Magazine madness: that’s Beijing, Time Out, City Weekend
Interesting times for those who get their nightlife news from free English-language lifestyle magazines such as that’s Beijing, Time Out, and City Weekend.
For the second time this year, Time Out is notably late, with the June 2008 edition held up due to licensing issues. This is no shocker if you consider that the magazine only recently started to include a masthead - the section that lists the editors, writers, and so on. Well, if you consider that and the general uneasiness of many people ahead of the Olympics.
Meanwhile, True Run Media, which has produced that’s Beijing since 2001, will move on. The magazine’s publisher, China Intercontinental Press, owns the “that’s” trademark and will take over the entire gig as of next issue. If you are in the publishing industry, you might guess the magazine’s biggest problem: it made money. That was, is, and will always be its problem.
If what happens to that’s Beijing is anything like the that’s China saga of a few years ago, we can expect an immediate nosedive in quality and a whole feedlot of stories about pork biotechnology (hmm, I wonder if that had anything to do with those science park ads?).
In any case, True Run Media will not remain idle. Expect a new magazine next month that is similar in layout and content to that’s Beijing. The name: The Beijinger.
Finally, rumors abound that the events staff at City Weekend face deportation after their recent Dining and Nightlife awards party featured frozen pizzas cooked in two small ovens. Just kidding - I’ll have more on the City Weekend awards shortly.
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Pointed to your site by our mutual, I guess, acquaintance at Danwei.
Forgive me for nitpicking but CIP do not ‘own’ the trademark “that’s”. It is still under dispute and awaiting a long overdue (14 months overdue) decision from the high court in Beijing. CIP nicked the TM with fabricated evidence from me when they nicked my whole business (not just that’s China, but that’ Beijing too, started by Gao Bang Shanghai not True Run, but yes run by them)in 2004. They did not need any fabricated evidence for that, just the publishing licence and some nasty threats to my staff.
And amused by your joke about CW’s staff being deported. Once the entire foreign staff of that’s BJ were deported in a tiff we had with another publishing partner. I got them all back in bar one, who I was happy to leave sweating in HK. (Long story)
And finally, it is not to do with money. There is far more to it than that. It is about face, power, politics, and much else besides.
Thanks for the slot
Mark Kitto
Mark,
Nitpick away, though I think it’s extreme to say, “it is not to do with money.” There may well be other issues to it’s hard to believe money is not a big factor.
Cheers, Boyce
Boyce,
Yes, money is involved, of course you are right, but just not as much as everyone seems automatically to assume it is. Just as when I tell people in my brief version how I: ‘built a media company in China and had it taken from me’, many listeners outside of China immediately assume I published something that upset the government. Not the case at all but could be argued that that, sort of, was part of it, at a long stretch.
The money involved with ‘that’s’ right now is a 10 million yuan investment from a new state ‘partner’ or ‘investor’. Where that money will end up is anybody’s guess.
By the by, bit of a bugger to find out someone has given RMB 10 million to the people who did actually offer me five million, out of court, unofficially and unaccountably, to settle the trademark case. (They did not mean it, but it was ‘illustrative’ of something that they made the offer.)
Mark
By the way, there were 3 small oven pizzas there. It’s just that the uncompleted facility didn’t have an electrical plug for the third oven ;) While it’s a lesson we seem to continue to learn - talk often masquerades as reality when planning events - we gauge the success of our award parties based on how much booze was served and how long our esteemed guests stuck around. In these two instances, the open bar ran hard and dry and I could have sworn I saw Beijing Boyce shoving warm Coronas down his pants come 10:30pm.
Collin Crowell
Managing Editor
City Weekend
I’d love to know, Mark, what you think the CEPP will be getting for their 10 million.
None of the writing “talent” presumably. None of the advertisers (the majority seem to have gone over to theBeijinger). Left over office stationary?
Or do they just get the name?
Perhaps readers won’t notice the change: “That’s Beijing, the name you know!”
I had a read of the new ‘that’s’ it’s rubbish! A lot of two hundred word reviews spread over whole pages and two page spreads of Chinese people looking ‘cool’
viva la beijinger!
Gareth,
Are you referring to the “Munching Donkey Balls” issue or a more recent tome?
Cheers, Boyce
Boyce,
I have seen only two issues of the new Chinese version of That’s Beijing. The first was awful, with yawning gaps of white spread between boring articles.
Presumably stung by criticism of their first effort, the editorial staff filled in the huge chunks of white by lifting quotes out of the articles and spashing them around the top of the page. That works fine if the quotes is a teaser - something that draws you into reading the article. But I guess it’s hard to find catchy quotes when the article is inane.
I just feel sorry for the trees that gave up their lives for this rubbish. Or, if it’s really recycled paper that this rag is printed on, then toilet paper would make a better end-use.