Attitude

attitude magazine was originally published by a company called northern and shell northern and shell used to publish a range of magazines and newspapers that were quite tabloidy and gossipy within their genre they also owned a few tv channels including channel 5 and they owned some adult tv channels and magazines as well bit by bit northern and shell started to suffer financially and they started to sell off their assets they sold off some of their adult tv channels and magazines they sold off channel 5 and some of their other tv channels and then they started selling off bit by bit their newspapers and magazines too and this potentially reflects the very difficult nature of magazine and print publishing there's a huge decline within printed magazine and printed newspaper circulation and readership and that has affected a lot of companies financially so stream publishing bought attitude from northernand shell stream publishing is an indie company so they're not owned by a big conglomerate they're independent but they do have a range of other titles so they publish a range of other magazines booklets flyers and leaflets for commercial companies they're quite a small organization they're based in surrey and they have less than 30 employees so quite a small independent production company but um they do have an owner called darren stiles he's currently the managing director of stream publishing darren styles is gay and when he took over stream publishing he decided that he really felt that there was this gap in the market for gay male magazines um and so he previously bought the title winq which is a i think it's netherlands based gay magazine um but it was and it was doing quite well attitude is a huge magazine it had um really quite a lot of sales and it was doing quite well in terms of the magazine market and i guess it was one of winx main competitors and rather than struggle they decided to horizontally integrate by buying out attitude from northern and shell so buying out competition for wink carrying on publishing writing and publishing attitude magazine so they own now both uh kind of quite leading successful magazines within the gay market in britain and in europe so they actually publish quite a lot of products and that means that they um can use their uh their skills their resources the fact that they're vertically integrated they have their own printing presses they can use all of that to attitudesadvantage but because they're an independent company and they're not owned by a big faceless conglomerate it means that attitudes still have the power to be quite creative and independent themselves and darren styles himself said that that's what he quite liked about attitude that they were quite a kind of maverick magazine within the industry and that they weren't afraid to push the boundaries

Industry

in fact attitude is so successful as a magazine that there are actually various editions around the world so there's a thai edition a belgian edition there's one in the netherlands and also in vietnam as well so a range of other editions of the magazine and this reflects hesmond hulk's ideas about minimizing risk if you have an existing successful format you don't have to create something completely new you can take that existing successful format and remake it for the similar audiences but in other countries

