Rock the Casbah

From a commenter:

Rolling Stone Middle East being launched before the end of the year. Ex-ENG staff on board apparently. Publisher is the same as FYI - poor man's What's On. Will such a cult mag work out here?

Forbes: the return

So Forbes Middle East is to launch according to this story on Zawya. But whatever happened to Forbes Arabia?

WTF Publishing LLC

Thread request:

Can anyone tell me how these magazine survive as they don't appear to have any advertising to speak of... and they can't all be Lebanese vanity projects can they?

UNFAIR
Brownbook
Desert Fish
IN Magazine
Virtuosity
Men's Style
Fur & Feathers

Media Week staff quit?

New post request:

Media Week’s editorial staff has left the building, it seems. The current roster of writers and editors have now either left, or are serving their last days today, leaving the Emirates Neon Group magazine without an editorial team, for the moment.

Although no-one’s saying as much on the record, AdNation understands the team quit over unpaid wages. Dues for some staff remain unpaid since the summer, we hear.

ENG publishing director Mike Orlov didn’t comment directly on the suggestion that ENG wasn’t paying its staff, but described the current employment situation as “volatile” and said ENG wished its former Media Week employees all the best.

“It’s a very difficult market situation. A very high number of companies are owed a great deal of money by their customers, which has led to problems with companies meeting their requirements, and ENG, amongst many other businesses, has suffered,” said Orlov.

Full story here

For men

It seems the Dubai men's magazine market is about to explode - GQ and Esquire, anyone? But what's to say new titles - even if international brands - will do better in this market than any previous attempts? Will the ad spend ever be big enough to support new men's glossies?

Draft media law starts to bite

Despite claims from UAE Inc that the new law will not encroach on media freedom, it seems that there are already a number of cases where it has. Worryingly, these include the news wires, as reported in the Guardian, and verified by a couple of our wire sources in Dubai.

The article, which states that a Bloomberg journalist was detained at Dubai airport and warned to be careful, also confirms that the double whammy of the Panorama documentary and the Independent's article on Dubai have struck a nerve with the powers that be.

Have any of you noticed increased censorship, self- or otherwise? Or run-ins with local authorities over stories you have run?

Down the tubes

Is your publication going down the tubes? Budget cuts, non-payments, layoffs, CEO just transferred all the remaining dirhams to his Swiss account, etc?

Here's a thread to spill the beans.

Magazine closures

New thread request:

We (ITP) have closed another two magazines today...(thought I would get in there first)

My good friend over the road at Motivate tells me they are going to announce one more "suspension" in the next few days.

Any guesses?

Return of the Jedi

Interesting goings on at Motivate - magazines closing down (Society Dubai, any others?) and former Motivator, Jason Leavy, back from UK to take up a new position as Publishing Director. Leavy used to edit What's On, before leaving to set up Society Dubai (which was sold to Society Dubai after Leavy moved to ITP as group editor of Ahlan - you following?)

anyone got the lowdown?

The abs and the abs not

Is the Dubai fitness market in good enough shape to support two niche mens magazines? ITP have launched Men's Fitness and Motivate will soon launch magazine juggernaut - or gay icon, depending on which side of the gym you stand - Men's Health. It's going to be Reebok's at dawn down Garhoud way.


Great post and great title courtesy of an anon - thanks.

Would you pay $300 million for ITP?

From a commenter:

ITP is up forsale. $300m and its yours. Serafin is touting it about, but noone wants to touch an overstretched media house in an economic downturn with ads orders being cancelled faster than those being placed. Maybe launching a mag a week wasnt so smart after all, as for those commitments in India, tsk.

Sure as hell isn't on my Christmas list.

Campaign the Sequel

Hurray, Campaign's coming back at the end of the month! Will it have the same wit, bite and verve under new management at Motivate? Will it slag off its own advertisers? And, more importantly, will The Spin be back?

With the recent launch of Mediaweek by ENG, there's plenty of newsprint dedicated to marketing and advertising. Is the market big enough for these titles plus Communicate and Gulf Marketing Review?

Starting a magazine in Dubai

A question from curious george:

If someone wanted to start a mag in dxb how should they go about doing that and if ITPs practices are norm (lying, scamming, cheating, etc), could an honest mag ever have a chance?

Any advice/answers welcome.

