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ST Magazine

The French Atari ST monthly that the press regulator would not count as a magazine

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ST Magazine launched in Paris in September 1985, the year the Atari 520 ST went on sale, published by Pressimage. Because it covered only one make of computer, France's Commission paritaire refused it the press accreditation that brought lower VAT and cheap postage; in 1987 it told readers to stop subscribing, and in late 1989 it added 64 pages on the Amiga, the Mac and the PC to win the accreditation. It passed to the Atari dealer La Terre du Milieu in 1997 and stopped in 1998.

ST Magazine was a French magazine for the Atari ST, and it began almost as soon as the machine did. Its first issue, dated September 1985, asked a single question on the cover, “Pourquoi acheter un 520 ST”, why buy a 520 ST. Its editorial explained the hurry: “If we are launching a magazine entirely devoted to the ST straight away, it is because we think this machine is the engine of a revolution at least as important as the Apple II’s was in its day.” That was six months before Britain’s Atari ST User, and nearly four years before ST Format. The single-machine focus that made it useful to ST owners also made it, in the eyes of the French state, not quite a magazine.

Launched on a price argument

Issue one’s answer to its cover question was a table of prices. It costed a Macintosh fitted with everything a 520 ST came with, from the mouse and monitor to the MIDI and hard-disk ports and the bundled GEM, BASIC and Logo, and arrived at 37,260 francs, against 8,432 francs before tax for the ST. A last-minute note added that rumours of a Macintosh price cut were going round: “Merci Atari !” The cover price, 25 francs, was also given in Belgian and Swiss francs.

The publisher was Pressimage, a small Paris press company whose own advertisement in issue one offered to translate ST manuals and programs into French for importers and distributors. From the second issue the masthead named Godefroy Giudicelli as directeur de la publication and Philippe Giudicelli as editor, with Jean-Michel Dubois as technical director. Subscriptions, 200 francs for ten issues, were payable to Micro-Application, which published ST books and software. The early issues came out irregularly. Issue 4 is dated August/September 1986, and by the end of the decade the cover called it a monthly.

“We are not journalists”

The December 1986 editorial opened with a protest:

“Non ! Non ! Nous ne sommes pas des journalistes ! C’est en tout cas ce que décident les membres de la Commission paritaire en privant ST Magazine, sous sa forme actuelle, de leur agrément.”

No, no, we are not journalists: that, at any rate, is what the members of the Commission paritaire decided in withholding their approval from ST Magazine in its present form. The Commission paritaire’s approval was what gave a French periodical lower VAT and cheaper postage, as the magazine’s own editorials explained. Its reasoning, as the editorial reported it, was that “magazines devoted to one computing standard are treated, roughly, as advertising catalogues for the brand”. The editorial called this unjust. So, it said, the author of forty pages on word processors and databases was “un vil camelot”, a cheap hawker. It also counted the cost. The magazine now paid higher VAT and far higher postage, and subscribers often found it at the newsstand before it reached their letterbox.

In October 1987 the magazine took the logic to its end. Under the headline “Nouvelle formule ! … Il ne faut plus vous abonner !”, it told readers to stop subscribing. Without accreditation it paid VAT at 18.6 per cent and had no right to the preferential postal rate or delivery times, so subscribers could wait up to four weeks for a copy. Once an issue weighed more than 250 grams, every subscriber cost the magazine money. “NE VOUS ABONNEZ PLUS !” Unless you were cut off from the world, the editorial said, buy it at the kiosk.

In December 1988 the magazine reported that it had once again been “reconnu d’inutilité publique”, recognised as of no public use, when the Commission turned it down again.

ST Mag becomes ST Mag

In October 1989 Godefroy Giudicelli announced the change under the heading “ST Mag devient ST Mag”. Many readers now wanted to do graphics, video and desktop publishing, he wrote, which the ST did less well, but “another decisive factor” was “le refus obstiné de la Commission paritaire” to accredit a magazine dedicated to one make. The money lost in taxes would go into 64 extra pages on the Amiga, the Macintosh, PC compatibles and “the machines you will certainly want on your desks tomorrow”, so that the Commission would no longer see the magazine as a brand catalogue. From November 1989 the cover called it “le magazine des 16/32 bits”. The masthead of April 1990 carries a Commission paritaire number for the first time.

The end, and a second life

Through the early 1990s Pressimage went on publishing ST Magazine with Giudicelli as directeur de la publication. In February 1997 the masthead named Godefroy de Maupeou in that role, and from March 1997 the publisher was La Terre du Milieu, an Atari dealer whose advertisements filled pages of the magazine. The latest issue found in public sources is number 127, dated September 1998, which still promised readers a full next issue. According to the Atari diskmag Alive, de Maupeou decided in October 1998 to stop publishing it, because readers were falling away and La Terre du Milieu was in financial trouble.

The name came back. In 2003, Alive reported, de Maupeou allowed a French Atari fanzine, AtTOS, started by Cyril Denis in 2001, to take the title ST Mag. Alive reviewed issue 132 of the revived magazine, dated October 2003, the first to be translated into English.

Sources

  • ST Magazine no. 1, September 1985: cover, editorial, price comparison table, Pressimage advertisement.
  • ST Magazine no. 2, November 1985, p. 2: masthead (Pressimage, Giudicelli, Dubois, subscription to Micro-Application).
  • ST Magazine no. 4, August/September 1986: cover date.
  • ST Magazine no. 6, December 1986: editorial on the Commission paritaire.
  • ST Magazine no. 13, October 1987: “Nouvelle formule ! … Il ne faut plus vous abonner !”
  • ST Magazine no. 25, December 1988: “reconnu d’inutilité publique”.
  • ST Magazine no. 34, October 1989: editorial, “ST Mag devient ST Mag”, and “Nouvelle formule, mode d’emploi”; no. 35, November 1989: cover (“le magazine des 16/32 bits”); no. 36, December 1989/January 1990: cover (“le magazine mensuel”); no. 39, April 1990: masthead (Commission paritaire number).
  • ST Magazine no. 112, January 1997; no. 113, February 1997; no. 114, March 1997; no. 120, October 1997: mastheads (Pressimage and Giudicelli, then La Terre du Milieu and de Maupeou).
  • ST Magazine no. 127, September 1998: masthead and La Terre du Milieu advertisements.
  • Strider, “ST Magazine”, Alive diskmag issue 7 (web, secondary): the 1998 closure, the AtTOS revival. https://alive.atari.org/alive7/stmag.php
  • CiH, review of ST Magazine issue 132, Alive diskmag issue 9, June 2004 (web, secondary). https://alive.atari.org/alive9/stmag.php

See also

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