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Autosport Magazine 1969


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#1 mab01uk

mab01uk

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Posted 05 November 2019 - 07:38 PM

Autosport magazine has been in the news recently after the print edition was increased in price to £10.99 and threatened with closure but has now been saved after a U-turn by the publisher and hs reverted to the previous £3.99 price after just 2 weeks:-

https://twitter.com/...3693167616?s=19

 

Meanwhile Simon Taylor (quoted below) who was editor of Autosport magazine back in 1969, had told Autosport forum members below how the magazine was basically run by four people at that time (all with standard-issue 850 Minis), assisted by some enthusiastic weekend reporters who received very little reward:-

Sterzo, said:
I can't believe they ever paid huge sums to reporters who wrote about "not many starters at wet Snetterton" in your 1969 Autosports. Free entry, the Green Line Bus fare and the price of a cheese sandwich - I would have done it.

Simon Taylor, on 16 May 2010 - 22:18, said:
I can answer this, because I was the Editor of Autosport at the time. (Goodness, it was over 40 years ago!) In 1969, after struggling with dreadful print quality from our letterpress printers, we changed to the then new-fangled offset litho process. This was not only to improve quality (in theory, at least) but also to allow us to get the magazine distributed on Wednesday for a Thursday day of sale, without compromising our Tuesday evening close for press. That way we'd able to scoop our deadly rival, Motoring News, which came out on Thursday then, but went to press on Monday night. The first issue of Autosport printed offset was dated September 12th 1969. That was actually a Friday, because we weren't sure if our new distribution would work. It did, so we felt brave enough to date the next issue September 18th 1969, a Thursday. However I forgot to change the small print on the editorial page that said "Published every Friday" to "Published every Thursday" until the September 25th issue. My excuse was that I was rather busy.....Despite the rather grandiose list of personnel on the masthead - including people like Paddy McNally, John Bolster and John Davenport - and a faithful band of keen but negligibly paid weekend reporters, the magazine itself was actually produced by just four people. In 1969 those four were Deputy Editor Quentin Spurring, Assistant Editors Jeff Hutchinson and Justin Haler, and me, each of us producing many thousands of words a week. At 25 years of age, I was the oldest, and as the Editor I was the best paid: after deductions I took home £26 a week. There were no computers, no e-mail, no mobile phones, no digital cameras, even the fax machine hadn't been invented. Our only high-tech gadget was the portable typewriter. The logistical dramas of pulling in the stories and the pictures each week could fill a book, and probably would if I thought anybody would want to read it. But the only way to make the magazine happen, without publishing software and e-mail, was to work round the clock in a little cabin next to the print works, so that we could write our copy and proof and pass pages on the spot. So we would all cover race meetings around Britain and Europe on Saturday and Sunday, rush back from wherever to London on Sunday night in our standard-issue 850 Minis and write our reports, then work at the printers from 8am Monday through Monday night to 6pm Tuesday. We would often work through without a break, writing Pit & Paddock news stories, subbing ropey copy from those faithful weekenders, chasing stories on the phone (you could ring up World Champions for a chat in those days, and there were no PR men), doing our own layouts and passing page proofs. We subsisted on bought-in fish-and-chips, and if the issue was going well we might snatch a kip in our standard-issue 850 Minis in the car park. We laughed a lot because, if you're tired enough, your sense of humour becomes gradually more and more juvenile. I know we had an Editorial Team Fart Graph on the wall, which was kept scrupulously up to date. On Tuesday night, when it was all over, we'd all fall into the nearest pub and get drunk. Wednesday was our sabbath, when I went to the laundrette and watched my socks going round. Thursday we had a meeting with the Haymarket suits to thrash out the ed/ad (editorial/adverting) page ratio, and read our newly-minted issue and groan at all the mistakes. Friday we wrote Features (and Readers' Letters under assumed names if a page's-worth of decent letters hadn't come in), and Saturday the cycle started again, at anywhere from Montlhery to Mallory Park. For five years I was permanently tired, and I'm not sure if the magazine was any good, but I've never had so much fun in my life.

I wonder how many staff the current mag employs....
https://forums.autos...tion/?p=8927345


Edited by mab01uk, 05 November 2019 - 07:41 PM.





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