the london line

I don't know who's backing it.

xpost- Readers clearly do want strong opinions, or else Burchill and Clarkson and Liddle wouldn't be so freakishly wealthy. Editors love a correspondence kerfuffle, and a manipulated one is as good as any. Hornby certainly isn't rich by dint of his journalism.

oh if only Esther Rantzen were alive at this juncture in our history!

Hmm, in a mass market, general interest publication - guessing this is printing at least 150k - the fact is most people don't give a damn about a) extended, theory-heavy reviews; b) by-lines (which only matter, ultimately, to the egos of journalists or those aspiring to be journalists. or their friends)

who said anything about "theory-heavy"?
the point about bylines only being any use to journalists and their egos is utterly facile, though.
bylines allow readers to build relationships with critics and work out whether they can be trusted. they also allow writers to be held accountable when they say something bloody stupid.
still it sounds like your happy with the rather workmanlike writing you find all over the uk nowadays so i won't argue.

xpost haha there is still one thing that can unite the post-ILX diaspora!

i find it interesting that you think that if the nme started publishing 3,000 word penman features today it would see and massive rise in sales - the world has changed - people don't consume music in that way anymore

this is true, to an extent, in music magazines. but i make the point, dave, that you are a) a music journalist b) a certain proportion of music mag readers aspire to be music journalists.

if you were to survey Q's 160k readers about by-lines i would bet the majority would not put any store by them

Could that happen now? Maybe. OK the culture's gone more bite-size and that won't change. But the prominence of personality-led talk radio and TV (and political blogs!) suggests that plenty of people still like a name to latch onto. How to make that work in 'music journalism'? No idea, but I'm not really a journalist.

I think if it did happen then ILM would still mostly hate it.

does q sell that many? anyway, i don't know the answer. word magazine is all about name writers, though, isn't it? as is mojo. i don't read either of these mags myself, but there must be a gap in the market *somewhere*. q is for 13 year olds. word is for people in their mid-late 30s, i guess. what of people in their late teens and twenties?

more so, but they don't sell anything. if you want to get your mag into tescos etc (where a 1/3rd of mags are bought) you need cash and a massive promototion/positioning budget.

dave, i don't see how you imagine a free alt weekly escapes the rules of the market - it still has to sell ads!

on the wider point, i don't think its just the culture has gone more bite size: the diversity of media means people no longer need, or will necessarily tolerate, being told what is great from a top down personality writer.
blogs etc work online because they function as a live discussion - comment boxes and the like. i think the observer's blog is actually very interesting in this respect - people will debate the articles, pull them apart, point to other links. in some senses, this is much more interesting than the paper itself

while people still like a name to latch on to, i think in wider terms people don't look for this in music anymore. music is more wallpaper to other activities now - people don't rush home, sit in their bedrooms, and avidly read the back of a record sleeve anymore. but they might stick on mtv before they go out, or download a couple of tracks from itunes that they've heard on the radio.

I think the need for a magazine-type medium in this world is increasingly redundant. of course, there will always be a small audience who will be passionate. but why buy a mag when you can have ilm for free?

yes i do realise this, but they don't have to worry about circulation.

of course they do! - what do you think determines the amount that they can charge for ads?

Q 162,574
Mojo 111,815
Uncut 106,224
New Musical Express 68,070
Kerrang! 61,844
BBC Music Magazine 55,383
Total Guitar 50,006
mixmag 46,162
Classic Rock 42,030
Classic FM - The Magazine 40,805
Gramophone 39,139
Metal Hammer 38,313
Guitarist 28,353
Word Magazine 24,824
Rock Sound 22,014
Guitar Techniques 21,137
Future Music 18,545
I Love Pop! 17,351
Hot Press (Osnovina Ltd) 15,232
DJ (Highbury Lifestyle) 12,320
The Guitar Magazine 11,918
Rhythm 10,866
The Fly 250
RWD 25

(published copies only, explaining the bottom two)

the point i am making is that, yes, there is probably an audience for a london review of music type publication - but it is not going to sell anything more than 20,000 copies, which is fine, though not economically viable for any big publisher.

Kerrang shot itself in the foot when it started to cover indies bands and dropped its old formula of big photos for your bedroom wall and plenty of words for those who want them. Also emap's treatment of freelancers was notably despicable. Ashley Bird has 'quit' to follow his rock dream, though everyone knows he was pushed.

