'Behind NME Lines'

After reading Eva Wiseman's article about NME Magazine and how it has changed over the years we get the feeling that the magazine has moved into a whole new generation of publishing, leaving behind many of the aspects of it that people who had been buying since it was first created in 1952 had been reading it for. Once named a 'national institution' this article discusses whether the magazine can survive in the competitive world of music magazine publishing.

Wiseman talks about how over the years music publications seem to have become less and less important, now post 'tabloid invasion and Internet saturation', there doesn't seem to be so much of a gap in the market for magazines to be as successful as they once were when they were 'the only place i read about new music'.

As i have previously discussed, this article also highlights the falling sales in printed magazines, and NME's lowest recorded sale; 'The NME recently recorded its lowest ever sale - its readership falling 17.4 per cent year on year to little over 56,000'. This could be due to a number of things such as the global economic state or readers' falling interest in the magazine.

The magazine has received alot of criticism due to it's shameless approach; 'Morrissey claimed that the NME was trying to 'misstate, misreport, misquote, misinterpret, falsify, and incite the bloodthirsty' after remarks attributed to him on immigration were splashed across it's cover.'
It is incidents like this that may have caused readers to leave NME, seeing such an influential figure as Morrissey publicly battle the magazine could lead to a boycott. In addition alot of people do not agree with the new image that the magazine has taken on with featured bands commenting that 'The constant emphasis on trends and fashion is a little galling. It feels as though it's soul has been sold off piece by piece'. 'Ex readers sound wounded' at the extreme changes that the magazine has gone through and Neil Spencer 'says it's impossible to compare the paper he ran to the magazine today'.

The article suggests that readers and former contributors feel that the magazine has declined with age, whereas current writers and editors believe that it is progressing all the time, though falling sale suggest otherwise. With NME branching out into various other media sources the magazine has become less important and therefore lost the authenticity that it was once loved for.