Mr. Magazine

Publishing During A Pandemic (7)

“The social responsibility is a key part of it and essentially why we are here. The social responsibility we feel for those people who need us is why we do what we do. They buy the magazine from us and they sell them to the public, and that’s at the heart of everything. And you can’t really separate us from anything else and I think the only reason that people have been keen to help The Big Issue, whether it’s the subscribers, corporate subscribers, or retailers, is because they recognize that responsibility and they want to find a way to help those people who write in the margins. I believe something has been triggered by the Coronavirus that is making people look out for others in ways that wouldn’t have always done before.” … Paul McNamee

The Big Issue is a magazine that feels a strong social responsibility to its vendors, and that’s because those people who sell the magazine are the homeless across Britain, and actually across  the globe now that there are branches all over the world of The Big Issue. The magazine supports the homeless by allowing them to buy the publication at half price and then resell it for the entire cover price.

Paul McNamee is editor of The Big Issue and spoke about the magazine which was started by Lord John Bird and Gordon Roddick some 29 years ago. Lord Bird had a bit of colorful past, in and out of prison, and Roddick was cofounder, along with his wife Anita, of The Body Shop, a cosmetics business that grew exponentially. According to Paul, the pair, Bird and Roddick, wanted to do something about the homeless crisis going on in London. Hence, the unusual business model of the magazine that has had to be slightly restructured due to the pandemic.

“There were two things that were key for us to do. The first was to make sure that those people who rely on The Big Issue for an income, our street vendors, and there are around 1,500 of them in any given week across Britain. We had to make sure that they could get income,” Paul told me and went on:

“We came up with a three month subscription offer, which seems to be right about the time people think this will be through its worst. It’s a three month offer, with a goal of 60,000 subscriptions.  Then we started building an app. We have a website and we’re very good at social media, and we started building the app very quickly. We began talking with retailers, because we’ve never in all of our history been sold in shops. So we started speaking to major retailers in Britain and they were very keen to do what they could to help. And just yesterday we went into the shops for the first time in our history.”

Paul told me that the social responsibility they felt to their vendors and readers was the only reason the magazine existed. So, despite much duress, these fantastic magazine people, our friends across the pond, came up with a way to continue the magazine and help their fellow man.

Magazines and their creators are amazing…

So, for the seventh in the series of Publishing During A Pandemic, here is the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Paul McNamee, editor, The Big Issue, United Kingdom.

But first the sound-bites:

On the history of The Big Issue: The Big Issue was started in 1991, 29 years ago in London by John Bird and Gordon Roddick. At that time, John Bird was a printer, but with a very colorful past. He had been in and out of prison and had been homeless himself on and off for several years. Gordon Roddick was a friend of his who had set up The Body Shop, a cosmetics company, with his wife Anita Roddick. The pair of them, Bird and Roddick, wanted to do something about the growing homelessness crisis that they saw in London. And they came up with the idea of a magazine that would be produced professionally and then sold to those who were homeless or vulnerable or right on the margins. The homeless people would buy it for half the cover price, then sell it for the cover price and that difference was how they made a living. So the more they sold the more they could make.

On how he has changed the business model due to the pandemic: We just had to. In publishing, as it is in a lot of industries, when you’re thinking of a big change, you plan it over time. You will perhaps test it. Then you will decide whether or not the change you are planning is worthwhile or workable. But with the pandemic, we simply didn’t have time to do any of that. We just had to act and act quickly.

On why he thinks The Big Issue is relevant today during the pandemic: The social responsibility is a key part of it and essentially why we are here. The social responsibility we feel for those people who need us is why we do what we do. They buy the magazine from us and they sell them to the public, and that’s at the heart of everything. And you can’t really separate us from anything else and I think the only reason that people have been keen to help The Big Issue, whether it’s the subscribers, corporate subscribers, or retailers, is because they recognize that responsibility and they want to find a way to help those people who write in the margins. I believe something has been triggered by the Coronavirus that is making people look out for others in ways that wouldn’t have always done before.

On anything he’d like to add: One thing I’d like to say is that I want to thank people who have supported The Big Issue during this time. A month ago we were making plans for future issues, we’re a weekly, so we have to plan a bit ahead. We were making plans for spring, for special issues, all those kinds of things. All of that had to go out the window as we restructured content and found new content. And I want to thank people who have come along with us and supported us and have allowed us to rebuild and be there for the vendors.

On what keeps him up at night: Wondering what we’re going to put in the magazine the next morning. I know that a lot of people have said that during this time, working from home means a lot less to do and they can make plans for the garden or make plans to work around the house; I don’t know where those people are getting time, because I feel like we’re working longer and more intensely than we did before this happened. At night, I try and get a little bit of sleep and then I wake up and get ready to go again, because we have to go again.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Paul McNamee, editor, The Big Issue.

Samir Husni: How are things in the U.K.?

Paul McNamee: Still locked down. Still quiet. Still uncertain. But I think people are getting more used to this strange way of life.

Samir Husni: For people who may not be familiar with The Big Issue outside of the U.K., would you tell us a little about it?

Paul McNamee: The Big Issue was started in 1991, 29 years ago in London by John Bird and Gordon Roddick. At that time, John Bird was a printer, but with a very colorful past. He had been in and out of prison and had been homeless himself on and off for several years.

Gordon Roddick was a friend of his who had set up The Body Shop, a cosmetics company, with his wife Anita Roddick. The pair of them, Bird and Roddick, wanted to do something about the growing homelessness crisis that they saw in London. And they came up with the idea of a magazine that would be produced professionally and then sold to those who were homeless or vulnerable or right on the margins. The homeless people would buy it for half the cover price, then sell it for the cover price and that difference was how they made a living. So the more they sold the more they could make.

