazines help to create the middle ground which constitutes the shared space between otherwise atomised individuals. Thus they contribute to our socialisation. As magazines download the world, or a subsection of it, for their readers to enter into, so they also upload their readership into as many subdivisions of the world as there are magazines depicting them. When magazines perform this aspect of their mediating role, readers come to be connected with the world(s) beyond their own, immediate experience, and with other human beings beyond the narrow range of their own, immediate acquaintance.

Yet there is a further sense in which magazines perform a mediating role. In the modern world human experience is inherently contradictory; so too is the recurring position of billions of people whose lives have been caught up in that continuum of contradiction which is perhaps more widely known as ‘capitalism’. In the nineteenth century, journalism (including magazine journalism) was reconfigured to take account of this predicament, and Charles Dickens was first among the journalists who took on the extra responsibilities which it entailed. From now on, the middle ground or mediating space opened up by journalism, was also the place where social contradiction was seen to be addressed and, up to a point, resolved.

Since Dickens’ time, magazines have generally offered a reading of contemporary contradiction (or some, small aspect thereof), combined with partial resolution of that contradiction in terms consistent with each, particular magazine’s own reading of it. But the way that magazines read social contradictions and write up their resolution, is often a mixture of fantasy and reality. In their reading of real-life contradictions, the latter are often made to look more manageable than they really are, i.e. real contradiction is translated into something which is part-real, part-fantasy. The fantasy element means that magazines are formulated partly as a distraction or diversion from reality, even though the performance of their mediating role has real social consequences. To paraphrase W.B. Yeats, the centre could not hold, things would fall apart, if not for the mediating role performed in part by magazines and their three-fold promise – distraction, contradiction, and resolution jointly amounting to the fantastic mediation of social reality.

If all publications perform a mediating role, they do not all perform it in the same way. To the contrary, their performances vary a great deal. For more than a century, magazines and newspapers together comprised a mediating axis between the individual and society. They helped to connect the individual with society, but the distinction between newspapers and magazines also served to differentiate private interests from the public interest. In London, this axis was reproduced in the location of newspaper and magazine offices in a straight line along first Fleet Street (newspapers) and then the Strand (magazines). Like magazines and newspapers themselves, these thoroughfares are adjacent but also distinct.

Located on and around the Strand, those titles with a tendency to gravitate towards the private and particular, came to be defined asmagazines. Meanwhile Fleet Street became known as such for its tendency to generalise rather than specialise: newspapers tended to cluster at the public end of the private-public axis, where they habitually performed their distinctive contribution to journalism’s mediating role in concert with the class-based political activity (Labour Party versus Conservative capitalists) which until recently made up the bulk of their column inches.

Identifying the particular combination of fantasy and reality peculiar to each publication, is also a way of locating its position on the axis between individual and society. Publications which purport to address social contradictions in primarily individual terms, are obliged to be diverting. Since their mode of address is ultimately unrealistic, they also tend towards the fantastic. In most magazines (by no means all of them), society’s predicament is presented as a series of threats experienced by individuals. Magazines also present these same individuals with the opportunity to address such threats and resolve their own, personal difficulties. In this unrealistically narrow purview, the broader pattern of essential, societal contradiction is inadmissible – it is nowhere to be seen; and to this extent in the performance of their mediating role, magazines tend to offer a fantastic resolution of contradictions which are really derived from social order rather than individual behaviour. Hence ‘glossy magazines’: not only for their shiny paper, but also for their fantastic gloss on the reality of social contradiction.

As fantasy is a recurring feature of magazines, so distraction often looms large in their make-up, compared to acknowledging contradiction as it really is, and/or offering resolution. Alternatively, contradiction and resolution are presented in a distracting or fantastic way rather than a realistic one. For example, a 1940s movie magazine such as Photoplay replied to the contradictions in the lives of its readers with a form of resolution that was highly romanticised and individuated. In its studied unreality, Photoplay magazine was more diverting than, say, The New York Times newspaper, which has always aimed to get a grip on reality, for and on behalf of its educated readership. Accordingly, at one and the same time these two publications occupied vastly different positions on the axis between social reality and individually-oriented fantasy. Moreover, their respective positions on this axis were also aligned to the contemporary distinction between magazines and newspapers.

The preceding section has offered an explanation for the different positions occupied by various publications on the axis of mediating activity performed by journalism as a whole. Aside from the respective positions occupied by individual titles, however, there have been occasions when the whole of journalism has tilted on its axis, usually in accordance with fundamental social change. When this happens, the entire range of publications is affected; each title can be seen moving along the axis between public and private, in one direction or the other.

