FH_May-Cover_finalHow time flies! Five years since we hit the launch par­ty, Fish­Head mag­a­zine is going from strength to strength, no doubt because they’ve been smart enough to solic­it a bunch of Welling­ton­ista con­trib­u­tors (I wrote in the very first issue, cur­rent ‘istas Tom Beard and Tom Goul­ter and gone fishin’ Hadyn Green are all reg­u­lar colum­nists). The biggest coup of course is that our film review­er Dan Slevin is in the edi­tor’s chair now. His first anniver­sary at the mag­a­zine has been recent­ly, so we thought we’d have a chat with him about how it’s all going. 

1. Con­grats on one year as offi­cial edi­tor of Fish­Head — what have some of the high­lights been?

Dan SlevinThanks. There have been lots of high­lights. See­ing the magazine’s cir­cu­la­tion and read­er­ship grow when most print media is strug­gling is a high­light. The feed­back we have been get­ting from read­ers is extreme­ly grat­i­fy­ing. See­ing sto­ries that I had only imag­ined look even bet­ter in print is reward­ing (I’m think­ing specif­i­cal­ly of Tom Goulter’s short his­to­ry of the Welling­ton sex indus­try via the city’s build­ings in the March issue and Graeme Tuckett’s inter­view with Russ Kali­vati, the Petone com­mu­ni­ty cop, in the April issue).

My first instruc­tion to all of our con­trib­u­tors when I start­ed back in Feb­ru­ary last year was to express them­selves — to not feel con­strained by a cor­po­rate or Fish­Head voice — and I’m pleased that every­one respond­ed to the chal­lenge. Intro­duc­ing new writ­ers and colum­nists like Steve Joll from The Breeze, come­di­an James Nokise and Heather du Plessis-Allan. Pro­fes­sion­al­ly, the high­lights are end­less.

But per­son­al­ly, I have to say get­ting to fol­low the Welling­ton Phoenix Foot­ball Unit­ed tour fea­tur­ing West Ham, New­cas­tle and Syd­ney last year was one of the best things that has hap­pened to me ever. We did a fea­ture arti­cle on the event before it hap­pened, when lots of peo­ple were still scep­ti­cal, and com­mis­sioned a great cov­er — our most expen­sive. That led to me going to press con­fer­ences, watch­ing the Auck­land game from the press box, get­ting to meet Win­ston Reid and the oth­er play­ers and get our spe­cial cov­er auto­graphed — mind­blow­ing. And our rela­tion­ship with the Phoenix has got even bet­ter since then.

Being offered a trip to Buenos Aires by Air New Zealand for a trav­el sto­ry is up there, too.

2. You’re obvi­ous­ly a mem­ber of the Welling­ton­ista as well — what do you think some of the advan­tages of writ­ing for a mag­a­zine as opposed to a blog are?

Col­lab­o­ra­tion is a real advan­tage. With most blogs you write arti­cles and post them with lit­tle sup­port from oth­er peo­ple. At Fish­Head, I nev­er write more than 5% of the mag­a­zine. I have con­trib­u­tors who write bet­ter than I do, a sub-edi­tor who makes sure that we are all gram­mat­i­cal and stuff and typo-free (she hasn’t touched this), excep­tion­al­ly cre­ative pho­tog­ra­phers and illus­tra­tors who work fast and then a design team in Nel­son who make the whole thing look beau­ti­ful.

I also love hav­ing some­thing phys­i­cal to hold in my hand every month. It’s a won­der­ful thing — to make some­thing with your brain that has actu­al weight in the world.

3. What changes/developments/continuingness do you wan­na see at Fish­Head over the next year?

We des­per­ate­ly need to fix our online pres­ence. We have been tin­ker­ing with a new web­site for months and only now are we close to launch­ing — there’s so lit­tle time left at the end of every month but we need to be a greater part of the day-to-day con­ver­sa­tion in the city rather than just the month-to-month con­ver­sa­tion.

We also need a dig­i­tal sub­scrip­tion option so that we can make the phys­i­cal copies we print go fur­ther. I’m sure lots of our com­pli­men­ta­ry sub­scribers would pre­fer a tablet option which would mean we can increase our house­hold dis­tri­b­u­tion — we choose a sub­urb every month to get a free copy.

Mar­ket­ing, pro­mo­tion and retail — they all need atten­tion this year if we are to con­tin­ue grow­ing.

4. Fish­Head obliv­i­ous­ly has com­mer­cial pres­sures on it — are there any sto­ries that you haven’t been able to pur­sue for fear of upset­ting the adver­tis­ers?

The rela­tion­ship with adver­tis­ers is the biggest sur­prise that I have had in the job this year. In many way, they are extreme­ly help­ful at pro­vid­ing ideas for sto­ries (self-inter­est­ed, of course) and I’ve tak­en to say­ing that in the com­pe­ti­tion for sto­ries and fea­tures in the mag­a­zine adver­tis­ers jump towards the front of the queue. We want them to be hap­py and for their busi­ness­es to be suc­cess­ful but at the same time, my first respon­si­bil­i­ty is make sure that our read­ers get con­tent that is worth their time and atten­tion.

To be hon­est, now that I know how things tend to work, I’ve seen it hap­pen a lot in cor­po­rate media as well as in lit­tle indies like our­selves. Once you know what you are look­ing for you see it every­where.

We’ve nev­er avoid­ed a sto­ry for fear of offend­ing an adver­tis­er but it some­times hap­pens any­way. We lost a great reg­u­lar restau­rant adver­tis­er because of a sin­gle para­graph in a Tom Beard review. That hurt us — and I regret that I didn’t han­dle it more sen­si­tive­ly — but our read­ers wouldn’t expect us to soft­en our writ­ers’ opin­ions. Then you become noth­ing more than an adver­to­r­i­al rag and there’s plen­ty of those around.

Maybe that’s why our main com­peti­tor doesn’t have any reviews? How dull.

5. You’re in good posi­tion to have a good overview of the city — what would your vision of Welling­ton in five years be like?

Few­er cars, more bicy­cles (on the road not the pave­ment — I’m a pedes­tri­an and they scare the bejeesus out of me but I know why they are forced to do it), bet­ter inter­net to sup­port our grow­ing, most­ly hid­den, weight­less exporters who are build­ing great busi­ness­es with­out ever send­ing an invoice to any­one in NZ, 10% big­ger pop­u­la­tion with that growth absorbed by greater medi­um den­si­ty liv­ing (I’m in the mar­ket for a decent afford­able 3‑bedroom apart­ment but they don’t appear to exist), a glob­al Welling­ton mar­ket­ing cam­paign that acknowl­edges that there is more to the city than craft beer, cof­fee and moun­tain bik­ing, water taxis or small fer­ries from the air­port to the city so vis­i­tors’ taxis don’t clog the Mt Vic tun­nel and they get to see the beau­ty of the city from a dif­fer­ent angle, our civic and busi­ness lead­ers real­is­ing that no one ever knows what is going to hap­pen in the future and that a lot of the best things about the city are a result of peo­ple tak­ing a punt and hav­ing a go.