Its research has shown that 75 per cent of workers in the City or Canary Wharf know about it and about half
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Its research has shown that 75 per cent of workers in the City or Canary Wharf know about it and about half have tried it Only 15 per cent dislike it. But consider this: by the end of the year, the 24-page title aims to have a distribution of 100,000 (from the current 60,000) to readers with average earnings of £50,000. That is quite a package to take to advertisers. According to the team behind the paper, which includes chief executive Jens Torpe, formerly of Metro International, reaction to City AM has been very positive. The Financial Times is struggling to find readers and advertisers, all the serious nationals have comprehensive business sections, so who would be mad enough to start a paper aimed solely at City workers? And give it away? Enter City AM, a free morning title that is handed to workers in the Square Mile and Canary Wharf as they emerge from Tube stations.
The biggest single group - people working in higher education - are only about 15 per cent of the total. And I still believe that if we continue improving the magazine and our marketing of it, we could double our circulation.'Thinking Allowed: The Best of Prospect 1995-2005' edited by David Goodhart is published by Atlantic Books. To buy it at the special price of £14.99 (plus p&p), call 01903 828503 and quote 'Prospect 02'.. We remain a small outfit with only nine full-time staff, and if we can use our redesigned website to increase international sales (now around 4,000) we may even reach the sunlit uplands of financial stability in the next couple of years.Our readers are, in the main, highly educated, intellectually curious people but spread pretty widely across the professions. As relatively favourable comments began to flow in our confidence grew: the irritating phrase that was often pinned on us was succ?d'estime.
We certainly weren't a commercial success.Now that we sell nearly 24,000 copies a month, things are more solid beneath our feet. Looking back on those first issues I wince at some of the baggy, under-edited pieces.But it was satisfying and motivating that few people, in the first year or two, gave us a chance of surviving. It also has more light and shade (cartoons did not feature for the first few years), and is more tightly edited. But since the arrival of Alex Linklater as my new deputy in 2001, culture and the arts have commanded more space (including regular columns on film, television, the visual arts and music) and there is more narrative journalism and interior life.Today's magazine is printed on better paper, uses more colour and looks a far more grown-up product than the early issues, which had something of the smart student magazine about them. Adonis went on to become an education adviser to Blair and, some said, the agent through which Blair was, indeed, his own education secretary.Apart from a big essay by Brian Glanville on sports journalism, there was not much writing about culture. And after many depressing days trailing round potential offices in dowdy parts of London we found a surprisingly affordable attic in Bedford Square which became our home for the next eight years, and the place where we too often heard the dawn chorus on our deadline nights in those early months.With the help of some friendly pre-publicity in the press and a big party organised by the PR company Hobsbawm Macaulay, our first issue was launched upon a somewhat indifferent world on 28 September 1995. I was lucky to find a first deputy editor - Valerie Monchi - previously deputy foreign editor of the Jewish Chronicle, who became as committed to making Prospect work as I was.