Why we should treasure our magazines

I searched for a better metaphor than ‘hiding their light under a bushel’ after I remembered they were on public display. However, when I saw how the Whitcoulls national chain has relegated them to retail obscurity, I decided it was appropriate after all.

I’m talking about magazines. More specifically, the homegrown general interest magazines now facing an uphill battle to survive in printed form.

They struggle to stand out in the diminished (and in the case of Whitcoulls, almost hidden) space devoted to periodicals. They are overwhelmed by a multitude of special interest and foreign titles – cars, cars, cars and a heady mix of pseudo-psychological wellbeing and celebrity.

And they are further hampered by an unsympathetic NZ Post which, while it has doubled the price of mailing a letter, has tripled the cost of sending local magazines to subscribers.

Our magazines deserve better. And they deserve far better support from the New Zealand public. Not as a form of charity but because these publications are good, damned good.

I am not going to talk today about local titles aimed at women. My wife Jenny Lynch (a former editor of the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly) is a better judge of those than me. She is impressed by much of what she sees.

I am devoting this commentary to four titles: the weekly New Zealand Listener, the monthlies New Zealand Geographic and North & South, and the quarterly Metro.

Each, in its own unique way, makes an important contribution to New Zealand culture and to the chronicle that will become our collected past. So do others that I would include had I the time and space.

The mix in each of the four titles is eclectic. It has to be. We do not have the population to support narrowly focussed publications. No niche is big enough.

The Listener is the grandaddy of the four and it was never designed to be niche. Its first issue in 1939 was distributed free to 380,000 households as a guide to the magic of radio. The monopoly it had on publishing radio, then television, programme schedules guaranteed a healthy circulation, and it was able to retain that grip for more than four decades. It survived a heart punch from German publisher Bauer which closed it in 2020. Are Media resuscitated it after almost six months of cardiac arrest.

Under editor Kirsty Cameron the Listener is a weekly mix of brain food and relaxation. She has a well-judged mix of politics, culture, social issues, and entertainment in its various forms. It makes a clear distinction between commentary and reportage. Its scope is international as well as domestic.

You don’t have to agree with commentators such as Danyl McLauchlan (politics), Jane Clifton (now residing abroad with her politician-turned-diplomat husband Trevor Mallard), or diarists such as Charlotte Grimshaw or Russell Brown. In fact, it’s good if you do disagree. They don’t claim a monopoly on wisdom but do provide views against which you can judge your own. And nine or 10 pages of commentary and letters a week is good feedstock for healthy discourse.

If I have one reservation about the Listener’s approach to opinion, it is the way it hands to a guest writer the space that should be occupied by an editorial. Its ‘Upfront’ page should tell us what the masthead thinks of an issue occupying our minds. As it stands, it appears the Listener has no opinions of its own. It does, of course. The story ideas, submission selection, and editing processes inevitably reflect the worldviews of the editor and her senior staff. I want the magazine to tell me what it thinks…upfront.

Its pages also accommodate very good long form journalism on a suitably wide range of issues, although Cameron is astute enough to know that her cover story has to have newsstand appeal. Health, wealth and the odd button-pusher dominate its covers. There is nothing wrong with that. A magazine that stays on the newsstand will not hold its lease on the space for long. And beyond the cover story is more nitty gritty, plus the best profile writer in New Zealand – Michelle Hewitson. I regarded her as one of the jewels in the New Zealand Herald’s crown when we both worked there. It is good to see she has returned to her forte, as well as sharing the Good Life on the back page with her partner Greg Dixon.

The other three magazines that hold my attention take a longer view of the world and serve different purposes.

North & South, under editor Susanna Andrew, carries on a tradition of longform journalism on issues from around the country that was established by its inaugural editor Robyn Langwell and continued by Virginia Larsen. North & South was conceived as something of a national version of Warwick Roger’s Metro but less avantgarde because, well, it was aimed beyond Aucklanders.

The latest issue – a week late because Andrew came off second best in a car v bike accident that left her with concussion (and a healthy respect for helmets) – is a rich mixture. Pete McKenzie’s cover story on the attempted assassination of an outspoken Sikh in South Auckland reads like an action thriller. In contrast, Melanie Newfield’s recollection of her first computer (a Commodore 128) was a gentle piece of nostalgia, and its cultural section a satisfying mix of fiction and non-fiction.

