Media on trial - New Statesman

The big issue for the NS is its image problem. A lazy critique is sadly
often taken as the prevailing view and most people use words like
worthy, dull, joyless and sandle-wearing without much provocation. These
changes are intended to shake off these perceptions - refreshed layouts,
a bigger size, shinier paper and more pages, with writers like Rory
Bremner and Julian Clary should combine for a more entertaining read.
The redesign is contempory, the layout feels credible and there is a lot
of interest-ing stuff in there, especially the arts and culture section
in the back half.

One does feel there ought be a bigger audience for the NS. The combined
circulation of left-centre titles like The Guardian and The Indy alone
is well over 500,000, but the NS only manages to sell around 25,000
copies, and the thought that lingers is that the title fails to connect
with a wider audience than a politically obsessed North London
enclave.

To become more credible to us as a print option, I would like to see
some more numbers and some proof of who is actually reading it. Without
evidence to the contrary, I would assume that its readership is
anti-corporate, anti-America and not particularly enamoured with
commercialism per se. Unless I'm given hard evidence otherwise, I don't
see this as an espec-ially fertile ground for many of our clients'
messages. The redesign helps put it on the right track, so let's see if
it can persuade a broader church to buy.

- Review by Adam Skinner, press/business director, OMD UK.