The first ever edition of Time Out Melbourne magazine has gone on sale, offering locals and visitors alike the ultimate guide to the city’s best bars, cafes, restaurants, shows, exhibitions and much more on a monthly basis.
The inaugural cover story is a celebration of the city’s vibrant bar culture and singles out the bars within which no self-respecting Melburnian should fail to raise a glass, from perfect summer rooftop bars to hidden drinking dens.
“And by ‘hidden’ I don’t mean those laneways every other guide tells you about, which are about as hidden as a flashy free-pour rosetta,” says editor Jenny Valentish, former editor of triple j magazine and whose CV also includes The Age, Cosmopolitan, SMH and Frankie.
“Time Out and Melbourne is one of those ‘meant to be’ couplings,” Valentish adds. “Melbourne’s unstoppable music scene, its art and theatre, its world-class restaurants, insanely creative cafes, and a comedy scene that’s the envy of the nation: these are all right in our wheelhouse. Time Out’s always been about discovering and celebrating the best and boldest in each city, and Melbourne has plenty for us to get our teeth into.”
“Our goal from day one has been to put a magazine into Melbourne,” says Time Out Australia’s Managing Director Justin Etheridge. “Original journalism and awesome photography is at the heart of everything we do and Melbourne will deserve the best that we can deliver. We’re starting with a monthly magazine, weekly newsletter, daily tweets with website and a free app updated hourly. And all written by locals, for locals.”
In the current publishing climate many former print publications now eke out an existence exclusively online, so it’s unusual to see Time Out grow in the opposite direction. “Many magazines in the past have paved the way for their online counterparts,” Etheridge explains, “but in the case of Time Out Melbourne it’s been the success of the site and the iPhone app that has led us to launch the magazine.
“From a national perspective this makes us a very effective proposition for our advertisers: we can offer regional campaigns targeted to the city in question, or run national campaigns across city-specific websites and over 50,000 magazines per month in Australia’s two largest markets,” says Etheridge. “The launch of Time Out Melbourne magazine is another significant step in our national expansion.”
It’s been 12 months of enormous growth for Time Out in Australia with the launch of websites in Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth and Melbourne, a major upgrade of Sydney’s busy site as well as iPhone apps in Melbourne and Sydney and increasing numbers of events in Sydney.
A selected number of Time Out Melbourne magazines are available for hotels to stock in rooms on a monthly basis. For more information, contact Angus Fontaine at angus.fontaine@au.timeout.com
Time Out Melbourne is a publication in the Intermedia stable of magazines, which includes HM magazine and www.hotelmanagement.com.au. HM’s Managing Editor James Wilkinson is also the Travel Editor of Time Out Melbourne and Time Out Sydney.