If you didn’t see it the first time...
... Meta makes magazines great again, the phony war and tortured analogies.
Hello Magazine Makers,
I remember hearing someone quote a BBC exec who was defending the corporation’s habit of rerunning TV programmes by saying, “It’s not a repeat if you didn’t see it the first time.”
It doesn’t even seem worth commenting on in these days of on-demand viewing, listening and reading, but back then I thought, “Wow! That’s genius.”
Well today I’m leaning into that genius and instead of a completely fresh Magazine Diaries newsletter, I’m serving up a few of my favourites from the MD archives.
To be honest, it’s been a huge week and a brand new post felt a wee bit beyond me.
We completed Media Voices’ merger with the excellent Flashes & Flames, and planning is already underway to grow our content and events for media industry executives.
I’m in the final stretch of writing ‘Inside the print revival’ - a report on the realities of the print resurgence - to get it finished for our inaugural Print Summit on June 10th. Come along and get your very own copy.
It’s a bank holiday in the UK and even publishing people need a wee break every now and then.
So, here are three of my favourite Magazine Diaries posts from the last 12 months or so.
Slàinte Mhath
Peter
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I’m not going to rehash the arguments that firing 40,000 fact checkers is a bad idea, a really fucking bad idea. Of course it is. What I would like to do is highlight how Meta following Twitter into their own self-perpetuating Slough of Despond is an opportunity for magazine makers.
I stumbled into a bit of a spat on LinkedIn recently that felt like it could have come straight from the mid-90s. New combatants, upgraded weaponry, but the same old slugfest. Ladies and gentlemen, the Print vs Digital death match. FML!
Comparing what’s happened in the world of music sales over the last 15 years or so with what’s going on in print right now misses some fundamental differences. But if we can ditch the tortured analogies, there is one key lesson magazine makers can learn from analogue music’s fight back.
Magazine Songs
I have a Spotify playlist of songs that reference magazines… What? Music and magazines are two of my favourite things. If you have a favourite magazine song, just reply to this email and I’ll add it to the playlist.
If you want to check out what’s already on there first…