When New is Old: The Men in Charge of Women’s Magazines
December 1, 2010
by Jill Miller Zimon
|The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda. This article was cross-posted from Writes Like She Talks.
And it involves the departure of two women – Ann Moore from TIME Inc. and Cathleen Black at Hearst who is Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s schools chancellor pick.
Their ages? 47, 49, 49, 50. Hey – wait a minute – that’s my generation. Almost exactly. Didn’t I have a lot of women in my generation who, you know, had the same opportunities etc.? Oh well – this isn’t “my” industry. I’m sure someone can explain the absence of women to me.
Nothing in the article about content, mostly it’s about business. The companies are Hearst, Meredith, Condé Nast and Time Inc. Magazines they publish:
Hearst:
Meredith:
- American Baby
- American Patchwork & Quilting
- Better Homes and Gardens
- Country Home Country Gardens
- Diabetic Living
- Do It Yourself
- Family Circle
- Fitness
- Ladies’ Home Journal
- Living the Country Life
- Midwest Living
- More
- Parents
- ReadyMade
- Renovation Style
- Scrapbooks, Etc.
- Successful Farming
- Traditional Home
- Wood
Condé Nast:
Fashion and lifestyle
Home
Bridal
Golf
Food
Travel
Technology
Culture
Time Inc.:
Hoping to get Jenn Pozner and maybe even the Women’s Media Center to comment on this. One of the arguments that is often made about coverage of women has to do with how business and editorial don’t have nearly enough women in charge and that alone changes when women get covered as well as how women get covered. I’m guessing one or more of these men have daughters. Will that influence their choices? (Don’t bother with the “should it matter” retort – yes – it should.)
Just a thank you comment to Amy for reading and noting my post on this subject. There are many resources on the paucity of women in the upper echelons of media and how scarcity skews coverage of women but how do we effectively pressure the systems to change. This NYT article about who has ascended to the top signals just how much longer and harder and louder we have to be.
Jill, This is a great post and a subject well worth thinking about because magazines aren’t the only media area where this is the case. For the most part, it’s still men who are making the decisions about covering women’s issues in the news media, as well — newspaper editors, TV news producers — are still mostly men. There are some notable exceptions, like Michelle Jaconi at CNN who is the EP for John King USA.
And don’t even get me started about the op-eds and talking heads. A quick look at the blog at The Op-Ed Project is enough to make any woman scream.
http://theopedproject.wordpress.com/
Thanks for the post Jill…that far from “Mad Men” and telling us what we need? Maybe not so much!
Thank goodness for some signs of progress…Tina, Arianna and Melinda et al…we must all continue to push for representation.
And then there’s this from CNN — are we surprised that Kathleen Parker isn’t getting the support she needs? And since when is SHE the sidekick? Grrr.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/l.....FEi51ZYLGN
But wouldn’t intentionally skipping over men in order to hire women be sexist?
Jen – my expectation would be that there’s no need to skip over anyone when elevating. I’m going under the assumption that there are women up to the task and in the running, without a need to intentionally skip over a man to promote a woman. And, if that assumption is wrong – that’s a problem too: how is it that these media conglomerates have entire levels of management devoid of women, yet from which they select their chiefs? That’s a failure of leadership succession planning with diversity in mind.
Did you have something specific in mind where you’ve seen this happen?
I worked at a womens’ magazine in the ’90s, under both male and female publishers. The goal of all publishers is to sell ad space–I didn’t discern much difference in style between the men and women in that regard, to be honest.
I worked under a female editor, new to a title, who came in vowing to reduce the number of coverlines devoted to diets. That didn’t last long! The diet headlines came back when it became clear that they move magazines off the shelf.
The pressure to sell to the coveted younger demographic is intense. I can only imagine how much worse it is now in the internet age.
More women at the top might help but I think the problem with womens’ magazines is much larger than that.
@Joanne – you will almost NEVER hear me say: ‘what goes around, comes around’, but two women, Cathleen Parker and Maureen Dowd, are the exception. Both of these women have been a living at the expense of women – viciously chastising women leaders, and then smacking down those of us who defend women, for doing so. The New Agenda was been the target of Parker’s keyboard on several occasions when we spoke out on sexism. So, now she is experiencing it first-hand, well….
I hope it is a learning experience. Perhaps some good will come of it when she goes back to her journalism career!
Here are my thoughts from HuffPost – links to Parker’s antics are in the piece:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....33288.html
BTW, I saw Silda Spitzer at a fundraiser for Eleanor Roosevelt’s home a couple of weeks ago. She looks fantastic and is working at a hedge fund. What this woman is doing with a schmuck like Elliot is beyond me!