This level of social change did indeed take place in Britain in the period leading up to the launch of Hello! in 1988. Hello!’s immediate success was partly a reflection of what had already occurred in British society throughout the 1980s; but the novel combination of fantasy and reality to be found in Hello! also provided its readership with a new way of mediating the social contradictions which continued to shape their lives. In the performance of this mediating role, the fantasy world of Hello! made a difference to the way people actually experienced what was really happening to them.

Hello!’s success was momentous because it was the magazine for a specific moment in Britain’s recent history. Its address to the contemporary social predicament, was fully in line with the formative experience of the decade – the defeat of the labour movement after a succession of arduous strikes (steelworkers 1981-2; miners 1984-5; printworkers 1986-7, among others), and the discrediting of socialism in favour of privatisation.

In this context, the term ‘privatisation’ does not refer only to the sale of public utilities such as council housing and British Telecom. Such instances of ‘popular capitalism’ should be understood as part of a wider trend which amounted to the reconfiguration of social life on the basis that ‘there is no such thing as society….only individuals and their families.’ In accordance with this declaration, issued by prime minister Margaret Thatcher in a magazine interview given at the height of her political power in October 1987, Hello! (1988) duly provided a picture of the world cropped so tightly that ‘individuals and their families’ – successful individuals in their family setting – comprised the only discernible form of human being.

Thatcher’s Conservative government had won the class war, her right-wing outlook was dominant, and it was only reasonable to assume that ‘there is no alternative’ (another of the prime minister’s declarations) to this extremely narrow characterisation of modern life. In these circumstances, admiring the success stories in Hello!, perhaps even envying the celebrities featured in them, was an entirely plausible response.

In accordance with the traditional role of magazines, Hello! continued to download a slice of the world for the reader’s benefit; conversely, the reader was (briefly) uploaded into that life world. But the way in which Hello! performed this role was unprecedented. It was primarily aimed at women readers in the C1/C2 category, who might previously have indulged themselves in the News of the World. But instead of inky pages and a robust attitude towards the rich and powerful, Hello! offered plush printing and the unadulterated celebration of material success. In 1988, it implicitly invited its readers, especially those in the relatively prosperous South-East of England, to thumb their noses at all the (Northern) casualties of deindustrialisation during that decade. Hello! addressed contemporary social contradiction by cropping the losers out of the picture; effectively dismissing them.

Whereas publications like Woman’s Own had always shut the door on the outside world, they had never denied the existence of the (man’s) world outside. But Hello! went much further. It identified the wider world with the domestic interiors inhabited by young, successful people: this is the modern world, it said. Of course it was fantasy – Hello! embodies a fantastically individuated resolution of intractable, social contradiction. But in the social context of the time, why not luxuriate in it? ‘There is no alternative’, after all. Furthermore, it’s official: ‘there is no such thing as society’. Accordingly, if Hello!’s picture stories could not possibly envisage the millions of working class people who had lost out as a result of recent social change, this is because, under the terms of Thatcherite orthodoxy, they – along with society – simply did not exist.

The above is not, even for a moment, to suggest that Hello! was conceived as political propaganda; rather that, in privatising society into a series of fantastic, domestic tableaux, it dovetailed with the declaration that ‘there is no such thing as society’; and matched the mood of a moment in history in which socialism was seen to be defeated. (It is fitting that Hello! was modelled on Hola!, the publishing success of General Franco’s post-fascist Spain.) Thus Hello! introduced British magazine readers to a form of mediation which was both timely and heavily truncated. Capturing the moment of privatisation, it anticipated the personalisation of news which emerged alongside the further development of celebrity culture. In this respect, Hello’s influence was felt across the magazine sector and throughout journalism as a whole: it helped to tip the whole axis of mediation away from public life towards the private realm. But Hello! itself contained a further contradiction which was to make itself
felt just as widely. By offering an especially myopic solution to the contemporary social predicament, this particular magazine title also anticipated yet another predicament for magazines and their readers.

As we have seen, in general terms magazines have been successful because they succeed in making social contradiction appear more manageable in the mind’s eye of individual readers. They render the unliveable, liveable, largely by the way they re-describe it. This is to reiterate the earlier point that magazines exist on a continuum between fantasy and reality, often with one foot at each end.

