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Rugby League Magazines


Eddie

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I didn't know League Weekly had gone for good - real shame. Been buying League Express since Covid started so will carry on now LW has gone.

Hope RLW comes back as I'm a subscriber. Also think 40/20 is a great read and always make a point of buying it if i see it in a shop.

The one thing that could save these magazines is that the national press gives RL so little coverage they are one of the few ways to read match reports and get the latest RL news.

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24 minutes ago, Man of Kent said:

Will RLW come back?

Yes it will.

But only when the time is right. 

We suspended publication of the mag because the bottom fell out of the market as a result of the pandemic, and we decided to concentrate our resources on keeping League Express and TotalRL.com going during these dark days. 

It’s been no easy task to sustain a weekly newspaper and a website with so little activity in the game and lockdowns restricting footfall to traditional sales outlets. To keep the mag going as well would have been a bridge too far for us.

Fair to say none of us anticipated the break in publication would be this long, but conditions relating to the pandemic now are actually worse than they were when we took the original decision. 😞

We are constantly assessing the situation, and will bring the mag back when we can. Sorry I can’t be more specific than that at the moment.

Subscriptions are still on hold, and will restart automatically when the mag returns. 

.

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LPL may try my patience a times - and I still feel RLW lacks some of the righteous indignation that made me so keen to get my hands on copies of Open Rugby in the old days, but we still need them and I'm happy to keep on paying (LEx arrives from our local newsagent, another disappearing resource we're hopefully doing a bit to keep in business).

League Weekly though. I probably don't agree with much inside or outside RL with Martyn but Danny Lockwood? No no no no no.

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10 hours ago, Eddie said:

Interesting article in the Guardian about rugby league magazines. 
 

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/no-helmets-required/2021/feb/17/rugby-league-magazines-battling-survive-pandemic

I‘ve only ever subscribed to RLW, which obviously isn’t being printed at the moment. Will give one of the others a go, these publications need our support imho. 

Very interesting and informative article. Thanks for posting.

 

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10 hours ago, John Drake said:

It’s been no easy task to sustain a weekly newspaper and a website with so little activity in the game

League Express have done an excellent job of producing an enjoyable, interesting publication each week, especially with the bare scraps on the table.

It's a welcome friend dropping through the letterbox down here in Cornwall.

Last weeks double page home and away kit spread was a prime example of the quality articles we often take for granted.

Dare I say it, I also look forward to the Gary Schofield page as well 😄

Well done to all concerned and long may you continue 👍

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£ 5 a month great value (Subscribed this morning) maybe better if you just charged £ 60 upfront for the year John like most subscriptions do Ancestry etc.

Gets it out the way 

I will ask the wife if I can also sub for the paper version on condition she doesn't throw back copies out, I caught her trying to throw out over 50 back copies of Private Eye the other week I nearly killed her they just dont get it LOL:)

 

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28 minutes ago, Hela Wigmen said:

Big fan of Forty20. That said, I don’t want another publication to go out of business. 

In terms of content, have any RL publication evolved on to social media/YouTube or are they all still just doing podcasts?

Depends what you mean, Social Media is a broad term, and the main publications all have Facebook and Twitter accounts. TRL are putting LE content on their site as a premium, have tried doing Facebook Live events. Forty 20 have lots of YouTube content that isn't podcasted. They're all trying their hand and some stuff will work and some won't. Some journos are going it alone with their own premium content on their own sites or Patreon. There is plenty of graft being put in that's for sure.

Social media is an easy catch all but there is so much of it, loads of it will sadly go undiscovered. 

SQL Honours

Play off mini league winner - 2002. Bronze Medalist - 2003. Big Split Group Winner - 2006. Minor Stupidship - 2005, 2006. Cup Silver Medalist - 2008, 2009

CHAMPION - 2005, 2009, 2010

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There seems to be an increasing crop of potential news sources within RL, some of them following the subscription model. Rugby League Live, is an interesting, if slightly confusing, recent addition, but they have signed up as their editor Matthew Shaw, who seemed to have a knack at LE/TotalRL for unearthing stories and just as importantly, usually being right about them.

