“CityNews” editor IAN MEIKLE reckons he’s knocked up around 900 consecutive covers over the past 18 years. 

EDITORS typically prefer to be heard but not seen, but I figured if I was going to reluctantly be on the cover, I might as well go the whole hog and write the cover story myself.

That and overseeing the production of (I reckon) 900 consecutive covers since December, 2005 gave my pictorial presence a little kudos if not a “Guinness Book of Records” record. I checked; the actual number of weeks is 917, but along the way we’ve sometimes missed publishing an edition over Christmas and the odd Easter break. We didn’t miss a single week over the covid years (now, that’s a cover story).

I have a reasonable recall of that incredible 18-year parade of faces (mostly always faces). We’ve had heroic faces, celebrity faces, political faces, historic faces, sporty, local, happy, sad, young, old and beautiful faces. All with character and all with a story to tell. Picking favourites is like asking me for a favourite Beatles song. It depends. 

Small, dirty little secret: I’m shamefully sure I’ve used the same cliched heading a couple of times, too. Australia Day covers spring to mind and I reckon I have a couple of “Young and free” in the distant past. Now the anthem’s been changed to “one and free”, that mistake’s something of a collector’s item. 

What’s the obsession with faces? It’s a technique I learnt ostensibly from “New Idea” and other magazines under my charge when I was CEO of Pacific Publications, Australia’s then second biggest magazine publisher. We were turning out easily more than a million magazines (“That’s Life”, “TV Hits”, “TV Week”, “Home Beautiful”, “Better Homes and Gardens” and others) a week. 

It was a big, big, creative business and every magazine knew the pulling power of the cover, every editor keenly knew how much their longevity turned on producing covers that called out “look at me, pay at the counter”. 

Whatever we might think of magazines such as “New Idea” these days, in earlier times (even before Princess Di) they knew how to get sales. By way of survival, “New Idea” is 121 years old this year, though its circulation is a fraction of its glorious past. It tipped over the million-a-week mark in the early ’90s. It was at half a million when I was there a decade later and still a big hitter. 

Why faces? A great magazine cover (this week notwithstanding) is one that intimately engages the reader from first glance, when your eyes meet their eyes and it creates a sub-conscious question mark: what’s that about? What’s the story? Who’s she? Is that really him on the cover?

Being a free magazine, it’s a painless reach to get the answers. 

So I look for engagement, personality and raising those question marks. One tip I got from a “New Idea” editor was never to have a beardy bloke on the cover. Men will pick up women and other men, so to speak. Women will pick up other women, but not hirsute blokes, she said. Now this isn’t an exact science and we’re a free magazine not dependent on cover sales, so the hairy guys (I had one on the cover a fortnight ago) are as welcome as hairy women. 

Free or not, we build “CityNews” to the same high quality as a paid reading experience. It’s not in my professional DNA to do anything less. We make our pages “sticky” (interesting), we don’t like the noise of page-flicking. You hear it when someone is “reading” a lesser-quality publication (thinks: hmmm, who could he be talking about?).

But while I bask in the achievement of so many covers, it would be remiss not to say thank you to the true creative power that drives the highest possible standard for when the ink meets the paper. 

Over the time I’ve had an interest in “CityNews”, I’ve worked with two exceptional graphic designers, from whom I’ve also learned a lot.

Originally, it was Silas Brown (“snapper to the stars” I used to call him because he also ran around town taking our social photos). Silas was quiet and thoughtful. He had the advantage of taking cover photos as well as helping design the page. 

He had the photographer’s gift of managing the complexity of light and the designer’s gift of making what we’ve got look great. Silas left us for a one-year wander around the world that became two. He returned as a gardener, which he cheerfully is to this day. But what a creative talent!

Likewise, his eventual successor Janet Ewen, who came to Canberra from Geelong. It was as if the universe had organised her to apply for the job. She is the embodiment of old-school newspaper/new-school magazine design. There’s not a challenge she can’t conjure up a graphically magical solution to, either for editorial or advertising clients (without whom we’d be nothing, thank you). 

She has an uncanny eye for what will work, despite being scolded once by a hands-on-hip photographer for Photoshop swapping a pair of blinking eyes for open eyes for the cover subject (remember, the eyes have it). 

She’s been managing the paper’s graphic design for a decade this year (she’s hanging out for a gold watch and I haven’t the heart to tell her…).

Janet will say she and I discuss cover photo selections. I will say Janet and I argue over photo selections. But the creative tension over nearly 500 covers is always productive and professional and fun. Sometimes she’s right (smiley face). However, we’re always the best of friends when she fires off the paper to the printer on Tuesday evenings, satisfied we’ve produced another cracker. 

To all our cover subjects of the past 900 front pages, thank you for being part of our success and I hope you felt we handled your unique personna with love and care. To our future cover subjects, please know that we will always treat your image with kindness and respect. 

So why does the cover really matter? I like to characterise it as the paper’s defining image for the week. It doesn’t have to be the hottest news story, but it must be of the highest quality and match the integrity and brand values of our masthead. You’ll have to forgive me for this week’s lapse; blame Janet. I am. 

Ian Meikle can be heard with Rod Henshaw on the “CityNews Sunday Roast”, 9am-midday on 2CC, and with “Canberra Live” host Leon Delaney Thursdays at 3.30pm.