• Emap has sold its business-to-business magazines to Guardian Media Group and private equity firm Apax – which owns Incisive – for £1bn.
• Sugar has launched Sugarscape.com, 'the web’s first social bookmarking tool for teen girls'
• Yeomans at Harper's Bazaar is BSME's editor of the year; Monkey wins innovation gong (Guardian)
• Chat slammed for fake murder picture
• Future to start up contract arm in US
• Vanity Fair to launch in Spain in 2008
• Neville Brody is to join the first debate on November 22 to be held by the new Editorial Design group set up by Paul Harpin (Haymarket) and Jeremy Leslie (John Brown, Magculture blog).
• The BBC has delayed launching its news magazine
• The Guardian has archived its contents since 1821
• Dennis profits on the rise with The Week
• Alma Media to launch Vicinitee for workers in London's Gerkin building
• IPC has bought product review website Trustedreviews.com
• Laurence King has published Editorial Design by Yolanda Zappatera
• Designers have set up a new trade body
• The ABC is to give monthly sales figures (Guardian)
• Future Publishing has sold its French arm for £13m
• BBC Worldwide has bought travel books publisher Lonely Planet
• A first issue of Oz (February 1967) has fetched £560 on Ebay
• Tim Southwell, Golf Punk founder and Loaded editor, has set up Mind How You Go Media
• Wallpaper is to move to 12 issues in 2008, splitting June/July
• Pornographically Dazed with digital mags (Magforum blog)
• BBC to launch genealogy title on Sept 25 (Guardian)
• Hachette suing Media Week
• Pick Me Up editor June Smith-Sheppard has led the development of online women's community Goodtoknow.co.uk for IPC
• NatMags has closed its digital magazine Jellyfish (Guardian)
• IPC's celebrity weekly Now has been redesigned (Aug 13 issue)
• Jan-Jul ABC figures to be released on Thursday, 15 August
• Emap's First to relaunch in September
• NatMags relaunches Esquire
• Harper's Bazaar changes name, again
• Glamour is to cut its cover price to £2
• IPC to launch Nuts TV on Freeview
• More! to go weekly from September
• Emap is selling its Irish radio stations for about £135m
• Vogue loses perfume battle Magforum blog)
• Dennis sells UK titles for £120m (Guardian)
• A tribute to journalism tutor Bob Atkins who died last week
• Nick Bradley is IPC’s new director of digital advertising
• A book on Diana by Tina Brown, former Tatler and New Yorker editor, comes out this week
• Press Gazette owner Wilmington is to sell titles with £20m turnover
• 171-year-old Lloyd's List has switched to Berliner format
• Former FHM and Maxim editor Ed Needham on how the web and 'trashy' weeklies have destroyed men's monthlies (Guardian)
• Games website developer Eurogamer Network and customer publisher MediaClash form Euroclash
• Men's Vogue has sent a journalist and 2 snappers with Tony Blair on his trip to Africa, according to the Daily Mail's 'Vanity Blair'
• NME will come with a White Stripes vinyl single on June 6
• IPC to close last year's Loaded spin-off Fashion Inc
• Emap loses its boss, launches Heat website and announces 'in-line' results, all in a week – and it looks like its Australian consumer magazines and French exhibition could soon be for sale
• BBC to spend £1m relaunching Radio Times
• BBC Magazines is to close It's Hot
• The May 14 issue of the New Yorker has a quadruple cover
• Future is to redesign Total Film
• Harper's Bazaar is PPA consumer magazine of the year; Property Week took the business title; 33 Thoughts the contract gong; Building and What Car websites won the online awards
• Guy Campos to edit Retail Newsagent
• FT to launch sports supplements
• Strand closes What's on in London (Guardian)
• Louise Matthews, MD of Emap Entertainment to leave
• IPC has launched InStyle website
• Trojan has closed Ice replacement Switched On though the website lived on for a while
• Sunday Telegraph Fashion supplement (September)
• Emap looks at overhaul