And that basic model of people coming to The Big Issue to buy and then going on the street to sell, that’s been the business model ever since, with the 50 percent cut. And that model grew in  London and it was actually fortnightly, then it went to weekly across the U.K., and ultimately around the world. The Big Issue is now in Japan, Korea, Australia, Taiwan, South Africa, and numerous other street papers that have used The Big Issue’s business model, either by copying it and using the professional team to produce it and sell it. Or in the States, particularly, there’s a lot of city-based street papers that use a lot more input from those who sell it, but they earn a much more modest scale than The Big Issue.

So, The Big Issue started as a single organization, a single publication in London, and spread to influence a global movement.

Samir Husni: When you have a publication like The Big Issue that depends on sales on the streets, how have you changed the business model with this pandemic and stay-at-home directive?

Paul McNamee: We just had to. In publishing, as it is in a lot of industries, when you’re thinking of a big change, you plan it over time. You will perhaps test it. Then you will decide whether or not the change you are planning is worthwhile or workable. But with the pandemic, we simply didn’t have time to do any of that. We just had to act and act quickly.

There were two things that were key for us to do. The first was to make sure that those people who rely on The Big Issue for an income, our street vendors, and there are around 1,500 of them in any given week across Britain. We had to make sure that they could get income. There’s no other way for them to get it. They’re not employed in any traditional sense, although we feel that they’re workers and they’re essentially running small businesses by buying a product and selling it. But in a traditional sense, they’re not employed, therefore they can’t benefit from government help, so we had to think very quickly. How do we manage to get benefit to those people?

And then the other side to that is how do we manage to keep going as a business because we have to be here for our staff to help those vendors and then afterward. When the crisis is over, we suspect that we’ll be needed in a bigger way, there might be more need for people to make that kind of income. So, we have to carry on.

I suppose the third thing is how do we make sure that we get a magazine into the hands of the people who enjoy it. We don’t want them to stop. So, when you’ve got those particular challenges, you very quickly come up with ways to overcome them, first, with subscriptions. Unlike a lot of magazines, we had no subscription base because of the interaction that people have with street vendors. And they enjoy that interaction, it’s important for us that exists. We may have had a few dozen subscriptions, but no real base.

We came up with a three month subscription offer, which seems to be right about the time people think this will be through its worst. It’s a three month offer, with a goal of 60,000 subscriptions.  Then we started building an app. We have a website and we’re very good at social media, and we started building the app very quickly. We began talking with retailers, because we’ve never in all of our history been sold in shops. So we started speaking to major retailers in Britain and they were very keen to do what they could to help. And just yesterday we went into the shops for the first time in our history.

So, we’ve had all of these incredible revolutionary changes to the business model that we had to implement, and at the same time produce a magazine and stuff for the app remotely, with people not being able to communicate as they normally would and not being able to look and check pages in the normal way. It’s been quite a few weeks.

Samir Husni: In addition to the social responsibility of publishing the magazine, why do you think The Big Issue is relevant today during this pandemic?

Paul McNamee: The social responsibility is a key part of it and essentially why we are here. The social responsibility we feel for those people who need us is why we do what we do. They buy the magazine from us and they sell them to the public, and that’s at the heart of everything. And you can’t really separate us from anything else and I think the only reason that people have been keen to help The Big Issue, whether it’s the subscribers, corporate subscribers, or retailers, is because they recognize that responsibility and they want to find a way to help those people who write in the margins. I believe something has been triggered by the Coronavirus that is making people look out for others in ways that they wouldn’t have always done before.

In terms of a publication, one thing that I’ve always been repetitive about and that I make sure the staff understands and everybody understands is that it’s not enough for people to take pity on a vendor and buy the magazine, they have to want it and want the content. They need to feel as though they’re getting something that they’re not necessarily getting from other places.

That might be because we have a particular challenge to orthodoxies, to institutions; we’re not owned by a big publisher, therefore we don’t have to fall into step with any particular thinking. We can be outside of the mainstream; we can allow ourselves to be a platform for people who might not necessarily have a voice anywhere else, and we can also bring a particularly different style of cultural input. The interviews that we conduct are admittedly different; we don’t have an agenda, people feel much more open when talking to us. We have good writers who come along and want to write for The Big Issue.

Content is key and it has to be something that people want to return to again and again. And I take pride in the fact that we’ve can consistently go up against any other standard magazine and win awards for covers, content, design and editing, for all these things and we still sell in big numbers. Social responsibility, you can’t really separate it, but we have a core identity in the content that others don’t really have.

 Samir Husni: Is there anything you’d like to add?

Paul McNamee: One thing I’d like to say is that I want to thank people who have supported The Big Issue during this time. A month ago we were making plans for future issues, we’re a weekly, so we have to plan a bit ahead. We were making plans for spring, for special issues, all those kinds of things. All of that had to go out the window as we restructured content and found new content. And I want to thank people who have come along with us and supported us and have allowed us to rebuild and be there for the vendors.

And also the staff of The Big Issue, because I think a lot of the focus has been on how we’re supporting our vendors and how we were immediately able to get money to them and get support to them, but the staff deserves huge credit for doing that, because again, they’re working at home and they can’t necessarily see the results of what they’re doing, but they have made a huge and a positive impact. I want to thank everyone who has supported us and encourage them to do more, to get their friends to take subscriptions and also to pay credit to the staff.

Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

Paul McNamee: Wondering what we’re going to put in the magazine the next morning. I know that a lot of people have said that during this time, working from home means a lot less to do and they can make plans for the garden or make plans to work around the house; I don’t know where those people are getting time, because I feel like we’re working longer and more intensely than we did before this happened. At night, I try and get a little bit of sleep and then I wake up and get ready to go again, because we have to go again.

Samir Husni: Thank you.