More eyes are on the Road

As editor of a magazine that reaches more than a million people, I sometimes wonder what’s on the combined tribal mind of all Open Road readers.

It’s a difficult thing to gauge. Feedback is sparse and usually confined to people with strong interests in specific issues.

We have noticed an increasing number of compliments over the past 12 months, but not enough to give us any insight into what the vast majority of readers are thinking.

So we continue to improve the journalism and to try new ideas in the confident expectation this will attract multitudes of new readers.

Magazine readership figures released last month by Roy Morgan Research have now confirmed what we suspected: More people are reading Open Road.

For the 12 months between September 2008 and September 2009, Open Road had a 7.1 per cent increase in readership. Out of 140 magazines, most of which had serious readership falls, Open Road’s performance ranked in the top 15.

With 1.219 million readers, Open Road has the fifth highest readership in Australia.

On top of these encouraging figures, Open Road also won two important prizes at the 2009 Bell Awards, run by Publishers Australia.

Staff writer Paul Rodger won the New Journalist of the Year award, while our design team, led by creative director Peter Sewell, won the Best Designer – Custom award for their work on Open Road.

This issue continues our commitment to maximum motoring coverage combined with entertaining travel writing, but we’ve changed the names of our sections and added a new one. ‘Your Life’ looks at the things we do in life as motorists, travellers, holiday-makers and NRMA Members. We visit the Bitter and Twisted festival in Maitland, check out Marysville almost 12 months after Victoria’s Black Saturday bushfires, tap into some helpful advice on shares, review books, investigate music for the road, and taste test an ‘eat street’.

The evolution of Open Road is happening before your eyes.

David Naylor Editor-in-chief

Open Road January/February 2010