• Wisden has sold its Cricketer title and The Oldie
• Haymarket's Autocar to relaunch in larger format
• TV and Film Memorabilia from Warners Group (April 20)
• Future's Official PlayStation Magazine to run monthly Blu-ray disc covermounts from June with playable game demos and film clips Magforum blog
• Emap finalises new company structure
• Time Out Manchester and Liverpool launch delays
• Ofsted report praises teen titles
• The Week to publish web-only issue on April 20
• Jackie Magazine: A Girl's Best Friend is on BBC2 at 9pm (Apr 9). Newsreader Fiona Bruce revealed as a photo strip model
• A Jakarta court has cleared the editor of Playboy Indonesia of distributing indecent pictures and making money from them. The judge said the prosecution had failed to take account of press freedoms created after the 1998 downfall of President Suharto
• Sleek added to Glossies section
• Phil Wallis has taken on the new role of senior producer, digital, at IPC Ignite, which publishes Nuts, Loaded and NME
• 175 jobs to go at Emap, including publisher of Arena and Zoo, and publisher of More
• Deadline, ITV2's reality TV show where 10 celebrities try to put together a mini-magazine under Janet Street-Porter (whose first editorship was Sell Out in 1975) starts Wednsday (April 5) at 10pm. The result will be published with Closer
• IPC to increase prices of What’s on TV (by 1p to 43p) and TV Easy (by 2p to 42p) from April 10
• Woman & Home's May issue has a travel size (237mm x 185 mm) sold only at WHSmith Travel outlets (March 29)
• BBC to license articles to US syndicator (Guardian)
• Exact Editions has launched a blog
• Emap is retrenching further by selling its Irish radio stations
• BBC's Bristol arm to launch Countrywide TV spin-off (Guardian)
• Hello! launches in Delhi (Guardian)
• Forbes Russian publisher 'craven' Guardian
• Time fakes Reagan tear and causes outrage
• Relaunches for www.countrylife.co.uk and www.glamourmagazine.co.uk websites
• Sunday Times writer Giles Hattersley to be the next Arena editor
• Grazia apologises to Kate Winslet over eating claims
• Oksar Ltd has launched quarterly Anorak for children
• IPC's Look has started advertising on buses in cities
• Hachette US is to follow the closure of Shock with Premiere
• Boys too fickle, says Observer's Janice Turner
• Magforum launches case studies on news magazines
• PPA sees consumer titles at record high
• IPC's Auton sees digital threat Observer
• Time Out's Sell Out added to 1975 launches page
• Essential has suspended publication of Real
• Travel size of In Style from April issue (March 7) at WHSmith
• Emap shares have had a torrid time after it warned on profits
• Emap has bought YoSpace, a mobile user-generated content business
• Elleuk.com website to go live Febuary 1
• Scented inks to be used on US papers
• News Magazines closes Inside Out
• New International planning Spectrum news weekly, according to Media Week
• Tesco threat to Loaded
• BBC news weekly NewsBrief for April
• Judge rules on Kerrang 'pleasuring himself' jibe
• News Magazines drops women's launch for contract title (Guardian)
• IPC tempts Condé Nast’s Maria Milano to run In Style website
• NatMags' Coast to go monthly
• New Woman editor Helen Johnston to edit Now
• Time Inc cuts 300 jobs
• Hollick’s KKR stalking Pearson/FT with £7bn buy-out
• Real to go monthly at £1.40 from February issue (Jan 19)
• Max Power to relaunch
• Shakeup Media developing free London daily Newsstand
• NatNags sets up cross promotion between She and aboutyou.com and Company with getlippy.com
• Alex Russell new group ad director for IPC Southbank
• Karen Livermore replaces Elsa McAlonan as Woman’s Own editor
• Fashion photographers on their favourite cover shots (Independent)
• Haymarket has bought www.pistonheads.com
• Trinity Mirror shuts magazine unit (Guardian)
• In Style to launch website in April
• Country Life celebrates 110 years (January 4 issue)
• 'Lola' women's weekly at News Magazines

