To feel like there is not one decent women's magazine on the market

[tinierclanger]

They all churn out the same tired old stuff slightly rehashed every now and again, there's no proper journalism, hardly any proper reviews, no insight into anything. They're all so boring!

xposts hambo

Do you think anyone would ever read it?

How do you start a blog then?

there is only one thing worse than "woman" magazine. Mother and baby/child magazine. load of shite that only succeeds in making you feel like a failure as both a person and a mother.

Yes, Junior is the type of mag you would read before a related psychiatric episode, for sure.

I'm not sure but I think someone else here will know!

This (below) says free blogs..
www.blog.co.uk

Remember to tell all of us here what the name is so we can read it!

I WISH Bust was easy to get over here. I also wish there was a UK version of Real Simple - the magazine that tells you how to organise stuff. I miss Craft and would sub to ReadyMade if it wasn't phenomenally expensive for an international subscription.

There's an Ealing dinner party circuit ?!?!?!

ponders half-packet of gnocchi in the fridge

PS would love to have read your Scientologist article.

Mippy
Real Simple - I love it- the 'repurposing' tips could give some of the Top tips a run for their money.
Gives you the illusion that your life would be smooth and easy if you just had the right organisation.

My article went the way of all things, but here are useful things I learned.

1. After hearing everything they had to say with a completely open mind, I would absolutely not join this organisation, even though they actively encourage slebs and journos to join and seek to make it particularly easy for you to do so.

1. However, I did take home two tips. If you visualise an empty parking space before you set off on a trip, this becomes reality for you more of the time than it probably should statistically, and I don't know why.

1. Likewise if your child hurts him/herself, and you take them into a different room, away from the scene of the accident, and point this out, they cry less and seem to recover quicker. That is apparently Scientology first aid.

Other than that, everything else I learned was basic stuff readily available form any self-help book in the library, or these days off the internet for free. So no need to take candy from these guys, really.

Come on, what about "Love It!" with its brilliant headlines like; "Murdered for a cheese sandwich" and "My mum ate my dog". (one of those was real)

I totally agree with you Floois. Some of the headlines are real gems !

I remember reading in one of these types of mags when i was a teenage, its so crap and werid , it has imprinted on my brain for ever more.

Perfectly normal and everyday headline , that can happened to the best of us, tis was entitled " There's a LoveSick Nutter in my Wheelie Bin!"

I seem to recall that the same said issue was on a bit of a roll, as it also gave a really funny tip....it went a little something like " Have you lost the plug from your sink/bath? Never fear, a golf ball makes an excellent emergency alternative!" Everyone knows the the only logical conclusion you can draw from such a dilemma is a golf ball.

What more could you ask for........

Boffinmum: Oh boy do I feel your pain. ANd I have been (and still am) a freelance writer, but never been able to break out of my particular niche, really - too wierd, too sweary, too feminist...

I'm tempted to subscribe to Fortean Times. It'd be way more entertaining that the tripe in most womens mags nowadays...

YANBU I recently found myself enjoying my mothers Good Housekeeping. Now either it's slim pickings out there or I'm getting old.

In theory I love magazines. Or rather I loved them. I read Hi and Girl (loved this one) and Jackie and moved on to Just Seventeen. Then More! aged about 14 (and often stolen by my brother overnight - ick!) and then New Woman and Company while at sixth form and also Sky too. Got Cosmo at uni and then Heat when it was good which it stopped being in about 2003 I think. Then Red and Easy Living whenever they both came out. Dabbled in Marie Claire and always find it disappointing. Can't find anythigg I like now other than New Yorker and the Sunday supplement mags. Blimey, writing that I realise I must have spend quite literally thousands of pounds on them. And over the years I have occasionally bought She, Vogue, Look, Grazia and Elle too.

Fortean Times has some excellent, balanced articles IME. I was surprised.

Solid, we need a freelancers support thread. I have thought about the blog and realistically I need to be paid to write this stuff, as others are, not do it for vanity purposes. I am sure you feel the same.

I have worked on the start up of two magazines for small independent publishing companies and it isn't actually that expensive to put a magazine together, for 6000 copies of a 64pp A4 mag it would cost about £5000 to print, mailing about the same.
If you had willing writers, an editor and someone brave enough to sub the copy from lots of opinionated MN'ers , plus design production person, I reckon it would be a do-able.

I would think that MN is a pretty good brand which would attract decent sponsors and maybe a small cover price...

I'm obviously being a bit fanciful here, but it would be a right rollicking read wouldn't it!

I only buy 'doing' magazines now eg quilting, knitting etc becasue I find myself shouting at the repetition, banality and sheer rubbish printed in womens' mags. At least with a craft/housey mag I can keep the patterns/recipes and put them to good use. Agree about the whole Mother/Child genre - a brilliant way to discover pointless problems you never knew you had. Burn the lot of 'em.

BTW Boffin, if you do write a blog, every time you posted a blog you would Tweet it at the same time. I reckon you'd get quite a following quite quickly...

I use Google Blogger and it's pretty good.

Hilarious thread
Did you know that New Woman editor went on to edit Eve
That Real editor went on to edit She
So its the Editors we like, rather than the brands - someone alluded to this about Sam baker, but missed out Cosmo from her career list.

In this economic climate, all magazines will continue to get worse because the advertising money is being squeezed, the budgets to create good editorial are being squeezed and the staff haven't had pay increases for 3 years so they too are pretty fed up, and are made to feel totally replacable by the publishers so they dare not step outside the box.

There was a huge round of redundancies in the industry about 18 months ago, and now the only adverts for jobs you see are 'interns' who do the same job but on minimum wage and get kicked out again after 6 months so they don't accrue any employment benefits.

Grim industry

So where is the Eve editor now,loved that mag?

A Mumsnet mag, what a great idea!