I say their model is confusing from a reader's point of view because their stories seem to be published on a wide array of sites such as the Hull Daily Mail, Manchester Evening News, Leeds Live etc, so presumably there's an umbrella organisation that runs all these sites. If you look at their blog today for instance at https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/live-rugby-league-news-feki-5016276 there's quite an impressive amount of content.

They seem to have been very busy in their opening weeks, which is good, though the focus so far has been very much on SL rather than Championship or League 1, which I hope changes as they settle in.

Then there are premium servces such as TotalRL's, plus Thirteen Rugby and the Rugby League Hub via Patreon. There are suddenly quite a few separate organisations competing with each other to break RL news first and add content, I think that's probably  a good thing espeically if they can all survive and thrive but time will tell.

 

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17 hours ago, Eddie said:

Interesting article in the Guardian about rugby league magazines. 
 

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/no-helmets-required/2021/feb/17/rugby-league-magazines-battling-survive-pandemic

I‘ve only ever subscribed to RLW, which obviously isn’t being printed at the moment. Will give one of the others a go, these publications need our support imho. 

"League Express tends to lean towards conservatism, whereas League Weekly was ..... happy to have a dig and question the status quo."

It's a long time since I've read a sentence that was more factually inaccurate.

League Express has held the rulers of the game to account far more effectively than any of our rivals ever did.

If you care to ask Nigel Wood, I think he will tell you that he was forced out of office by the things we revealed in League Express and you can all draw your own conclusions about why Robert Elstone is stepping down from Super League.

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5 minutes ago, The Phantom Horseman said:

There seems to be an increasing crop of potential news sources within RL, some of them following the subscription model. Rugby League Live, is an interesting, if slightly confusing, recent addition, but they have signed up as their editor Matthew Shaw, who seemed to have a knack at LE/TotalRL for unearthing stories and just as importantly, usually being right about them.

I say their model is confusing from a reader's point of view because their stories seem to be published on a wide array of sites such as the Hull Daily Mail, Manchester Evening News, Leeds Live etc, so presumably there's an umbrella organisation that runs all these sites. If you look at their blog today for instance at https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/live-rugby-league-news-feki-5016276 there's quite an impressive amount of content.

They seem to have been very busy in their opening weeks, which is good, though the focus so far has been very much on SL rather than Championship or League 1, which I hope changes as they settle in.

Then there are premium servces such as TotalRL's, plus Thirteen Rugby and the Rugby League Hub via Patreon. There are suddenly quite a few separate organisations competing with each other to break RL news first and add content, I think that's probably  a good thing espeically if they can all survive and thrive but time will tell.

 

I really admire the efforts of Reach to tap into the RL market, plenty of hard work has gone in to get good coverage in The Mirror in recent years and this seems to be an extension of that. 

I agree there are confusing elements to it, being linked to the regional papers sort of makes sense, except in the regions where a team's local paper isnt owned by Reach. How many fans of Bradford and Halifax are going to log on to the Huddersfield Examiner website to read the scoops about their teams, I'm not sure. The email newsletter seems to be a halfway house to try and resolve that but seems a little old hat to me but I'm sure they've done their research. 

The positives are in the bigger regions, pooled resources might pay dividends. A story about Wigan was the main story on the back page of the Manchester Evening News this week.

SQL Honours

Play off mini league winner - 2002. Bronze Medalist - 2003. Big Split Group Winner - 2006. Minor Stupidship - 2005, 2006. Cup Silver Medalist - 2008, 2009

CHAMPION - 2005, 2009, 2010

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7 minutes ago, Martyn Sadler said:

"League Express tends to lean towards conservatism, whereas League Weekly was ..... happy to have a dig and question the status quo."

It's a long time since I've read a sentence that was more factually inaccurate.

