Nobody Does It Better

The Germans do it better. There are many things that the Germans do better, much to the annoyance of the British. It is not a matter of annoyance but one of mystery - as far as I'm concerned - as to why the Germans, where Mallorca is concerned, are so much better at producing publications (in fact, even the Swedes seem to do it better as well). There may well be some German horrors lurking that I am unaware of, but they would be hard pressed to be worse than some of the things that the British can be held responsible for (or irresponsible, to once again use that Peter Cook line). There is one particular magazine that rarely is to be found in the north of the island. Just as well. It is unreadable. And no, I'm not naming names. That is not really why I have brought this subject up. I want to ask the question - why are the Germans that much better?

One might argue that the answer lies in a far bigger market, but that is not the case. The residential German market is, if memory serves, around 50% greater than the British, but we're not talking huge numbers of people - maybe 30-35,000. I stand to be corrected on this population stat. And by all means do say if I'm wrong, but that's my recollection. Even if this market were double or three times the size of the Brit sector, this still would not be enough to explain the fact that in terms of layout, editorial, advertising content and sheer sophistication, German publishing on the island is superior; indeed it is better than much of the Spanish.

That word - sophistication. That's a word that's bugging me. Or rather it is gnawing at me and telling me that this is where the difference lies. Can this be? Perhaps so. Is it that the Germans are more sophisticated? And by implication that the Brits are unsophisticated? Yet, I can well remember being told - by Germans - that Mallorca is the place where downmarket Germans go. That, of course, is completely wrong as a generalisation, as it would be were it to be applied to the British. There is no such thing as a homogeneous tourism market from either country; nor is there a one-size-fits-all residential market. And it is because of this very diversity of markets that it is, as I said on 19 March (I Can't Read You), so difficult to reconcile "competing demographics". Sophistication cannot be the explanation, except in the sense that the publications have tended to take a sort of top-down approach in pandering to a higher common denominator.

Whatever the reason, there is a wider issue and that has to do with the sustainability of publications for what are small markets, be they German or British. There is huge competition. "The Sun", to take an example, is now actually printed in Mallorca. The distribution and availability of publications is now no longer the hit-and-miss and two-to-three-days-later affair that used to be the case. And then there is the internet.

The combination of recession and online has hit regional publications particularly hard. National ones are not immune either. But it is at the local level that these "threats" should have always been especially keenly considered by publishers in their "SWOT" analyses. Mallorca is a local level. The expatriate markets within Mallorca are even more "local" if you like. You wonder how publications here can make sense - not in their hard-copy format at any rate. And in "free-to-air" digital format, they make even less sense, unless there were huge ad revenues - which there are not.

Publishers have created many of their own problems. Why are newspapers available for free on the internet? There will always be a role for the physical paper, so long as people - like me - prefer to have something in their hands rather than just looking at a screen. But for how much longer? Much as I prefer to handle a paper, I am very content to read content for nothing - and I do. The argument that free content would be supported by internet advertising revenue was always bollocks. It never stood up as an economic model, and doesn't. The recession has brought this home. The Germans may do it better, but they, and the British, are unlikely to do it at all, publish local titles, unless they can do it better on the internet. That is going to have to mean that people pay for content. And so they should. Trouble is, you've got hordes of Brits here going around nicking broadband access in order to fritter on frigging Facebook. They're not about to pay for stuff when they're engaged in not only free exchange but also theft. And even worse still, I'm on the point of joining them. Not the theft bit, but the Facebook. Where does it all end?


Oh, and apropos sophistication. Did you know that "The Sun" printed 300 thousand - 300,000!!! - more copies for their death-of-Jade special. I am most terribly sorry. She has died young, she has done good things for smears, but for pity's sake, three hundred thousand more ... . Words do, just for the moment, fail me.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Dr Dre, Eminem and Xzibit (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaG6Kju0E-Q). Today's title - was her big hit about Jagger, Beatty, Taylor?

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