The BBC on the future of newspapers

5 November. BBC Radio 4 is running a series this week on the future of newspaper, Can Newspapers Survive? is fronted by Guardian columnist Kim Fletcher. This is backed by three investigations of news issues, including coverage of the disappearance Madeleine McCann, and the editorial and ethical questions raised.
The British newspaper industry

Murdoch outlines WSJ plans

Such a strategy would see it come up against the New York Times, but would probably be a relief for the Financial Times. The FT came in for a criticism two years ago that it was moving away from its business base, most prominently from Andrew Neil, a former editor of Murdoch's Sunday Times.

Kelsey on black faces

October 18. Former Cosmopolitan editor Linda Kelsey has blamed the conservative nature of the industry for the lack of black models on magazine covers – and the fact that there are so few black celebrities. Speaking on Radio 4's Woman's Hour, She recited an anecdote from when she was Cosmo editor that distributors had warned her off using a black model because such covers did not sell. The magazine used the black model and she said it had no discernible effect on sales. Nowadays, such titles no longer used models, but celebrities instead, she said. Also, Kate Moss would be used rather than Naomi Campbell because she was guaranteed to sell copies.

The interview comes after a Guardian report this month asking 'Why are all the models white?'
Why are all the models white?

Time Out turns 21 in Sydney

Time Out has launched its 21st edition in Sydney. The title will be a monthly for October before going weekly on October 24. The 'teaser' debut issue has 96 pages for $1.95 covering art, books, fashion, film, food, drink, music, nightlife and TV with a print run of 35,000 copies. The weekly price was not disclosed. The licence is held by Print and Digital Publishing, a company set up by Justin Etheridge and Michael Rodrigues. The editor is Angus Fontaine, who has strong competition from Drum, Sydney Star Observer and 3D World, as well as pull-out guides in the Sydney Morning Herald and Daily Telegraph.
Time Out Sydney
Time Out profile

Vogue launches in India

Vogue's 17th edition has launched in India with a 50,000 print run. The magazine is edited by Priya Tanna and will compete with western spin-offs Cosmopolitan, Maxim, Hello, Marie Claire and Time Out as well as local titles. The first issue cover shows Australian model Gemma Ward between Bollywood actresses Bipasha Basu and Priyanka Chopra. The cover folds out to show local models MoniKangana Dutta, Preity Zinta and Laxmi Menon. The cover shot was by Patrick Demarchelier and styled by British Vogue fashion director Lucinda Chambers.
Condé Nast profile

Mag Scene careers guide from PTC

The Periodicals Training Council has launched a careers guide, Mag Scene. The guide is for students and anyone interested in a career in magazines and covers a range of sectors and job roles, from media law to creative advertising. The free, 68-page booklet will be sent to universities, careers advisors, schools and publishers. Ruth Ganthony, training administrator at PTC, interviewed people in the industry to profile the job roles in consumer, business, specialist, customer, data and online publishing.

Economist expands ads

September 20. The Economist is to launch a campaign on September 22 with seven new ads by illustrators:

• 'Follow the herd' by Seymour Chwast
• 'Afraid of the dark' by Geoff McFetridge
• 'The worst thing to lose'by Non-Format
• '100,000 braincells die' by Mick Marston
• 'Dissection' by Matthew Green
• 'The world revolves' by Non-Format
• 'Know everything' by Fine 'n' Dandy

The copywriter was Mark Fairbanks with art direction by Paul Cohen at AMV BBDO.
Economist website
News magazines

Shortlist dummies seep out

20 September 2007. Shortlist, the free men's weekly, launches, having released at least 3 dummy covers. Two of these are on the left. The title will also be available as a digital magazine using the same Ceros technology as Monkey. The magazine and website was reported as having a combined marketing budget of over £2m and half a million copies were distributed.
Mike Soutar plans to launch a free men's weekly
Men's magazines history
Men's magazines A-Z

Economist spin-off Intelligent Life

September 3. The Economist has relaunched its annual magazine Intelligent Life, as a quarterly. The magazine aims to 'explore the passions and pleasures of the 21st century: from travel and food to philanthropy and health; from fashion and shopping to design and the arts'. The brief to attract 'an upmarket, elusive audience' pits it against Monocle, Portfolio and the Financial Times' How to Spend It.

Articles in the September issue include:

• 'La Chasse': the French hunt, by photographer Mike Goldwater;
• Dave Arnold, the $10,000 gin & tonic and molecular gastronomy;
• The wine inspector: sizing up the 1,000-wine tome at London's Restaurant Gordon Ramsay
• How LEDs will light up your life.

Editor Ed Carr has appointed Tim de Lisle, rock critic of the Mail on Sunday and a former editor of 'Wisden', as deputy editor; Rebecca Willis, travel editor of Vogue as associate editor; and Isabel Lloyd, former features editor of the Independent, as commissioning editor. Magculture has reported that the Tomato’s John Warwicker is behind the design.