I am not sure Metro’s founder would particularly approve of the current version. Warwick Roger wrote for and edited a magazine that could be both edgy and savage. And it was fearless, best exemplified by Sandra Coney and Phillida Bunkle and their 1987 exposé on cervical cancer research “Unfortunate Experiment at National Women’s”. Today’s magazine has its share of strong opinions but under editor Henry Oliver it is more measured than its earlier incarnation.

However, it continues to serve the function of telling a city about itself. I suspect that many of its current readers buy the magazine as a guide of where to go to be entertained, where to eat, what to drink, and who are mover and shaker in the social life of the city.

That does not detract from the more serious content that Metro contains. My old mate Bob Harvey, a long-time inhabitant of the columns of Metro, continues to hold the city to account. And the latest issue has a perceptive recounting by Charlotte Muru-Lanning of a coming together of Māori at Tūrangawaewae in January, although the absence of captions to Rāwhai Wetere’s photographs reveals a singular fault in the magazine’s otherwise impeccable look. It sees photographs as part of the design, not the narrative. Sometimes, however, substance must triumph over form.

That said, some of its illustrations are stunning. Electra Sinclair’s portrait of ACT leader David Seymour is one of the spookiest I have seen. I can understand why it was used with Morgan Godfrey’s political column in spite of the fact most of it was about Winston Peters.

Metro may now be published only four times a year, but it makes up for the reduced frequency with a bumper offering: The Autumn issue runs to 260 pages.

The periodical to which I most look forward (apart from The Oldie which wings its way from Britain to remind me each month, in the fondest way, of my advancing age) is New Zealand Geographic. It is a monthly reminder of the special character of our islands, their surrounding seas, and the multitude of species that call them home.

Each issue of NZ Geographic is a surprise. I thought that irritating nine-year-old English seagull imitator who was all over the television news would put me off the bird for the rest of my life. That is, until I picked up the magazine and read its cover story – seventeen absorbing pages on ‘the everywhere bird’ otherwise known as the red-billed gull. Kate Evans’ story, supported by superb pictures from one of this country’s best wildlife photojournalists Richard Robinson (a former colleague), adopted a narrative style that was engaging and deeply informative.

In stark contrast was John Summers’ harrowing tale of LandSAR searches for people missing in the country’s unforgiving wilderness, and the part played by one of its members Wayne Keen. Keen has a matter-of-fact view of his role and the sometimes fruitless quests for missing trampers. He is also something of a philosopher in explaining away why he may continue searching well beyond the end of the official effort. An example quoted by Summers:

He reaches again for philosophy, in this case the Chinese thinker Köngzǐ, better known to English speakers as Confucius who, Keen said, preaches of the benefits of time in the mountains. “I guess it’s a bit like a drug. It’s good for you. It’s good exercise. You can forget all the daily struggles. I mean, if you’re hanging off a bluff by your eyelashes, you don’t worry about the everyday trivia that bothers you in the office.”

That, apparently, was why he searched obsessively for six months before a missing hunter’s body was found and why he then went back to look for his rifle. He never found it.

The magazine’s publisher James Frankham and editor Catherine Woulfe display a deep dedication to the magazine, its website, scientific projects, educational offshoots, and the annual photographic competition it organises.

This magazine, and the others that make their way to us at varying intervals, are important. They are chronicles, and chronicles become historic artifacts. They are colourful and informative records of this country and the ways it changes and sometimes stays the same. Without them, I do not know how those that follow us will be able to look back and fully understand us and the country they inherit from us.

Someone who is deeply involved in that process of telling us about ourselves wrote to me a few weeks ago. He said: “Despite smaller organisations, magazines and long-form journalism having an out-sized influence on the cultural lives of Kiwis and the public conversation, I’m not sure anyone in the room particularly cares.”

He is right about the former but wrong about the latter. Some of us do care.

Birthday greetings

Happy birthday to RNZ’s First Up, which yesterday celebrated its fifth birthday. Indira Stewart and now Nathan Rarere have offered early risers a civilised, informative, and often cheery start to the day before Morning Report takes its grip on us. Many happy returns.