City magazine
A city magazine is a magazine that is devoted to local topics of a city or region and usually contains an event calendar for music events, exhibitions, films and similar service pages.
history
City newspapers, the forerunners of the city magazines, emerged in the 1970s as part of the alternative culture . At that time, the established daily press often did not reflect the alternative culture. Hence the idea of a counter-public , realized in so-called Stattzeitungen . The first German city newspaper was the Hobo in West Berlin , which appeared from 1971 to 1977 . The Frankfurt paved beach and the Münchner Blatt were also early and important city newspapers. The Village Voice , which has appeared in New York since 1955, can be regarded as the forerunner of the city magazines . In the US, such magazines are known as alternative weeklies .
Today many city magazines belong to established media groups. But there are still independent magazines that have been on the market since the 1970s, such as the Pflasterstrand successor Journal Frankfurt , Bonner Schnüss and Kölner StadtRevue . In the 1990s there was competition from the issues of the magazine Prinz , which was more oriented towards lifestyle , fashion and consumption , in 13 metropolitan regions . In September 2017, the Nuremberg city magazine Plärrer , which recently only appeared online, announced its end. In 2020, the Berlin city magazine Zitty was discontinued after several changes of ownership and editorial merger with the city's competitor tip .
Online city magazine
In the meantime, typical printed editions have withdrawn to the online area or have set up an online portal in parallel. In the background, there are often well-known publishers who finance themselves through advertising. In contrast, there are numerous smaller, mostly non-profit associations or institutions that offer their own city magazine. In contrast to the commercial projects, the non-profit projects often focus on city-specific problems. These city magazines often have an alternative function to the daily newspaper and are used to form political opinions.
Special interest magazines
Some city magazines have developed into special interest magazines . In 1980, what was probably the first German family city magazine Mamamia was published in Würzburg . The publisher Barbara Pohl was awarded the Federal Medal of Merit in 1990. In the meantime, there are also family magazines in other cities that bundle relevant regional information and dates especially for the target group of people with children.
Many homeless newspapers and underground magazines today also have an urban connection .
Web links
- Link catalog on the subject of city magazines at curlie.org (formerly DMOZ )
- René Martens: “ Most people read for free. They were once the building blocks of a city's cultural identity: the city magazines. Her decline tells of the loss of meaning through adaptation ”, in: taz of April 21, 2010, p. 15
- In dungarees and on high heels: market success and counter-publicity of city magazines , Der Spiegel 42/1985
Individual evidence
- ↑ Plärrer city magazine online version ( memento from August 25, 2017 in the Internet Archive ), online at plaerrer.de:80