Intelligent Life prepares
News magazines profile

BBC History in digital one-off

August 26. BBC History has created a 14-page digital version to coincide with the British Museum's Terracotta Army exhibition. It uses Ceros technology, like Dennis lads' mag Monkey and the late teen title Jellyfish.
BBC profile
Ceros Media

ABC sales - headline results

August 16. The Audit Bureau of Circulation released circulation figures for the period Jan-Jul 2007 today:

• Look, IPC's high street fashion and celebrity weekly has first ABC of 318,907 against 220,125 for Grazia – up 26%.
• Emap monthly New Woman lost nearly half its sales, at 122,634.
• Real-life and traditional women's weeklies nearly all took a hit. Bauer’s Take a Break was down 5.9 per cent to 1,018,423 and IPC’s Chat fell 7.7 per cent to 511,510.
• It was a bad year across the board for the lad's mags:
• Nuts (269,498) extended its lead over Zoo (186,732) to 90,537 copies, but fell 9% in the process to 277,269;
• IPC monthly Loaded fell 35% year-on-year to 120,492;
• Emap's FHM sold 311,590 copies, down 25.9% year-on-year;
• Emap's Arena fell 23.1% year-on-year to 30,886;
• Dennis's Maxim was was down 26.3% year on year to 107,687;
• GQ was a tad up at 127,886.
• What's on TV kept its pole sales position for IPC, but Bauer's TV Choice is catching up (giving the German group some solace as Take a Break carries on sliding down).

Felix Dennis on Desert Island Discs

Maxim founder Felix Dennis appeared on the BBC's Desert Island Discs on Sunday August 12. Dennis was one of the founding editors of 1960s Oz, a publisher of computer magazines at VNU and recently sold the US arm of the his company to fund the planting of the biggest forest in Britain. He chose as his discs:

1. 'One Too Many Mornings' by Bob Dylan
2. 'Come Into My Kitchen' by Robert Johnson
3. 'Have You Heard?' by John Mayall and the Bluebreakers with Eric Clapton
4. 'Bloomdido' by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie
5. 'Mother' by John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band
6. 'You Came A Long Way from St Louis' by Peggy Lee
7. 'Memphis, Tennessee' by Chuck Berry
8. 'Bim Bam Baby' by Frank Sinatra

Ultimate choice: 'One Too Many Mornings'
Book: The Dictionary of National Biography
Luxury: A very long stainless steel shaft to encourage pole dancing mermaids.

More details can be found on the DID pages.
Dennis profile
Desert Island Discs

IPC strengthens digital output

July 24. IPC has launched what it claims is the UK's only shooting web portal with Shootinguk.co.uk. The company's Inspire division, which publishes The Field, The Shooting Gazette, Sporting Gun and Shooting Times, is behind the site.

IPC has also strengthened Insight, its consumer research division, by creating a new role of digital insight analyst. Alexandra Woolford from cruise holiday company Ocean Village has been appointed to the post. Her job will be to improve the company's understanding of how consumers are using the web and IPC's online channels.

IPC has launched instylemagazine.co.uk and home interest portal housetohome.co.uk this year. In the past month it has appointed its first director of digital advertising and first online design editor for advertising.
Shootinguk.co.uk
IPC profile

Intelligent Life to expand

July 24. The Economist's annual lifestyle title Intelligent Life is to become a quarterly from September. It will use the slogan 'Lifestyle. Now with substance' and be edited by Edward Carr, a former Financial Times news editor. The relaunched magazine will cost £4.95 and appear in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The interface between news, business and lifestyle is a sector that is being shaken up by the likes of Tyler Brûlé's Monocle (which claims 2,500 subscriptions since launch) and Condé Nast’s Portfolio. The Financial Times - which owns half of the Economist - publishes a monthly lifestyle magazine How to Spend It.
News, business and lifestyle magazines

Soutar plans free men's weekly

July 18. Mike Soutar plans to launch a free men's weekly – Shortlist – that aims to get away from the downmarket image of Nuts and Zoo.

Soutar, who has been editor of lads' monthly FHM and was editorial director of IPC Media when Nuts was launched, has joined forces with former Emap chief Sir David Arculus to raise funding.