But what if the ends are so far apart, and the continuum so thinly stretched across such a wide spread, that the magazine’s position becomes untenable, at least in its original terms? If so, either the magazine has to change, or the reader’s attitude to it will change for the worse, i.e. the punters stop buying.

In the case of Hello!, the distance between fantasy and reality was so wide that it ceased to be a continuum and became a further contradiction. At this point, though the magazine itself did not change very much, the way its readers’ approached it, seems to have altered considerably. Not that they stopped buying, however; rather, they stopped buying in to the straightforward celebration of success and instead started looking at it askance – sideways, from a consciously critical angle. Already they were reading Hello! in a manner that its writers and photographers had not originally intended, bringing a greater intelligence to it than its content ostensibly requires.

In their knowing approach to celebrities, Hello! readers raised the curtain on the second act of celebrity culture in which the gap between fantasy and reality is made explicit, so that we now know we are commuting between these two whenever when we talk about the damaged gods featured in
celebrity magazines. Meanwhile, instead of being applied to magazine content by readers without the publisher’s knowledge, as in the case ofHello!, this level of knowingness was subsequently designed in to the re-vamped version of Heat, re-launched in 2000 around Big Brother and viewers’ critical attitudes towards the ‘wannabe slebs’ of Reality TV.

Heat and Hello! have been close rivals ever since. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, both titles continued to exercise considerable influence in the magazine sector and throughout British journalism.

First floated at the high tide of privatisation, celebrity magazines went on to invite us to share our intelligence in an open-ended conversation about fantasy and reality. This comprised a form of social interaction, post-privatisation. But it is hardly an expansive form of socialisation; instead it is limited to constant, self-consciously critical chit-chat about celebrities. Not so much squared, this is more like intelligence cornered. Though concerns about ‘dumbing down’ are wildly misplaced, in the performance of their mediating role, celebrity magazines have hardly been uplifting. By no means as bad as they have been made out to be in some quarters, compared to the likes of Addison and Steele they make a poor showing of what it means to be human.

Essays in Magazine Media, No 3, December 2012
Andrew Calcutt

Essays in Magazine Media, No 1, November 2012

Andrew Calcutt

Take any picture of Kate Moss. Note the physical attributes which contribute to her instantly recognisable appearance: cheekbones, mouth, hair, skin tone,
body shape, etc, etc. But over and above all these, the eyes have it. Supported by other elements in her physical make-up, her iconic status derives
primarily from her eyes – and the way her eyes are alive. Kate Moss, the 40-something woman who was brought up in the suburbs of south London, becomes Kate Moss, the supermodel’s supermodel, because of the way she is seen looking out upon the world.

Most pictures of Kate Moss show her looking directly at us, the people looking back at her picture. She is gazing at us explicitly; the implication is that
we are gazing back at her, each party evaluating the other in a comparative exchange. In this exchange of views, it is understood that she is looking to
see if we measure up and we are doing the same to her. That’s why she is ‘cool’; and because we are looking back at her on equal terms, we get to feel the
same way.

Kate Moss is a global icon because she is the individual who has come to represent the reciprocal process of continuous, comparative appraisal – a process
which most of us are engaged in much of the time; so much so that we do not even think about doing it. Continuous comparison, active appraisal – constant
performance of these ubiquitous activities forms an important part of our whole way of life; they are key to our culture. Moreover, certain cities – and of
these, London especially – have come to represent this aspect of contemporary culture for and on behalf of the whole world. As a global brand, London is
primarily a way of looking at the world – a world-renowned gaze which the rest of the world is prepared to subsidise; and Kate Moss, in the way she looks,
symbolises this way of looking, perhaps more than any other individual. No wonder she was the face of Rimmel’s long-running ‘London Look’ campaign,
launched in the 1990s.

The London look goes back a lot further than that, however. The culture of continuous comparison originated in London around the turn of eighteenth
century, when London became the fastest growing merchant city in world history. London’s growth depended on the city’s merchants and their characteristic
activity – comparing the price of merchandise against its market value, with the constant aim of selling at a higher price than you bought it for. Despite
the self-interested momentum of mercantile activity, i.e. making a profit by buying low and selling high, the merchant’s profitable margin was also a
variation on the true worth of any commodity. Thus, personal self-interest entailed constant reference to agreed standards, common to the cohort of
merchants, and arrived at by a collective process of continuous comparison. Moreover, this process was not restricted to commodities alone: instead,
people, their morals and their behaviour also came to be scrutinised, almost as if they themselves were commodities subject to the merchant’s continual
appraisal.

