H&H - Tabloid Sensationalism?

measles

measles

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I know that I've posted about this before, but do the powers that be at H&H really and truely think that their readership expect headlines such as that on today's issue - "How I made a winner of my naugthy ride"?

I for one would be very interested to hear how a telented rider such as Ruth Edge worked through issues with her horse but does H&H really have to make the piece - and on the front cover, too - sound like something designed for readers of 70p weekly sensationalist magazines?

Does the way H&H is going really annoy any other devoted readers?
 
I used to buy it religiously every week and read almost all of it. Since they "improved" it I've bought it about five times and most of it's gone unread. Bl**dy annoying.
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I don't know about that particular article but i do sense a general drift away from racing, hunting and serious articles to the kind of horse care and training stuff that you might find in Your Horse or similar publications. If I wanted to read that stuff then I would buy a different magazine. So yes, I think there is some dumbing down, which is regrettable.
 
I have not bought it for months now and i also used to buy it week in week out. I feel it is getting more and more like the monthly horse mags with misguided information and too many horse care articles that are badley written. It is irritating.

Lou x
 
unfortunately H&H is slowly turning into a "red top" of the horse mag world.

it used to be about racing, hunting, shows, showing, eventing and a little Dressage....

its now quite a mundane rag...much the same as any other "horsey" mag....too much trivia and dross for me to spend a regular amount on it....
 
Sensationalism is how any tabloid attempts to attract readers, if sales have dropped for whatever reason, they need to grab the attention of potential buyers and turn them into actual buyers.
 
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Sensationalism is how any tabloid attempts to attract readers, if sales have dropped for whatever reason, they need to grab the attention of potential buyers and turn them into actual buyers.

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True, but if in the process you lose your core market.. I agree with the other general horse care comments too.

The week wouldn't be complete though without the fun of spotting all of the typos in the small adverts!
 
I was going to post on this. More and more I am irritated by the patronising editorial, and some of the articles feel like padding and start of with an attention-grabbing headline but then fail to deliver. Does anyone remember the short-lived magazine Gallop! ? A sort of horsey Hello, with articles about the joys of cantering your horse across a beach or that sort of twaddle. It's not the way forward for serious horsey people, surely.

Dumbing down H&H isn't going to attract many more readers, but is more likely to lose the loyal ones. I use to hover by the letter box on a Thursday with my coffee in one hand ready for a good couple of hours of reading. Find now that I don't even bother opening it until the afternoon.
 
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I was going to post on this. More and more I am irritated by the patronising editorial, and some of the articles feel like padding and start of with an attention-grabbing headline but then fail to deliver. Does anyone remember the short-lived magazine Gallop! ? A sort of horsey Hello, with articles about the joys of cantering your horse across a beach or that sort of twaddle. It's not the way forward for serious horsey people, surely.

Dumbing down H&H isn't going to attract many more readers, but is more likely to lose the loyal ones. I use to hover by the letter box on a Thursday with my coffee in one hand ready for a good couple of hours of reading. Find now that I don't even bother opening it until the afternoon.

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You are a person after my own heart! To take an example, totally trivialising the Olympic info by having a page full of numbers along the lines of "22,476 - the number of dropping that will be done in the Olympic stables"... I mean, honestly! Hello for horses anyone?

And just to make you chuckle - yet again - the small sections summarising the British Novice and Discovery 2nd rounds on one the the pages of SJ news has two of the successful horses being "ridden by rider". Really? I'd never have guessed.
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i HATE the new layout it reminds me of pony magazine and such like, those magazines serve their purpose but i want Horse and Hound like it was before.
 
I have come round to the new lay out, especially the news pages, it makes reading easier IMO.

I think some are being slightly unfair - the vet articles are, again IMHO, still very informative and certainly a step up from anything you will read in HORSE or Horse and Rider for example. It is still my favourite equestrian mag. I like the Brits Abroad competition pages, the *reveals* interviews are a nice coffee break read, the classifieds are second to none....there is still a lot to like and IMHO it is very far off Hello! for horses
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i don't have prob with layout, but this week front cover is SO BADLY PHOTOSHOPPED................................. ARRRRRR they just haven't got folk right and they have chopped up 3 images to make one - IMO horribly technically done - UCK!!
I was going to buy, BUT couldn't, front cover put me off so much, so flicked through in shop instead
 
I agree with you.

I prefer it now. I can read the light hearted bit when I am flying in and out the door and I read the more in depth stuff when I have time to sit and read it properly.

To be honest racing and hunting has never interested me enough to read about it. I do love reading the show jumping, eventing, Dressage write ups.

So it may be falling out with some people but I am loving it.
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It has lightened up a bit.
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Weezy - you have some fair points there. The classifieds are one of my favourite parts (and not only for the ytpos
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) and I agree about the veterinary section but the standard of journalistic style and the layout have changed considerably and not for the better. I find some of it almost offensive or something not quite so strong as that. I'd happily change to another magazine now but there is nothing on the market like the old H&H!

My mother today opened H&H when it came in and had the day to read it before I got back from work. Her comment - "That thing's gone right downhill. Do they think the readership are 14yo girls? [No offence to 14yo girls intended] Will we cancel the subscription?"
 
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I agree with you.

I prefer it now. I can read the light hearted bit when I am flying in and out the door and I read the more in depth stuff when I have time to sit and read it properly.

To be honest racing and hunting has never interested me enough to read about it. I do love reading the show jumping, eventing, Dressage write ups.

