The trouble with PRIDE

Here goes, I promised myself that I will strive to stick with this blogging and make it a regular thing. But do bear with me as at the moment I am balancing this with some academic stuff so periods of silence are inevitable.

I have to start by giving my Plaudits to the columnists for PRIDE magazine Mutale Nkonde for her New York column, Angie Lemar for her regular contribution, Uchenna Izundu for her theatre page, and the journalist who seems to be at the heart of it all Amina Taylor. Keep on keeping on....

A recent article ran in the Media Guardian 8th January 2007 Issue that focused on Pride magazine and the (now former) editor Sherry Dixon. The article had comments from other editors and black PR consultants that were quite insightful. Reading through the article I could not help but wonder whether Sherry Dixon was reading it and if so what was going through her mind.

The magazine has been in circulation for 15 years now and has a readership of 200,000. Now I know this in some circles is considered an achievement but 15 years 200,000 readers....come on now! In the same article the publisher of thenewblackmagazine.com declares that he has done the same numbers each month and it has only been in existence less than two years.

Is the owner/publisher of PRIDE magazine in the business to make losses?

Is it a poor imitation of American glossies?

Well I think this is the cop out criticism that we are bound to lamp on a magazine that really is not abreast with the goings on in the community.

My criticism of the magazine is: what does it really stand for? Reading through the latest issue it seems a very haphazard collation of articles stuck together. Celebrity interviews and sex, book launches, album promos, and sex, finance, more sex, theatre and sex, bling bling and more sex. Do I detect a theme?? Don't get me wrong I know the difference between explicit sexual content and the "How to keep your partner happy tips or How to keep your love life going or How to maintain a happy relationships….." but a spade is a spade and this is sex….

Assimilate not Alienate

Are we still talking about mixed relationships? Black men and white women and vis a vis? The criticism is not personal, but surely you do not expect to be securing advertising dollars with that sort of content. Magazine pages need to drive advertising and likewise the content within the pages needs to drive advertising.

In the January issue, the magazine features black entrepreneurs of the month towards the back under the title Power Players. I fail to understand why you'd have this section at the back and another feature on Black Women setting up their own businesses in the middle pages.....this is overlap in content. Why??? What was the objective?? This was an opportunity to get some advertising.....

Just the other day I stumbled across a website http://www.eurweb.com/ which I have to say impressed me so. Ok! At first glance it is nothing special and really it is a different version of the same thing.

This sort of websites can be found on the net a dime a dozen. But take a good look at the advertising on that site. Show me a black publication let alone website that feature that sort of advertising. I know pop ups are annoying….but someone will take notice of them. I also have a hunch that if you look at the sales in America for the Nissan, Lexus or Toyota Camry, you find quite a significant proportion is the African American.

How do you expect to grow your readership from 200,000 to 200,001, and 2 and eventually get to a million when the same issues that were being discussed in yester years still dominate the pages? Are you trying to insinuate that black people have not moved on? Look around and you will see that quite to the contrary, black people have moved on and are doing things.

I know for a fact that the black community is progressive and all you need to do is visit the hotspots to see for yourself that this is not the sort of content that people are yearning for and hence the reason why your target female and male readership is turning to Cosmopolitan and FHM respectively. (For the males.... a topic for another day) Looking at the publishing industry as a whole we see that the issue facing a lot of the publications is the fact that: readers are now fragmented and the platforms through which we consume our content has changed significantly.


Opportunities aplenty

In a society that considers the demographic black to include Asians and all non whites, can a serious publisher honestly ignore a section of the British community that is actually at the core of British middle class society? Simple lesson, Asians have tremendous consumer purchasing power? Their consumer purchasing habits especially for the PRIDE demographic of average age 28 ABC1 female are similar to the Black (AFRO) community as a whole. If in doubt visit a Monsoon department store and the likes and you will see what I am talking about. You guys -at PRIDE- need to get your act together. You cannot publish a magazine with so many errors.

When you are a large power house like the Grazia's and Vogues of this world you can afford to get away with errors, but when you are struggling publication looking to lure advertisers you need to develop a sense of paranoia in your editorial process. Layout is everything and I suggest you get some sort of Market research done on whether the layout is working. Having non-aligned text on the pages shows a lack of professionalism. One of my favourite phrases is "harness potential." The barriers to entry that were so significant in the past are now being eroded by....well I am sure you know...by what. It's technology as a whole and the internet in particular.

You need to push your content on the web more aggressively. If you're printing half a million copies every month and half of that is being recycled to pulp then something isn't quite right. GO GREEN, IT MAKES FINANCIAL SENSE. Is there any black consortium that can be formed to take over this publication and turn it into a great future success?