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No doubt you've heard the news that D.C. Thomson announced massive cutbacks yesterday with 300 redundancies and several magazines being cancelled.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/feb/09/beano-stylist-dc-thomson-cut-staff
One of the titles ending is the superb Animal Planet magazine, which just goes to prove that quality is no guarantee of success. Animal Planet (recently retitled Animal Planet Kids) was a fun magazine about animals and the environment that was presented with more depth than most kids' mags. Its free gifts were also of a higher quality, created especially for the magazine and made of card or paper, not plastic, to reflect the magazine's respect for the environment. On the occasions where it was "bagged", even the bag was paper, not plastic.
A far bigger blow of course is for the 300 staff who are about to lose their jobs. These are terrible times for publishing, or in most industries really, and my thoughts are with them.
With rising bills and less work it's hard to see any positive future in publishing. I wish I could end this post on a more upbeat note but I hope you'll enjoy these two examples of the Bad Pets strip that were so enjoyable to draw...
8 comments:
I hadn't heard myself..
not to be... something but.. I worked for ten years in woodland conservation and did a fair bit so i'm not a huge expect but I'll say not ALL plastic is bad.. it depends on the type, how it's made and used. Some companies are FINALLY started to use more recycled plastics, which are in fact, much better then cutting down trees for the card and paper. Some companies are also stupidily think you should plant 1 tree for each one you cut down.. which is far from the truth. you should plant 3, partly to deal with that fact not all will take. So after a year or so to see if the tree is established and then ones which are unrequired (you remove dead, and some will be too close to others) you then dig up and replant elsewhere where they are needed.
really, at a major scretch, 2 for each 1 is the smallest possible to plant.. also there is ALOT of paper waste and rubbish in woodland areas as well as plastic and the fact that it MOSTLY degrades faster isn't always a plus, the ink doesn't degrade as much and can polute the soil more.. it's pretty tricky.... but the key word is 'balance'.
anyway.. Shame they are closing a number down like that. I'm not a regular subscritor or buyer of many magazines at all these days, so I can't comment on quality but some I have seen... kinda..mm.. not aimed at me and often don't quite have something to really stand out.. the fact there are SOO many magazines cluttering up many of the local shops I go into probebly doesn't help, but there has always been a bit of that problem. Some magazines do try to have digital options but can be fairly lackluster in adverts etc.. it is much harder.. a physical comic you can see on the shelf, digital, not so much (though there are many digital markets etc which work much like normal markets, just digitallity)..
very complex situration really.. maybe when magazine makers learn how to come to a deal with news agents and supermarkets for selling digital stuff VIA shop, which is an option in some places.. a bit like buying a gift card.. the video game market is slightly getting into that wher you can buy the game digitally via a traditional shop but it's not really being done much right now.. something that should be looked into though...
Understandably the DCT cuts are big news in Scotland and has been greeted with shock as DCT are a much loved company. As you say thoughts go out to those losing their jobs and freelancers like yourself Lew. Hopefully things will pick up in 2023 for you and others. Publishing sadly seems to be taking more than its fair share of this recession
Thanks Paul.
Terrible news …things go from bad to worse
Yeah, those 300 job losses are definitely not good to hear about. Hopefully they'll find jobs elsewhere quickly, though of course the entire print industry isn't doing so well. I hope DCT can sort themselves out and survive.
Do you still get paid even if those two strips don't get used? With their other animal themed magazine Animals & You also cancelled, I suspect the only place they could appear now is in Beano.
Yes, I was paid thankfully. DC Thomson usually pay pretty quickly, just a couple of weeks after the artwork is sent to them, so I received the money last year.
As Steve Holland reported on his blog, a big part of the cuts was Aceville Publications (which published Comic Collector for several years). See https://bearalley.blogspot.com/2023/02/comic-cuts-17-february-2023.html for more details.
Thanks David.
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