The title aims to distribute 500,000 copies a week in the autumn and follows on the success of the free weekly Sport in London. Like Sport, it will also be available as a digital title using Ceros technology. It has been developed by Crash Test Media and has the working title Alpha One. The backers include Beano publisher DC Thomson.
What Emap has lost

Cosmo Girl to close

June 22. The National Magazine Company is to close its teen monthly Cosmo Girl!. Although the title was selling almost 130,000 copies in the second half of last year, the writing may have been on the wall when the company chose not to use the brand for its digital magazine offering, Jellyfish, earlier this year.

The title was launched in October 2001 and is the latest in a string of casualties in the teen sector.
Nat Mags profile
Teen magazines case study
Jellyfish launch

FT pulls out of WSJ running

Marketforce deal with WH Smith

June 15. WH Smith is to change the way it displays magazines. Over the summer, the retailer’s 535 shops will switch from selling ranges based on their size to individual ranges and display plans that Marketforce, the IPC-controlled distributor, has tailored to suit each store’s sales profile. WH Smith accounts for about 12% of magazine sales in the UK. However, its dominance is being challenged by supermarkets – Tesco and Sainsbury together now also account for about 12%. Distributors appoint regional wholesalers (Marketforce uses 70) who handle the physical distribution to some 53,000 retailers who sell newspapers and magazines in the UK. The distribution system was subject to a controversial Office of fair Trading inquiry in 2006.
Marketforce
WH Smith

IPC and Future strengthen digital side

June 13. IPC has created a new role of director of digital advertising and appointed Nick Bradley – digital sales director for Hachette Filipacchi - to fill it. And Future, one of the first UK publishers to take digital production techniques and ther web seriously, has taken on Seb Bishop as an independent non-executive director. Bishop founded Espotting Media (now Miva), which pioneered search marketing and pay-per-click advertising in Europe. He already sits on the boards of Steak Media, a UK search engine marketing agency, and Adjug, a European online advertising exchange.
Future profile
IPC profile

Utopia Kitchen & Bathroom

July. Pro Publishing, Colchester. Monthly. £3.99; 164pp. Ed: Rebecca Rushmer
Utopia is a high-spec kitchen and bathroom monthly from Pro Publishing, which aims to be the Vogue of its sector.
Pro Publishing profile

Copy of Oz fetches £561

A copy of legendary underground magazine Oz 5 from July 1967 – the issue that folded out into a giant poster – has sold for £561.30 (plus £1.75 postage) on auction website Ebay (May 31). There were 14 bids on the item, which was described as 'in good clean condition'. Oz became world-famous as the result of an obscenity trial in 1971. Felix Dennis – one of the three editors prosecuted – went on to found Computer Shopper, Maxim and Monkey; he is now spending his fortune planting the Forest of Dennis and writing poetry.
Oz covers gallery
Felix Dennis drops trousers
BBC profile of Dennis

IPC launches fourth homes website

29 May. IPC Southbank, publisher of Ideal Home, Living Etc and Homes & Gardens has launched a homes portal housetohome.co.uk. It includes:

· a gallery of rooms with 2,000 images;
· decorating toolkits such as a colour, garden and room planners;
· a product finder;
· a personal notebook section to save site research and plans.

The site can draw on the expertise of six relevant IPC titles: Ideal Home, Homes & Gardens, Country Homes & Interiors, Livingetc, 25 Beautiful Homes and 25 Beautiful Kitchens. Three of these have websites already: idealhomemagazine.co.uk; livingetc.co.uk; and homeandgardens.com (since closed).

IPC profile
Homes and interiors magazines
Property magazines

Press Gazette redesign

11 May. The Press Gazette and its website have been redesigned. Unfortunately, the changes are the website are not for the better:

- less content can be seen on a screen;
– the lefthand navigation column has disappeared, so to find the magazine section, you have to look under the 'Home' dropdown menu;
– links to stories in the paper's archive no longer work. You now have to use the site's search function to find these articles, I'm afraid. PG is hoping to write a script to address the problem.
Magforum blog

Death Ray

June. Blackfish, Bath. 13 times a year. £3.99; 148pp. Ed: Guy Hayley
Slick launch issue for this science-fiction (mainly film/TV) monthly from Blackfish. The best eight books of science fiction are picked out, from Frankenstein to Neuromancer. If the magazine is reminiscent of SFX, that's because some of the staff are ex-Future Publishing. The title is the brainchild of former Future editor Matt Bielby (you'll be very familiar with his background after reading the mag or the website!) who set up Blackfish.

