JULIA GILLARD'S SOLUTION - A QUESTION OF STYLE ANA DIAZ AMELIA AGOSTA
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EXPLORING AUSTRALIAN
WOMEN’S MAGAZINES
JULIA
GILLARD’S
SOLUTION
A QUESTION
OF STYLE
ANA DIAZ
AMELIA AGOSTA
EXPLORING AUSTRALIAN WOMEN’S MAGAZINES Prepared by Andrea Andric Bachelor of Communication (Journalism) Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Bachelor of Communication (Journalism) (Honours) RMIT University, Melbourne Australia Ph: 0424 796 556 Email: s3166055@student.rmit.edu.au Supervisor: Dr Josie Vine Faculty of Communication RMIT University, Melbourne Australia Email: josie.vine@rmit.edu.au
ABSTRACT This practice-led research of magazine feature writing aims to re-negotiate the idea of the Australian women’s magazine. Born out of dissatisfaction with current commercial Australian women’s magazine this study looks toward niche publications such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and The Monthly as inspiration for combining two fields of interest – fashion and politics – in one publication. This combination of political commentary and fashion editorial presents a new vantage point and magazine concept. To examine women’s magazines this exegesis looks at Australian journalists and publications that informed the writing of the articles. As well as this, the exegesis discusses critiques that have shaped and initiated the discourse of women’s magazines. This research hopes to add to the Australian academic discourse on magazines as well as present an untried magazine concept to be tested by a focus group or other market research methodology.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my supervisor Dr Josie Vine for her unfailing support, advice and encouragement. Thanks also to Honours Program Director Adrian Miles for always challenging me to think laterally. Thanks to my brother, George, for his love, understanding and tremendous talent; my mother for believing in me every step of the way and Mish for his continuous positive energy. To my Honours peers – this experience wouldn’t have been the same without you. Thank you for your constructive feedback, friendship and all the fun. A special mention goes to Hannah for her friendship and support through countless hours of Labsome insanity.
STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP: This project contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any tertiary institution, and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference is made in the text of this project. Signed: Date: / /
CONTENTS
Abstract
Statement of Authorship
Acknowledgements
Contents Page
Introduction 12
1. Literature Review 15
1.1 What is a feature article? 15
1.2 Difference between newspaper features and magazine features 16
1.3 The Nuts and Bolts 18
2. Theory 24
2.1 Women’s Magazine Themes 24
2.2 Critiques of Women’s Magazines 26
2.3 Dichotomies of Women’s Magazine Content 27
2.4 Advertising and Journalism in Women’s Magazines 28
3. Methodology 30
3.1 Practice-Led Research 30
3.2 Audience/Readership 31
3.3 Project – Processes and Considerations 32
3.4 The Conversation About Design 42
4. Limitations 43
5. Conclusion 45
Reference List 46
Appendix 1 – The Project 51
Appendix 2 – Readership Profile of The Monthly Magazine 60
Appendix 3 – Readership Profile of Vogue Magazine 61
Appendix 4 – Australian magazine readerships 62
Appendix 5 – HREC approval letter 66INTRODUCTION
This study was born out of my dissatisfaction with commercial and general interest
Australian women’s magazines. It is unfortunate that magazines such as Cleo and
Cosmopolitan make assumptions about women’s interests, potentially leaving a potential
readership in the lurch. These assumptions, however, are predicated and derived from a
successful business model. They have long-standing and entrenched ideas abut the type of
content that sells magazines and generates revenue. These ideas were aimed at the sexually
liberated woman, evident in Buttrose’s editorial letter in Cleo (1972), and gave a voice to
issues previously not discussed freely in women’s magazines. It is this socio-political context
and unquestioned business models in place for the creation of Australian women’s magazines,
which spurred me to undertake a re-negotiation through practice-led research.