“What this woman is doing with a schmuck like Elliot is beyond me!”
The answer that question is at the root of all Western civilization.
Amy – more topics for discussion over wine:
“What this woman is doing with a schmuck like Elliot is beyond me!”
Also:
1. I do want to say about Parker Spitzer: his overtaking time, space, air was completely predictable – not sure who would really, from the get-go, be someone we’d expect who wouldn’t let it happen who would also sit on the stage with him. My concern is that the producers et al knew all along or could have at least anticipated it. That Parker took the bait – just not a smart move. Why couldn’t the show have been built around two strong smart sassy women?
Why Spitzer at all? If producers suggested that to me at any point in time, right away, I’d know – they’re just looking for the curiosity factor and people who want to see him dominate the screen and be overbearing – that gets old very very quickly – not what I’d think would be a longterm plan for that time slot. Better off with some evening hard news version of The View or something along those lines.
2. Re: this original post – Joanne passed on a link to how Conde Nast, which is mentioned in the original post above, just named a guy to be the D.C. editor of the magazine, SELF – described as a woman’s “well-being and fitness” magazine:
http://www.mediabistro.com/fis.....elf_b26225
Again – I think, “could they really not locate a capable woman to do this?”
I will be interesting to see how this turns out. The thing is when they do hire women for Corporate Media positions they tend to be women who conform to the male corporate cultures (Parker and Dowd). So their strengths are kissing what ever hairy ass is directly in front of them. They are not innovative women and the result is the “same old $h!t” and then people say “see women can’t do any better than men”. I think what will change women’s publications is the break down of Corporate Media gate-keeping so that innovative women from outside the sexist corporate media can get their product to market. So original internet communities or publishing groups from places in the country other than New York and LA ofer the only hope of change. Men view the world differently than women and women audiences are not going to spend money to see the world through male eyes. The only financially relevant definition of “Women’s Content” is content women will pay to consume, it is not relevant what male executives or even imitation male executives think.
I’m not saying it isn’t important to seek equal representation of women in the highest levels of Corporate Media, I am just saying that as long as the sexist corporate media culture exists nothing will change and women audiences will continue to ignore them. Also remember these publishers consider their advertisers to be their customers they do not consider readers to be their customers.
I don’t think women have to be in charge of women’s magazines. Wasn’t a woman in charge of playboy (the most iconic men’s magazine in history) for like 15 years or something?
Kelly, you are right and when you get a woman executive who is nothing but an imitation man fitting into a sexist corporate culture you get the SOS. All of these Corporate Media groups have made the mistake of letting men define what is sex and so they consider an entire half of normal female sexuality taboo because it frightens men (the half where women don’t worry about how they look and ogle men). So Corporate women’s mags concentrate on giving women “helpful” hints on how they can conform to men’s sexual fantasies. Alas women have their own fantasies and want to indulge them and don’t actually care what men want. Again the mags print what their advertisers want to see and they want to plant the idea that women have flaws that they must purchase product to correct. They basically have a business model that isn’t relevant to women audiences. There are two problems here, one is equal opportunity for women executives and the other separate problem is no one is publishing anything for female audiences even though we are 52% of the population and make 80% of the purchasing decisions. Remember you can’t just label something a “women’s magazine” if women don’t read or watch it, it isn’t women’s content. And Gay men aren’t women.
There are studies that show women feel worse or bad after reading “women’s magazines”. So that is the problem these magazines face. How do you get someone to pay money to purchase something that makes them feel bad? How do you get them to spend money buying and time reading information they find irrelevant? And how do you resolve the problem that it is the type of article advertisers want to see that alienates the perspective readers. How do you break advertisers of the “you have a problem you need to buy product to correct” advertising pitch?
These were always problems for these magazines but now women have so many options for their spare time. 15 years ago I used to subscribe to a lot of magazines. 5 years ago I would still read them occasionally at the library or other peoples houses. I don’t even look at them now and my magazine time has been taken over by other things I enjoy. This is even more true of the younger demos.
As to why I adamantly believe that it does matter and does make a difference having women in editorial and business decision-making roles at magazines and their conglomerates: I know that I’ve seen posts on TNA about the effect of media’s portrayal of women and girls on women and girls. While of course it’s true that there can be men who do a much better job in this and women who do a horrific job at this, overall, there’s just so few women, period, affecting the stories covered and how they are covered.
