NUJ members’ magazine The Journalist has marked its 100th birthday with a redesign – the title’s first in 10 years.
It is a move which means the union remains committed to producing a print magazine – despite experimenting with going web-only for one issue last year.
Following budget cuts, the new-look Journalist will come out six times a year, as opposed to 10 times a year in its previous guise.
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The new look mag is in expanded A4 format – measuring 300mm by 230mm.
The Journalist is now more features-led – with news mainly confined to the NUJ website and produced by the union’s two communications staff: Stephen Pearse and Miles Barter – a former north of England organiser of the NUJ who has returned to the union head office this week.
Journalist editor Tim Gopsill said: “We’ve got the space now to make The Journalist more relevant to people – now union news goes on the website the magazine can be much more featurey – with more stories about members lives.”
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One example of this in the first new-look issue is a three-page feature detailing a day in the life of a journalist covering London Fashion Week.
Gopsill said there would not have been room for such a feature before, when The Journalist was committed to covering all of the NUJ’s various campaigns and industrial disputes.
The relaunch issue is 40 pages, including an eight-page pullout on the magazine’s centenary, but it will be moving to a regular 32 pages.
The reduction in frequency follows a cut in The Journalist’s budget, not including salaries, from £220,00 to £150,000 a year.
For one issue last year, The Journalist was published online as a PDF. Gopsill said the reaction to the experiment was overwhelmingly negative – with 250 readers emailing in asking that The Journalist stay a print product.
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