Oz delivers a shot across the Bauer
Dr Mumbo was pleased to see the esteemed Mark Day, resident media columnist in The Australian, join in and take a stick to magazine publisher Bauer over so-called “errors” which saw magazines such as Take Five “accidentally” changing key locations in stories from overseas to Australia.
The systematic localising of stories was first revealed by Dr Mumbo’s colleagues who noted how Take Five had changed locations such as “Redruth, Cornwall” to “Redfern, NSW”.
A former owner of infamous Melbourne tabloid The Truth, Day argues that this “kind of chicanery” is unacceptable even for the trashy mags.
Day also uses his column to openly mock Bauer Magazine’s response.
Last week as representative from Bauer told Mumbrella that they were taking the issue seriously and that despite it happening again (this time localising the details of a story about a mother whose daughter was murdered at a Christmas party) they had put on extra staff to ensure it doesn’t reoccur.
True to form Day asks the question most of the industry was asking describing it as a “a puzzling move” especially “when you consider that the way to fix the problem is to not change locations in original copy, which doesn’t seem to be terribly labour-intensive.”
Indeed.
And he did acknowledge Mumbrella as the source of the story. Which makes a change to the way they usual refer to you.
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