BIZCHINA / Top Biz News
Highbrow magazines hit a low
By Wang Shanshan (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-07-12 08:27
Like the last knights fighting a losing war, two Shanghai-based monthly
magazines Shu Cheng (Book Town) and Wan Xiang (Panorama Monthly) have
only recently published their first editions this year after financial
difficulties forced a six-month suspension.
When they temporarily stopped publication, the press wrote eulogies on
China's last "intellectual magazines," tailored to the reading tastes
of the cultural elite.
But their troubles are not recent. Since 2000, Book Town stopped
pubishing thrice, reportedly because of money problems. Panorama Monthly
kept running on a tight budget until it had a cash-flow crisis at the end
of last year.
Now, as the two try to sell their new editions and Book Town redesigns
its content and layout, the market seems fairly nonchalant.
"I don't think their sales can exceed their previous numbers (about
30,000 a monthl each)," said Xiong Hui, a bookshop manager.
For the time being, together with a couple of other titles published in
Beijing, China's "intellectual magazines" seem to have little chance of
overcoming financial challenges and dwindling reader interest.
Is it because the market has switched to "lowbrow" reading material, or
because the people who used to read these magazines have all but
disappeared despite growing numbers of university graduates?
The "intellectual magazines" had good readership among better-educated
urban dwellers in the 1980s and early 1990s.
But since then, other types of media have flourished.
Zhu Wei, editor-in-chief of Sanlian Lifeweek a current affairs magazine
based in Beijing since 1995 said the magazine market has been taken over
by a new breed of publications upscale current affairs magazines.
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