Maybe ‘Change is good’ but surely you can change in the wrong way, like 50% of your favourite magazine being owned by an asset management company in the city, how can that be good?
What am I on about? Dirt Magazine’s most recent editorial tells of how Dirt have ‘joined forces’ with some other action sports publishers to create a new publishing group called Factory Media. ‘Buy into’ and ‘joined forces’ seem to be popular terms for hiding larger misdemeanors, as investigations show 4130 and its associated titles were bought by Factory Media, a company recently set-up from a management buy-out of Action Sports Media.
The Source magazine reported this buy-out and aquisition as being funded by Electra Quoted Management, an asset managment firm who have a 50% share in Factory Media.
Fears of change for the worse don’t appear unfounded as big company ethics seem to be kicking in already, with subscription reminders awash with call centres and anonymous addresses; we all know Dirt HQ is in Dorset but the letter is footed Factory Media in London, the address on the top is Sittingbourne in Kent, the email address is …servicehelpdesk.co.uk…who?, the phone 0844 (a new non-geographic number, less costly than using a freephone number for your business apparently). Adverts for road and kids bikes and cars have already invaded the pages.
Maybe its because I have a vendetta against Dirt for certain misdescriptions of our product but glossings over only annoy me more. Maybe I stand to be corrected and these sites http://www.electraquoted.com/ are a figment of my surfing.
Will I send them my money? I don’t think so even though I have every issue since 2001 issue 29. I know it’s all been done in the name of progress and going monthly but sometimes its not always in the right direction. Often we see in the industry niche brands taken on by bigger players only to discover that they are niche for a reason and maybe, just maybe there aren’t that many more downhillers out there that will read Dirt.
