Women's magazines distribution falling - Marie-Claire

[VictoriaSpongeAndTea]

I used to buy lots of magazines, particularly Marie-Claire and Grazia. I've stopped buying any that focus on transwomen rather than women as they just weren't relevant, or in Grazia's just insulting with article by the person who felt women were doing feminism wrong (name escapes me at the moment)

So I have slightly mixed feelings about Marie Claire stopping UK print magazine after November www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49651603 In the past they covered stories impacting women that no one else did and covered some real ground breaking stories but they went down the poor oppressed tw route without doing proper journalism so I'd long since stopped buying even the occasional copy.
They are continuing digital subscription so maybe it's just general market trends.

[Iloveelephants2]

Women’s mags* sorry so many typos. I give up

[RosiePosiePuddle]

This reminds me of an interview I saw with Ian Hislop with a load of students. Someone asked him about journalism as a career and he basically said don't go there as there is no money because no-one pays for it any longer. I wonder how his magazine Private Eye is going because he refused to put content online.

I loved magazines when I was younger. I stopped buying them as I read content on my phone and came to hate the consumerism as I got older.

It is a shame in a way that they are dying out. Not because people realise how damaging they can be, but because it shows the direction that journalism is going. Imho, tough times for journalists means that they become a lot more malleable for business and politicians.

[isabellerossignol]

I loved women's magazines in my teens and twenties. And I was also filled with self loathing. Everything about them made me feel inferior. I felt fat (despite being 5ft 4 and weighing 8 stone) I felt like I had terrible skin, like I was the only female in the world who couldn't fit into a tiny pretty bra, and most damaging of all I felt like everyone had these fantastic glamorous careers, earning lots of money and being oh so successful. Cosmo was the worst for that, always full of made up bullshit about how Annie, 28, was working on an account with a client and did something amazing and everyone was blown away by it she got promoted ten times inside 6 weeks. And it was always 'a client' and 'an account'. Never any indication as to what field Annie might work in or what she did that was so innovative. And all that crap made me feel so bad about myself. I have a 13 year old and I really hope that women's magazines are a thing of the past by the time she is of an age to be the target reader.

Having said that, Marie Claire did have some fantastic articles years ago about women's lives around the world. It was through Marie Claire that I first read about the Taliban and the awful treatment of women in Afghanistan, or more specifically about how Kabul had been quite a modern westernised place in the 70s and within 20 years women's rights had been removed. Utterly terrifying and a very pertinent warning for the times we live in now. So for that I will always be grateful to Marie Claire.

[nettie434]

When I read Marie Claire years ago, I did think its coverage was broader than other magazines aimed at women. Now I only read these magazines at the hairdresser and get irritated by the number of adverts.

I think they helped make women feel they were not good enough but I wonder if social media places even more pressure on young women now.

[Floisme]

I’d be careful what you wish for. Printed magazines may soon be a thing of the past but that’s because young people are on Instagram instead (or whatever the latest platform is) which is even more dishonest - loads of them don’t even declare when they’re advertising - and it’s on tap 24/7. And at least the old magazine journos were for the most part proper writers who could string a sentence together.

[RoyalCorgi]

I wonder how his magazine Private Eye is going because he refused to put content online.

Interestingly, Private Eye is going extremely well - circulation is nearly 250,000. I think that's because there isn't anything else like it, either online or in print.

Print magazines are dropping like flies, tbh. Look at how many parenting magazines there used to be, for example - there were about eight or ten at one time. Now there's only Mother & Baby. All the parenting content you want is online, thanks to sites like this one and numerous others.

[nettie434]

I think that is a good point Floisme. At least in a printed magazine I can tell the difference between an advertisement and content. Now a reality star is photographed wearing a product they were given which means that it is not exactly a Which best buy.

Re Private Eye, I was originally given a gift subscription. When it ran out, I took out an annual subscription and stopped buying a newspaper. Not sure how typical this is but Private Eye does some excellent journalism.

[isabellerossignol]

Floisme you're right and I can't quite believe that I was so blinkered to not have thought of that.

[Floisme]

There are regular threads on Style and Beauty about grammers/bloggers who are followed mostly by teenage girls and whose posts are basically undeclared advertising. I think grammers probably detest S&B as much as TRAs detest FWR. Once it’s pointed out you can’t unsee it. Mind you there’s a lot of undeclared product placement in magazines too. And in films. And pretty much everywhere else.

[MoltoAgitato]

Too much of women’s magazines content is available online for free, and I do think the more serious articles that occasionally popped up in those magazines are no longer being written as a result. I don’t know where that writing has gone - blogging won’t pay for it, and I doubt even the more serious newspapers will pay well for features these days. The lifetime of an article has also drastically contracted - who’s going to wait a month for new content when you can get it every day?

I only buy one magazine now and that’s for a niche hobby which doesn’t have much good writing online.

[Bananalanacake]

what happened to B magazine. I used to like that one.

