Our Middle Pages

A Complaint

We have received the following letter from Mrs Joan Wagner, 13 McGlashen Avenue, Richmond:-"As a purchaser of two or more copies of your magazine each month since its beginning, I would like to make my first complaint. This is endorsed by all my friends who promise to sign a petition to this effect.!!! Those dreadful centre pages! This type of thing is available in any old paper and we don't appreciate paying 6d for it. Give us 6d of pictures of the old railway yards, the tip or anything else. Your previous magazines have always been eagerly awaited - I have every copy you've printed and they come out for rainy day reading, reference etc. Even every-day records of scenes on a trip to town, busy streets, someone's workshop, the rough, or smooth sea- we don't mind seeing a new picture of them. I realise subjects may, at times, be difficult to get, but the coming holiday season, school functions and the show should give you a backlog for next year. We don't mind if they are late coming into print. Weddings all the ladies appreciate and most men loathe, but I must commend your cover plates, roving camera, personal, reunions, "Introducing", veterans, and industries and sports pages.

"Please forgive my candour, but your magazine is a dear old friend whom we don't want to see run off the rails."

And An Explanation

Thank you Mrs Wagner for your letter and to many other "old friends" of "Photo News" who have expressed their opinions to us on this subject. We'll let you in on a secret. We, at "Photo News", look upon our readers as members of a vast family (we estimate we have something like 40,000 readers) and each month we attempt to produce a chatty, informal pictorial letter to every member of that family - not just a magazine, but something a little more personal than that.

Here, in Nelson, we have been turning out "Photo News" for six years and in other centres much longer. In all that time we have had to bear wage, freight, paper, ink, machinery and countless other increases without having increased our price or without having introduced advertisements to offset these increases. But the situation had developed where it became impossible to continue in this way without an increase. And so the price of the magazine was raised to 3s. Now, here's the main point that many of our readers have overlooked. The additional 6d was not imposed to cover the cost of the 16 extra pages. The price had to be raised irrespective of the number of pages to ensure that we could continue to function economically. Maybe we should have emulated other publishers who have copied the "Photo News" idea and raised the price and left the magazine as it was. We preferred to give our readers a little more.

More local news in these 16 pages has been advocated. We would like to do that, and this subject will be one discussed at a conference of editors this month. But it would be extremely difficult. At the moment we work something like 60 to 70 hours a week (every Saturday and often Sundays and many nights of the week). Subject material is often scarce and although pix of the tip and the sea might suit some readers, we're sure that month after month they would pall.

We have heard complaints about the pages, but we have also heard some praise. In the months to come, we hope to improve, not only the centre pages, but the whole magazine with new features, etc, and we're sure that before very long the centre pages, whatever they contain, will be just as avidly read as the rest of the magazine. We've had some problems in printing and experiments, but the bugs are being ironed out. We've had problems too in that our shift to better premises at head office has been partly delayed through building problems. So please bear with us for a little time. You will have your reward in a better, brighter and more colourful magazine.