Emap is to hire up to 10 extra journalists after taking fortnightly women’s glossy More weekly.
The decision to launch a weekly version this September will make it the fifth member of Emap’s women’s weekly portfolio, joining titles Heat, Closer, First and Grazia.
David Davies, managing director of Emap Elan, said the change was a way to move away from being straddled between the ‘fading’monthly market and the continuously growing weeklies.
He told Press Gazette: ‘I think the monthly market is under enormous pressure and it’s better to just offer a weekly lifestyle title rather than a fortnightly one. There are two dynamics in the market – monthlies and weeklies – and in the past they’ve been quite well balanced, but clearly the action has moved to the weekly market.”
At launch in 1988, More targeted the older teenage girl, offering a mix of fashion, showbiz, real life, sex and relationships – with its infamous ‘position of the fortnight’feature.
It relaunched five years ago, repositioning itself as a young women’s glossy, recently celebrating its 500th issue. The title’s last ABC figure came in at 271,629.
The move could put pressure on IPC’s weekly fashion and celebrity title Look, which launched in January. At the time, Look editor Ali Hall – a former editor of More – insisted that the IPC title was not in the same target market as Grazia and would appeal to 18 to 30-year-olds interested in high street fashion.
More, which will continue to be edited by Lisa Smosarski, will now be seen as direct competition to Look.
Davies said: ‘Look has some celebrity content and quite a lot of catalogue pages of fashion, but that’s all. More is a fully rounded lifestyle title and it addresses all the things that young women are into.”
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