Men are always asking what women want. We newspapermen want to know what readers want. Sometimes we pay consultants who charge a lot of money and know nothing about the business to find out.
But there is, of course, a cheaper way. That is to put out a questionnaire for readers to fill in. And that's what Next Magazine has done. But we are all prejudiced and perhaps the magazine bosses have already had well-defined ideas about who their readers are, as shown in this questionnaire.
Four children are pictured sitting around a boardroom table flipping through copies of Next. Presumably, they stand for readers. 'Have your say!' the headline offers. So now we know what the magazine thinks of its readers. Perhaps we should be asking: what do children want?
