I have been thinking about Quadrant Editor, Keith Windschuttle’s comment published here last night since I saw it come through at 9:30pm.
Dear Mark,
Thank you for drawing attention to your concerns about the wording of the subscription form in the current Quadrant Magazine. I can understand why you and your colleagues are upset about it.
It was a clumsy attempt to draw attention to our appeal for subscriptions, which I now regret publishing. I have told our printers to withdraw it from all future editions. It will not appear again.
Yours sincerely
Keith Windschuttle
While I appreciate Keith responding here, he does not demonstrate that he understands the issue. This is about more than wording. Somewhere in their office a decision was made to target newsagents, the hand that feeds them. They decided to print an insert into the latest issue in the magazine, on a colour paper to draw attention to the offer. They chose words which put down their network of retailers.
Labelling this clumsy does not do the process justice – unless they have no process for considering such inserts.
I would have preferred Keith to say something along the lines of:
Newsagents,
Sorry. I am my team here at Quadrant are sorry for disrespecting you as we have in the latest issue. We failed to consider your investment in Quadrant. We failed to recognise that you have played and continue to play an important role in distributing and selling our magazine.
We intend to make this right. here is our plan:
- Every issue from now on will promote newsagents putaways alongside any subscription offer.
- We will develop a one year putaway product with you so that customers prepaying you for a year can access the same benefits of those subscriptions we post.
- We will list your outlets on our website – under a find a Quadrant retailer facility.
- We will research a story about the role of newsagencies in Australian society and run this – if it meets our editorial criteria.
We cannot undo what has been published in the latest issue. I hope that the steps outlined above show we have learned from the mistake and want to work with you mutual benefit.
Please continue to stock Quadrant.
It’s not too late Keith.
Mark;
This was the standard response to everyone that wrote to the publisher. I know of many newsagents that received the same email.
It shows how little they understand the issue and further shows how little they respect the chanel.
Unless the publisher issues a firm retractiona and apologises then this title will remain on my no go list.
The least he could have done was apologise.
At the risk of defending the indefensible, I’d say there was no intention to put down newsagents. More likely, whoever was behind the offer was JUST thinking about Quadrant’s needs without considering anyone else — which kind of goes with the magazine’s philosophy.
I think Quadrant’s response was as expected. You have to expect them to make decisions that are best for their business, not yours. Are newsagents charities now?
Local News….totally agree. While I respect the plight of Mark and understand his frustration in that newsagents have carried the title, ultimately this comes down to probably being one of those titles that Mark will blog about in regards to oversupply etc. Quadrant is attempting to offer a service to the devout readers and possibly free up some of Mark (and everyone elses) shop real estate that is so often blogged about as being expensive.
Quadrant is a title that will usually only be read by people who buy it regularly with the occasional ‘tester’ – unlike say ‘New Idea’ that many people would buy infrequently on impulse. The Week offers an excellent subscription offer and is very often difficult to locate reliably in any of my local newsagents, (I live in a town of around 40,000).
Newsagents are not a charity and I would suspect that perhaps this may have been done intentioanlly to ‘lock in’ those regular readers for a title with a lower sell through than other titles.
It doesn’t seem quite as bad as what happened with Nat Geographic and how newsagents were treated by Dick Smith however, the principle of using the newstands to promote sales away from where one is purchasing it is not only fundamentaly wrong it is an abuse of our retail function.
Local News
If that’s your real name. Quadrant are making a business decision in their best interests by leeching upon the goodwill, hardwork and retail opportunity of others who have committed vast amounts of money to earn a living. To have that thrown back in their faces by a magazine publisher with a low selling product smacks of arrogance – long live the early return/cancellation button
Local, Quadrant is the charity, accessing our real estate for a very low cost. We have carried this title.
Daniel, I would not complain about oversupply of Quadrant because it is not oversupplied. It is distributed by Gotch and they rarely oversupply.
Mark, you just contradict yourself. In your first point you say Quadrant is a charity because you have to support them. Then you say you are fine with it because it is not oversupplied. It either makes money or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, ditch it. If you are not happy supplying space for small mags like Quadrant and if you didn’t do so then the whole newsagent magazine model would fall apart. You would have a magazine range like a 7-11 with only the NewIdea and Womens Weekly. You can’t have everything.
Local, A title does not have to be oversupplied for it to be a charity. In my case, it is not oversupplied. However, sales are so low that I do not cover real-estate and labour costs associated with it. Hence, in my case, it is a charity.
Until their behaviour in the latest issue I was happy to carry the title for range and range only.
I’d be happy with between 700 and 800 titles. In a shopping centre it is hard to justify more unless you are in a top ten centre and in a perfect location traffic-wise.
If Quadrant can put this message in their mag, can I put one in my shop that says
” Quadrant is a crappy overpriced magazine, they charge you too much. You are better off buying something else”
I find the reply from the editor amazing, if only for the fact that it appears his printing company is responsible for the content of his magazine.
If no one wants to say it, I will:
“Keithy’s done him self a mischief!!!”
I think it is about time we got into the partworks folk .remove the crap in side and post it back to them
Agree Jim
Mark, I agree with pretty much all you said in your first post today. We did fail to consider your investment in stocking and selling our magazine. We only saw the issue from our own point of view, not yours. As a customer who’s had accounts and several standing orders with my local newsagent for more than 30 years, I should have known better and recognised your interests. So, yes, I’m sorry we made such a bad judgement. We not only believe you play an important role in reaching our readers but we probably couldn’t survive without you. Your suggestion number 2 is actually an attractive one for us. We would certainly be prepared to offer access to Quadrant Online to anyone with a standing order for the magazine with a newsagent. I don’t know how we could organise that, but I’ll certainly try to find out.
Keith Windschuttle
Editor, Quadrant
Just check out the Universal packs ,got an A/5 sheet inside them .We are now checking to see if they have a sheet in them, if so they are now being returned early Mr universal it is called craping in your own nest.
As newsagents we were very disapointed to read the copy of Quadrant that contained the bright blue subscription offer in the magazine. We have decided to keep the copies on the shelf but have removed the offending pages. If it happends again we will totally remove the title. This will also happen with any title that shows NO respect for the newsagency channel.
Record another victory for Fletcher the great. Where would we be without him interfering?
Probably worse off.
David,you do not have to read this information and you do not have to act upon anything mentioned but for a lot of us this information and discussion is appreciated. If you are against Mark providing us with information why waste your time commenting. Read something else.