Media Week

The future of the free weekly men's magazine Sport hangs in the balance today following news that its French parent company, Sport Media & Strategie, has gone into administration.

We're told the last issue of the magazine, which employs 24 people, was distributed on 3 April and the company is now “rethinking its business model".

While it's just the latest in a growing list of British magazine closures, Sport's positioning as a high quality, free title, distributed by hand across London every Friday, made it particularly susceptible to the advertising downturn.

Unlike every other magazine that has closed in the past year, Sport's readership is stronger than ever and its content has been nothing short of award winning; being named Best Sports Coverage within magazines at the 2008 Sports Industry Awards and the Launch of the Year at the 2007 British Society of Magazine Editors Awards.

But, at little over two and a half years old, the magazine is far from mature and the pockets of its independent parent, led by managing director Greg Miall and editor in chief Simon Caney, are far from deep.

It remains the only magazine of its kind, operating without the national reach of Shortlist, and also without its broader remit.

However, in a short space of time, Sport has struck a cord with advertisers and its readership of elusive, upwardly mobile males.

Its mix of sports interviews, news and events was well balanced and on-target: It distributed more than 315,000 copies per week and claimed 85% of its readership were ABC1 males, aged between 18-45.

While I know enough women to regularly enjoy it to question that figure, there’s no disputing its ability to attract some of the biggest names in sport, including Tiger Woods, David Beckham, Roger Federer and Thierry Henry.

Its apparent demise can be attributed to several of its advertisers either closing down themselves or cutting back on ad spend.

According to a resigned Miall, Sport was ahead of its business plan last summer, "but no-one launches a company with a business plan that includes the worst recession for 80 years". 

So is the well respected and much loved magazine set to find a new buyer; unlikely.

As images of the City of London under siege are transmitted around the world, some serious questions regarding the media’s involvement in the G20 demonstrations must be asked.

Photos of bloodied protesters clashing with baton-wielding police fill the pages of every national newspaper today, providing, at least, a distorted picture of what proved to be a few well contained disruptions.

One photo doing the rounds (below) - which commanded a third of the page in the FT and the front page of Metro – shows a menacing crowd gathered around a baseball-capped protester throwing a TV at the windows of the Royal Bank of Scotland.

But take a closer look at the picture and what initially seems like an angry mob full of rampaging anti-capitalist, free-market-hating anarchists turns out to a gaggle of hacks. In fact, there are only four people in the picture who are not holding an SLR camera.

Meanwhile, in the BBC’s extensive TV coverage yesterday afternoon, the studio stayed with their man on the ground as he weaved in and out interviewing people penned in near Bishopsgate.

At one point he managed to persuade one young man to stop shouting at the police long enough to give a five minute account of what had been happening. A few grumbles about police brutality later and we find out he isn’t a bonafide protester with issues at all, but rather a journalist (albeit for a student rag). A quick pan away from the scene said it all.

When journalists on the ground are outnumbering any would-be rioters something has gone wrong. Furthermore, if all hell was really breaking out, how many of those wielding cameras would actually stay around?