Clare Cook

Magazines need sub editors

Magazines need sub editors more than ever - niche is about the subtleties of vocabulary, tone and voice that make them invaluable to fragmented media.

Having worked as a chief sub editor on magazines for three years, it seems obvious that the debate surrounding the mergers of titles and the sacrifice of newspaper sub editors is a major problem.

Magazines, as I have always believed, are a different monster and the thought of anything happening ot the subbing process of magazines fills me with dread.

In magazines, the subs take on an a different role than in newspapers.

Firstly, their role as 'checkers' is far more in depth than anything that happens at newspaper level. Jordan has a boob job? We would have been expected to check every cutting or everything ever written to confirm the size of Jordan's breast at any time in the last ten years.

Cameron's son dies? We would have to cross reference every source and the spelling of every name not just on cuttings but with the shadow government secretary. And  if you didn't get the shadow government secretary you would be expected to have your information from Cameron himself.

The same is simply not true at newspaper level. My friends at local and national press assure me of this. The sub checks a few spellings and grammar notes but the main reason for their existence is cutting to length and headlines.

The subbing role at magazines is different as well due to house style and positioning. Anyone who has wored on a magazine knows the difference between dolled up and dressed up. One you might find in Star and one in new!. These subtleties in vocabulary choice and tone are critical to the positioning of a magazine and thus its success.

Axing the sub of a magazine would be to sacrifice 'niche' and become generic. Ironically heading back down the road newspapers are trying to turn away from.

The last major difference is at a human resource level and writers. The journalists writing on celebrity magazines and others are not always employed for their writing skills. In fact, i have worked with some of the worst writers in my life. This is not basic grammar but major issues with structure and technique. Why? Because they have been employed for their bulging contacts book and their ideas rather than their writing.

All this makes me think that newspaper may be kissing goodbye to their niche with generic headlines and content - and magazines will continue to be ever more targetted and specific - if their sub editors remain a vital part of the editorial team.

Related links

Johnston Press and the centralisation of the newsroom operations

Trinity Mirror gets rid of sub editors

In Ireland the same problems apply

You plant a seed not a tree: magazines and community

My idea for the day: You would never think of planting a fully-grown tree. You plant a shoot or a seed.

Grim reading if you needed it. But surely the vibe around new launches and the possibilities of niche digital platforms could make the future bright.

I can't help feeling that the post from Tim Holmes a while back is still so true. Unless magazines stop thinking about who they are writing for and instead start from the organic and work up then the stats will continue to fall.

But, of course, it hasn't been "the reader" who has come first in reality. It has been the corporate entity that publishes the magazine. The idea of "the reader" has long been circumscribed by limitations that are not always transparent to "the reader":
• there have to be enough readers to make publication commercially worthwhile
• there have to be advertisers who want to reach them
• there have to be all sorts of deals along the distribution system to allow them to get their magazines
• there have not to be all sorts of counter-deals (spoiler tactics of various sorts; buying up all the shelf space) to allow the magazines to get into retail outlets

and so on.

When all is said and done, the printed magazine is a non-editable, non-selectable, previously filtered, handing-down-the-tablets-of wisdom, broadcast entity. The much vaunted research that big publishers do before a major launch or during re-launch preparations are, looked at through the other end of the telescope, an attempt to define the community that will want to buy the magazine.

This approach still works. All the new ways of consuming media do not suddenly negate the old ways, just as all the new ways of marketing do not negate the old ways. What has changed is that these methods are now only effective for the last generation of publishing, and they do not work so well for networked communities.

That's where we're going ...

You would never think of planting a fully-grown tree. You plant a shoot or a seed.

Love and the digital revolution

THERE have been plenty of column inches devoted to the launch of LOVE magazine from Conde Nast.

Jemima Kiss has given her take on it, as have correspondents in the national press.

But most interestingly, surely, is its digital portfolio. You can sign up for the Facebook account and join the community of some 4,00 fans. Surely this is a good omen?

Then there is the blog which seems to have been posting since October 2008. There's little of in-depth coverage here but even from the opening post documenting the offices and what life will be like working here, it goes to show how barriers have come down between the 'them and us' mentality of yesteryear.

Search for it on twitter and the first two tweets I found were from a) a guy who wanted to know what all the fuss was about and his tweet constituted his three-hour life on twitter and b) a woman for whom a tweet about Love mag was her third entry since 2007. Not exactly a vibe.

The website is at a url you would expect but try to find it from a Google search if you dare. I stumbled across it from the blog.

The design relies heavily on roll overs and pop outs, though, so I am not sure how much thought has been given to usability given that these features are notoriously difficult for some.

And the site is marked by its lack of advertising. This is a showcase for the print publication and has no evidence of any new business model or funding stream.

So all in all, a rather lame bag.

A naked Beth Ditto on the cover of the first issue gives a pretty clear sign of the title's intentions and its edgy, fashionable bent. This isn't a magazine that's going down the usual path of the fashion titles.

Format-wise, the size of the magazine is also fairly surprising - at a staggering 336 perfect-bound pages, it is roughly the size of a clothes catalogue, so not one for reading in the bath or on the bus. It looks great as a coffee table title and wouldn't be out of place in an expensive hair salon. It reminds me a little bit of an edgy version of Happy which I once sub-edited for Richard Desmond.

However, the large number of pages does mean, unsurprisingly, a very large number of ads. Love has  23 double-page spreads of ads before you reach the content page, which must be a record. On top of that, there are another 18 pages of advertising - a total of 41 DPS ads, before you reach the first piece of content. Patience is a virtue.

Is it a deliberate decision to have no cross-platform community? Is Facebook the tag on or at the core of this magazine's identity.

Katie Grand is the editor. The logo is Fashion and Fame. But it seems to me she is presiding over a ship that doesn't want to involve the reader's really at all. Fame among the elite. What an ugly inconvenience we can be.

Wired magazine goes digital

Interesting to see that Wired see the potential in the

UK market and our penchant for online sites.

Advertising and magazines

Magazines's can't escape the fact that companies will be cutting back on their advertising budgets. So I miss-understood the bumper issue of Bazaar at first - thinking they were surviving better than most and were expecting to boost pagenation. Turns out it is nothing to do with advertising - but in fact a decision by the director to make the size of the print product bigger.

Digital fan as I am, you can't help thinking there may be other ways to focus energies, especially when a traditional shopping mecca such as Conde Nast's Domino would have all the advertising opportunity in the world. I remember when I was working on the Express' Happy magazine - pitched at the top end of retail exubertance - that you would think buying power and high-ad turn over went together quite snuggly.

 Is there any way they could work on growing the community on twitter or blip instead?

 

 

Bumper March issue for Bazaar

NatMag's UK edition of style title Harper's Bazaar is to defy the economic gloom with a bumper-sized March issue.

Customer magazines prove common link for UK's trusted brands

Over three quarters (78 per cent) of the UK's most trusted brands regularly publish a customer magazine, new research from postal service Royal Mail has revealed.

Shopping magazine for the home closes after four years

Condé Nast has confirmed that its shopping magazine for the home, Domino, is to close. Its accompanying website will also close.