The flood of new titles into the magazine space may well be filling what appear to our biggest publishers to be obvious gaps. These guys don’t skimp on research and they’re past masters at the art of the compelling media argument. Here’s our readership niche, they say, here’s how they think, work, love, play, eat and communicate; and here’s the advertising pool, they go on, who’re eager to help our readers do all the above and more. It’s an impressive show.
So thanks to the likes of Caxton and Media24 and their various affiliates, we now have publications that mine all corners across the women’s, men’s, lifestyle, spiritual and celebrity sectors. We have on-shelf titles dedicated to shopping, to dining, to driving, to decorating. We have, quite clearly, a vibrant magazine industry.
But what we still don’t have is a real journal of opinion. Neither do we have a credible English consumer title dedicated solely to in-depth political and cultural journalism.
Sean Jacobs makes the argument (page 47) that South Africa could use a publication like the US’s The Nation. Such publications, suggests Jacobs, ”write about subjects that no one else would touch since they are not owned by any major media conglomerate.” There’s a hitch, of course. As Jacobs concedes, The Nation – probably the world’s best known opinion journal – has reached break-even only three times since its launch in 1865.
Across the US and Europe you’re spoiled for choice on these provocative and vital journals, and many of them, like The Nation, are funded by benefactors. But there are also those pure journalism magazines that will carry the scintillating 10,000-word feature on contemporary culture, and some make a tidy profit — think New Yorker or The Atlantic.
Our cover story this month (page 17) touches on some of the explanations you’ll get as to why South Africa has neither magazine type. One argument is that our readers are not interested, that there’s no market. Another is the crippling legal and editorial costs of the Mail & Guardian, a newspaper with similar aspirations.
We’ll ignore the non-interest excuse and focus on the second claim. Fact is, this class of media product isn’t launched for the money. Its founding purpose is always a form of idealism. If profit does come it’s usually some way down the track, when a commercial animal figures out how to sell the (inevitably affluent) readership to advertisers. The M&G is becoming the example.
South Africa’s alternative press died when the ANC came to power (see page 34 for the latest venture of Zwelakhe Sisulu, founder of New Nation). Lacking a raison d’etre, the funders left. And it’s the contention of Moeletsi Mbeki (page 23) that today we ”don’t yet have a new class of politically interested capitalists in this country.”
Could that ”yet” be cause for optimism?