Who will buy the jewels in Emaps crown?
There is clearly a crisis of confidence in the magazine industry. Each time somebody denies it, they only confirm it. Last week, as one group of people were talking up the value of the magazine medium, another lot were damping it down. Naturally, the former were sellers and the latter were buyers. The grandees of the UK publishing industry, gathered under the standard of their trade organisation, the PPA, were marking Magazine Week by spraying out stats, such as the useful revelation that 5.6m kilograms of ink are used to print UK magazines each year, while banging the drum for their medium in an increasingly choice-spoiled marketplace. Meanwhile, over at the private equity houses, they were trying to find a way to justify a price for what was until recently regarded as the most desirable portfolio of magazines in the country, the consumer division of Emap. They could see plenty of customers for the business-to-business operations, which have prospered mightily on the back of the inter
