We Magazines, the publisher of websites The Hoopla and Birdee, is launching a female-focused quarterly tabloid newspaper for girls. The publisher made the decision to launch the paper following demand for a print publication among its 16-24 year-old Birdee readers.
The first print issue of Birdee will go on sale the first week of December for $4 and will have a print run of 20,000. It will be the publisher’s second product aimed at a younger female audience, following the launch of online site Birdee.com last year.
“People kept telling us that our demographic is walking away from print, but we did research and they overwhelmingly asked us ‘when are you going to turn Birdee into print’?” We Magazines co-founder and publisher Jane Waterhouse told Mumbrella.
“This demographic spend their life looking at screens but, strangely, they also like to read books and the thought of something tactile is really appealing to them.”
Waterhouse argues that young women are not walking away from print, there simply isn’t a suitable publication in the market. She also admitted the project was risky, describing it as a “discovery strategy”.
“It is a radical idea and there is a risk,” adds Waterhouse. “But we wouldn’t be doing it if we didn’t have that push by the audience. We also haven’t gone out with a massive 100,000 print run so we are minimising the risk with 20,000 for the first issue.”
