There's nothing new under the sun. That was my reaction when I read a US Postal Service blog suggesting the latest trend was the "Magalog" or the "Catazine", a hybrid of catalog and magazine. My reaction was thus because this is how one major category of magazines, the trade magazine or trade journal, started a couple of hundred years ago.
The Morgan brothers, who ran a business which combined the categories of druggists and hardware sellers, decided back then that they'd get more readers and more committed readers for their catalogs and thus more customers if they included news and information. And that meant news etc that was not just puffery for their products.
In the 1960s I worked in London for the firm of publishers which had been, a century earlier, that firm of chemists. Those catalogs became the world's first trade magazines, The Chemist and Druggist and The Ironmonger. As they became successful in their own right, they split from the chemicals company (which became Morgan Crucible) and the one which became Morgan Brothers Publishers (and subsequently the Morgan-Grampian Group, now part of Fleet Holdings).
When I started work for the descendants of the Morgan Brothers (Sir Charles Morgan Hudson was the chairman) I worked on The Ironmonger and they were approaching their centenary year as publishers. They set a high standard with an editorial staff of around ten on that magazine alone, a supplements department with two or three (I worked for that section for a while and wrote a 64-page guide to glues and adhesives - exciting stuff!) and an inquiry department with 5 people fulltime answering phone and mail questions from subscribers.
It was definitely profitable and as a young reporter I was sent UK-wide reporting on the meetings of hardware retailers and ironmongers. When John Betjeman (later appointed Poet Laureate by Queen Elizabeth II and following on previous appointees to that position such as Tennyson, Wordsworth and John Masefield) called for some information in order to write his speech to open an exhibition of Opercula (perhaps better known as "coal hole covers" those often ornate cast iron plates set in footpaths in front of houses above the coal cellars) I was told to find the booklet on that subject we had published long before, try to find some updated information and arrange to meet him before the event and then report on the opening. It took many hours and resulted in about a 6-inch story.
But that was the way things were in those profitable days. Maybe some of the "new" catalogues with news will do as well. As long as they follow the basic rule that the Morgan Brothers followed, that there must be no puffery. Readers had to be respected.
I'd suggest that a good start might be not to call the new publication a "Magalog" or the "Catazine".
The Morgan brothers, who ran a business which combined the categories of druggists and hardware sellers, decided back then that they'd get more readers and more committed readers for their catalogs and thus more customers if they included news and information. And that meant news etc that was not just puffery for their products.
In the 1960s I worked in London for the firm of publishers which had been, a century earlier, that firm of chemists. Those catalogs became the world's first trade magazines, The Chemist and Druggist and The Ironmonger. As they became successful in their own right, they split from the chemicals company (which became Morgan Crucible) and the one which became Morgan Brothers Publishers (and subsequently the Morgan-Grampian Group, now part of Fleet Holdings).
When I started work for the descendants of the Morgan Brothers (Sir Charles Morgan Hudson was the chairman) I worked on The Ironmonger and they were approaching their centenary year as publishers. They set a high standard with an editorial staff of around ten on that magazine alone, a supplements department with two or three (I worked for that section for a while and wrote a 64-page guide to glues and adhesives - exciting stuff!) and an inquiry department with 5 people fulltime answering phone and mail questions from subscribers.
It was definitely profitable and as a young reporter I was sent UK-wide reporting on the meetings of hardware retailers and ironmongers. When John Betjeman (later appointed Poet Laureate by Queen Elizabeth II and following on previous appointees to that position such as Tennyson, Wordsworth and John Masefield) called for some information in order to write his speech to open an exhibition of Opercula (perhaps better known as "coal hole covers" those often ornate cast iron plates set in footpaths in front of houses above the coal cellars) I was told to find the booklet on that subject we had published long before, try to find some updated information and arrange to meet him before the event and then report on the opening. It took many hours and resulted in about a 6-inch story.
But that was the way things were in those profitable days. Maybe some of the "new" catalogues with news will do as well. As long as they follow the basic rule that the Morgan Brothers followed, that there must be no puffery. Readers had to be respected.
I'd suggest that a good start might be not to call the new publication a "Magalog" or the "Catazine".
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