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Does Tribune Magazine have a future?
The Independent on Sunday has an interview with the Editor of Tribune.
Independent on Sunday, Today, page 87.
In its heyday, after the Labour election landslide of 1945, Tribune boasted a circulation of 40,000. A typical week might have seen Michael Foot denouncing Ernest Bevin’s pro-US foreign policy, or Barbara Castle arguing for decolonisation. Major political decisions within the Labour party would be thrashed out in its pages and the magazine became a training ground for left-leaning politicians and journalists. But since the Sixties the readership has dwindled to a mere 3,000, although the website, relaunched last year, draws a further 2,500 unique users per week.
So what happened? “The Left has always been bad at promoting itself through journalism – they just don’t put the investment in,” says Seddon. “This is a great lost opportunity for the unions. If they really want to get people thinking about the issues they’ve been discussing at conference, they need something like Tribune. What could be better? But it means putting some serious money into it.”
If the unions decide to adopt his strategy, they will have to continue stumping up the cash, although, relative to their revenues, the cost of keeping Tribune going is small. Producing 49 issues per year costs £270,000, or £22,000 per month. Advertising revenue used to account for about £7,500 per month, but that has fallen sharply since May, when Boris Johnson replaced Ken Livingstone as Mayor of London. Under Livingstone, the Greater London Authority and the Mayor’s office ran weekly ads in Tribune, and the loss of these two advertisers has left Tribune extraordinarily thin on ads: an August edition was entirely ad-free.
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