Hard News by Russell Brown

Does this mean North & South is the New Listener?

... there are some interesting trends in the domestic and international markets: what might be the start of a long-term slide for the gossip-oriented women's mags, lad mags [g]oing down the toilet ...

Much and all as I'd personally welcome these trends, I do wonder about the wider implications. Both those forms of publication are quintessentially 'light' reading. Like the cheap Victorian yellowback, which was designed to be read on trains, they're meant to be glanced at -- leafed through -- during brief moments in between other things. Now, with the advent of text messaging, I wonder if that mode of light reading has started to disappear. If you're on a bus, say, you're much more likely to check your messages than take out a magazine (as you might have done five or ten years ago).

And perhaps there's a wider demographic shift here too. Lad and gossip mags have traditionally relied upon a young readership. How many of the cellphone generation, though, read traditional print media at all, or indeed anything other than text messages from their friends?

can you please find an excuse to have Wendyl Nissen & Finlay Macdonald on every week.
how much do they rock!!!!
and i love how everyone is so honest about what they do and don't read and how much they read online
it's refreshing

and who would have thought craft might be the new thing in magazines ;)

How many of the cellphone generation, though, read traditional print media at all, or indeed anything other than text messages from their friends?

Sounds like the sort of generalisation that they pinned on comic book readers back in the 1950s. Give the kids some credit, please. (And I don't mean text credits)...

Perhaps we're nearing critical mass of all the doctor's and dentist's waiting rooms...

and who would have thought craft might be the new thing in magazines

And who thought there would still be outlets selling knitting wool and clothing patterns?

Thanks RB for the link to Media 7. Enjoyed that. Was interested how much fulsome praise was heaped on Lynda Hallinan, editor of NZ Gardener, and for the weekly email newsletter she produces. I've been a subscriber to it for several months and it is a splendid example of the genre.

Anyone interested can get access to it via a link on the NZ Gardener website.

Good episode RB, but can you look at numbering the parts of the video on the website? Not so much for the first, as that's the one that opens, but it's a little confusing as to which I should watch next.

Cheers

Very good discussion - although, on a personal note, I'm a little disappointed that the man walking his dog in the park tonight who I thought was Finlay McDonald plainly....isn't.

Russ, too many Media7 related posts. <<yawn>>

C'mon bro. Hard News. Ya'know?

C'mon bro. Hard News. Ya'know?

ummmm, belt, media7 IS hardNews. <<eyebrow raise>>

in almost every way, slightly tweaked by the graces of the medium.

and who would have thought craft might be the new thing in magazines ;)

Maybe Sunday magazine could do an article on the new craft craze that's sweeping Auckland...

Maybe Sunday magazine could do an article on the new craft craze that's sweeping Auckland...

i know especially since it's such an Auckland specific thing