I got the April issue of Monocle today in New York.
The magazine was still in boxes.
The news agent asked me the same question: What is this a magazine about?
World affairs, I said.
He went to the back of store and found the box.
I got two copies.
I had lunch with Andres Mata, the editor of El Universal in Caracas, and one of the copies went to him.
He didn’t know about the magazine.
Monocle is still an underground publication.
Let’s see what we have here:
It has better cover paper.
Less pages (194 plus the 32 pages of the KitaKoga comic booklet) but the same quality content.
Norway as a geopolitical cover story.
Pages 2 and 3 for a Rolex ad.
Cosmopolitan reports from more than 16 places: Norway, Samara, Barcelona, Bremen, Quito, Abu Dhabi, Copenhagen, Delhi, Mumbai, Tokyo, Istanbul, Paris, Basel, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Derbyshire, Trieste, Graz, Punta Plata, Lima, Cairo, Alexandria, Mogadishu…
And on the last page, Tyler Brule advocating for a London Media City.
Again, a compelling “briefing on global affairs, business, culture and design.”
I am flying tonight to Europe.
This will be my flight food.
UPDATE (after my first readings)
Some of the photos are really bad.
This is an area with a lot of room for improvement.
An interview with a Catalan politician (very bad, with no context and no editing) has a few shots that look like pictures taken with a cellular phone …
If this piece is part of the price to have some Catalan investors, Tyler Brule has to be careful.
And the same happens with some bits about the aviation industry, where Tyler Brule had previous business.
Credibility is the key for the success of any media publication.
Monocle can be dead in just months if readers and advertisers have this perception.
