Jane Bruton, Editor in Chief of Grazia, is quoted in the Guardian today talking about bloggers. It pretty much amounts to a feature on ‘why magazines are better’ and a few side-swipes at blogging such as saying the magazine is still streets ahead of the internet in crafting stories and adding tone and opinion to target specific markets such as the Grazia girl. Now, I am very well aware that being quoted may not exactly resemble what you said in a newspaper, but taking it at face value – and it is in the Guardian – I don’t like her tone.
I will always, and have always, raised a hand for bloggers, even right back in the day when the editors were beside themselves with outrage that bloggers were being offered front-row seats at fashion week. The writer part of me wanted to join them, the blogger part of me just couldn’t. JB’s assertion that “it seems to me.. that there has been a bit of a resurgence and the fashion blogger thing has tapered off a bit.. “So, what *thing* would that be, exactly? Just grouping bloggers together and calling them a *thing* is so derogatory and actually, the blogger *thing* hasn’t tapered off a bit – but what is happening is that the cream is rising – and those are the ones that are taking the traditional print readers.
“You can’t read an Ipad in the bath” is another reason why mags are here to stay, apparently. Well, hate to break the news that Ipad covers come with stands so you can put it on the sink or on a stand next to you and read it from there – or watch movies – or listen to music or any of the million other things you can do on an Ipad.. and last I heard, magazines weren’t waterproof either.
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However, as blog stats rise, Grazia circulation falls. Explain. Explain why, if bloggers are merely a *thing* that nobody is terribly interested in any more how the stats and circulation *thing* pans out.
I honestly cannot bear it when print is actively aggressive towards on-line. It’s not fair and it’s disingenuous because let’s face it, magazines are the first to juice blogger stats (i.e. run competitions etc in the hopes that their own on-line stats will rise with every voting click) and bloggers don’t do that to magazines or on-line sites.
We can work together – it is even possible that magazines can learn a thing or two from bloggers as we will see – but a patronizing trashing isn’t the way forward. It’s not, as suggested by JB, that magazines are being offered all the exclusives – if PRs and brands want something seeding quickly, they can’t go to something that’s not coming out for weeks later. My blog and others are living proof of that.
Interestingly, here are some quotes from JB in 2009 from the FIPP World Magazine Conference about the fact that reporters from Grazia were tweeting live updates from fashion shows.
“We can talk to our readers on a minute-by-minute basis. We get instant feedback if we want to test out a story for our magazine – we can go online, we can go on Twitter.” “
“Our fashion teams now – rather than sitting and taking notes – they’re Twittering from the front row, they’re running to the car, typing up instant web reports.”
“The readers love it because they’re seeing everything through our eyes.”
“They [readers] feel involved, feel closer to the brand and feel closer to us as personalities. We’ve never been afraid of exposing the inner workings of the magazine.”
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“In the current climate the fact that people relate to our personalities and trust our brand is really crucial.”
Every single point above is what bloggers do and do so well. Each and every point could just as equally be applied to the reasons why women (and men) everywhere click for now news and don’t wait til it’s old news. Magazines have learned from the on-line world, but damned if they’ll admit it.
Nobody wants to see print disappear.. I shudder to think if another magazine closes how many more brilliant writers get thrown into the already overflowing ‘freelance’ pool. But, belittling comments about a community and genre that’s rising isn’t going to help anyone.
What magazines forget is that we’ve completely changed how we read – and I mean physically. The days of being able to wade through a three page feature for me is long gone – I want quick information in a short format that I can digest at speed. That’s not unintelligent, it’s just how it is today – we’re piling info on top of info into our brains and can take it only so much at a time. Once you start reading on line, reading in print just isn’t the same; your just brain works differently if on-line takes over.
And I’d totally not make the assertion that only journalists can ‘craft’ stories – not true. I’m both, journalist and blogger and I can see that JB is protecting her trade. I get it.. it’s a very, very worrying time and it’s commendable that she’ll stand up and be counted as trying to protect jobs and an industry that’s struggling. But, there are ways and ways, and in my view, that was the wrong way.
You can read the Guardian feature HERE.
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21 comments
Another excellent piece Jane, one of the reasons I always come back to BBB is because you always deliver what blogging is all about: fresh information at a high pace. The press’ attitude towards online writing is bordering on childish at this stage and that Grazia woman’s words just made me despair. We’ve recently started writing beauty for a magazine and I’ve actually found it so difficult to slow down so to speak… I do commend beauty eds for having to write about trends in advance, and not as they happen like bloggers do! For me personally, though, blogging is my first love and I will always defend it as fiercely as you do. xx
Now I have been a reader of beauty magazine pages for many years and was deeply saddened when Marie Claire Health and Beauty went under as that for me was the best mag for beauty articles. I love a good magazine but have found in the past few years that I have blogged on and off and off and on,that I turn far more to beauty bloggers for their thoughts on products than to magazines. Thanks Jane.