Thus the merchant city of London was also the birthplace of a culture of continuous comparison, in which nothing is beyond compare, and all human life is
subject to the same level of scrutiny.

So it is that in contemporary portraits of proto-journalist Joseph Addison, he is often to be found looking at out us, looking back at him, in the much the
same manner as Kate Moss. Furthermore, as Kate Moss is representative of the London look today, so Addison represented the London look of his day; though
in the early eighteenth century, the London look was not so much represented in the way Addison looked as it was by what he wrote and the way he wrote it.

Before going on to examine his writing, however, we should first acknowledge that what Kate Moss and Joseph Addison have in common, is not
common to all periods of human history. On the contrary, with the benefit of hindsight we can see that their level-headed appraisal of whatever appears in
front of them was absent from most pre-modern societies. This means that for most of the people living in earlier iterations of London, throughout all the
previous periods of pre-modern human history, performing the continuous comparison which we take for granted, and which I have thought to summarise as the
London look, would have been almost impossible and well nigh unthinkable.

Take another glance at their portraits: Kate Moss and Joseph Addison are levelling with us. Their eyelines – his and hers – are normally on the same level
as ours. In the earlier iconography of the medieval period, however, human figures and God-like creatures are seen to exist on very different levels: the
former are constantly looking up, their gaze a symbol of their subservience. Meanwhile the objects of their adoration – kings, saints, gods – are looking
down on mere mortals; further confirmation that, at this time, being human meant living in thrall to superior beings beyond our control. There could be no
comparison between us and them, whereas for Joseph Addison as for Kate Moss, everyone is accountable to more-or-less the same standards; and we arrive at
these, same standards by continuous appraisal of ourselves in comparison to everyone else (and of everyone else in comparison to ourselves).

In theory, at least, the modern world is a level playing field; and this is epitomised in the eyelines of iconic figures such as Kate Moss and Joseph
Addison – looking out at us on the same level as us looking back at them.

During the English Civil War which culminated in the execution of King Charles I (1649), the most militant section of the Republican army, the Levellers,
sought to establish a level playing field by force of arms; but they were overruled. Half a century later, when a new social order had been confirmed in
Britain, ratified in the constitutional monarchy of William and Mary (1688), the process of levelling the field of human behaviour was brought about
primarily through trade – notably the expansion of trade to the point where London became the foremost merchant city in the world. This was the
fast-changing context in which Joseph Addison and his publishing and writing partner Sir Richard Steele extended the characteristic habit of continuous
comparison from the markets of London, where it was already commonplace, connecting it to that other locus of comparative study, namely, moral
philosophy.

Here, in their libraries and the books that filled them, philosophers observed how people lived and pondered how they should be living. In other words,
philosophy was continually comparing what is with what ought to be, just as the merchants of London were continually comparing the
commodities currently on the market with the best-ever version of these same commodities; the silk, for example, which is now on sale compared
with silk the way it ought to be. In the midst of this culture of continuous comparison, in the form of two short-lived periodicals, The Tatler (1709) and The Spectator (1711), Addison and Steele created a middle ground between financial and moral speculation.
They made a space for describing, appraising and speculating upon day-to-day human behaviour, with one eye on the markets and the other on moral
philosophy. This space, and the comparative study which characterises it, are what came to be known as ‘journalism’.

Here is what Addison hoped his essays would achieve:

It was said of Socrates, that he brought Philosophy down from Heaven to inhabit among Men; and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me that I have brought Philosophy out of the Closets and Libraries, Schools and Colleges, to dwell in Clubs and Assemblies, at Tea-tables and in Coffee-Houses.

(Addison 1711a)

Addison aimed to bring philosophy to the coffee house. Not that London’s new coffee houses lay empty: they were only recently established as the go-to place for trading commodities; Addison’s contribution was to make them into the place to trade ideas as well as commodities, especially ideas about how we should live. But where would these ideas come from? How would they reach the coffee house? Direct from philosophy, perhaps; more likely, via Addison and his essays. Thus Addison established himself in a new space which he himself helped to create, half-way between the commercial and the philosophical.

In form and content, Addison set about his journalism so that it would constitute the middle ground. When declaring his intention to ‘Enliven Morality with Wit, and to temper Wit with Morality’ (Addison 1711b), in his choice of subject matter he promised to combine moral seriousness with the business-like world of the sharp riposte. Similarly, Addison (ibid) preferred to formulate moral seriousness in the ‘common talk’ of London’s mercantile culture (N.B. ‘common talk’ does not imply vulgar or coarse – these connotations came later; here it is a non-pejorative term for the shared language in which people like Addison commonly converse.) He himself would not have used the following terms; nonetheless it is true to say that Addison was establishing journalism (form) as mediation (content); not least because in contributing to the creation of journalism, he positioned it half-way between the market and the library.