[ChardonnaysDistantCousin]

I haven’t bought a women’s glossy for years.

I used to buy Vogue, but that became very “woke” for want of a better word, I still get Harper’s but that just fashion, and I get the occasional House and something.

I stopped reading Red when they stated featuring influencers on their beauty pages. If I wanted to see that I could as well click on their Instagram. Lazy.

[Floisme]

There were some really interesting bloggers around about 10 years ago, writing about all kinds of stuff. They weren’t in it to make money - they just had something they wanted to say. But then the PR industry cottoned on and that was that. I think the reason printed magazines (and all printed journalism) is in decline isn’t just falling readership, it’s because advertisers are removing their custom too. Why pay all that money on a big spread when you can throw someone a free outfit and get them to wear it on Instragram? Ok it might be slightly more sophisticated than that but not much. It makes magazines look positively innocent. I will miss them.

[BlackForestCake]

Private Eye is doing well precisely because it has not done what other publications have done: cut back on journalism to save costs. People are still prepared to pay for properly researched, fearless journalism. There is not much of that about in the mainstream press any more. They have got into a vicious circle: cut back on serious journalism -> paper becomes less interesting -> fewer readers bother to buy it -> sales and ad revenue drop -> need to cut costs further.

It is important to understand that the business model of most publications (other than Private Eye) is NOT selling you something you want to read. It is selling your attention to advertisers. That's where the money is (or was) made. The fiver or whatever you pay for a magazine only just about covers the cost of printing it.

[HelenaDove]

Private Eye have been doing proper expose on some of the housing associations. At least twice in the last three months.

[HelenaDove]

www.pressgazette.co.uk/womens-mags-abcs-cosmopolitan-sees-biggest-circulation-fall-full-figures/

[Goosefoot]

Yes, I am not convinced the rise of internet content is better. When I was of an age to read those magazines we were at least aware that they depicted a sort of fantasy, that the photographs were not realistic and weren't really meant to be. Adbusters was passed around schools. Now its all influencers who follow no journalistic ethics, don't care in the least about conflict of interest, and even other regular kids are presenting heavily retouched images of their daily lives.

[user1497863568]

I haven't bought one for ages. I occasionally buy the September issue of US Vogue. They are usually just full of advertisements for things I usually can't afford and wouldn't spend that kind of money on if I could.

[2Rebecca]

My husband and I still buy print magazines. We both get sports related magazine delivered and I get the Spectator which I think is also doing well. That has few adverts. I think the female glossies just got silly with the number of adverts and seemed a waste of paper environmentally. I'd much rather have a thin magazine with stuff I want to read. My son buys no magazines

[HelenaDove]

There was a fortnightly magazine called Real which was running in the early 2000s which was quite good.

[Sarcelle]

I used to love magazines. From teenage onwards I read them all, pure escapism. They never made me feel bad about myself, I just liked the look into other worlds. The glossiness of them, the glamour! The photographs in far flung places...

Some of the ones I liked the most ended - She, New Woman, Eve.

Never really took to Vogue, Tatler or Harpers, just too far removed from my life.

My magazine obsession has dwindled to three a month on subscription - Red, Woman & Home and Good Housekeeping. The subscriptions run out in January and I won't be renewing. I feel like I am saturated with content online and hard copy and I cannot be bothered anymore. I skim read them these days, so no point in buying them. I am no longer impressed by fashion, or beauty advice. Sometimes I read Change Your Life articles in Woman & Home or Good Housekeeping, about some woman in late life who has opened a business and I get suckered in, thinking I could do that! About a 1/4 way through the articles it mentions they sold their second home in the Dordogne to fund the business, or their DH is a CEO somewhere, so the articles are not relevant to the everyday woman because most don't have access to those type of funds. That is the only time that magazines make me feel a bit shit about myself.

I no longer buy newspapers, although I sometimes get a free one if I spend enough money in a supermarket.

I won't miss magazines if they go.

[pikapikachu]

Dd is 16 and never read a women's magazine. Her friends are the same. Social Media has all of the celeb gossip and fashion inspiration immediately after it happens rather than weeks later.

I haven't bought a magazine for years either. The Internet has free recipes, shops, celeb gossip, articles which makes them redundant. I will pick one up at the Doctor's but that's it really.

[CherryForFirstMinister]

I cancelled my Vogue subscription after they hired Paris Lees to speak for women and pushed teens towards anal with clitoris free diagram. They ignored my letter of complaint completely and continue sending me emails of drivel.

UK Vogue used to be high fashion and a bit of the surreal - like wandering around an art gallery. Now it reads and looks like a badly put together trawl of social media, real tasteless barrel scraping illiterate crap.

[HelenaDove]

"I cancelled my Vogue subscription after they hired Paris Lees to speak for women and pushed teens towards anal with clitoris free diagram"

[AuntieMarys]

I read Cosmopolitan in the 1970s....stopped reading magazines about 2000 .