Gordon & Co vs the old bunch

Talk about the staff who used to work on the mag
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Lloyd Mangram
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Gordon & Co vs the old bunch

Post by Lloyd Mangram »

Hi folks,
at last, yesterday I got my hands on 4 complete volumes of Commodore User 1986 -1990 (I was after them since September last year, but now I've got them at home -yess!) and flicking thru them I realized that in 1988 when Gordon, Kati, Paul & Maff where ruling Zzap!64, the golden oldies like Julian Rignall, Gary Penn and Steve Jarrat all worked for EMAP, publishing the main rival: Commodore User.

That was a pretty funny situation.

Or wasn't it funny at all?
Was newsfield frustrated with the loss of their golden age reviewers, and/or was their a huge pressure on Gordon and his team to 'deliver'?
Was there really a war going on between EMAP and Newsfield?

Questions, questions...
Anyone who knows more about it?
Would be glad to hear those stories, if there's a story at all.
Ta!
Rob
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gordon
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Re: Gordon & Co vs the old bunch

Post by gordon »

biggestjim wrote:Was newsfield frustrated with the loss of their golden age reviewers, and/or was their a huge pressure on Gordon and his team to 'deliver'?
Was there really a war going on between EMAP and Newsfield?
There was *always* a war between EMAP and Newsfield (and Future and Dennis, come to that).

From my my viewpoint, I felt no pressure on the magazine other than the need to cut production costs. No one ever said "come up with a bunch of new ideas before those wankers at EMAP get ahead" ;) But of course Newsfield was frustrated by the loss of their Golden Age reviewers -- it didn't reflect well on them that all their best writers eventually left for their rivals at EMAP and Future.

It's even worse when you consider that EMAP's atmosphere wasn't that great compared to Zzap! Towers. It was a bit of a dull, dry, professional place in a professional city. Sure, we had a laugh, but never like the isolated camaraderie you felt in Ludlow...

:)
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Lloyd Mangram
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Post by Lloyd Mangram »

Interesting, interesting stuff.
I felt no pressure on the magazine other than the need to cut production costs.
How did you do that?
Did you cut Oli's budget for crayons and ink? :D

Ta!
Rob
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gordon
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Post by gordon »

biggestjim wrote:Did you cut Oli's budget for crayons and ink? :D
Ha! As if. Nah -- it was just the argument we always had about colour vs black-and-white in the magazine. We wanted all the reviws in colour, they wanted some in mono; we wanted to run our own budget, they wanted us to get stuffed. Treated us like kids. Which we were, really. :)
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Lloyd Mangram
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Post by Lloyd Mangram »

Kids running a bloody good magazine, that is. :wink:
Once again I emerge from beneath a massive pile of paper which makes my desk groan to bring you the world’s most amazing posts.
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