Magazines

With the increase in the number of pull out magazines, which are mostly weekly magazines, the business of magazines sold separately has suffered. Why would anyone, except for diehard film enthusiasts buy a film magazine, when almost all newspapers have entertainment sections or pull out magazines at least once a week? 

But there are still some magazines such as She for woman, Spider for computer users and two or three business magazines, and three fashion magazines which are doing quite well. There used to be a magazine for teenagers (Teenager) but because of poor quality of writings and bad editing the magazine didn’t run for a long time. Also there are now youth pages in many newspapers. There used to be children’s magazines, but now with almost every newspaper having a children’s magazine or a page or two for the kids, those magazines had to close down.

The magazines have columnists, freelance writers, reviewers and experts writing on different subjects. Since the magazines have to go into print earlier so as not to disturb the schedule of the news pages, the deadlines have to be three or four days before the day they are supposed to be delivered with the main newspaper to the subscribers.

The introduction of 24 hour TV news channels and the Internet, even if a smaller segment of the population has access to it, leave the newspaper to carry comments and analyses on events and developments of national or international importance. This happened even in the past when cricket aficionados saw a one-day international or a day’s proceedings of the Test match but read the comments of the likes of Omar Kureishi avidly. 

Similarly comments on the changes in the performance of the stock markets evoked keenness among the readers to get the comments and the forecasts of experts in the next day’s newspapers.

Multi-city Newspapers

For a multi-city newspaper, the editor and most of his deputies sit in the head office – Karachi in the case of Dawn and Lahore in the case of Daily Times – there are, however, resident editors in other cities from where they have reporters and subeditors. The local pages are produced by the resident editors. The main body of the newspaper – the editorial pages, the business section, the international news section, the sports pages and the pull out magazines are all produced at what one would call the head office, for want of a better word. 

PCs replacing Paper

A point worth mentioning is that these days newspapers offices have become paperless. The reporters work on PCs and the writers email their contributions, so the person who is supposed to sub (or edit) the copy does that on his own PC before the matter is transferred to the PCs of the page makers. As mentioned earlier even film is being dispensed with in leading newspapers. The pages on the computers are transferred to the plate making section, eliminating the middle stage thus saving both time and money alike.

Deadlines

Journalists, whether they are in the field or are on the desks, have to work under strict deadlines. Any delay would result in the delay in the printing of newspapers. Mind you, there are few things more perishable than the newspaper and nothing more stale than late news.

Niche Magazines

As for magazines, there are very few general interest magazines left in the world. Akhbar-e-Jehan is a notable exception in Pakistan but its circulation is dropping noticeably.

Today we have niche magazines – news magazines, women’s journals, fashion magazines etc. In the US you have magazines devoted to even a subject like cigar. Then there is an old magazine called Ebony, which is only for African-Americans. There are magazines for migrants from different countries such as Pakistan Link and India Abroad.

If there are magazines of national and international importance, there are also magazines which are of interest to people in a certain city. Even in India there are magazines which pertain to cities like New Delhi. They are all about the events and the places in that particular city. Also some international magazines such as Time, Newsweek and Readers’ Digest have editions for different areas in much the same way as some newspapers like Financial Times and Wall Street Journal which have editions in different countries.