League Express has held the rulers of the game to account far more effectively than any of our rivals ever did.

If you care to ask Nigel Wood, I think he will tell you that he was forced out of office by the things we revealed in League Express and you can all draw your own conclusions about why Robert Elstone is stepping down from Super League.

That was one of the things that stood out for me too Martyn, but maybe he meant you struck him as more Tory than other publications?

2 warning points:kolobok_dirol:  Non-Political

 

 

 

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Another was " ...the only rugby magazine in the UK deemed worthy of ownership by a major publishing house. " what was the role of this bit in an article on league publications?

There are certain things, it seems, that the corperate media use like brand placement in films.

 

2 warning points:kolobok_dirol:  Non-Political

 

 

 

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For the want of a better phrase, to me LE is more part of the establishment, especially now it's the only (weekly) game in town. Nothing wrong with that but the more voices analysing the game professionally, the better. 

LE claiming the scalp of Elstone when every man and his dog had it in for him is not how I'd interpret it, but then I don't have any skin in the game. Will be interested to hear Elstone's thoughts on who he might blame when he is as far away from the job as Wood is now. I mean lets be honest we haven't ever really heard from him when he was in the job so I guess we'll never know. 

Each publication has their own merits, for me Forty 20's damning analysis of the whole Bradford Bulls saga (where I do have skin in the game) towards the end of 2019 is far more critical than anything on the matter I have ever read in the pages of an LPL publication, but then it has the breathing room to do so. 

SQL Honours

Play off mini league winner - 2002. Bronze Medalist - 2003. Big Split Group Winner - 2006. Minor Stupidship - 2005, 2006. Cup Silver Medalist - 2008, 2009

CHAMPION - 2005, 2009, 2010

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I absolutely adore Rugby League World and Forty Twenty but there is so much instant content available for free now. Did anybody else other than me secretly used to move the league magazines in front of union and football magazines in row of the new stands so other people could only see the league publications. Also if I was in a non rugby league area and I had read my copy I would leave it around so other people could read it.

 
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52 minutes ago, Martyn Sadler said:

I'd be interested to know how you define 'the establishment' and what you think those words mean in a Rugby League context.

A fair question, and I did think perhaps it wasn't quite the right choice of words. I'm not suggesting  - as some might if they see something they like on the wrong Monday morning - that it's an RFL propaganda sheet, so in that sense perhaps I can see why you might think me saying LE being part of the establishment is unfair criticism.

Perhaps "part of the furniture" is more appropriate? It's the market leader and you know where you stand certainly and it's a comfortable read but any criticism of the game is more muted than both of the main rivals mentioned in the Guardian article. To be clear, I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but it's clearly different. Nothing wrong with that, and there is a place for that and it clearly works very well. 

I would certainly agree LE has more clout than League Weekly ever had - the old joke was any news that was in Weekly but not Express might be of dubious quality, but to me looking at the Elstone example are you just greasing wheels already in motion? I genuinely don't know. I think because LE has that clout I always think it can do more - eg The Bulls/Forty-20 example I posted above, was very critical of many people still in the game and plenty who aren't and I can't imagine anything similar appearing in LE (and I have read everything about the subject going) but I realise they are separate periodicals with separate resources. I'm sure I'm leaving myself open to accusations of bias, and it's really not about that one issue, but it comes easily to mind for me.

I'm not saying LE isn't an enjoyable or worthy publication I hope you understand, but I couldn't particularly describe it as consistently hard hitting and maybe you wouldn't either. Not everything has to be. 

To ask a question you'd be well within your rights not to answer - how do you feel about the demise of "the other paper"? Whilst I'm sure some extra sales have come your way, it's hard times for everyone. Did the competition keep you sharp?

SQL Honours

Play off mini league winner - 2002. Bronze Medalist - 2003. Big Split Group Winner - 2006. Minor Stupidship - 2005, 2006. Cup Silver Medalist - 2008, 2009

CHAMPION - 2005, 2009, 2010

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