I'm enjoying the publisher v editor dynamic of this thread, esp monkface v stelfox.

like that was what i said at all. just forget it. this is not what this thread is about. and why do you believe that no more than what amounts to 1 per cent of the population of london will "buy" a free publication packed with high-quality writing about the city they live in, art, music, theatre, cinema, books etc? it can work in new york, why can't it work here, or are we actually as stupid and backward as many americans think we are?

such as

an expanded version of The Guardian Guide
+
maybe printed versions of online weeklies:

Kultureflash
http://www.kultureflash.net/

Flavorpill
http://london.flavourpill.net/

i'd argue that because the voice has heritage, and the fact that it got in there before time out, it inhabits something of a unique position. in london, any attempt to go up against time out over the past 20 years has failed. is this because the writing was not good enough? or does it suggest that with every broadsheet doing arts coverage these days there simply isn't a substantial market here?

I think the question of 'good, innovative writing' is also very loaded. What is exactly wrong with OMM or Friday Review? What do you think is missing here? Lengthy pieces on dancehall? think pieces on authenticity and MIA or What is Pop?

spins on such things happen all the time - eg the conceptual space occupied by kate moss (3000 observer review a couple of months back), the psychology of summer pop (3000 words indy on sunday a while back)

you can go and do something better - i would like to read it - but i have a feeling that doing so would be a lonely, penniless place and would be essentially a vanity project for disillusioned journalists. OR do it online, where you are likely to find a far greater audience

But generally I agree. The money necessary for a start up is so huge that the only 'independent' publisher with the infrastructure in place is Time Out, which doesn't distribute through the usual network, and they're hardly going to welcome the competition. No one has mentioned good for nothing, a far better produced title than London Line and a brave venture.

Yay! Gramophone beats Metal Hammer!

I think I will get Gramophone on my way home.

Obviously everyone who writes in Gramophone is an arsehole.

OMM has to essentially appeal to music fans who don't buy music magazines (and, seemingly, the odd jazz fan) - in terms of covering across the board it does very well. and it gave run the road album of the year! a bold move. and as for the features they ARE very well written. much the same could be said of friday review - i, personally, don't have much interest in art, but adrian searle or whoever is writing about the new hirst, is enough to keep me happy.
as for mr cynical, i'd argue he's an incredibly gifted writer, able to write for that audience brilliantly, and imagine his fans - people who buy 20 cds a year - double his detractors

I have to be cagey as it's an open forum. All the publications mentioned above that I've had experience of writing for have their pluses and minuses, but I'm a chickenshit freelancer and prefer to keep my gob shut. Feel free to email me, if you like, although I know it's against the spirit of open discussion...

I think any writer with even a minimal amount of pride in himself or herself would want to aim higher than the treadmill of providing comfort food for solvent retards.

I think any editor with even a minimal amount of pride in himself or herself would want to stimulate the highest denominator of their readership rather than continually kowtow to the lowest on the basis of what advertisers - as opposed to publishers - feel is their demographic.

I'm a freelancer who also has a fair amount of what Peter Sellers used to refer to as "fuck you" money, and thus I'll open my gob as and when I see fit.

I do not consider it a healthy situation when publications are run on the basis of fear rather than love.

Given the ongoing destitution and starvation in the Third World which is a direct result of "market forces," you'll forgive me if I don't put my trust in "the market."

I do not consider it a healthy situation when publications are run on the basis of fear rather than love

please come down from your cloud. this is simply evidence that you have no idea about what running a magazine with a mass circulation entails. editors can think what they like, but they do what they are told - unless they are running very small publications. magazines are run by big business, you might not like this in the same way that you probably chose not to shop at tesco, but it is the reality of the situation. to launch a mass market magazine you need millions.

as for "providing comfort food for solvent retards" this is merely indicative of your elitist outlook. i don't have a problem with this, but at the same time i have intelligence to realise that there aren't likely to be thousands of people queueing up with the same opinion. it is an utter fallacy to think that 'if only marcello carlin had his own vanity publication to spew out 4,000 words on why 1985 was no good for music people' you'd discover a whole new market for a magazine or newspaper.

You look to the LRB - which sells around 45K copies, and even that is massively inflated by the fact that they give away an extra subscription to subscribers who renew. they also have a massive academic audience. why do you suppose that there the market for a LRM is any bigger given that most people can get their music reviews in hundreds of other places?

where there is a market for this, i would argue, is online. i don't understand why you are so wedded to a print, other than to serve your own ego

now crawl back up king's reach tower and write 200 words about nimble basslines, there's a good lad.

voice now is somewhat unlike the voice of the mid-fifties. TO is likewise not very much like the TO of the late 60s and 70s. it obviously has the potential to be better, but i wouldn't write it off. it's still very popular.

Cheltenham Jazz Festival
Encompass
TripTych Festival

What do the NME focus on instead an exclusive interview with trad plodding outdated Oasis

Ofcourse there is a market for a weekly music/ culture publication that serves a totally different market compared to the NME !

oh: also: i got some old nmes recently. be surprised: ian penman did not write 3000wd theory-heavy essays. he wrote, you know, reviews of things. interviews. with jokes and stuff.