Hoopla founders to launch quarterly newspaper for girls in ‘radical and risky’ move
We Magazines, the publisher of female focused websites The Hoopla and Birdee, is to launch a quarterly tabloid newspaper for girls after research revealed there was demand for a print publication among its 16-24 year-old readers.
The first print issue of Birdee will go on sale in the week beginning December 4 and have a print run of 20,000. The cover price for the 40-page newspaper will be $4.
We Magazines co-founder and publisher Jane Waterhouse described the project as “radical and risky, but exciting” and said she hoped to take the newspaper monthly if it proves successful. It will be the publisher’s second product aimed at girls following the launch of online site Birdeemag.com last year.
“People kept telling us that our demographic is walking away from print, but we did research and they overwhelmingly asked us ‘when are you going to turn Birdee into print’,” she told Mumbrella. “This demographic spend their life looking at screens but, strangely, they also like to read books and the thought of something tactile is really appealing to them.”
Rather than the commonly-held belief that young women are walking away from print, Waterhouse argued it was more a case of there not being a suitable publication in the market.
“Nothing is speaking their language. There is nothing they feel is talking to them,” she said. “Our writers are not experienced journalists but those who are young, up and coming writers who are speaking the language of the audience they are writing for. Our journalists are talking to their peers.
“This is the first tabloid newspaper for girls and we think it will work.”.
Waterhouse said it chose a newspaper rather than magazine format in order to “disrupt the market” and because the content lent itself more to a news-style publication.
Content will include political and current affairs issues along with lifestyle, health and fashion.
Waterhouse admitted the project was risky given the untested nature of the product and described it as a “discovery strategy”.
“It is a radical idea and there is a risk,” she conceded. “But we wouldn’t be doing it if we didn’t have that push by the audience. We also haven’t gone out with a massive 100,000 print run so we are minimising the risk with 20,000 for the first issue.
“It will be quarterly initially but it would be great to take it monthly. But like anything in media it’s hard to have anything longer than a three-month plan.”
Launch advertisers include health food brand Aussie Body, Roadshow Home Entertainment and “small independent fashion” brands. Advertisers have reacted well to the idea, Waterhouse said.
Meanwhile, The Hoopla has altered its paywall in favour of a freemium strategy, with readers given three free articles each month before having to subscribe to access additional content.
Waterhouse admitted the paywall led to a huge decline in social sharing, particularly on Facebook, which saw subscriptions plateau after three months.
But since partnering with e-commerce platform Press Plus, which manages the back end customer service and adopting the freemium strategy, traffic has soared 350 per cent, she claimed.
Steve Jones
Jane Waterhouse is speaking at the Publish conference in Sydney tomorrow.
topics
birdee
Jane Waterhouse
Media
newspapers
paywall
publishing
The Hoopla
We Magazines
Wendy Harmer
Someone in the media is doing something new and different? Sounds like a breath of fresh air.
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Exciting to see something new happening in this market.
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A women’s magazine that is talking about orgasms, fitness tips and how to deal with gossips?
That’s pretty radical! Way to shake up the world.
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@Helen
Bagging everything is easy. And common.
Well done, Birdee. Great site, great focussed content. Of course it’s courageous to launch a magazine these days – good luck. You might just succeed.
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Hey Helen – the thing that will be different about Birdee is that the writers are themselves young women and girls.
The topics are perennial – as they are in any publication.
Birdee also talks science and technology, international politics, mental illness, social media, the arts – music,poetry, books.
I can tell you, as someone with a young teen daughter, I’m very proud to be a part of Birdee. My kid is in love with Leonardo Di Caprio and watching Friends on re-runs.
But I hope she will graduate to Birdee.
The thing that’s radical here is that girls and young women have a space to talk to each other that’s free from mothers like me who have a habit of being censorious and always have been. ( I still won’t let her watch The Wolf of Wallstreet)
Dedicating a space for them to talk amongst each other, without interfering, is the best thing I can think of right now.
Perhaps you have some other suggestions…
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The website is great. Fantastic even. It has a really great mix of content, fun articles mixed in with serious in-depth issues.
I just don’t understand why the ground-breaking print issue just looks like a cooler designed Cosmo mag from the 80s.
Why does the website have articles about Islamaphobia, Brittany Murphy, Advice from Lena Durham, and even mental illness but none of that is reflected in the front cover of the print version?
It’s a bit disappointing. Kind of like a News Corp got hold of the print version.
P.s there better be an tablet version…
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And the next edition of Birdee will have a centrefold of Jack Thompson. Perhaps Hoopla should stick to their website consisting of two women gossiping over the back fence.
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Great idea. Good luck Jane and co. And good on you for The Hoopla. Just about the only intelligent thing out there for women. I like not being treated like i only want to read about celebrity gossip and vaginas. You leave Mamamia for dead.
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Well, it sounds risky. Aren’t newsagents catering nowadays mainly for lottery players and transport ticket purchasers? And there’s the added risk that supermarkets may be able to sell lottery tickets in NSW and the ACT sometime next year. The age of magazine browsing at the the newsagent seems to have gone.
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Gutsy move, to be applauded. My money is on it working; “intelligent”, “like reading books”, “tactile” …
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… and the next edition of the guardian or the saturday paper will feature the same old middle aged men fighting – oh, sorry, that’d be the parliament or men’s btiching – oh wait that’d be ‘current affairs’ or wait for it – entire websites and weekends of tv devoted to mens’ sport. all very ‘important?’ says who? And why can’t a young girl watch Friends reruns and like nail polish AND be interested in creating stop motion videos or engineering or surfing. My daughter is, and she’s only 9. That’s the joy of it – it’s all OK. I dread the coming ‘shut down’ … Fly Birdee fly.
PS Jack Thompson was a big spunk
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