Less than 24 hours from the launch of its inaugural issue, here are the “editorial concepts” of Monocle according its own Web site:
We believe it’s time for a new, global, European-based media brand.
With a keen focus, strong reporting, sharp wit and more classic approach to design, we’ve dubbed our venture Monocle.
At the core there’s a monthly magazine delivering the most original coverage in global affairs, business, culture and design.
Alongside, there’s a web-based broadcast component covering the same areas through a variety of bulletins, mini-documentaries and talk formats.
Focused on informing and entertaining an international audience of disillusioned readers, listeners and viewers, it is our intention to create a community of the most interested and interesting people in the world.
Edited out of London, Monocle is staffed by a team pulled from the world’s leading news outlets, magazines and broadcasters.
Conceived by Wallpaper founder and Financial Times columnist Tyler Brûlé, the launch team calls on some of his old alumni and new talent from The Independent, the BBC, branches of Condé Nast and a host of other news outlets.
Versed in politics, popular culture, business affairs, media, architecture and design, the editorial team will cover the world from its London hub and dedicated bureaux in Tokyo, Zürich and New York.
Monocle will be driven by offering original, never-before-seen content to an audience of well-heeled, intelligent opinion leaders around the world.
The new magazine has five main sections:
Affairs: A global mix of reportage, essays and interviews with the forces shaping geopolitics.
Section a’s lead stories are big, visual and smart.
Told by the best writers and captured by fresh photographic talent, the Affairs section of the magazine will set an agenda in newsrooms around the world.
Alongside big features there will also be smaller dispatches filed from our network of bureaux and stringers.
Business: Devoted to identifying opportunities and inspiring the reader.
While keeping an eye on the big stories, Monocle is more concerned with reporting on Slovenia’s emerging wine business, on the runaway success of a certain South American airline and the rise of Valencia as a new creative hub.
Where other titles seem solely interested in billionaires and share prices, Monocle’s business coverage will champion the small and interesting as much as the massive and muscular.
Culture: With a tight group of opinionated columnists, reviewers and interviewers, it delivers the best in film, television, music, media and art.
The culture component of the magazine is dedicated to delivering all that’s new from all corners of the world.
This section’s edit team will be committed to ensuring that readers’ dinner guests will always ask ‘where did that track come from?’
Moreover, it will be about culture in the truest sense and not be a forum for covering played-out celebrities.
Design: Bypassing hype, Design is dedicated to unearthing emerging and established talent.
Driven by a group of international contributors, Monocle’s mandate is to cover fashion, industrial design and architecture from around the world and cover territory that other titles miss.
For people in the industry, it will bring their world to life.
For people who are interested in everything from automotive design to retail architecture it will keep them ahead of the curve, their wardrobes well-stocked and their builders busy.
Edits: Bite-sized and thought provoking, Edits are vital life improvements curated in a fast-paced well-researched collection.
A concise, opinionated narrative that covers all the essentials of daily life: the wine to buy, the best Korean massages, the emerging neighbourhoods to invest in and the books to take on holiday.
In short it’s all about the buy and sell.
The magazine’s proposition, has raised around £3.3 million from a series of international investors .
Brule,who launched Wallpaper in 1996 at the age of just 27, said Monocle would have no direct rivals in the UK market, although it would sit alongside The Economist. It would also have similarities in its style of reportage to Vanity Fair, but it will not take an interest in celebrities.
The majority of the 22 editorial staff will be based in London, Monocle will have single-person bureaux in New York, Zurich and Tokyo. It will go on sale in most European, Asian and North American countries.
Access to most of the monocle.com website will be restricted to magazine subscribers, who can sign up for a year for £75.
The first edition of the new title will appear on news stands at £5 a copy all over the world, weighing in at a heavyweight 244 pages.
There will be an initial print run of 150,000 copies.