Vanity fare

It seems the UAE isn't the only country that loves its vanity publishing . Wonder if the Cook County magazine had better or worse spelling and grammar than we get here?

Living the teen dream

You can just hear the voiceover advert now, as the UAE gets its first teen magazine.

It's so dreamy - soon there will be a magazine for me and my friends! We'll get advice on boys, and kissing, and how to dress like Britney Spears or pose semi-naked like Hannah Montana without upsetting our daddy!

Or I'll learn that it's ok to be just like Lindsay Lohan and find love's young dream with another girl! And they'll answer my question of "how far is too far"!

I'll finally know what Jake Gyllenhaal's favourite colour is and the name of the Jonas Brothers' pets!

And just think of all that totally awesome but cheap fashion from Top Shop and Miss Selfridge, that'll make me look like a total Lolita but if I'm lucky, I'll be helping those poor Asian sweat shop kids* at the same time!

Sadly you won't learn anything that's going to actually help you in life: how to make vodka jelly and have a crafty fag without your parents knowing. And you're unlikely to get the answer to your real dilemma: will my parents give me a nose job for my sweet sixteenth if I ask them nicely enough?

Because this new magazine is being launched in Dubai, by ITP, who may well be trying to keep their noses clean. Expect to see pages of fluffy kittens and "how to complete your homework in time" features instead.

For anyone interested in editing this gem of a new title, especially if you have a passion for the female youth market (and don't happen to be a skeezy male journalist working within the hallowed Garhoud halls), then you can apply here):

* DMO is not condoning the use of sweat shops, nor implying that Top Shop and Miss Selfridge use them.

Open Skies: officially excess baggage

The Emirates in-flight magazine Open Skies has been considered surplus to requirements on the A380 super jumbo. Hope that means passengers will also be saved from the shocking luxury buying guide, where a couple of million Skywards miles and a couple of million dollars can buy you a jet-propelled personal rocket pack, or something equally useful.

Was this really an eco-friendly measure from Emirates (and - yikes - will they cut gold card baggage allowance on the A380 as well?) or was there another reason?

Note from editors: to make it clear, it's only the A380 route so far that will be without the Open Skies magazine (so no danger of us being deprived for many years to come). This isn't what we originally posted. That will teach us to cut & paste from someone else's article, which has since been amended. But at least we credited the article we ripped off, right?

The Magnificence of Mr Mugabe

Superb thread submission:
---------------
Are ITP and AMG going for the World Dictatorship Tour 2008?

While you might think it was difficult to top the Arabian Business visit to China (one week after the brutal supression of dissent in Nepal) that resulted in some of the least critical commentary in media history, ITP has gone one better by sending Ahlan! to Zimbabwe in the same week it saw the collapse of a democratic election and - hey! - the brutal supression of dissent.

Best quotes? (From the Zimbabwe Chronicle):

"The journalists talked much about their expeditions in the county and one of the touring journalists, Kate Hazell of ITP, a media group with over 200 publications that covers most countries in the Middle East was overwhelmed by the tourism packages, which the country has on offer. "It’s not my first time in Zimbabwe, I was once here sometime back. I didn’t know one can afford to do hunting as well," said Hazell."

Full marks too to AMG's Adam Wilson, who's quoted as saying:

"I work for a publication that focuses mainly on business. Our readers are mainly top business executives and I hope that if I can write all what I have seen they will be interested in the opportunities that exist here both in terms of investment and leisure."

------------------
Next up: Grazia covers Pyongyang Fashion Week.

***Notice***

We have removed the Canvas post and won't be publishing any futher comments on that issue at the moment.

New men's magazine

Our sources tell us that the first magazine from ENG Media will be a weekly men's magazine called QI and will be launched in about 2 weeks. Former Charged editor Alex Ritman will be heading it up. Regional men's magazine are of a notoriously low standard here (witness Arabian Man or Al Nisr's awful 4Men) so does this mag stand a chance? We are not too optimistic.

Return of the media mack daddy

Another Dubai media behemoth rises again .... Former ITP sales god Neil Petch is now managing director of ENG Media, formed by Emirates Neon. He has poached Graham Stacey from CPI (where he headed up OK Middle East), who is now group editor.

Details on what publications they plan to launch are sketchy at best, but our money is on a celeb gossip title at least. Our spies tell us that Stacey is on a serious recruitment drive.

Updated: thanks to the poster who submitted a first look at one of the ENG magazines, BHW.