Private Eye in the UK is the country’s best selling news and current affairs magazine; it is also the only one without an equal online presence.
Sales of Private Eye are up 9 per cent year-on-year, and the Christmas issue was the biggest seller in the title’s 55-year history, shifting 287,000 copies.
This defies the trend of magazine sales in the country, which lost sales at an average rate of 5.9 per cent year-on-year on the second half of 2016. Even the 129-year-old National Geographic saw its print circulation drop 8.5 per cent in 2016.
Ian Hislop has been the editor of Private Eye since 1986 and says, “I still find it extraordinary that people say they will not pay for news. It is a tiny amount of money. Private Eye is less than two quid. We are asking people to pay what they pay for a coffee every morning for the work of about 50 talented and trained and committed people. It really is not much. And I think the failure of the last 10 years has been to chase after free and give away your content for free – why should you? I do not expect to be given entertainment for free, a haircut for free, music, films, any of that. All that model seems to be doing is destroying a craft base.
“From our point of view, the fact is print does something different. If you get a copy of Private Eye, there is a huge variety of material in it which you get in one place. You may by serendipity pick it up, find the jokes funny and read the stories later. You may find the jokes pathetic but think the stories are great. There is stuff in it that can be much more varied because people are not directed to it through a funnel on the internet. You have got it in your hands,” says Hislop.
“I do not think it's my position to lecture people. I have had 10 years of people saying to me that ‘the future is digital and print is dead, you are finished’. And we are not, self-evidently.”
Interestingly, the satirical magazine still draws advertisers, despite regularly taking shots at brands. By not giving the content away for free online, readers can only purchase the paper, meaning any advertising dollars are a bonus rather than a necessity.
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