Some reading on why it matters so much to have women in positions of decision-making in media outlets, women’s magazines as much if not more than anywhere else:
http://www.media-awareness.ca/....._girls.cfm
http://www.pta.org/3736.htm
http://theopedproject.org/inde.....038;id=418
http://www.mediaforum.org/NWEF.....gstory.cfm
http://www.mediaforum.org/NWEF/bootcamp.html
Btw, this link isn’t directly related but I think it’s really interesting anyway (and not spam, promise):
http://www.signaturebookslibra.....apter3.htm
Isn’t that fascinating? Anyway – thanks again for the space and thoughts.
http://www.womenaction.org/csw44/altrepeng.htm
Thanks for the reading and I will get to it. I don’t mean to say it isn’t important to have women in media I just think that the Corporate Media are lost causes in terms of appealing to a female audience. I don’t think anything innovative for women can come out of them no matter who runs them. Putting some women in positions of authority 10 years ago might have made a difference, but ten years of no real women and a few imitation men has doomed them.
Another problem for Corporate Media is their gate keeping has been so thorough that they don’t even have any small magazines or publishers or start ups who do appeal to women audiences to buy up. They have totally smothered out all innovation in women’s content leaving them irrelevant to modern women audiences and without anyone to buy out, or to lead them out of their darkness. You simply can’t get modern women to pay for crap that makes them feel bad about themselves and you can’t sell them a 1950′s male view of sex. They have too many options one of the big ones being keeping in touch with all sorts of real friends over Facebook. Corporate Media is irrelevant to young women. Installing a bunch of women executives now isn’t going to change that. It is too late.
I agree with these articles that Corporate Media is distorted and just generally sucks but I don’t believe they can be educated into changing their ways. They only employ men and women who share their distorted values. A real women’s media needs to spring up on it’s own using the internet. Even without better media options most girls ignore Corporate Media magazines, that is why magazines are attempting to reorganize. But all feminists need to do is give girls and women real compelling media options and I am sure women will be all over it. The other thing is remember these magazines are nothing but advertising venues. They are made to appeal to the men who buy advertising. And I am willing to bet that in their reorganizing effort instead of trying anything new they will just double down on their offensive content and ultimately fail completely.
Currently much of the sexist fare on Cable TV exists because female customers are subsidizing male content just so they can get clear reception on one or two channels. This should end in less than 5 years because of the availability of individual shows on the internet whether they are free or not. When corporate media can no longer extort subsidies for their sexist schlock they will have no choice but to abandon it. Of course they are still left with the problem of they have very, very little women customers will pay to watch and certainly not enough to make a cable subscription of interest. Who will subsidize their male content?
I respect and understand the despondency but being just 48 and having a daughter who is a young teen, I’m not ready to give up.
Also, watching the trailer for this film that was just accepted to the Sundance Film Festival re-affirms the incredible need for us to continue to call out these facts, the environments that keep them in place and work one at a time and collectively to change that environment. We will not all share the method for doing that, but I do believe that there are so many fronts that need attention, there is room for everyone to press for and make change:
http://www.writeslikeshetalks......el-newsom/
Well more power to you. I do believe in a vibrant women’s media but I don’t believe a corporate media owned and operated women’s media is possible. It will take real women starting their own magazines which have firm advertising guidelines and they will need to stand up to advertisers. These women will have to consider young women as their valued customers, not the men who want to buy advertising their valued customers.
A few years ago there was a new magazine for girls that looked great, I can’t for the life of me remember the name of it. I subscribed for my daughter and she read it cover to cover. As soon as it got successful it changed into the usual advertising driven schlock and we canceled. The articles went from girls doing interesting things to “which of these face makeups is right for you!”. As soon as the advertisers show up publications turn to garbage and start to fail. Same with TV, as soon as you get a good show for young women Victoria’s Secret and Reebock show up and you have 5 minutes of borderline content punctuated with 5 minutes of hoochies prancing around in stilettos and lingerie, nude women rubbing lotion on their body and Reebok babes sticking their butt in your face. No one but a bunch of old men is going to sit through that $h!t.
Bes – two outlets to suggest – New Moon Girl, started by Nancy Gruver and run with her two daughters (at least at one point):
http://www.newmoon.com/
And BlogHer.com which most definitely keeps an incredibly tight watch on its advertisers etc. I do not belong to their ad network and I am a contributing editor there (so I get paid for my writing), but my experience with them over the last three years or so has allowed me to observe them agonize over a variety of things I’m glad they agonize over re: who and what to advertise etc.
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