The Saturday Paper will publish its first issue this weekend, and I'm really eager to check it out. It'll be interesting to see whether it's distributed in the regions in paper form, you'll also be able to buy issues online.
It's the much talked about weekly newspaper from the publisher of The Monthly and The Quarterly Essay and according to this short interview with editor Erik Jensen, it promises to be "...focused almost exclusively on long form
journalism – on narrative writing that shares its aspirations with the
New Journalism of the 1960′s."
A lot of thought and work seems to be going into the design and layout of the paper, which makes it seem a little magazine-y to me.
If you're interested, here's an earlier interview from RN's Media Report with the paper's publisher Morry Schwartz.
And on the subject of print and magazines - I've recently discovered that the National Library in Canberra is a great place to read hard to find (and expensive) magazines from Australia and overseas. I read a copy of Harper's there last year and am now hooked, there's a great section at the front of the magazine with excerpts from all kinds of publications - from new books, to unusual police reports. And if you're into The Quarterly Essay, the library's bookstore sells back issues for $10.
I'm looking forward to the Saturday Paper. I've always loved reading the papers on a Saturday. So it's been disappointing in recent years as The Australian has become unbalanced, and the SMH just a bit crappy. Although, I've noticed the SMH in recent months has sensibly headed back to decent journalism, after it's fling with lightweight and celebrity content. Perhaps in preparation for competing with the Saturday Paper? It's more important than ever to have intelligent and balanced journalism in this country, so I say good on Morry Schwartz for bankrolling this. Kind of reminds me of the early 1970s when my lefty parents were super excited about the launch of the Nation Review, a cutting edge weekend publication of those heady days. Leunig started in the NR, and I loved looking at his cartoons, but mum had to make sure I didn't flick through to the back pages where they had raunchy dating classifieds, including the first gay ads in the "mainstream" press.
ReplyDelete