No Rock And Roll Fun

WHAT THE POP PAPERS...: There's a curious piece on the BBC Collective site at the moment focusing on the death of the music/style magazines. What makes it especially interesting is that it should be written from an insider's perspective, as the author is Stuart Turnball, former Sleaze Nation editor, music editor for Sleaze, and an associate editor on X-Ray. If anyone should know why music and style magazines are failing, it should be Stuart, whose CV comes across like a hurricane chaser of magazine collapse. He makes some interesting predictions - it's "only a matter of time" before other broadsheets follow the Observer in launching a standalone music supplement (The Sunday Telegraph Boogie Box? Can't see that somehow; while the Guardian already has pretty much that in the Friday Review, albeit sharing its space with films as well, like Uncut); he also fumes "Anyone who considers today’s style or music mags rebellious is deluded. When you’re in the pocket of advertisers or the clutches of an obscenely rich and usually Philistine publisher, you are, as Bill Hicks so beautifully put it, “sucking Satan’s cock”" - he edited a magazine for Capital Radio's XFM brand, and worked for Sleaze, remember, so it's kind of curious where the sudden distaste for such titles comes from.

Stuart's conclusion:

"The future of the UK underground press lies in a marriage of digital and print. Mags supported by websites and vice versa, with no dictates from advertisers, supported by users/readers for users/readers – the only way for honesty and truth to remain intact. We need fresh mags and fanzines to rise out of the mire and explore the in-between spaces of contemporary culture, the areas ignored by commercial clamour. It’s an ideal, but where would we be without ideals?"

Although he doesn't quite manage to explain how, precisely, the magazines will support the websites and the websites will support the magazines without the need for either of them to ever bother with setting up an advertising department. If only we could be told how, precisely, the unique way these endeavours will be funded.