Tyler Brule
Tyler Brule, founder and editorial director of Wallpaper, has stepped up his plans to launch an international news weekly.
Brule, who two weeks ago unveiled new £2m fashion magazine Spruce, intends to draw up a business plan and work on the concept this winter.
"We would like to do a weekly news magazine next," he told Press Gazette. "It will have a global outlook, big budget and talk to an informed global consumer. When I’m skiing at Christmas I’ll be thinking about it."
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Brule said he had "enormous respect" for The Economist but he criticised other titles for being irrelevant.
"I think the time is absolutely right for a new launch in this country, but also internationally," he said.
"The world has changed and is changing enough that I think a lot of the current news weeklies haven’t really kept pace. A lot of them are in trouble, they are irrelevant, chasing the wrong stories and looking tired."
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Brule said his concept was based on bringing back great reportage.
"No one has a correspondent in Chechnya right now documenting what is going on for three weeks and saying, ‘why the hell won’t Russia let Chechnya go?’. We have lost that tradition in this country.
"It has certainly been lost in the US, although the German and French magazines do it a little bit.
"We are reporting focused but not so analytically focused and I think people want someone to sum it up and give them a point of view."
The magazine would be based in London but Brule said he would look overseas, particularly in Germany, for an editor, rather than from the British press.
"Germany has such a great tradition and has produced some of the best weeklies in the world," he said.
Brule said he had discussed the launch already with his bosses at AOL Time Warner and there were "issues" because Time Inc publishes news weekly magazine Time.
If his plans are given the go-ahead, the launch could be on news-stands within 18 months.
"There are some people who think it is a brilliant idea and some people who are as scared as hell by it because they know it is going to be expensive," he said.
The launch will require major backing from Time Inc, which has just agreed its first major European acquisition, the £1.15bn takeover of IPC.
Brule added: "Probably the main obstacle is courage – not on our side, of course."
by Ruth Addicott
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