History and background of magazines and regional magazines

Magazine publishing has been a profitable industry for over 100 years but technological advances, as the article and graphs above show, has changed the face of the industry at different points in time. As you cans see from the graph above digital publishing of magazines seems to be the future and whee profit lies, however, some consumers still prefer to consume texts in printed form. As this is the case I will be making a print version of my regional running magazine and an accompanying digital version to accompany for everyone in my target audience.
In terms of local running magazines there are no competitors(as the screenshot below shows), this is why I am creating my own one for my county as there is an obvious gap in the market in which I could fill to gross a profit.

However, I will need to compete against traditional regional magazines that dominate market share in the area such as Cornwall Today, My Cornwall and Cornwall Life.

I will also need to compete against national running magazines such as Runners World, Running Times and Womens running.

The first regional magazines were released in 1731 in London, where the release of 'The gentleman's Magazine' was released by Edward Cave. Now, it is unusual to see a regional magazine aimed at a specific gender.

Regional Magazines are typically released monthly and contain details on the area, or county they are from. Regional magazines have a purpose to build the knowledge of  people who live in the regional area the magazine is about. You are able to subscribe to regional magazines, just as you are with larger, well known magazines. Because, regional magazines are so specific, they tend to only be released once a month. This is in order to include enough information for the issue. However, this does increase the price of the product. Due to it's niche target audience and how packed full of information the magazine is, on it's monthly release, the price is a lot higher than a weekly published magazine. Regional magazines range between £3.70-£6.00 in price, per monthly issue. Regional magazines don't tend to have a specific gender based audience, however you can usually tell which way each issue sways towards, by the front cover image. It is very unusual for a regional magazine to aim at one specific gender though. Regional magazines can be bought by people all around the country. You do not have to be from that particular region, to read their magazine. Regional magazines are trying to branch out to a wider audience, by selling their magazine outside their region, as well as in it. This enables people who no longer live in this region, to keep  up to date with what is going on in the area.

Advanced Portfolio

I have chosen to create the first four pages from an original regional magazine for my A2 Media Coursework brief, as well as the website and billboard advertisement.I think that this will be a great brief for me as I am very interested in photography and the style of pictures I will be taking for the magazine. I decided to do a website and a billboard advertisement to go with my magazine as I prefer creating visual media. I like the idea of a regional magazine because having lived in cornwall all my life and being very interested in athletics I have many pictures of Cornish athletes. A regional magazine about Cornish athletes will be appealing to locals and attract a wider audience from around the country.