Long-form journalism and lifestyle content to be expanded in News Corp mastheads

In a shot in the arm for longform journalism — and a booster for lifestyle content — News Corp Australia is set to unveil new magazines in its four state-based Saturday mastheads.

Laura Chalmers has been appointed national editor-in-chief of the four new magazines: ‘People are looking for premium journalism.’ Picture: Tara Croser

In a shot in the arm for long-form journalism – and a booster for lifestyle content – News Corp Australia is set to unveil new magazines in its four state-based Saturday mastheads.

Two of the magazines – the longstanding QWeekend in The Courier Mail and The Advertiser’s SAWeekend – will enjoy a makeover and retain their titles, while the Herald Sun in Victoria and The Saturday Telegraph in NSW will launch VWeekend and Sydney Weekend respectively on November 6.

Laura Chalmers, who has been head of features at The Courier-Mail for the past 18 months, has been appointed national editor-in-chief of the four magazines. She said the initiative had been driven not only by readers’ appetite for quality long-form journalism, but a desire to feed the soaring digital demand for lifestyle articles on fashion, books, podcasts, tech and recipes.

“This is a really different product for News Corp, in the sense that the four titles are state magazines with a national, shared cause,” she said.

“Each week the plan is to have really strong state covers, telling the best stories from each state, with a heap of other local features in each magazine – there will be well-known identities talking about their Saturday rituals and their favourite spots to go in their home towns, and a spotlight on local events, restaurant reviews, travel. But in addition to all these local elements, there will be a lot of lifestyle content that will go across the four state markets.”

Chalmers said News Corp’s deepening investment in long-form journalism was a welcome recognition that despite the readily available headlines in the digital age, more readers were taking the time to seek out “the story behind the story”.

“The thinking in newsrooms everywhere is often how can we make this story short, sharp and easy to digest.

“But the success of QWeekend (which launched in 2005) and SAWeekend (which debuted in 2009) in recent years has shown that people are still looking for premium journalism – incredible stories, told beautifully,” she said. “Our QWeekend features are often 3000-4000 words, and we can see from the digital data that people stay and read every word.

“One of our most-read stories ever for QWeekend was our long-form piece on (murdered Brisbane mother) Hannah Clarke – everyone knew the facts of that story but we went back to all her closest family and friends, and we looked at her life and how her relationship with her abusive husband unravelled, how he slowly eroded her trust.

“There’s a skill to taking a news story that everyone knows about, and digging further down into it. And the response from our readers shows there is huge demand for it.”

The magazines’ content – written by News Corp’s best journalists across the four states – won’t be rolled out exclusively in the Saturday print editions, with articles from each title to appear online and on social media channels throughout the week to drive reader engagement.

National Weekend Editor Mick Carroll said the Saturday magazines would be a potent addition to the existing weekend magazines that featured in the company’s four Sunday mastheads: Body+Soul, Escape, Stellar and The Binge Guide.

“Through the new magazines, advertisers now have the opportunity to spread their messages to an audience of more than five million readers across the entire weekend both nationally and locally,” he said.