[Article] 'In Dublin' and 'Magill' close due to falling advertising

Victor

Looks like Mike misses the money from the hookeres.

'In Dublin' and 'Magill' close due to falling advertising
From:ireland.com
Tuesday, 7th October, 2003
Emmet Oliver

Several leading magazines, including Magill and In Dublin, are to close due to a severe downturn in the media sector.

Their publisher, Mr Mike Hogan, said falling advertising revenue and poor trading conditions meant it was no longer feasible to publish the titles. Irish Wedding & New Home and High Ball magazines are also closing.

The closure of In Dublin and Magill brings to an end a long colourful era in magazine publishing, with both titles often making the news rather than just reporting it.

Mr Hogan said over the last six months he sought to find a buyer for the stable of titles, but no offers were submitted. The company which publishes them, Ink Publishing, made a loss of €1.3 million, according to accounts for the year to December 2001. A creditors' meeting is expected later this month.

Mr Hogan said the decision was taken with regret, but the financial losses were not sustainable.

He said competition in publishing was now more intense. "When I started off magazines had plenty of space in the market, but with newspapers increasingly crowding into the market, things have changed radically."

He said the general downturn in the economy also played a part. "As everyone knows, advertising budgets have been cut throughout the industry, and that has to take a toll eventually."

Mr Hogan said 12 full-time staff would be lose their jobs because of the decision. The rest of the magazines' material was generated by freelance journalists.

In April the downturn in the advertising industry was cited as the main reason for the closure of the women's magazine Who, which Mr Hogan also published.

The magazine attempted to compete with British celebrity titles like Now, but found it difficult to compete on cover price.

The Irish magazine sector is currently under serious financial pressure, with several publishers posting large losses.

The lack of advertising revenue is the main cause, and some observers believe there are too many titles in the market. The admission last year that certain titles owned by the Smurfit Group had overstated their circulations also damaged the sector.

However, in recent times the industry has pointed to greater regulation, and attempted to convince advertisers that advertising in magazines represents better value than other media options.

Magill and In Dublin: a potted history

For magazines with relatively modest circulations, Magill and In Dublin have certainly created plenty of controversies over the last 20 years.

Magill in particular has a distinguished record for breaking controversial political stories. From the arms trial to planning corruption in Dublin, the magazine has managed to regularly beat the national press to ground-breaking stories. The magazine's sardonic tone and constant harassment of politicians has been its unique selling point.

However, Magill and In Dublin were both creations of the 1970s and early 1980s, and neither publication has managed to achieve lasting commercial success since those heady days.

In fact in recent years journalism at Magill has cost publisher Mr Mike Hogan serious money. In May 2002, for instance, Magill was forced to pay €25,000 to a charity and to apologise to the Tánaiste, Ms Harney, for a "seriously defamatory" article. Legal costs for Magill were estimated at the time at over €110,000.

The magazine in the 1980s was edited by some leading journalists, among them Vincent Browne, Fintan O'Toole, John Waters, Brian Trench and Colm Toibin. Among its favourite pre-occupations was the finances of former Taoiseach Mr Charles Haughey. The publication of diaries by former Department of Justice secretary general Mr Peter Berry gained the magazine great kudos.

Magill was relaunched in August 1997 after a six-year gap by Vincent Browne and journalist John Ryan. It immediately put itself back centre-stage with exclusive revelations about DIRT tax evasion and Allied Irish Banks. It also produced stories concerning planning corruption in north Co Dublin, and these were subsequently investigated by the Flood tribunal.

In Dublin started life as a counter-cultural listings magazine, but in the 1990s most of its notoriety sprang from its decision to carry highly-suggestive adult advertising.

In August 1999 this led to the Censorship of Publications Board banning the magazine because a number of its editions were "usually or frequently indecent or obscene". Suggestions that some of the advertisements might have encouraged prostitution caused a furore. In October 2000, Mr Hogan had a €63,000 fine imposed on him in the Dublin Criminal Court for publishing adverts promoting brothels and prostitution.

mike65

Sigh! The end of an era....

In Dublin was always low grade sh!te for the most part while Magill has'nt been a good read since it went bust the first time.

Making magazine publication pay in a market as small as this one is nearly imposible so those subs from brothels quite possibly was the difference between viability and failure.


Mike.

DadaKopf

Having been peripherally involved in a soon to be released Irish mag, I've realised that the only way to go right now is to make magazines free. Otherwise no one will read them.

I think for too long, the public has let magazine owners and editors get away with murder pedalling horse-grade pulp at us for too long. With a few notable exceptions, most magazines don't bother trying to up the stakes of magazine quality in this country because they think the public doesn't care. Yeah, we don't care because you don't care so we don't buy your overpriced magazines! The articles are poor and the quality is rubbish and totally boring.

It's only been with the success of The Slate, The Yoke, and the new look Hot Press that things seem to be looking up but we're a conservative lot. I mean, the Sunday Tribune is *still* struggling and it's clearly one of Ireland's best weekly papers. I dunno.

I'm personally not sorry to see In Dublin go - I still don't know what the hell it was there for in the first place except for maybe advertising hoarding for Dublin's seedy underbelly. Magill I never read but nobody ever talked about it except for the dumb libel case.

At least with free magazines, you can guaruntee people will pick it up. And there's probably more freedom to experiment cos you're not so dominated by market demographics or whatever.

The Phoenix is weird, though. It's a magazine whose readership is really a select clientele of hack journalists, politicians and backhander businessmen but still it sustains itself.

Irony is: now that our economy is is in recession, printings costs are at an alltime low! I hope this once agian becomes a golden age of Irish magazines like it was in the 70s and 80s!

Victor

There is also the matter that "In Dublin" was / tried to be a glossy with the associated cost. The "Event Guide", "The Slate" and several others use newsprint and their objective as listings magazines is to get across information, not look "noice".

Magill was a mould breaker, insofar as it did a lot of ground-breaking journalism in it's earlier incarnation and up to the "In Dublin" / hookers (Hogan was personally taking - and keeping - cash to put in ad.s for prostitutes) debacle looked as if it might return to it's former highs. Those events lost him all respectability and lost him the editor of Magill, from which Magill never recovered.

Of course the name of the publishing company is "Hoson" - son of a ho(oker).

DadaKopf

Well, whether this new magazine succeeds or not will be the real litmus test, eh?

'S called Mongrel. I think it's out now.

DadaKopf

... and now The Slate's gone bye bye.