Publishers wrestle with magazine call by Govt

The Government’s decision on Tuesday that printers are not part of the supermarket supply chain and must therefore close during the national lockdown has meant magazines are the only product in that supply chain not deemed essential.

Part of the fallout from that decision came on Thursday when Germany-based Bauer Media Group announced it would cease publishing a raft of iconic New Zealand magazines including The Listener and NZ Woman’s Weekly.

But another publisher, Philip Macalister, told BusinessDesk he sees the coronavirus crisis and resulting national lockdown as an opportunity. That’s despite the fact that the Government’s decision has left the latest edition of his flagship magazine, New Zealand Property Investor, 95 per cent printed with only the cover left to do.

“It’s been a real blow to the magazine industry,” said Sally Duggan, executive director of the Magazine Publishers’ Association.

“It’s just a pity it’s been such a blow to an industry that’s already under pressure [with] Google and Facebook gobbling up [ad] revenues that have traditionally gone into magazines,” Duggan said.

Macalister’s printer had assumed it would be deemed part of the supermarket supply chain and therefore essential, a stance one of the two major chains, Foodstuffs, had supported, but that was over-ruled by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, he said.

That decision meant he can’t get the property magazine finished for at least three weeks or when the lockdown ends and by then the magazine’s contents will be out of date.

MPA’s Duggan said she had worked over last weekend with publishers and printers in preparing a submission arguing that the industry should be classified as essential.

“It did seem to be an anomaly that they were the only supermarket supplier” not deemed essential.

The MPA had argued that magazines are usually distributed to supermarkets and dairies and through NZ Post.

“There wasn’t a safety issue,” Duggan said. Everything within those supply chains was “totally controllable”.

The MPA can’t see why its members’ magazines have been put in this position although “we very much support the effort to stamp out Covid-19.”

Macalister said he had already started a digital version of the property magazine and has more than 1000 subscribers signed up — he said total subscriber numbers are “commercially sensitive”, but the magazine has a wide readership. Disclaimer, this journalist used to write for it.

He will be publishing the latest edition digitally and advised advertisers of that yesterday.

The other two magazines, Asset and The Mortgage Mag, will also be published digitally.

He is also thinking about other ventures he could trial to see whether their target audiences will pay for them. “I’m a glass-half-full guy.”

Macalister takes a dim view of the Bauer move, noting the company had been trying to sell the NZ business: “Corporates seize on these events to do the bad stuff.”

Corporates seize on these events to do the bad stuff.

Philip Macalister, publisher