I think the fashion magazines will go the way of the four loom weavers and wheel tappers. Sure you can make a case for things the mags do well, but the economics are bleak. If you can’t cover your costs you are out of business. The circulation figures are going down and down. It is worth remembering that Cosmopolitan used to have a circulation of about half a million. I don’t think it is 300,000 now but its costs will be pretty much the same. And Cosmo is probably doing better than most. Sure the glossies remain popular and powerful, but you can’t pay the rent with nostalgia.
Magazines and blogs are so different and serve different purposes. If you’ve seen or heard of a new foundation (for example) you can’t go through every magazine looking for some sort of feedback or review but you search the internet for that information, a magazine is where you might see the initial image inspiring you to look into it. If magazines want to keep the reader coming to them for all information they should be associating with blogger’s and utilising each other, most journalists don’t write the way bloggers so sticking a normal article writer online to blog doesn’t always work since the commercial writing shows through.
Totally agree and actually after subscribing to Grazia practically since it’s launch I recently cancelled my direct debit. Everything just felt quite old, bloggers on the other hand react immediately – and honestly the point of the weekly mags is to be topical isn’t it which in our instant age, they just can’t. I don’t want to see magazines disappear either but it’s a foolish editor that doesn’t want to work with the internet, and that must include bloggers because they are the driving force behind the information we consume.
A very good point made by BBB and I wholeheartedly agree that we can work together. I like both print and online for different reasons and there should be the opportunity for both. Very mean spirited of JB I thought!
I run the risk of sounding cliched, but she sounds rather like a luddite. History doesn’t have happy tales of those who failed to embrace the changing tastes of society. Far from it. Innovate or stagnate.
I honestly think she is just trying to protect her job and magazine. I wouldn’t look in to it too much!
It’s incredible to me that this argument is still being made by people in print journalism when every magazine has started its own blog and has embraced social media. I fail to understand why we can’t all just work together and respect each other.
The thing is, Grazia actually use Bloggers and link to their blog posts on their community page (http://www.graziadaily.co.uk/beauty/community) so I find it a bit off to be saying ‘oh yes we want to work with you here’ and then saying that kind of stuff elsewhere.
They even have their own ‘blog/bloggers’ section on their website: http://www.graziadaily.co.uk/grazia/bloggers – if it’s just a ‘thing’ that has tapered off, then why keep such sections on their site?
Stand up for your industry by all means, but don’t do it at the expense of others.
To be fair, that was in 2009 and it was actually referred to as “twittering” at the time.. so weird as it sound now, it wasn’t out of place then.
I just stopped buying magazine s 3 years ago… I stopped needing them. End of story.
I subscribe to 7 different blogs. I haven’t bought a magazine in years.
I never read women’s mags now. Everything is just so much fresher on blogs. I find out more on your site than I ever have in a £4 magazine. She needs to buck up her ideas.
I think you hit the nail on the head early in the article. Grazia is selling an overall brand, everything in the magazine is focused on the Grazia Girl, the idea of who their reader is or who they want them to be. I create my own online ‘magazine’ that actually suits me rather than some editor where both the subjects of the articles and the personalities of the authors suit me.
I still love print magazines but I enjoy the tailoring of my online reading.
This is a great piece, thanks for sharing.
I always find it fascinating when someone whose job is information and communication is so far off the mark. I would have expected better from the Editor in Chief and hopefully she is only speaking for herself here and not the entire team.
I fully understand the need for self-preservation and to protect her industry, but to say that the “blogging thing” has tapered off is not only an insult to the bloggers who slog their guts out to be recognised, but also an illustration of just how distant she is from the needs of her readership. As someone in a senior position, this has made her look terribly ill-informed and actually a little bit petty. Like the most popular girl at school who has been usurped by a prettier new girl and so her only recourse is to slag her off in the hopes of clawing back her influence.
I don’t work in media, but I do work in mobile technology and over the last 12-18 months I have seen a massive increase in the amount of data used on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. I was recently at the launch for the new HTC One handset (shiny, but not tempting me away from my iPhone) and the team who created the new interface on the phone had discovered that increasingly we are becoming what they called information “snackers”. Exactly as you said, we want little bits of information that are instantly available and immediately relevant. I think fewer and fewer people have the time to sit down and trawl through a magazine, but most people have time to catch up on a few blogs on their way to work, or sitting in reception waiting for their 10am meeting (that last one might just be me).
