When I was a student in the 90s, a friend and I were asked to write an article on magazines for our uni newspaper. Somehow - still not sure how - we got the editors/deputy editors of Cosmo, Smash Hits, and More to agree to interviews so we spent a day wandering round magazine offices.
The most fascinating thing about it all was that the editors and journalists of each magazine were exactly like their magazines. The Cosmo deputy editor and the other Cosmo staff we spoke to in their stylish offices were all very posh, mostly with glamorous transatlantic or French accents, all beautiful, about 8 feet tall and super thin, immaculately dressed and made up, with the best hair I've ever seen. We must have looked and sounded like a pair of absolute troglodytes.
The woman at Smash Hits looked and dressed like a Blue Peter presenter going clubbing, was super excited and enthusiastic about everything - talking to us, working for Smash Hits, whatever we asked her about. She was lovely to us, but I'm not sure we got much interesting material from her because she was just too upbeat and bouncy.
The More offices were probably somewhere on, or just off, Oxford Street, up a couple of floors, and not at all glamorous. The editor/deputy editor seemed older than the others we'd spoken to (late 30s, maybe), less thin, dressed in black lycra and lots of gold chains, lots of makeup, smoker's laugh. She was brilliant copy - had a jaded eye on everything except her readership, who she seemed to like and identify with. At one point she said (about the beauty advice in More, I think) "we're all dogs, but we've got to make the best of it". Don't think we were allowed to put that into the piece we wrote, sadly.