GWAS Media Musings

Hooking you up with what's happening on the glossy media beat...

- Ellen Page (looking like an Olsen twin; baring her midriff) and her Whip It director Drew Barrymore appear on the October cover of U.S. Marie Claire. There are lots of online references to the duo looking like a lesbian couple. I think they look cute. (Puke?). In the mag, Barrymore says of Page's body confidence filming the roller-derby flick: "She was in her frickin’ bra and with an open jacket and hot-pink shorts, skating around the rink with red lips and… and she was sexy as a mother…. a feral creature. It was great. And it’s so screwed up for girls to think, Oh because I don’t have that cookie-cutter model body, it must mean I don’t have the right body shape. And I love model bodies, but I just want women to embrace several body shapes. That’s the thing I love about derby. It’s really welcoming.” Hilary Swank appears on the November cover of the magazine, which is currently enjoying an aesthetic relationship with the colours yellow and blue (see below right).

- PBL Media's ACP Magazines has "ended its cost-cutting phase and entered a new era in which its focus will be on improving editorial quality," reports Sally Jackson for The Australian, with managing director Ian Law suggesting aggressive tip-on tactics may have see their last days: "We are embarking on a new era at ACP Magazines," he told attendees at an ACP function. "Some magazine publishers, and I don't absolve ACP from this, have been at risk of taking the view that the cover and the glossy presentation of the book were the most important factors in determining a sale result. And if those two factors didn't deliver a result, then a tip-on or a cover mount ... would help deliver the sales figure we were chasing. I am saying that we need to raise the editorial standard ... Without a culture focusing on good content you won't have the readers or viewers you want, and without the readers and viewers you won't have sustainable profits." Rapturous applause!

- Jackson also reports that Dolly editor Gemma Crisp has left the building, while new hires including Helen McCabe (The Australian Women's Weekly), Fiona Connolly (Woman's Day), Louise Oswald (NW) and Edwina McCann (Harper's Bazaar) have been crucial for striking a balance between "experience and new energy": "Our focus in recent months has been on the women's lifestyle group and ensuring it is best placed to take it forward," says Law. "We believe we have got most of the key positions where we want them."

- Over the past twelve months, Dolly has been using increasingly fancy tip-ons, including a mini hair straightener and Roxy duffle bag, to draw teen attention, with the most recent audit figures reflecting a sales rise. Artificial circulation enhancement of smart publishing practise? Back in June, ACP's women's lifestyle marketing director Matt Dominello told Mediaweek that teens were prepared to pay a premium for a high-quality covermount, justifying Dolly's fluctuating cover price: "We've had pyjamas and the iPod speakers at $7.95, and then with the hair-straightener now we're up to $9.95...if they can get a great magazine and a hair-straightener then that represents great value for money." For a comparative look at Dolly and competitor Girlfriend, see a recent GWAS guest review here.

- Back in August, Pacific Magazines' commercial director Peter Zavecz told The Australian that it was unfair for ACP to put the entire onus for magazine performance on the editor, at the time speaking in reference to the dismissal of Robyn Foyster: "There's also marketing and distribution, as well as editing," he said. "We would never put our editors on the spot like that. What about the publisher's role?"

- Not shy of a gimmick, Playboy has put Marge Simpson on its November cover, with an interview, centrefold pullout and more pictures promised inside. Editorial director James Jellinek says Marge is "a stunning example of the cartoon form" (source). Jessica Rabbit is one thing, but Marge Simpson? This will have the family groups up in arms - and perhaps rightly so. It's a fine line between a bit of playful fun to stimulate publicity and objectifying a character who's come to represent a pillar of moral stability. In 2007, U.S. Harper's BAZAAR featured The Simpsons in a less "racy" fashion shoot.

