When asked why he has opted for a CD cover mount with the March issue rather than reaching out to downloaders he

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Ballet Shoes Center.com

Published: September 24, 2010

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When asked why he has opted for a CD cover mount with the March issue rather than reaching out to downloaders, he does not try to suggest that the tracks could readily be transferred to his readers’ iPods. Instead he says: “If we had a free £10 worth of downloads I would say, ‘I can’t be arsed. He says his readers are slightly older than those of his rivals, though at an average age of 34 they are considerably younger than the 48-year-old who is the heartland of the readership of American Esquire.Tiffin himself is 40, and has a slightly fogeyish way about him. He even declines to turn his nose up at the weekly men’s market, seeing the circulation potential for his title in hundreds of thousands of young magazine readers whom he can one day persuade that “there’s more on offer than Abi Titmuss”. He is commendably careful not to engage in the sniping that has been a feature of upmarket men’s magazines in the past year, with Dylan Jones of GQ and Anthony Noguera of Arena engaging in a slanging match, which Greg Gutfeld (Maxim) entered into with some relish.

Tiffin, who is a former editor of GQ Active, says he hasn’t got time for that sort of thing – unlike his allotment in Fulham, which he tends every weekend, nurturing the organic vegetables that he takes to dinner parties as presents. He was irritated by later suggestions (wholly untrue, he says) that Kimberly had proposed an interview with David Blunkett.Tiffin has a feature on Labour election supremo Alan Milburn in his May issue but says it is not for glossy magazine editors to nail their political colours to the mast. It was he who commissioned Kimberly Fortier to write a ground-breaking (if rather cosy) profile of the then newly installed Tory leader Michael Howard, which would have attracted more attention if she was as famous then as she is now “It was the first profile he had done,” says Tiffin. Katja Hoffman writes: “I have vivid memories of my birthday of a couple of years ago. Not of celebrating with friends but of waiting at the Alexanderplatz underground station in Berlin.

The sounds of the ‘Sieg Heil!’s echoing through its tiled corridors and of my heart pounding with fear as I saw them marching towards me.”Another Manifesto feature highlights the British basketball players who have made it to the hallowed ground of the NBA (the latest being a lanky Sudanese refugee who had moved to Croydon before finding his true talent for hoops).Tiffin thinks that Esquire has not always had the credit for its journalism that it deserves. This translates into a piece by a 33-year-old German journalist on what it’s like to share a birthday with Adolf Hitler. The reason we decided to launch this brand new strategy was we felt there was an opportunity to own the premium price end of the market.”So Esquire now sells for £3.95, markedly more expensive than its two most obvious rivals Cond?ast’s GQ (£3.40) and Emap’s Arena (£3.50).Tiffin thinks that top-end men’s magazines are “undervalued” and that – even at £3.95 – Esquire represents a “bloody good deal”. So he commissions Scottish novelist Ian Rankin to profile Sean Connery.This star-interviews-star routine is an Esquire hallmark, with comedian Stewart Lee (writer of Jerry Springer: The Opera) interviewing Johnny Vegas and then, next month, Alan Partridge co-creator Armando Iannucci questioning his hero Woody Allen.There is a 30-page segment near the front of Esquire called “Manifesto”, which Tiffin thinks best expresses what his publication is all about, offering a quirkiness and unpredictability not found elsewhere on the newsstand.


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