NME Analysis

The NME Story

Magazine History
The first magazine was a gentlemen's magazine. All images were drawn with no cameras and no DTP. The magazine was very rich in text and there would be no girls inside the magazine or mention of. IN 1885 a ‘Good Housekeeping’ magazine was set up which was aimed at women and told them how to keep their husband happy. 1897 saw the introduction on Vouge magazine which has very similar conventions as today. e.g. topics on fashion and lifestyle and that hasn't changed as the needs of women remains the same. In 1955 a magazine more for teenagers came out called Marilyn. Like today it appealed to the youth of the time with topics on current things and photos of celebrities. When Nova came out in 1960 we can see that it actually showed the change in women's roles from previous decades where women were completely inferior to men. Men's magazines always had specific topics such as Auto Trader that was published in 1975 and other magazines of this type has topics of football and fishing. In 1986 Arena magazine, a general lifestyle mag focused on men came out. It stared photos of men on the cover but eventually resorted to woman. It had its own representation to girls almost like the ones you’d see in magazines today, young, slim, perfect teeth and skin and at the time white women. !996 saw the first black model on Vouge apart from health and fitness mags who had been doing it for ages.

The NME Story

NME was founded in 1952 and was a non glossy magazine in tabloid format. NME was owned by IPC. The journalists for NME wrote about pop and were generally very pleasant about
the bands and artists. Morris Kinn, the first editor was first to feature in the singles chart. NME grew ever bigger and was massive in the 1060’s. A cosy relationship with bands still remained.
In 1969 the NME audience had changed and become self aware teenagers. Soft drugs had turned to hard drugs and ‘Love’ and ‘Peace’ resorted to violence. A new spiky attitude was taken on and harsh articles were winning the audience again. New young writer Charles Shaar Murray wrote for OZ prior to NME. The new influx of writers wrote in a similar way to ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine, loud fast and funny. At age 26 Nick Logan began as editor and brought in an uncluttered cover and made the paper more hippier and so that it questioned proposition. In 1976 there was an advert for ‘2 young hip gunslingers’ to cover the punk scene. Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons joined and changed the direction and tone of the magazine. So when they reviewed bands they would either be at your throat or at your feet. NME was one of the only places to see punk. The magazine liked The Clash and Sex Pistols. The magazine had a strange politically correct attitude, the Stranglers song ‘Peaches on the beaches’ didn't impress Burchill however contrastively Generation X was too clean. The next movement in NME was that new editor Neil Spencer was to redesign the paper. Not so long after Kent, McDonald, Burchill and parsons were out and new talent needed to be brought in. NME started to see a decline in readers after Nick Logan went to Smash Hits and the Face magazine started to cover the booming Romantic scene. This left writers such as Barney Hoskins and Paolo Hewitt wondering what to write about. Paul Bourney decided to write about Manchester Fall, Buzzcocks and New Order. NME had a new double act, Morley and Penman. NME had started to become politically intellectual. The writing style of what they wrote was deemed as very important. Philosophy and culture were being covered in the magazine. The publication of an article on youth suicide was a very daring piece and very audacious and was to a very small audience but it meant a lot to this audience. Not many other publications aimed at the youth could do this. In the mid 80’s NME was supporting red wedge, Labour movement, lots of people out of work due to Tory government. IPC were very unhappy about all the political content in the magazine. 7 years after Spencer left NME was involved with the Hip Hop wars. The question was Hip Hop, Soul or Rock? Many thought Hip Hop was just a fad and asked, ‘Why have black artists on the cover?’ NME appeal to a white audience and consequently two thirds of the audience left. IPC were not impressed and took control leading to lots of journalists leaving overnight. So IPC got in Alan Lewis, a populist editor after higher circulation. The mag was instantly nonpolitical, less ‘hip’ and more middle-of-road (MOR). Morrissey was being put on the cover for almost any reason.  However after putting Morrissey on the cover stating he was a fascist John Harris effectively ‘Killed the dad’. 12 years later Conor Mcnochols got Morrissey back on the cover after all the years of Morrissey not speaking to NME. So many magazines had folded and yet through all the struggles NME had faced it survived, being a chameleon and changing tastes with the audience. Everyone had their own period of NME that they loved.