- Now, here's a more agreeable publishing gimmick (for my sensibility, anyway). Yesterday I subscribed to Marieke Hardy's SMS book (or "M-Book") after reading about it in The Age. Genius interactive idea and the perfect writer to undertake such a Gen-Y project. With Myf Warhurst also recently joining The Age team as a columnist, this is currently the paper to watch for fabulous female writing. The first installment of "The Vigilante Virgin" arrived just in time to wake me up this morning at 6am (we are not on daylight savings time here). Here's how it goes: "Judy Bowler lowered her sizeable spread of bum on to a portable foldout stool and exhaled steam into the bitter cold. She should have warn something warmer. Already, she felt the icy fabric of the chair seeping through her tracksuit and spreading, like a wholly unpleasant rash, around her fleshy kidneys. She pulled her parka around her stout sausage roll of a frame a little tighter. Wriggled her electric blue Explorer socks experimentally inside her gumboots. Bloody Nora, it didn't matter what they were saying on the telly. It was cold." Want to sign up? It'll cost you $0.25 inc. GST to subscribe, plus $0.55 per message, plus any associated mobile internet costs (you have to access each installment online).

- Social network presence will be a top consideration for marketers in 2010, reports Min, with plans for investing in nontraditional media (online, mobile...) outweighing plans for more traditional media. Meanwhile, one magazine making the most of smart-phone apps is Nylon: "Nylon has gone beyond the usual Web site dump and added some of its signature style to this first good try."

- However, not all journos are welcome online – particularly where blogging is concerned. In today's Australian, Sally Jackson reports on the need for media organisations to clarify their policies for online interaction after a Brisbane-based sub-editor lost his job for slagging off his paper in a personal blog. Coincidentally, Marieke Hardy used to publish a personal blog (she stopped last year), Reasons you will hate me, which landed her in some hot water a la Gawker's Jessica Coen (now of New York Magazine): "The worst things people have ever said about me are on the internet," she told The Age. "One said my great-aunt killed herself because I was so untalented. I actually gasped when I read that... When I started, I was angry and untamed. I became clever-er, I hope, about channelling the rage."

- Tanya Irwin has reviewed Sky magazine for Media Post. The slick Delta Airways in-flight glossy is also available on newsstands and "would rival any general interest publication out there," says Irwin. "While it's impossible to be all things to all people, Sky takes a pretty good stab at it."

- "Beyond the power of the purse strings, consumers don’t wield that much power in shaping the magazine experience," writes Judy Franks in her assessment of the changing mediascape for Min Online. "Granted, editors consider reader input in the form of focus groups, online forums and letters to the editor. But the relationship is clearly skewed to the editor: what the editor thinks is best for his/her readership at large. This one-way relationship doesn’t reflect the realities of how consumers now engage with media in general."

- "Exactly how much of a deep dive have the Condé Nast properties really taken this year?" asks Min's Steve Smith in his report on recent Condé Nast coverage. "Do the losses really merit killing a 70-year-old brand (Gourmet) and jettisoning three other titles?" Apparently, the publisher's loss of revenue will amount to $1 billion by the end of the year. Ouchy.

- But that hasn't stopped Condé Nast Digital from launching trulymadlydating.com, a social networking site "recommended by GQ.com and Glamour.com", with links through to Vogue.com, presumably where fashion-conscious types can hook up with other fashion-conscious types. Matches made in glossy magazine heaven!

- Still with Condé Nast, Jezebel writes on Annie Leibovitz's penchant for composite shots using Sassy Bella's assessment of Vogue's airbrushed cast-of-Nine cover as a launch pad. I'm more bothered by the Photoshopping of stars to airbrushed perfection than the creation of photographic collages, but is this practise just as misleading for the public, or a matter of practicality? Do fictional covers do a magazine any favours? Does the public have a right to know when images have been manipulated?

- Former fatty Karl Largerfeld is not a fan of curvy women on catwalks. The German designer has responded to compatriot Brigitte magazine's intention to use "real models" from 2010 by saying, "No one wants to see curvy women" and the world of fashion is about "dreams and illusions". (Source)

- He may not be coming to town to promote his new film, but he can be seen on the 10th anniversary cover of GQ Australia. Robert Pattinson joins "the most influential men of recent times", including Tom Ford, talking exclusively to the magazine about how playing a teen vampire has made him one of the most desired men on the planet. The issue, also representing editor Nick Smith's one-year tenure in the hot seat, also features prominent designers talking about the state of Australian fashion, nominees for the GQ Men of the Year Awards and Mike Butler's investigative expose coming after being entrenched in bikie culture for two months.

Yours truly,
Girl With a Satchel