From a convenience perspective my iPhone is considerably smaller than a magazine and so takes up less space in my bag, yet gives me endless possibilities to access information in little chunks – and its far more information than any single magazine could give me in an issue.
Then there is the cost difference. I could pay £3-£4 for 200 pages in print, of which one third is adverts and another third is irrelevant to my needs. With blogs, there is no cost and I’m only accessing what I want to see.
As for the comment about people not using their iPads in the bath, I’m sure I’m not the only one who does. I work 12 hour days most days and by the time I get home every minute before bedtime is precious and has to be used efficiently. Most nights, I read blogs and catch up with my You Tube subscriptions on my iPad while I soak away the stresses of the day. I can’t remember the last time I read a physical, paper magazine in the bath. It’s been months, if not years.
I really don’t understand why magazines seem to look down on bloggers, although I do love reading magazines and what they feature, I love seeing products being honestly tested by bloggers and seeing the results without photoshop or a make-up team behind it.
I think she’s just trying to drum up interest in Grazia again, but taking a swipe at bloggers – the ‘competition’ – looks a bit defensive.
I used to subscribe to Grazia, but the reason I stopped was that they went totally off brand with their fashion and beauty editorial. I couldn’t get on board with their writing anymore – it was depressingly vapid. Perhaps it has changed now…
Grazia should also remember that a lot of bloggers retweet and link to their online stories, sending traffic their way. They also do ‘Blogger of the Week’ features online, so it’s a bit insulting to the bloggers they’ve worked with.
It would be interesting to see who else spoke at that PPA talk. Seems like the Guardian piece may be skewed towards the two speakers who may have had the most divisive opinion. Generally at those things there’s a consensus that the print industry does have to – and is – moving into adopting a transmedia approach to survive.
Anyway, you can bet your ass digital is a huge part of Grazia’s survival tactic into the future as is the continuation of the Grazia girl persona online. Personas = essential for successful inbound marketing of their brand and they’ll know that.
She has a point about bloggers but she’s tarring all bloggers with the same brush. It’s like saying all newspapers are the same when we fundamentally know they’re not, or that Vogue and New! or on the same footing. Eh, no. Bloggers, while doing something different, are just as varied. There are some spectacular ones. But there are a lot of truly awful ones. You need deep pockets to publish in print, but you can do cheaply online (not free, time and people are resources) which means there’s little or no bar to some of the – sorry – shit we see and cringe at. On the other side of it, I also cringe at Liz Jones. A lot
And it’s those deep pockets that allow magazines to create beautiful shoots (which I always sigh at when I see bloggers ripping off – do your own stuff and then say you’re the future!), do those in-depth pieces with comment and opinion that can be crafted and honed over time by staff journalists and editors that, lets be realistic, bloggers don’t generally do because of the bar to them placed by time (they have other jobs), resources (contacts, knowledge, access).
There will always be a place for informed journalism and that I think may be where the magazine of the future lies. Blogs are amazing for quick response, instant comment, opinion forming, trends, fast fixes, reviews, all those other things that we have come to rely on them for. I’m passionate about them and believe in them utterly.
But because I work on both, I also believe there will still be a place for magazines – it’ll contract, become more specialist and possibly longform, but the way in which we consume media because of blogging means it’s here to stay; it or some changing form of it. Both will co-exist and it’s the smart brands that’ll get the mix right.
TL;DR mags r good but so r blogs.
Given that the news just broke that Easy Living is going online only I’d say she is either spectacularly ill-informed or just clutching at straws.
I personally have never liked Grazia – the message confuses me. Expensive fashion with seedy gossip? Is that the message? Maybe it’s because I’m not ‘a girl’?? The comments underneath the original Guardian piece are priceless though. Great post.
I really enjoy reading your articles about blogging and other things, and to be totally honest, since receiving my iPad about 2 years ago, i have never bought a glossy mag or a newspaper. All the info i am looking for, i get from online blogs, plus i get to see swatches and personal opinions about the product, which will never be printed in a mag. For someone to be an editor-in-chief and to be so far up her ass that she doesn’t know what the current trends are and how women look for fashion and beauty news, is really mind boggling. As to Grazia mag, I second the opinion of Caroline, they do seem very confused, from one side, they advertize very expensive things (majority of it is tat) and then, from the other side, the cheap gossip verging on the bullying about stars and what not. So, screw you Grazia mag and any other mag that thinks this way, I will keep on reading blogs, contributing my time and raising stats to the blogging community. Ok, rant over.