I'm glad to note that Tribune has apparently been saved by a mystery buyer. But the jury is out as to what it will morph into after being jettisoned by the union conglomerate which kept it going in recent years. The mystery benefactor wants to broaden it beyond the Labour Party and include more European news and features.
So the danger is it will become another amorphous left-of-centre magazine - and even less appealing. Tribune was once a serious must-read on the Labour Left but lost its major editorial strength when the Tribune Group of MPs disbanded in the early 1990's. It means well, but it is meaningless without a power base in Parliament. And in recent years many of the articles have been ( excuse my language) piss-poor. Still, I wish the editorial and production staff whose jobs have been saved all the best
Saturday, 6 December 2008
TRIBUNE SAVED BY MYSTERY BUYER.....
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
2 comments:
Interesting. I'm not sure broadening beyond the Labour Party is a bad thing in itself but it depends a bit on what direction(s) it broadens in and how it does so.
It's moot point whether's a sustainable market for one weekly 'amorphous left-of-centre magazine', it's not really worth thinking about whether there's a market for two.
For me, the way forward for Tribune is to do up to 16 pages (possibly 12) of well written stuff, including real news - not just rehashed wire copy and reworded press releases.
Articles from MPs should be kept to a minimum unless they (or their researchers) are actually good at writing and have something vaguely interesting to say.
NGO and campaign group press officers should not be given space to do extended version of press releases.
Anyway, I'll be watching with interest to see what happens. It's unlikely to be anything I'm suggesting.
I gave up reading it years ago once it lost any meaning now it's just nonsense.
Post a Comment