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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