By Brad Jamieson
 aving trouble focusing? Keep an eye on Monocle. Wallpaper* brainchild Tyler Brűlé is banking that his just-launched magazine - a high-flyer monthly glossy covering global affairs, business, culture and design - will attract a well-heeled audience with an appetite for global news coverage.
Perhaps you're thinking, international news… brought to us by the founder of Wallpaper*? Well, yes, this time out, style guide authority Brűlé returns to his seemingly ongoing mission to convince us that his serious journalism chops can match his style ones.
As promised, the launch issue opens with features about Chinese imperialism in Africa, the expansion of the <--quote#right--> Japanese navy (a whopping 17 pages long!) and a cultural report about Afghan music. A hefty beast, the magazine clocks in at over 250 pages and contains 50,000 words – the average word count of an average pulp novel.
Monocle, divided into sections A-E (Affairs, Culture, Design and Edits), will feature pieces on cities, business stories and international faces that are often overlooked by other monthlies. The prominence on long articles is part of the magazine’s attempt to “restore a bit of quality” to the news medium. That same prescription trickles on down to a slim – but suspiciously cool - back section called Inventory.
Brűlé has angled Monocle, which sells for $12.50, to deliver a global outlook on areas rarely explored, stating that the magazine's aspirations are "broadcast-based." Created for a demographic that current media models currently disregard, Monocle aspires to embody a global media brand that combines print, web and broadcast components.
Magazine frequency is scheduled to be 10 times a year and distributed globally with an initial print-run of 150,000. Subscribers will be able to access a web-based broadcast component delivering bulletins, mini-docs and talk formats. The title has a lean editorial team of 18, including three editorial editors in New York, Zurich and Tokyo. The staff is based in London offices that are also home to Winkreative, Brűlé's Zurich-based design and brand-development company – which developed the brand identities of Stella McCartney, Swissair and Toronto's Porter Airlines).
Bank-rolled by investors including a Spanish conglomerate and a Japanese bank and the luxury goods advertisers - PUMA, Dior, Cartier, Cathay Pacific, Prada - that Brűlé worked with in his Wallpaper days, the magazine includes no bylines; only journalists' initials appear beside each story. No journalist headshots appear on the magazine, not even one of Mr * himself.
The magazine is pitched to a well-educated, jet-setting audience, often living in multiple cities and want to read about business, culture, current affairs, design, fashion and all things visual. Indeed the whole package is tidy and sophisticated, as you would expect - from the brainchild of style-bible Wallpaper. But the book has left some articulating that while there is indeed an appetite for 'serious journalism', Brűlé might not be the best man to package a guide symbolizing content over style.
Who knows, maybe Brűlé will prove them wrong. At the very least, that well-heeled demographic can always use copies of the matte paper tome as coffee table books in their in their various multiple city homes.
| Monocle Magazine
No journalist headshots appear on the magazine, not even one of Mr * himself
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