In the Know closes

May. Bauer has closed its women's weekly In the Know - its second failed title in three years. In fact, the German publisher has now had five failed launches on the trot – Cut, Real (sold to Essential in 2004), Lounge (2004) and Three-Sixty (2002) being the others. The losses on these must exceed £20m. Although the company publishes Take a Break, Bella and That's Life, their market share is being slowly eroded. From being the company that shook up the women's market in the late 1980s, Bauer is in danger of seeing its titles embark on the sort of long, slow decline that has bedevilled IPC's traditional women's weeklies Woman and Women's Own.
Bauer profile

Portfolio (US)

May. Condé Nast (US). £3.50. 336 pages (including part front cover, internal gatefold adverts and gatefold back cover). Ed: Joanne Lipman; pub: David Carey
Condé Nast made its second big launch of the year with business title Portfolio. In February, the Vogue publisher launched a similarly massive Vanity Fair - as a weekly – in Germany. Portfolio has entered a tough market for business advertising in the US with page volumes down at BusinessWeek, Forbes and Fortune at between 3% and 13% over the past year. Also, their sales figures have been flat in recent years. It also faces competition from the February debut of Tyler Brûlé's Monocle. Condé Nast and the Financial Times sank millions into Business, a monthly in the UK, in the late 1980s, but that closed after five years. The magazine includes a bound-in page of 3 subscriptions forms and five loose inserts ($12 for 12 issues starting August 31; $60 outside US); a bound-in, perforated reader survey ('intelligence gathering' in the magazine's jargon); and a bound-in postage-paid envelope. There is also a bound-in Red Cross A5 leaflet. One advert used metallic ink.
Big year for news magazines

Popworld Pulp

14 April. Brooklands Media, Redhill, Surrey. £1.49; 68pp. Ed: Hannah Verdier
Pop weekly spin-off from Channel 4 TV series. Runs two websites, one based around the magazine and the other promoting bands at popworldpromotes.com. Unfortunately, the title closed after just two issues.
www.popworldpulp.com
Brooklands profile

Sci-Fi Now

April 11 (cover not dated). Imagine, Bournemouth. £4. 148pp. Deputy ed: Aaron Asadi
Imagine is taking on Future's SFX in trying to expand this sector, which is being driven by TV series such as the BBC's Doctor Who and ITV's Primeval. However, it's a niche, with SFX (a 1995 launch) selling just 32,672 copies an issue – though at a high cover price of £3.99. The programme producers have tight control on images, with the magazine's main cover image being seen on other titles and articles.
SciFi Now
Imagine profile

Woman's Own (March 26) – the relaunch strategy sounds similar to that adopted for Woman in May 2006, when IPC spent £3.2m on its relaunch

* Price: 78p – rising to 85p
* Sales: 356,811
* Female readership: 1,112,000
* Launch: 1932
* Median age: 46
* Target market: Busy mums and housewives, aged between 25 and 54

Woman's Own in £2m 'reinvention'

10 April. IPC Connect has 'reinvented' its traditional weekly Woman’s Own with a new look and editorial focus for the issue of 23 April (on sale 17 April). Its price will rise from 78p to 85p – though the first redesigned issue will cost just 50p. The editor, Karen Livermore, who took over from Elsa McAlonan at the start of the year, and the editorial team 'over the last eight months have been immersed with readers from all over the country'. The relaunch includes:

· Upfront: a seven-page section of news, views and celebrity gossip, including columnist Richard Arnold from GMTV;
· Shape Shop for 'figure-fixing' solutions;
· Look Younger beauty and wellbeing advice;
· 'no-fuss' food coverage;
· smart shopping tips;
· true life stories.

In addition, the paper has been improved, issues will be eight pages bigger and a redesign aims for a 'cleaner' look with 'more sophisticated' spreads. An eight-page sampler is bound into copies of Chat and Woman’s Own on Thursday (12 April). The company plans to spend £2m on advertising and marketing.

