In the latest January edition of DG magazine... • The New Year Detox Diet • Resolve yourself fitter! • Faces to watch in '07 Available now in your local newsagent
What is it about monthly magazines? Why do so many of them insist on running a month ahead of reality? Do they really think we're so stupid that we won't buy a magazine dated 'December' in December in case we think it's an old copy? Alas, yes.
Pop down to your local newsagent and you'll find the January editions of several of Britain's favourite magazines on sale already. The January 2007 edition of Q magazine was published last Friday, the January copy of Empire has a cover article previewing "2007's darkest sequel" and January's FHM boasts "20 new sex tips for 2007". Even Practical Caravan, Cross Stitch Crazy and Classic Tractor have their January editions on sale already. Why? It's not January for four weeks yet. We don't want to read about 2007, we want to read about 2006.
In the ludicrous time-shifted world of the monthly magazine editor, New Year comes early. Magazine editors spend their November putting together articles on slimming and gym-going, and trying desperately to predict the trends of the upcoming year. Even worse, they'll have spent October assembling their special Christmas issues. This means sending out the junior researcher to find artificial snow and fake holly to decorate photographs of festive place settings. And it means trying to cobble together "Review of the year" articles and "Best of 2006" lists when there's still ten weeks of the year remaining, rendering the subjects meaningless. All this so that we, the readers, get our Christmas and nostalgia fix delivered in the first week of November, only to deem these magazines wholly irrelevant and chuck them away unread. And when we do finally want those gift-buying hints and Nigella's turkey-basting tips, at the start of December, it's too late because we're already being forcefed articles on New Year Resolutions instead. Pah!
Not that every magazine is quite as bad. Marie Claire is waiting until this Thursday before going all 2007, British Plastics & Rubber won't be pretending it's January for another fortnight, and most of the BBC magazines hold off until much nearer the end of the month before releasing themselves. Would it really be so awful for circulation if all magazines were more patient and published at the correct time, so that both the date on the front and the content inside were appropriate? It might mean publishing another January 2007 magazine at the end of this month, just to kick things back into proper synchronisation. Or just holding back every remaining 2007 issue by an extra couple of days each month so that the publishing date eventually aligns with reality by the end of the year. We, the British public, are quite intelligent enough to work out that the magazine in the shop must be the latest edition, no matter what month it says on the front cover. Alas, I fear this may never happen. In which case a very Happy New Year to all my readers (and I'd better start planning what I'm going to write for Valentine's Day).
