Titania Veda

"This is a new take on the media model,” says Monocle's Andrew Tuck. . "No one else has done it."

The World According To Monocle Magazine

In these fast-paced times where information is at your fingertips and news tend to overlap, Monocle magazine provides a breath of fresh air.

A news magazine dealing with international affairs, business, culture and design, Monocle purports to be a return to old-fashioned journalism.

Editor Andrew Tuck said the magazine intended to step back, reinvest in journalism and resources and print beautiful pages. “[Monocle] is all about going back to what made us love newspapers and magazines 20 or 30 years ago,” he said.

Launched in February 2007, the magazine is the brainchild of Tyler Brule, former editor of Wallpaper*, an international design and lifestyle magazine. With headquarters in London, Monocle is currently available in 82 countries worldwide with distribution figures reaching 150,000. The magazine’s reach includes Indonesia, Australia, Korea, America, Sweden, Norway, Japan and Brazil.

With a target readership of wealthy and well-read urbane professionals, Monocle prides itself on its exclusive world reports. By commissioning stories out of London, New York and Tokyo, it ensures coverage of the world’s different time zones and events.

Functioning more like a wire service than a periodical with its far-flung correspondents, the reporters are able to take the time to unearth stories untouched by other international media as they are free from the daily news grind. When Nairobi correspondent Steve Bloomfield was assigned to report on the growing influence of China on Africa, he wasn’t burdened with looming deadlines.

“We didn’t worry about what he was doing each day as long as he found a good story,” Tuck said.

That attitude, according to foreign editor Sophie Arie, gives reporters a better chance to do original reporting.

“We can’t write stories that the local media have done. We work on the basis that we distribute in many places in the world,” said Arie, who handles correspondents in Beirut, Bogota, Milan, Moscow, Nairobi, Stockholm, Sao Paulo, Washington and Tokyo.

Though it embraces aspects of old-school journalism — film photography is still used for 50 percent of its images — the magazine is a forward-thinking one. During tough economic times when many print publications have folded, Monocle has thrived by providing information on a multi-platform level.

Subscribers can also view films, slide shows and listen to audio on the Web, as well as view archived issues of the print version. Another source of alternative income for the magazine are Monocle shops in London, Los Angeles and a seasonal one in Palma, Majorca, which sell merchandise, including bags, watches by Japanese retailer Beams, jackets by Italian brand Aspesi, leather notebooks by Milanese brand Valextra and fragrances concocted by Comme des Garcons especially for the magazine.

“The traditional way that magazines make money is through newsstands and subscriptions. This is a new take on the media model. No one else has done it,” Tuck said.

A regular Monocle reader since it entered the Indonesian market in 2007, Hidayat Jati defined the stereotypical Monocle reader as being clad in Cuccineli cashmere while lying on a Scandinavian sofa, drinking organic coffee and pretending to worry about nuclear weapons.

Jati, a media executive for one of Indonesia’s largest publishing companies, said, “Their goal is to be like Wallpaper and Economist, which is ballsy, though a bit pretentious.”

That the magazine may be putting on airs is not a matter that concerns Tuck, who has confidence in the content of his pages, but is irked by the fact Monocle is perceived simply as a jetsetter’s journal.

“[For instance], if you look at the fashion pages, you don’t see million pound necklaces, dripping with jewels or expensive items. The fashion is calm, crafted, about quality and taste, not about money — like the magazine. Our readers are 20-year-olds who study foreign policy, are in the ministry or in the EU,” Tuck said.

Tuck doesn’t deny the readership is mainly from the upper echelons of society. Though it is not, he said, about the readers’ wealth, but their global state of mind.

“What they like about Monocle,” Tuck said, “is that we find the whole world interesting.”

Indeed, it is the forgotten pockets of newsworthy stories that add to the refreshing appeal of the magazine. Readers are more likely to come across a story of how the police chief of Karachi spends his day dealing with the threat of terrorists than a general overview of the Al Qaeda insurgency in Pakistan.

The magazine is all about looking for new angles and in-depth dispatches, such as their last issue entitled “Weapons of Mass Seduction: Why Soft is the New Hard,” which reports on winning friends and influencing opinions through music, sport, design and your very own news channel.

As opposed to doing another story on the genocide that afflicted Rwanda, the October issue of Monocle features how the country is rapidly thriving and becoming East Africa’s communication hub.

“We go away from cliches and set ideas people have of parts of the world that daily news reinforces,” Arie said.

News for the monthly publication, according to Arie, is not simply about telling the bad news that is reported in daily publications, but identifying people who find ways to cope and can add to a reader’s sense of a certain place, giving them an additional understanding.

But even the magazine’s most thorough reports can’t please everyone all the time. Jati is one reader who professes he can’t take their supposedly serious pages of politics or business too seriously.

“At times, it can be too bourgeoisie, sterile, safe, too ‘manicured’ and not enough humor. But I still like it overall,” he said.
To learn more, go to www.monocle.com



Monocle is available in Jakarta at Aksara bookstores

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