The strategy sounds similar to that adopted for Woman in May 2006, when IPC spent £3.2m on its relaunch. Woman's Own has a sales figure of 356,811, compared with Woman's 388,998. Both titles have been on a long sales decline since the 3m-selling 1960s and were badly hit by the arrival in 1987 of German titles such as Take a Break, which sells more than a million copies a week. The rise of the celebrity sector has taken away more sales. Both titles were launched in the 1930s.
IPC profile
Women's weeklies sector
Relaunching magazines

GMG sells Auto Trader stake

26 March. Guardian Media Group, owner of the Guardian and Observer newspapers, is to sell a 49.9% stake in Auto Trader publisher Trader Media Group to private equity group Apax for about £674m. The Guardian is focusing on its websites, with Journalism.co.uk reporting that the paper will spend £15m in the next 18 months on Guardian Unlimited with:

• £1 million going on video production and hiring experienced staff;
• a US version of its Comment portal as part of its bid to be the world's leading voice of liberalism.
• the Guardian now thinking of itself as a digital company where the web was the 'pre-eminent' element.

GMG said the sale was intended to 'rebalance the group's portfolio'. The bulk of the money is most likely to be spent on buying more radio stations.

Jellyfish digital magazine

20 March. National Magazine Co., London.
Jellyfish is a digital magazine for teenage girls aged 11 to 19 (known internally as Project Celia). The 'magazine' is sent electronically every Tuesday to people who sign up. Celia Duncan is the editor. Viral marketing and advertising in other NatMags titles were used to promote the title. Jellyfish uses Ceros technology from Applecart, a UK e-publishing consultancy, to give the appearance of pages being turned over (also used by Emap for Digital Living and for Dennis Publishing's Monkey). Dennis uses the term 'eMag' for Monkey. Jellyfish focuses on fast fashion, celebrity videos and postings from readers, with most of the content being drawn from other websites. Products on the fashion and shopping pages can be bought online using a click-and-buy system. As the website said, 'If it moves, click on it.'
National Magazines profile

What Digital Camera relaunch

• pagination increased from 140 to 200 pages;
• a redesign as 'a more contemporary magazine with a lifestyle edge';
• a 20-page pull-out in each issue on core areas such as landscapes, travel and nature;
• a 32-page buyer's guide;
• a 'community section' where readers can test equipment, send in photos and hints, and comment on photos;
• lens and accessories tests.

What Digital Camera (£3.99) aims to attract both beginners and enthusiasts. Its ABC sales figure is 25,117; sister title Amateur Photographer sells 26,068. These figures are well behind Emap's Digital Photo and Practical Photography, both of which sell more than 61,000 copies a month.
IPC profile

Happy closes

So London

The Dido issue was 'nailed to the shelves'

Women 'can't live' without web

15 March. Research by IPC Southbank has put publishers' obsession with launching websites in context – almost 70% of 4,000 ABC1 women respondents claim they couldn’t live without going online. Research for its titles such as Marie Claire, In Style, Woman & Home and Ideal Home shows:

• almost three quarters of respondents spend more time online compared with last year;
• 86% have shopped online;
• last year they spent on average £840;
• 68% use websites to research products before buying them elsewhere;
• half go online to browse for clothes;
• 36% look for make-up and skincare products.

Among the women's websites being launched or relaunched are: www.instyle.co.uk (April), a homes portal (May) and www.countrylife.co.uk (IPC); www.glamourmagazine.co.uk (Condé Nast); www.elle.com/uk (HFUK); NatMags teen digital magazine Jellyfish. IPC poached Condé Nast’s Maria Milano to set up the In Style website.

Jackie Newcombe, managing director of IPC Southbank MD, said: 'Broadband is making the internet a much more convenient and attractive medium for ABC1 women. The popularity of the internet – in particular with premium women – is a trend no-one in the media and marketing industry can afford to ignore.'

Among the other results:

• The top products bought online were: books, CDs and DVDs, travel tickets, hotels and holidays; cinema and theatre tickets; high street shopping; computer hardware and software; household electricals; and toys and games.
• The top five search were: travel, fashion, health, property and beauty.
• The top five online activities were: subscribing to newsletters, downloading music, grocery shopping, sharing photos and forums and message boards.

