Calling all journalists. Are magazine stories true?

[jasper]

This is a trivial question but is something I have always wondered.

Are the real life stories in the quality women's mags (She, Marie Claire etc) true ?

I have just read one in this month's She where a woman goes from being happy and loaded with a lovely husband and son to a destitiute jobless disabled single parent of a boy with Aspergers in the space of a few months. Oh, and 50K in debt .
Amongst this poor woman's troubles were the fact the other mothers forced her to take her son out of their "normal" school.
The whole thing sounded a bit far fetched and I have often wondered if these stories are true, exaggerated, or plain made up.

Anyone know?

If they are made up I would like a job writing them as I think I would be good at it

very interesting replies.
Aloha I thought you might know about the particular story in She.
Poor woman, what a total nightmare to go through...but then of course it did make her reexamine her priorities and all that stuff.
I was once featured in a trade mag ( I had forgotten all about this) where the journalist who interviewed us completely transcribed all the things we said into quotations attributed to myself and my business partner. None of it was exactly lies but nor was it 100% accurate.
Things were printed in quotations which had not actually been said.

The journalist definitely had an agenda and we were selected and crowbarred into place.

He did appeal to our egos with some very flattering photographs.

aloha- I couldn't imagine anything worse- nice cup of tea for me please

frankly, me too. Mind you, I do feel guilty sometimes if I ever made anyone feel inadequate about their sex lives with our silly fictions. I remember someone had to test the 'wheelbarrow' but they couldn't even get into position for laughing so said it was fantastic for orgasms. Hmm... It was very funny working there sometimes though. Mind you, I'd rather dig coal than write another sex feature now.

I have just been interviewed by a journalist wanting to put my story into Best magazine, so I can verify that some are true at least.

JimJams, glad to hear some news about BIBIC, I spent a week sleeping on a double decker bus collecting money in London, Oxford, Bristol and Bath for them in my distant student past. I can't remember how much we raised, but hadn't heard much about them since (TBH hadn't really looked into it, but am glad that they are of help to you).

Rhubarb - are you going to tell us when it is published so we can all read about you? !

Mebbe!

Please do - although when I was featured in Best (is your journalist called Dawn?) I was never told when it was coming out, I happened to be browsing through it at the checkout in Sainsbury's & found a picture of myself staring back, I immediately started getting all excited & bought about 6 copies !!!!!!!!!! Sad.

The worse thing was that no one I knew read Best so none of my friends saw it (unless I thrust it under their nose!) until we met a colleague of my DH's who said, 'oh yes, I read about you recently'!! DH was not impressed!

Is that Dawn Robinson-Walsh or something like that? She used to post on parenting newsgroups years ago looking for people to interview.

I was once approached becuase I had sort of a whirlwind romance with dh, but after interviewing us said we were quite boring, (in the nicest possible way) and the story wasn't interesting enough.

No, the lady who interviewed me was called Jenny Campion, and she does freelance for a few magazines and tabloids. She is going to send me a draft copy of what she has written for my approval first - I insisted on that, once bitten twice shy, that kind of thing! It's quite a sensitive topic, nothing at all to do with sex or romance, so they had better do the feature with respect or else.....! I will let you know when it comes out though, if anyone is interested.

I was in Woman mag (or Womans Own, not sure) in a 2 page article about me, dh and ds. I sent our story in when I saw they paid £200 but when they published it they only offered me £25 ( I'm cheap but not that cheap). Took several indignant emails to get the rest of the money.

I was in Slimming Magazine in 1997, but, although they did not make anything up, the style of the piece was not like me at all. They made the story really girly and lightweight. I enjoyed the makeover etc though. Plus, I got a large bunch of flowers delivered. No money, but I didn't do it for that. Sad to say that I am a long way off that weight now

I was a "My Birth Experience" story for Prima baby magazine - I did it because my friend was married to the journalist and she asked me as a favour - she interviewed me on the phone and I sent my own photo in, which I preferred as I could choose a nice one of me

I was in the Telegraph finance pages a couple of years ago, espousing the benefits of pound cost averaging. The journo had contacted my husbands company for an example of soembody doing regular investments with them. I was really cross when I saw the example as they had completely misquoted me and made me sound like a very inexperienced investor - my work colleagues took the p out of some of the more banal quotes for weeks.

Prufrock - my mum was in The Telegraph money section too! The funny thing was that she got very humpty about the fact they printed her name & where she lived together with her photo. What did she think they took the photo for? The text that went with the photo made no sense whatsoever - just a way of filling up space as far as I could see.

I've been mulling on this one as I want to keep my anonymity. But then I'm pretty sure no-one I know (apart from Custdy) uses Mumsnet, so what the heck! Best issue dated 22nd April.

Is it available online, Rhubarb?

Thanks for letting us know Rhubarb, I'll make sure I get a copy!