So it may be falling out with some people but I am loving it.
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It has lightened up a bit.
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Bonzabean - I agree with you that a mix of content is ideal (and not all hunting an racing!) but the journalistic style is bordering on tabloid and it's that that gets me. The sensationalist headlines on the front page often get my hackles up before I even open it!
 
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Bonzabean - I agree with you that a mix of content is ideal (and not all hunting an racing!) but the journalistic style is bordering on tabloid and it's that that gets me. The sensationalist headlines on the front page often get my hackles up before I even open it!

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You know what is going to happen now, don't you?
I am going to start noticing this tabloid tendancy that you are talking about. LOL.

Actually a few weeks a go there was a headline that made me raise my eyebrows a bit and I muttered something like "Daily Mail" to myself. I wish I could remember which magazine it was now. It was quite recent.

Overall though, I do prefer it now perhaps they could lay off the drama a bit. It is not as if the horse world needs added drama now does it?
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Went to have a look at the front cover and see exactly what kick_on means. It had registered that the olympians looked very uncomfortable but not the splicing!

This just about sums my point up. Does everyone remember the lovely Whyte Melville quote that used to run across the top of the front page? (I even went to St Andrews to see his statue, but I had too much time on my hands as a student and I digress..)

It now proclaims proudly "BRITAIN'S ONLY EQUESTRIAN WEEKLY". Wow, something to be proud of indeed.
 
Sorry to spoil things for you Bonzabean - not my intention at all!!

And just spotted my friend Whyte Melville squashed in very odd font at the top of the contents page. Clearly, he deserves to be relegated here as the world needs to know that H&H is BRITAIN'S ONLY EQUESTRIAN WEEKLY!
 
He was removed for years, and was only reinstated when the new format took hold - the editor commented on it in her column
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Yes I do understand where you are coming from and yes a lot of the journalistic skills leave a lot to be desired, but I still think it is a sound magazine.
 
I saw the headline about Ruth Edge's horse and was hoping for a story about how she turned a naughty horse into a winning horse and all we got was well at seven he bucked me off and left and came back to me at 8 and there you go. Very disappointing for those of us wanting some hints/ tips on dealing with such horses and hope for the future that our naughty horses may come good.

As for the new format I don't have strong feelings either way, I really have no interest in hunting or racing, and only read the showjumping reports, letters and classifieds. I find the letters page a bit staged though, I don't think anyone reading the mag would have understood the depth of feeling about some issues on the forum eg BSJA photo shoot.
 
Thank you everyone for your comments on H&H and its now quite long-established new look. To respond to a few of the points you’ve been making I can report that our front cover this week is not a composition of several pictures, but one photograph in which we have removed some items from the left hand side (to the left of the riders and Mistral Horjis) where the arena is to improve the readability of the coverlines.

Whyte Melville’s quote was removed completely from the magazine some time ago by a predecessor of mine, and I chose to reintroduce it every week on our contents page in the redesign to reinforce our roots and the title’s undiminished commitment to hunting, which is as strong now as it was under the earlier part of my editorship when the threat of a ban was at its most acute. I hunt whenever I have the opportunity, as do many H&H staff – hunting and racing remain as core to this title as ever they did, though as we reach the end of hunting’s closed season I know the focus on the full-swing sport horse competition season can irritate to those who only follow hunting. Don’t worry – our full hunting coverage resumes soon!

We are unashamedly proud of the fact that we remain Britain’s only weekly equestrian title, and boast this on the front cover, because of the topicality and news-breaking ability this gives us; our news desk has trebled in size in the past six years, our news pages have increased in volume and our staggeringly popular online news service grows monthly in its audience.

We still carry fulsome, agenda-leading, though-provoking, heavy-duty features, investigations and reports in a host of subjects (can you really call our recent expose of the flouting of live transport rules in E Europe tabloidy, lightweight and sensationalistic?), but recognise that modern reading habits have changed over the past decade. People have more demands on their time than ever, and – as some of you have volunteered – appreciate the new entry points and ‘easy to dip in reads’ and mini columns we have introduced in addition to our longer articles. Every title must evolve in order to survive and develop, and H&H has done that a lot across its 124 year history.

Regarding the Ruth Edge coverline – some of you have read only the report from Gatcombe and not noticed her guest eventing column in the same issue (filed in order to give Mark Phillips and William Fox-Pitt time to get settled into Hong Kong) in which she describes in quite some detail the hackamore, and new training methods she has adopted to make her Gatcombe Open champion, Mayhem, a winner. It’s great insight and, I believe, has every right to be coverlined. Ruth is a super talented rider on the very cusp of breaking into eventing’s top elite.

Yes, we have some tongue in cheek stats regarding the Olympics this week – but we have also run a really detailed, informed form guide, and over the past weeks successive profiles of lesser known but highly interesting Olympic contenders (German event horse Marius, Alex Hua Tian, and Hiroshi Hoketsu)

Sadly we are unable to find a way to proof read the classified ads before they are printed (We’ve tried and failed – but we enjoy the howlers too) and as for the show jumper ‘ridden by rider’ - that’s a fair cop, and the show jumping editor is labouring through a large piece of humble pie as I write.

I hope this is useful. Keep reading!


Lucy Higginson
Editor
 
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I hope this is useful. Keep reading!

Lucy Higginson
Editor

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Thanks for taking the time to reply Lucy - hope to see you out hunting this season and I WILL introduce myself rather than the usual nod and smile in your direction LOL!
 
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