In both these venues, and also in the space between them – journalism, continuous comparison was the order of the day. For such comparison to occur, the people involved must have suspended their other activities, however briefly: the merchant comparing one commodity with another (a real roll of silk with the ideal version, perhaps) may be on the point of deciding whether or not to make a purchase, but the comparison comes to an end as and when he makes a decision and acts upon it. Similarly, the philosopher contemplating how we should live by comparing different modes of living is in the process of coming to a judgement, but he is not yet acting on his own judgement or implementing his decision. In the moment of comparison, whether it is long or short, both merchants and philosophers are standing aside from the action – their own actions as well as other people’s. Poised to act but pausing before doing so, like chess players just before they make their move, they are regarding themselves and the other parties involved; watching, in their mind’s eye, the diverse consequences of various courses of action, none of which have yet been taken.

Less of an actor, more of a spectator – here was a newly extended social position which acquired explicit representation in Addison’s journalism.

In order to highlight this moment of self-regard, in 1711 Addison invented an avatar, Mr Spectator, and made a play of appointing him the editor of his publication. In reality, Addison himself was the editor; but the pantomime he created around Mr Spectator shows how highly Addison regarded this orientation to the world and the capacity for comparative study inherent in it. Similarly, in naming his periodical The Spectator, Addison identified such self-regard – scrutiny applied to oneself as well as everyone else – as the essential social attribute. Introducing his
avatar in the launch issue of the eponymous periodical, Addison suggested that Mr Spectator, by virtue of being a spectator, is in a better position than those unable to stand aside from their normal activities:

Thus I Live in the World, rather as a Spectator of Mankind, than as one of the Species, by which means I have made myself a Speculative Statesman, Soldier, Merchant and Artizan….[I] can discern the Errors in the Oeconomy, Business and Diversion of Others, better than those who are engaged in them; as Standers-by discover Blots, which are apt to escape those who are in the Game.

(Addison 1711b)

Thus Mr Spectator is crowned constitutional monarch of London’s many actors: he does not claim to rule by divine right, as Charles I had done (and lost his head for doing so). But he is a cut-above; by standing aside, he gains an overview. Not that Addison was really recommending a life of pure contemplation; rather, in the voice of Mr Spectator he was saying that human beings behave better for having been inactive spectators, however briefly; conversely, when human action is not informed by at least a moment of scrutiny, it tends to be uncivilised and unworthy of society. In writing and publishing The Spectator, Addison sought to instil self-consciousness as the characteristic trait of a new way of life. Although his publications were short lived, the new London was partly shaped by the way he framed this habit of mind.

But how, on the printed page, did Addison carry out his comparative study? What form would self-consciousness take? A quick glance at the first issue of The Spectator is enough to show that images were not his chosen vehicle. Quite simply, there are no images. Apart from the masthead (loosely defined) and a Latin quotation underneath it, there is nothing on the page except run of copy. For Addison and his generation, and further generations to
follow, form of words or prose style was the crucial element. To our eyes, the style they preferred may seem wordy and unnecessarily complex; but this complexity had a very important purpose. By holding various elements together in the same sentence, Addison et al made the sentence into an instrument of comparison. Thus:

Tho’ the other Papers which are publish’d for the Use of the Good People of England have certainly very wholesome Effects, and are laudable in their Particular Kinds, they do not seem to come up to the Main Design of such Narrations, which, I humbly presume, should be principally intended for the Use of Politick Persons, who are so publick-spirited as to neglect their own Affairs to look into Transactions of State.

(Steele 1709)

This is Steele (rather than Addison; but the two of them worked so closely we can assume they were of like mind) introducing The Tatler, and announcing its orientation to the public interest rather than narrow self-interest. It is an especially significant announcement because it proclaims the existence of that new space – subsequently dubbed ‘the public sphere’ – in which everyone’s behaviour is to be accountable to the same standards. But the way in which the proclamation is issued – its form – is equally significant.

