MEDIA & MARKETING:IT HAS been a busy week for the publishers of Cara magazine, the Aer Lingus inflight magazine, writes Siobhán O'Connell

Last Thursday, Cara'spublishers Maxmedia were popping the champagne corks as they celebrated it being named Customer Magazine of the Year at the annual awards organised by the Periodical Publisher Association of Ireland (PPAI).

Then on Monday the company was in the High Court as it sought more time to prepare its defence to an action taken by Cara's previous publisher, Harmonia.

The cat fight over Carastems from the decision by Aer Lingus earlier this year to award the Cara contact to Maxmedia. For 13 years, Harmonia, and its previous incarnation Smurfit Communications, had published the title. Harmonia principal Norah Casey reacted by instituting legal proceedings against Maxmedia and its advertising director Mary Kershaw, who used to work in Harmonia.

The statement of claim alleged that Kershaw, as an employee of Harmonia, gave commercially sensitive information to Maxmedia to help the company secure the Caracontract.

Matters escalated in July when Harmonia alleged that 24,000 computer files belonging to Harmonia had ended up with Maxmedia. At the same time, Aer Lingus was joined as a defendant in High Court action, as well as Maxmedia director Garret Whelan, also a former employee of Casey's at Harmonia, and his wife and business partner Lisa Goughran.

Cara, which was launched in January 1968, is one of the crown jewels in the Irish contract publishing arena. Published eight times a year including four double issues, the magazine is edited by Tony Clayton-Lea and garners significant advertising revenue.

Its circulation is not audited by the Audit Bureau of Circulation, but the publishers claim a circulation of 35,000 copies per single issue and 45,000 copies per double issue.

The loss of Cara rankles with Casey, as she made plain at the PPAI awards function. In accepting her own Publisher of the Year award, Casey told the black-tie audience that she felt Harmonia deserved some of the credit for the Caraplaudit.

Casey's comment went down like a lead balloon with many of the diners, who reacted with much tut-tutting.

Contract magazine publishing, or customer magazine publishing as it is also known, has been a growth area in recent years. How it works is that organisations or companies contract publishers to produce magazines, yearbooks or diaries on their behalf. The publisher sells advertising space in the publications and there is often a profit-share agreement.

Despite losing Cara, Harmonia produces customer magazines for O2, An Post, the HSE, Unilever, the K Club and Dundrum Town Centre.

One of the oldest contract titles is Garda Review, the magazine of the Garda Representative Association, which was first published in 1923, a year after the force was established. That title is currently published by Dyflin Media, which also produces titles for the Construction Industry Federation and other bodies.

Another big player in contract publishing is Ashville Media, which publishes diaries for Dublin City Council and Galway County Council, as well as customer magazines for Ashford Castle and the VHI.

Harmonia and Maxmedia are not the only magazine publishers who have fallen out. Solicitors acting for Checkout Publications, publishers of the grocery trade magazine Checkoutand the website Retail Intelligence, have written to rival publisher Penton Publications, complaining of breach of copyright.

Checkoutalleges that Penton, based in Northern Ireland, has published "the substance of articles word for word" in its publication, Ireland's Forecourt Convenience Retailer, which were originally published in Retail Intelligence.

Checkoutis requesting an undertaking from Penton Publications to stop using its material without permission and the withdrawal of any copies of its latest issue not yet circulated.

However, publisher Bill Penton says he knows nothing about the matter. "We have never had a problem of this type in our 15 years of publishing. We run a professional organisation and I am not aware of any issue with Checkout."