Magazines

gumdrops

Well-known member
i used to love mags. meant a lot to me growing up. still got more piles of them than anyone really should do. the one i used to like the most as a 10/11 year old was sky. dont think many people talk about that now though lol. used to go smiths or borders and read as many mags as i could but havent done that in so long. doesnt feel that essential/necessary anymore. i might try and get back into that though.

bought sight and sound the other day (this doesnt feel as vital as it once did either, despite good content, seems like it needs more content, like a lot of music mags, and a lot of the reviews seemed a bit diffident), as well as adbusters for the first time - not sure what this is about exactly, bits of current affairs, some philosophy, but good design, if more pictures/artwork than words.

the believer looks good but is quite pricey. wax poetics i always want to read but it just looks too 'baggy'. i get little white lies which i like, but its always a special 'theme issue' (another common theme of many modern mags - prob in the absence of enough to fill it with?) centered around one particular film, which almost makes it an advertorial cos theres so much about that one particular film. but i like the love that goes into it, even if the writing is quite fanziney.

dont think ive bought a music mag in ages. i used to like fact more when it was a little mag than a website. not that theres anything wrong with the site, i just liked the compact paper version.

who in their right mind would want to write about pop music beyond the age of 30 anyway? (31 year old man employed by Observer Music Monthly sits down in front of three Sugababes to discuss current career patterns -- but what exactly happened to his life? Why is he not being flown to New York to uncover Jay Z's dark soul at a surprising tete-a-tete outside New Jersey?)

harsh.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
Seconded for Little White Lies and Prospect*, which I've been impressed with both times I bought it - thinking of taking a sub out to replace the Vanity fair one, which can't end a day too soon (no sooner did I buy it than they replaced all the long political articles I liked with bankers, fucking bankers every bastard month).

*esp in comparison to New Statesman, which I've bought once about 2 years ago and couldn't believe how boring it was (arts coverage excepted)
 

scottdisco

rip this joint please
Seconded for Little White Lies and Prospect*, which I've been impressed with both times I bought it - thinking of taking a sub out to replace the Vanity fair one, which can't end a day too soon (no sooner did I buy it than they replaced all the long political articles I liked with bankers, fucking bankers every bastard month).

LOL.

i never knew LWL was a paper mag, i've read (and greatly enjoyed) the online version.

i also used to love picking up FACT in little record shops, was very exciting! still love the site, the best there is, IMO.

used to read Adbusters a lot back in the day via a uni library. can imagine it sparked a thousand epiphanies for exurban kids. although i haven't seen it, the cover identifying the Jewish heritage of Bush II/neo-con top-brass does sound foul, mind you.

LM losing its libel case was a great day for journalism.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
Also amused by Craner's love for Standpoint. Isn't that just training ground for the children of famous writers and the place for which Nick Cohen reserves his very worst journalism?
 

scottdisco

rip this joint please
i've only ever read one article from Standpoint (a magnificent piece on Berlusconi) but, yes, the whiff of Cohen * off-form is not the best bouquet for any magazine.

* i adore Cruel Britannia, FWIW.
 

polystyle

Well-known member
Which is harder than having to write something good -- I often think these boys should give up and go into advertising or marketing...it's a heartless creativity but it's full of £££s and life is short and the world is large. And the only kind of reviews they get to write these days run the emotional and aesthetic spectrum of effusive praise <> disappointment. The Big Critical Assassination can no longer happen: there's no need and there's no space. No one is paying attention and there are too many opinions to ignore. This is why K-punk still labours in the shadows and you hear nothing from Penman: their world has disappeared.

Right on some money there Craner
 

woops

is not like other people
I feel I could batter out a good piece about something if I had some sort of brief...but about what?

This is half the battle though, isn't it? if I knew the answer to that I'd batter out the good piece myself.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
Roffle, shoulda known there wouldn't be much love for LM around these parts. Their anti-environmental/pro-growth-at-any-price stance was quite worrying, I recall.

Well, it's also borne of a dislike of the RCP (the mag's political parent), which was for people who were too cool for the SWP, but too bourgeois sneery for anything constructive (like the Labour Party, obviously :p). But if you're feeling nostalgic, you can still (?) find those people at Spiked and they make regular TV babble appearances in their Institute of Ideas guise.
 

scottdisco

rip this joint please
Mick Hume had the chutzpah to write a piece fairly recently for Spiked as an anniversary came around about the ITN thing, predictably trying to play his violin about Britain's (undeniably unfit for purpose and shockingly unfair in general) libel laws and trying to minimise federal Yugoslav/Serb leadership culpability for the vast majority of deliberate Balkans agonies, peddling the old sleight the SWP used to do so loudly, the civil war tag and all that, a rank piece of equivalency that must be loudly opposed for the foul horse-shit it is at all times.

thence a back-of-cigarette-packet laundry list of excoriating overbearing western crusaders obsessed w intervention and all that jazz, easy topics on which to drum up support, i grant you, though wrt Bosnia LM got things totally wrong.

and i don't suppose they will ever admit that.

which is deeply disappointing, to say the least.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Also amused by Craner's love for Standpoint.

I don't particularly love it, but I think there are some things it does, mag-wise, that are correct, even outstanding, certainly superior to Prospect (I am not talking about ideology or even specific content in this case). New Statesman and The Spectator are both the pits; Standpoint and Prospect have a lot of potential they never fulfill, though Standpoint usually gets closer (at least it's not dull) (the i-D to Prospect's Face).
 

grizzleb

Well-known member
Ah right, I think I've seen it and avoided it based on it's billing as a right-wing Prospect. I will need to swatch it out, but I hate Christopher Hitchens and it sounds like something that he would laud.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
Ah right, I think I've seen it and avoided it based on it's billing as a right-wing Prospect. I will need to swatch it out, but I hate Christopher Hitchens and it sounds like something that he would laud.

Doesn't his right-wing son write for it? Amis' wrote the EDL piece, feel sure Alexander Hitchens (who from the little I've seen has most of his dad's drawbacks with none of the talent) calls it home too.
 

grizzleb

Well-known member
I don't particularly love it, but I think there are some things it does, mag-wise, that are correct, even outstanding, certainly superior to Prospect (I am not talking about ideology or even specific content in this case). New Statesman and The Spectator are both the pits; Standpoint and Prospect have a lot of potential they never fulfill, though Standpoint usually gets closer (at least it's not dull) (the i-D to Prospect's Face).
Prospect can be extremely MOR and tasteful alot of the time, but every issue there is usually one or two excellent articles and sometimes the whole thing is great (twice a year maybe). This month's was hilarious, and I recall an article last year some time about chess in Armenia that was absolutely great - just what I look for in journalism.
 
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