In order to advance his claim, Steele compares his new periodical with ‘other Papers’. Whereas they are ‘laudable in their Particular Kinds’, his will ‘come up to the Main Design’, taking a broader view which encompasses ‘Transactions of State’. Taken as a whole, the sentence is a way of saying: ‘on the one hand there is X, on the other hand there is Y, and Y is preferable to X because of Z’. It is a comparison of two objects (in this instance, existing
‘papers’ compared to Steele’s new one) and their respective merits. Typical of the rounded prose style of Addison and Steele, this sentence also typifies their construction of sentences as instruments of comparative study. In their writing, the rounded sentence or period is the cell form of a whole organism (London and its culture) of continuous comparison. To this end, they were obliged to write sentences of sufficient length and complexity. Short sentences
are not long enough to undertake the comparative study which Addison and Steele assigned to them.

The use of Latin quotations – to us, perhaps even more arcane than their prose style – also performs a comparative role. In quoting from Roman poets such as Horace and Virgil, Addison and Steele were implicitly comparing themselves and their era to that other, earlier form of the examined life, as enjoyed by the ancien regime of Roman citizens (though not by their slaves or the peasantry of the period). On the other hand – and now I am using this
sentence to make a comparison – their regular reference to the Ancients, and their frequent recourse to other forms of writing – letters, dream sequences, dialogues – also indicate that at their time of writing modern journalism was still in the process of being formed: it was not yet sui generis, i.e. of its own kind.

Addison and Steele were among the first to formulate journalism as such, but theirs was very much work-in-progress, not a finished object. Nonetheless, they established the periodical (not yet designated as either a magazine or a newspaper) as a form of mediating activity. For the purposes of this module and the line of inquiry associated with it, this was their most notable achievement.

References

Addison, J (1711a) The Spectator, 12^th March 1711

Addison, J (1711b) The Spectator, 1^st March 1711

Steele, R (1709) The Tatler, 12^th April 1709

Essays in Magazine Media, No 2, November 2012

Richard Sharpe

In the year that Dickens died, 1870, the British Empire was in full flow. It stretched from New Zealand, declared a British colony in 1841, through Australia, which had been colonised in the 1780s, through the whole Indian subcontinent. Britain took an active part in the colonisation of Africa. It had possessions in the Caribbean and controlled Canada. In fact, the foundations of this Empire had been firmly laid in the year 1759 when, in a world war, British land and maritime forces beat the French on land and on sea. In India the British and their Indian allies beat a French army at the Battle of Plassey. In Canada another French army was beaten in Quebec. And, to seal off these victories, a British fleet destroyed the French fleet in the battle of Quebron bay in Southern Brittany. The British fleet was to the west of the French in a howling gale coming in from the Atlantic. The French tried to shelter in the rocky bay but many of their ships floundered; and those that did not were shot up by the Royal Navy. France, without a home fleet, could not communicate with its colonial possessions nor reinforce them. The British Empire had shrunk slightly with the independence of the 13 states of British North America (1776), but expanded again as more possessions were added after the defeat of Napoleon in 1814.

There were several engines to the expansion of this Empire. There might be a threat from over the border of an existing colony which had to be dealt with. This led to the expansion of Britain’s Empire into the Sudan in the horn of Africa. There might be the threat of another Imperial power entering a neighbouring country: this led to three failed invasions of Afghanistan from India. There was always the need for good harbours around the world in which merchant ships and the Royal Navy could shelter from storms and repair. This led to the seizure of the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa en route to and from India. Later there was the need for coaling stations as the navies turned from sail to steam. This led to the seizure of Aden. Finally there was the need to protect British capital, invested abroad and sometimes under threat. This led to the seizure of Egypt.

There were strong forces binding this Empire together. First was the Royal Navy, the largest navy in the world which protected the essential trade routes on which British commerce depended. Then there was “The Victorian Internet”, the world network of sub-sea cables over which telegraph messages flowed. These allowed the British to coordinate the Empire in commerce and military affairs. Britain owned the world’s sub-sea cable networks built by private companies and part financed or subsidies by the government. London was the financial centre of the world. Capital raised in London flowed to build railways in Patagonia, open up sheep farms in Australia, open gold mines in South Africa. Emigration from Britain created other bonds, especially as Scottish and Irish emigrants spread through the Empire. There was also a small colonial civil service, the officers of Empire who through their residences governed from their stations. By the end of the nineteenth century, magazines formed another of the ties that bound the Empire together; but not until the period after
Dickens.

Dickens decidedly did not write about Empire: he wrote about the past in Pickwick Papers, his first successful publication, and in A Tale of Two Cities (London and Paris). Otherwise he kept to a largely domestic agenda. Why would his focus be on Britain? Because, while he was writing, Britain was undergoing its most dynamic phase of development: By the time that he died, Britain’s wealth as a trading and banking nation had been surpassed by its industrial power. Industrialisation was the story behind Dickens’ stories.

