New Idea is a long-running weekly magazine aimed at women, now published by Are Media.
History
The magazine was first published in 1902
by Fitchett Bros. The founder was Thomas Shaw Fitchett.
It was subtitled A Women's Home Journal for Australia.
In 1911 the magazine was renamed as
Everylady’s journal, but in 1928 the title was changed back to
New Idea.
Fitchett Brothers changed the name of their company to Southdown Press (later renamed Pacific Magazines).
Following World War II the company was acquired by
Keith Murdoch and then became part of the
Rupert Murdoch media consortium.
In June 2006, the magazine was ranked 3rd in Australia in circulation, with an audited circulation of 433,176; it ranked ahead of Reader's Digest.[Audited Media Association of Australia] In December 2014 readership had halved to 1.265 million,[Roy Morgan Research 'Australian Magazine Readership 12 months to Dec 2014.]
Content
In what may be termed the golden era of popular magazines, 1950–1980, a popular column was "Mere Male", where readers recounted humorous stories where an "MM", usually a husband, was the (affectionate) butt of the joke. Several anthologies of stories from the period have been published
and the expression became part of the Australian
vernacular.
Controversies
In January 2008, it revealed details that
Prince Harry was with the British army serving in
Afghanistan, in breach of an agreement with the major news organisations.
It ran updates on the story on two further occasions. When the
United States Drudge Report ran the story on 28 February 2008, the prince was forced to abandon his posting and return to the UK. After the story broke much more widely,
New Idea pulled the story from its web site and made itself unavailable for comment to other members of the press.
Two months later, the magazine issued an apology for publishing the story. "We regret this serious lapse of judgment. We sincerely apologise to all our readers, to the servicemen whose lives are at constant risk while serving at home and abroad and to their families and loved ones."
New Idea was criticised on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Media Watch for the use of sensationalist headlines and content.[ABC Media Watch 7 July 2014]
In 2016, actress Eliza Szonert threatened to sue New Idea because the magazine refused to pay her an agreed sum of 7000 for a tell-all interview about claiming back her child from an ex-partner living overseas, with the magazine claiming she had lied about entering drug rehabilitation.
As of 2020, New Idea is published by Are Media,
Personnel
- Editor-in-Chief
-
Dulcie Boling 1977–1993
-
Louisa Hatfield 2005–2017
-
Frances Sheen 2017–2018
-
Emma Nolan 2018–
- Deputy editors
See also
-
Health promotion
-
List of women's magazines
-
List of men's magazines
-
List of Australian magazines
External links
