Publishers have once again failed to move with the times

If you’re going to charge £3.99 to a young readership that may not be flush with cash, you need to offer something unique – not content that can freely be found elsewhere, writes Chris Blackhurst.

So farewell Nuts, Loaded, Zoo and FHM. You always were tits and bollocks.

The demise of the lads’ mags – Nuts stopped printing last year, Loaded followed suit, and now Zoo and FHM have suspended publication, seemingly with little hope of a return – may be easy to mock, but it is nevertheless breath-taking. These were publications, let us not forget, that for a period were magazine royalty, genre-creating market-beaters that, in no time at all, forged large circulations and revenues. FHM, the leader, saw its sales hit 700,000; Zoo achieved 260,000.

Now, after a decline as steep as their rise, they’re all gone.

Why? They were killed by their own schlock, and a failure to adapt.

Even in their heyday these were not titles to be proudly displayed, even by their target audience. Did you ever see anyone reading them? They would lie on tables in barbers’ shops or garage receptions, invariably heavily thumbed, and grubby looking and feeling.

That was where they wanted to be: somewhere between porn and respectability; not quite the top shelf but, certainly based on their cover lines and some of their stunts (free Kleenex with pictures of one glamour model), more or less there in attitude and tone.

There was good content to be found between the smut, but it was not exceptional. Fatally, too, much of it was devoted to espousing gadgets – tablets and smartphones, the growth of which, and their ability to show Internet porn and provide similar material on sites like The LAD Bible, did for the increasingly tired mags.

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They failed to evolve. All four exhibited the same crude humour, pandering to the lowest common denominator. As sales dropped and the lads graduated to online, there was no attempt to move upmarket, to produce a print alternative that the reader might be proud to be seen holding and had lasting value. Luxury and seriousness belonged elsewhere, in GQ, Esquire and Men’s Health, all of which carried a sense of purpose.

The publishers failed to move with the times, not seeing that the jokes were wearing thin. If they looked at the hugely popular The LAD Bible, for instance, they won’t see in-your-face references to boobs and cleavage, and an obsession with sex. It’s clever, smart and knowing – none of which, latterly, could be said of the lads’ mags.

What is the lesson of their demise? That to survive and thrive in print a title cannot have an Internet alternative. It must play to the tactile quality of paper, producing brilliant photography and words to be lingered over at leisure. If you’re going to charge £3.99 to a young readership that may not be flush with cash, you need to offer something unique, not a content that can easily and freely found elsewhere – in digital and in print.

It can’t be coincidence that Mike Soutar, founder of FHM, went on to create the “freemium” magazine model with ShortList and Stylist. Their objective is to supply “high quality, premium content free to affluent consumers.”

Soutar makes no bones about the gap in the market he identified, saying on the Shortlist Media website: “Weekly men’s lifestyle title ShortList was the company’s first launch in September 2007. Created as a response to a flagging men’s magazine sector, the publication met with almost instant approval from both readers and advertisers, and immediately set the pattern for a company focused on entertaining sophisticated metropolitan audiences. ShortList is the leader in its market with an audited weekly ABC well in excess of 500,000copies.”

Ladism has not died, unlike its paid-for magazines. It’s changed and relocated elsewhere – and they stayed put, and perished.

Sympathy is a weasel word

The headline in The Sun leaves no doubt: “1 in 5 Brit Muslims’ sympathy for jihadis.”

Given the speed at which people glance at newspaper front pages they could be forgiven for supposing that 20 per cent of British Muslims backs IS.

That’s a worrying total, one at odds with the Muslim community leaders who always insist that backing for the terrorist group is extremely small.

But further examination reveals another side to The Sun poll. It was conducted by the company Survation calling 1,500 people with “Muslim surnames”.

To obtain a representative sample of British Muslims, which you might have expected had occurred with that headline, would have taken much longer and have been a lot more expensive. It would have involved contacting tens of thousands of British Muslims.

YouGov, the newspaper’s regular pollster, declined the brief because it could not reach enough Muslims within the paper’s timeframe and budget.

Of those contacted by Survation who agreed to take part, 5% agreed with the statement “I have a lot of sympathy with Young Muslims who leave the UK to join fighters in Syria” and 14.5% said they had some sympathy.

The way that was phrased could include Muslims fighting against IS. Similarly, the word “sympathy” is weak and ambiguous. Anyone who felt they could see or understand why young Muslims might take up arms was not catered for – instead they had to fall back upon the word “sympathy”.

But “sympathy” is not as strong as “support”. Sympathy is a weasel word, and presumably, was selected for that very reason. You can be sympathetic and not support, or you can be sympathetic and support.

It’s not clear which applies. That blurring enabled The Sun to splash with a line that could be read as suggesting 20% of British Muslims support IS.

Muslim leaders have reacted angrily to the The Sun, accusing it of being sensationalist.

The poll and its wording were constructed carefully. The accompanying article did not exaggerate.

The problem, though, is that the survey was too carefully put together. You should not have to go to the lengths of choosing a word like “sympathy” when you really mean “support”. You should not have to keep IS out of the question when that is what you really mean. The phrase Brit Muslims implies a lot more than just 1,500 were contacted.

The Sun got its story – but British Muslims are entitled to feel hard done by.