In the year that he died, 1870, half of the steel in the world was produced in the UK. Britain led the world in manufacturing capital goods and infrastructure: steam trains for around the world, rails for around the world, steam engines for around the world. Britain was exporting expertise in building canals, railways and cable networks. Britain was also reforming itself. The old methods of buying a place in the military and civil service were abolished, and exams to test the merit of applicants were introduced. This helped to improve the quality of those administering and policing the Empire.
The government of the day also saw the need to develop a newly educated working class; it recognised the urgency of teaching them how to read, write and do arithmetic: the three R’s. This working class was required to understand engineer’s drawings, to make its own calculations beyond those entailed in traditional, craft-based production methods, and to report on what it had done. Each child would have elementary education paid for by the state, in schools erected and run by school boards.

These school buildings can still be seen around the UK. A hundred years ago they were populated by serried ranks of pupils, well drilled in the three R’s and much else. They are clean, not working as their grandparents would have been in mines, sweatshops or factories. They are taken out of the labour market, one of the objectives of education to this day.

The much else that they were drilled in, included the expanse of the Empire and what it was said to signify. On the wall of every school room or certainly in the hall of each school would be a map of the British Empire.

This one is from 20 years later, but you can see the purpose it has. You are part of this Empire. The goods coming into London’s docks are the produce of this Empire. Empire gives you what you have. And it is exotic: there are many people in it not like you. What do you know of them?

From about 1846 to 1873 the UK economy had experienced growth fuelled by its mercantile strength, its banking strength and its industry. This growth was based on the bonds of the Empire. In 1873 there came a shattering blow: the first industrial capitalist crisis of over production, and not the last. There was just too much steel and too many steam engines etc for the world’s economy to absorb. There was cut-throat competition between producers which lowered the rate of profit. They could not pay the same wages as they had in the past. Wages were cut, with little defence of wages since unions were weak. This Victorian depression went on, effectively, for 23 years, until 1896. Britain responded by focussing on the development of Empire. In 1873 Queen Victoria was given the title “Empress of India” by the British government: she had never been there, she never went there. But such as the power of British imperialism that she could be named Empress of an entire subcontinent.

It was not until 1896 that the recession really ended. It ended as a result of higher government expenditure on armaments, the development of what we would call today a consumer economy, and the reduction of wages so that profits rose again. Into this story walks George Newnes. He was a salesman based in Birmingham. He liked the quirky bits in newspapers, the unusual stories which he read to his wife over the breakfast table. He decided to launch a whole magazine made up of these quirky pieces. In 1881 he decided to project his interest and see if there was a market for it. There was. And it lasted until 1984. His magazine, Tit-bits, became a success. He engaged with his readers and the editor, talking directly to his readers about what was worth including and what wasn’t. He formed a conversation with his readers, creating a community which could read his magazine wherever and whenever they wanted and still be a part of this community. He found he had the ability to write fluently, edit a magazine and make money from it. He focused on real life,
jokes and humour.

With Tit-Bits Newnes had created a magazine of diversion.

Newnes made a fortune from Tit-bits. He moved to London in 1885 and started to build a publishing empire with his wealth and talents. His talents included writing well, seeing a market and serving it.

His next venture was The Strand, which became a national institution. He launched it in 1891 and it lasted until 1950. It was for the middle classes: “[it] confirmed their values and fostered and celebrated their achievements” (Jackson 2001 p88).

The location which the magazine takes its title from, The Strand, is significant in itself. This thoroughfare links the City of London (its interests in banking and trade) with the City of Westminster (its interests in government, politics and the law). The Strand had on it shops, restaurants, theatres, a railway station, hotels, banks, pubs and wide pavements along which to promenade.

The Strand
was monthly, cost 6d and included humour, fiction, real life stories, interviews and profiles. It was lavishly illustrated for the day. Writers included Conan Doyle with his masterful creation Sherlock Holmes. It had a regular pattern: title page; full-scale illustration of the first story; fiction story with at least one illustration per double-page spread; reporting story, often an illustrated interview, or a crime and criminals piece; humorous piece; fiction story; picture-based story, such as portraits of celebrities through their ages; and it often ends up with pages of illustrations such s images of watches through the ages.

The Strand
had “an editorial bias in favour of the timeless as against the timely” (Pound 1966, p64). It sold 300,000 copies in its first issue and 400,000 by 1896.

