Newsome: editor-in-chief of new Trash
Condé Nast has joined forces with Ministry of Sound to launch Trash, a consumer lifestyle magazine which promises to be “anti-hype”.
Backed by a £1.5m launch campaign and edited by former Dazed & Confused editor Rachel Newsome, Trash sets out to be a cross between a pop Vanity Fair and a grown-up Smash Hits.
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The bimonthly hopes to attract “urban, intelligent, open-minded high spenders”, aged 20 to 35, who are fed up with being told what’s cool and feel there is nothing in the market talking to them.
Newsome said people were getting increasingly frustrated with empty hype and labelled style magazines “dead” and music magazines “boring”.
“One key idea is to do something which is anti-hype, rather than telling people what’s cool, which is something people are becoming bored with,” she told Press Gazette. “There has been a cultural shift in awareness. We are trying to produce a magazine for a generation which used to go clubbing religiously – and still go once a month or so – but who are also into TV, sport, travel and food.”
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Trash will be a music-led magazine with articles on popular culture and fashion. It is based at Condé Nast’s customer publishing division, headed by former Sunday Express editor Sue Douglas.
Newsome was headhunted by Douglas earlier this year for the role of editor-in-chief and she created the magazine concept of Trash with co-editor Paul Flynn, formerly of the gay lifestyle magazine Attitude. Steve Read, who was lured to New York by Tina Brown to work on Talk magazine, is art director; Charlie Porter, deputy fashion editor on The Guardian, is men’s style columnist; Bethan Cole, Sunday Times Style columnist is women’s style editor and Stuart Turnball, formerly of Sleazenation, is a contributing feature writer.
Newsome, who worked on Dazed & Confused for four years, said Trash would not be London-centric and suggested there was potential for the magazine abroad, boosted by Ministry’s profile overseas.
The idea is to draw on Ministry’s experience in music and global youth culture and Condé Nast’s style and publishing expertise.
Trash will launch on 4 July with a cover price of £3.95 and each issue will carry a Ministry of Sound CD. It is aiming for a settle-down figure of 100,000.
The launch signals a comeback for Ministry of Sound, which was forced to close its dance magazine Ministry last October due to the expense of covermounts. According to insiders at the time, cover-mounted CDs could cost around £40,000 per issue and because of falling sales, Ministry struggled to break even. Its final ABC was 65,030.
By Ruth Addicott
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