IPC profile

Taking on the Economist

The BBC, Rupert Murdoch's News Magazines, Wallpaper founder Tyler Brûlé, the Barclay Brothers with Andrew Neil and Condé Nast are all lining up to take readers and advertisers away from the million-selling Economist. Magforum examines the competition and the history, from Topic through Now! to the European.
News magazines
The European: from Maxwell to the Barclays

Loaded looks to 3D and DVD

April (on sale March 1). IPC. Ed: Martin Daubney
Loaded has turned to 3D specs – a technique used by men's magazines since at least the 1950s – for its second gimmick of the year after February's 'flip-2-strip' flap. The April issue comes in a bag with a DVD, a Kitkat bar and 14 pages of 3D imagery of models Lucy Pinder and Jana.

Rival lad's mag Front used 3D for its 1998 launch issue. In 1954, Lilliput - one of the best-selling monthlies of the day – featured 'a Lilliput lady in 3D' for its Christmas issue with 3D glasses. Several other titles in the 1950s used 3D imagery as a regular feature and whole series were based around the gimmick.
Men's magazines in 3D

Dennis drops trousers (and Maxim sales)

16 February. Multimillionaire Maxim publisher Felix Dennis posed for today's Financial Times sitting in a chair with his trousers down. The image adorns the front page of the FT in the UK to illustrate a news story in which he reveals that he is considering selling his company to help continue planting the largest forset in the UK, the Forest of Dennis. However, Dennis still has a long way to go to match his past exposure – he appeared naked on the last issue of Oz with the magazine's other staff. The stunt may serve to detract from problems at lad's mag Maxim in the UK, sales of which are down 29.3% to 131,497 copies a month in the latest ABC sales figures (www.abc.org.uk). However, there was better news for Dennis from ABC Electronic, which showed an average of 209,612 copies of Monkey magazine have been opened each week since the digital-only title launched three months ago.

Vanity Fair weekly for Germany

Monocle from Brûlé

March (10 issues a year). Winkontent, London. £5; 244pp + 32pp manga comic. Ed: Andrew Tuck
Investors are backing Wallpaper founder Tyler Brûlé to pull it off again with Monocle. Current affairs and business form the core of the male-oriented title with culture and design added to the mix – very much reflecting Brûlé own passions. Boy's Own feel to some of the content - from the pilot cover to the spy manga. Think Economist plus TV21 plus Sunday Times Magazine (from the 1970s). The magazine provides a model that could be rolled out through airports around the world. Production values let the title down on issues I saw: dirty printing, poor post-press handling and binding coming apart. Also, the matt paper used for most of the pages loses detail in the (mainly small) pictures.
Monocle
Recent articles:
Wallpaper man's singular vision Observer, 11 February
Just don't mention the Wallpaper* Guardian, 12 February
Glossy debut with a cool eye on the world, says the Independent (12 February)

Sublime for ethical lifestyle

Look fashion weekly to cost £1.30

On 30 January, 1.2 million copies will be given away of Look, IPC's celebrity-fronted street fashion weekly launch. The sampling exercise comes a week ahead of the magazine's debut at £1.30 – 50p cheaper than Emap's Grazia - on Tuesday, 6 February. Copies will be given away:

• in supermarkets and Marks & Spencer;
• with the free daily newspaper, thelondonpaper;
• in 10 shopping centres;
• in branches of WH Smith;
• bagged with Now, IPC's celebrity weekly.

Emap shows no sign of dropping Grazia's price. Look, codenamed 'Project Honey' is aiming to sell 250,000 copies a week – Grazia's ABC was 175,218 for the first half of 2006. IPC describes its 'biggest ever' launch as a 'glossy high-street fashion weekly' with an investment over two years of £18m (£8m of which has been earmarked for marketing). The editor will be Ali Hall.

The title will aim at women aged between 18 and 30 who have left home but have yet to settle down. The Observer has quoted Eve Webster, managing director of IPC Connect: 'Young women now have 11 years from when they leave home to when they have children and they want to cram everything into their lives.'

IPC and Groupe Marie Claire jointly publishing Marie Claire in the UK and Avantages and Famili in France.
More details and larger cover
IPC profile

Loaded unveils 'flip to strip' cover

Car does U-turn on square format