The Strand
told its readers that life was stable (in the end): there were bad things in life like crime but the forces in charge could deal with them. After all, each of Holmes’ cases was resolved.

It was part of the new journalism. The 1890s was the decade of the new. “The Eighteen Nineties were so tolerant of novelty in art and ideas that it would seem as though the declining century wished to make amends for several decades of intellectual and artistic monotony” (Jackson 1939 p15).

By 1896 the economy had recovered. It had been recast with the introduction of branded consumer goods, including the bicycle with pneumatic tyres, and heavy government expenditure on armaments. Wages were pushed down and profits were up. European society, particularly in the UK and France, entered La Belle Époque. Into this growing feeling of confidence Newnes launched Wide World Magazine in 1898 with its slogan “Truth is Stranger than Fiction”. It brought real life stories to its readers from around the world. The magazine lasted until 1965. There were stories from the empire and beyond. Police chased bandits in North West India; lady missionaries took Christianity to the heathen Chinese; how a woman in the USA outwitted the Apaches; how the Mecca pilgrimage is conducted; a woman’s experience as a “girl-diplomat” in Peru; a trial for murder in central Africa; and reports of seeing a sea serpent.

Newnes has established the third point of his triangle saying: the world is strange but understandable through people’s narratives.

Each of Newnes’ magazines took a different slice of the world and the work of human imagination and presented it in a different package for different readers with different interests. They mediated the world differently.

The move to consumer goods meant that these goods had to be advertised to readers in order to gain attention. This lowered the price of the magazine for the buyer. Newnes’ next venture, Country Life, carried advertising on its front cover.

He launched it in 1897 as a weekly and it reached a circulation of 41,000 in its first year. It is still published by IPC and currently has a circulation of 38,000. Country Life links the interests of those with a life in the country: they may be urbanites with a place in the country or true country dwellers, but another slice of life is taken for them.

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) came to the fore in the 1890s. He was a true advocate of Empire. He was born in Lahore, in contemporary Pakistan, and observed the Empire in India and South Africa closely. He admired the Empire builder Cecil Rhodes and what he was trying to do in South Africa: extend the Empire and consolidate British interests. The 1880s and 1890s the scramble for Africa began: European imperial powers invaded parts of Africa to carve out Empires. Belgium seized the Congo. Britain tried to seize the Sudan but its army was defeated. In the late 1890s came revenge: General Kitchener led a Europe-equipped and officered army to invade the Sudan. There resulted the battle of Omdurman in 1898 in which a European-style army led by General Kitchener crushed the native forces defending their country. The USA was also on the move as an imperial power. It was dismantling the remnants of the old Spanish empire in the Caribbean and the Pacific and claiming it for its own. In response Kipling wrote his poem The White Man’s Burden. First published in American magazine, it was later published in The Times. It urged the Americans to take on the responsibility of being an Empire; to send out its best to civilise the “half devil, half child” of allegedly inferior peoples. To stop them warring among themselves; to stop famine, to bring light to their heathen world. But not to expect any thanks from them.

Kitchener was depicted as the sword of Empire, and Kipling as the pen, both imperial icons.

Kipling used the pages of the Covenanter magazine, theCivil and Military Gazette, Lippincott’s Magazine, McLure’s Magazine, MacMillan’s Magazine, the National Review, and the St James’s Gazette to spread a rendition of Empire in which contradictions were partly addressed and provisionally resolved – all of this in a suitably diverting manner. In so doing, he became as famous in his day as Dickens had been in his.

References:

Jackson, P (2001) George Newnes, Farnham: Ashgate (this is the source for most of the Newnes material)

Jackson, H (1939) The Eighteen Nineties London: Penguin

Pound, E (1966) Mirror of the Century, London: Heinemann

Gilmour, D (2002) The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling London, John Murray

Why the C-word won’t work for commercial magazine publishers

Andrew Calcutt, 8 January 2010

‘Let’s make it a community’.

To publishers wondering what to do with their magazines in these difficult times, the prospect of turning titles into communities, sounds increasingly attractive.

10-4-2010

Mark Beachill, 14 December 2009

 

‘For the ‘lads’, the leisure life-world is the pivotal point in a fragmented life, which allows them to fashion a sense of order out of the disorder of the everyday.’ (Blackshaw 2003:22)

‘In an increasingly fragmented world…we are rediscovering new paths to the old ways of forging close-knit social bonds.’ (Churchwell, 2009)