IPC sub-editors dictate our nation’s youth. Ha, been a while since I heard that one. There is talk at the Meadi Grauniad that someone wants to re-open The Face. I can almost feel the unusually stiff square binding and remarkably heavy paper already. It was like being a member of a secret league against wankers.
Actually, this isn’t a good idea. Don’t do it, man; think of the 10,000 word 5-part stinker review I’ll have to fill up the blog with. I’m measuring up the space already. The disappointment and bitterness and drunken nostalgia; it won’t be pretty. Especially if you’re planning to rehire this guy:
“How do you maintain the cachet if you give it away for free?” asks one former editor. “Dazed, Vice, etc would murder it. Like Shortlist, it would be read by Polish cleaning ladies on the way home from the 4am shift.
Eh, just a fart then.
The subs [subscription] issue is equally tricky. How do you sell the subs? Who wants it? Or is it controlled subs – free to trendy shops – in which case it has no editorial teeth and no budget.”
This is true, however; once you get into someone else paying for your distribution with a magazine, your editorial independence and therefore, in the long run, your relevance and quality are going down the pan. The old crack about the freedom of the press being restricted to those who owned one was never that clever; there is a long tradition of the most surprising publications running off the same press.
But distribution. Now that’s the tough one. That’s the one the bastards have always controlled.
Update: Laughed.