now attitude print magazine is not the product you are studying you are studying their website and their online editions and that's quite important to know but it is important to understand that kind of background of the attitude print magazine now obviously the fact that they've got a website and online digital editions is just kind of um demonstrative of the fact that a lot of magazines now have to be digital have to be online to target those more modern audiences because so many audiences now are spending their time on the internet there is an ipad version an iphone version and you can download it via kindle through the app store etc so reflecting the fact that so many audiences are using these converged technologies now on a day-to-day basis the website has 1.8 million unique users every single month which is huge within the magazine industry and actually the digital copies sell over 11 000 copies a month so people are still buying the digital version of the magazine as well but selling printed and digital copies of the magazine isn't enough they have to expand their revenue opportunities because don't forget when they were selling a lot more printed copies of the magazine they were able to make money from the advertising on the pages but now that those print sales are declining they have to have advertising opportunities on their website as well so there's a range of advertising opportunities within their website you can create banner adverts they sell sidebar adverts companies can sponsor whole sections of the website they can take over a page they can create advertorials that look like articles but are actually adverts companies can even run competitions and promos on the website as well and they can even advertise via their social media pages too so there's a whole range of advertising opportunities that help to make stream publishing more revenue from the attitude brand being a website with digital additions as well means that they are able to distribute their product globally it's no longer just limiting the website and the brand to be a british target audience which i guess is what the print magazine often was targeting the online website and the digital editions often feature stories from around the world potentially to reflect the fact that they do have a more global audience now there's a high focus on celebrities and star appeal on the website and in the digital editions every single page almost is just plastered with names that would be familiar to an audience and that is to engage the audience and draw them in make their online website more attractive more unusual more exciting and engaging than others attitude magazine are famous for securing some amazing exclusive interviews with people that might have never done an interview or an article for a gay magazine before so people like previous prime ministers even members of the royal family prince william did an interview with attitude and was on their front cover and the first time ever that a royal uh royal had ever done anything like that um you know articles with people like daniel radcliffe so really quite high-profile celebrities has helped to really maintain the brand's identity and to maintain their profits ### Publishing stream publishing do have a variety of social media accounts so things like facebook twitter and instagram they use these to try and target a reasonably modern audience don't forget lots of people are using social media nowadays and it also helps to target a global audience so lots of social media posts about things happening in other countries tagging people from other countries as well it's a great way of broadening out your audience so it's not just british readers reading the online magazine there are several countries around the world where being gay lesbian bisexual trans is actually illegal and therefore attitude magazine would not be allowed to be sold in its print version having the online website means that they can often offer this content to people in those countries even if lgbtq communities are actually illegal by law those communities can still access the website in a lot of those countries but not necessarily all so having an online version is a way of reaching audiences in countries where perhaps they might not be allowed to read printed material about lgbtq lives so it's it's a good way of actually overcoming some countries like legal regulations to do with with being gay every single social media posts redirects an audience back to the website so the social media for attitude is really about driving traffic to the website which i guess is about hopefully trying to increase their revenue from advertising you can see that a lot of their posts do feature quite scantily clad male models but some of the more adult content what they do is they use the twitter or facebook um algorithms to be able to censor the content so that they are at least trying to keep it away from perhaps much younger audiences and that way people have to sign in with with accounts to try and prove uh in theory that they are over the age of 18. however as we all know not everyone on social media is the age they're supposed to be so digital technology is making it quite difficult to try and regulate what content is getting to what audiences attitude also have an issue with the fact that not everyone who comments or looks at their social media posts is actually supportive of lgbtq communities so you can see that there are several comments on their social media posts that might be seen as hateful offensive and discriminatory now obviously facebook and twitter and instagram and other social media platforms are supposed to be helping to tackle this they're obviously not doing a brilliant job perhaps this is why attitude have very little options on their website for audiences to actually share particular articles and images online it could be because attitude and stream publishing are concerned **about the reaction it might get from** some people who are clearly homophobic and transphobic perhaps stream publishing is attempting to protect its readers and to protect the people who are the subjects of their articles by not allowing this shareability on their website perhaps they are trying to stop articles being shed in a hateful way and hopefully create a more safe community for some of their readers however stream publishing have actually set out their own ethics policy on their website and you can see here they've got their own rules and regulations that they say they will abide by so perhaps reflecting this idea that some companies now are trying to self-regulate trying to put in place their own rules and regulations that they say they will follow in an attempt to try and uh stay out of the public eye in terms of controversy stream publishing also run a variety of events that are around the attitude brand so things like the attitude awards um and they are really big events attended by hundreds and hundreds of people and it's a great way of getting extra publicity for the magazine stream publishing have also set up something called the attitude magazine foundation which is a registered charity this foundation raises money and funds to distribute to lgbtq communities and charities around the country so things like uh running youth groups running support groups running events uh they help to donate money towards particular pride festivals as well so perhaps suggesting that this company isn't all about profit and power which relates back to um current and seton's theory um and so um it's quite interesting to see that there are some things they do that are perhaps about giving back to the people during the covid pandemic in 2020 stream publishing ran an attitude pride at home festival because there wasn't really able to be a kind of pride festival in real life so they ran their own uh nine day festival over two weekends and it was all digital it was lots of videos lots of talks workshops etc and so perhaps reflecting using technology to reflect current social and cultural context of what's going on in the country to try and keep their readers engaged and offer their readers something a little bit different surrounding the attitude brand so that was my easy to understand guide **to attitude online** magazine and industry don't forget to check out my channel for other videos about attitude and the other