A study by David Gauntlett (2008) of British women’s magazines revealed common
themes in contemporary magazines as: men as sex objects, sex and sexuality, relationships,
transformation and empowerment. However, Gauntlett’s study also revealed “few, if any,
of the interviewees were entirely happy with the women’s magazines they read” (Gauntlett
2008, p. 212). While this type of study hasn’t been conducted in Australia, a lot of women’s
magazines published and syndicated for an Australian readership follow the same model.
This project is presenting an untried concept, which aims to re-negotiate the idea of the
Australian women’s magazine by combining political and fashion content. This concept
is presented using practice-led research. The project offers four feature articles: a political
commentary article, column, fashion designer profile and a Q&A piece. These articles are
examples of the type of content that may fit in an Australian women’s magazine. Therefore,
the project is intended to be viewed by a probable focus group, or used for other magazine
audience research methods, which would be the next stage taken in this process but is outside
the scope of this exegesis.
Throughout this study I realised that there are things about women’s magazines that greatly
appeal to me. Most of my appreciation is for high-end fashion magazines, such as Vogue and
Harper’s Bazaar, and related to the form of the magazines: their glossy pages, design and
fashion images. However, I also enjoy the focus on the love of fashion demonstrated in the
fashion features in these magazines. Also an avid reader of political commentary and news
magazines, I wanted this project and exegesis to propose a different perspective on the type
of content an Australian women’s magazine can feature. I aimed to do this by combining
fashion and political writing in one publication.
With this project I am assuming an audience of women who are of the A/B demographic,
which is discussed this further in Chapter 3. Readership statistics from the political and social
12 Andrea Andriccommentary magazine The Monthly suggest that women in this demographic are interested in political
content. According to The Monthly’s readership profile, compiled by Roy Morgan Research, 40.51 per
cent of its readers are female. This means that 54,000, and nearly half of their whole readership, are
women. (For a full readership profile please refer to Appendix 2). It is curious that these interests are
not represented in women’s magazines since there seems to be a large female readership interested in
political content. Even though this project is not intended as a business proposal, this exegesis discusses
the audiences and readerships to provide a more clearly defined context for the project.
This study was completed from a journalistic point of view to investigate a re-negotiation of Australian
women’s magazines. In doing so, I examined the current body of knowledge on journalistic magazine
writing. This exegesis discusses where my project sits in relation to the existing ideas and practices
within journalism. Focusing specifically on feature writing, this study concentrates on feature writing
theories outlined by Australian journalist and academic Mathew Ricketson (2004) and scholars
Stephen Tanner, Molly Kasinger and Nick Richardson (2009). I am not endeavouring to invent a
‘new’ style of writing with this project but rather to borrow from existing styles and present them in a
different context.
This exegesis will discuss current industry examples such as Cleo, Cosmopolitan, The Australian
Women’s Weekly, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Russh, Frankie and Yen. Comparing and contrasting this
with the proposal I am making with my project, I will discuss how these publications and Australian
fashion journalists – such as Janice Breen Burns and Ita Buttrose, as well as political journalists such
as Michelle Grattan, Annabel Crabb and political commentary articles in The Monthly magazine –
informed my writing.
Since there is very little academic discourse in Australia on fashion and women’s magazines, this
exegesis will briefly discuss the international feminist critique of women’s magazines. These critiques,
mostly from first-wave feminist scholars such as Betty Friedan (1963), make up the bulk of academic
writing on magazines. Even though I do not agree with them wholly, they were important in locating
my own opinions within the discourse of women’s magazines. These critiques are valuable because
they initiated a discourse on magazines. In fact, Tim Holmes in Mapping The Magazine (2008)
observes that feminist scholars opened the research in the field, which might be characterised as
magazine studies (Holmes 2008, p. x)
The methodology chapter of this exegesis discusses the writing practices I employed in researching,
writing and editing the articles that comprise my project. It also discusses the importance of
undertaking this study as practice-led research and the decision to present the project as a mock-
up of a magazine. In this chapter, I will explore the idea of readership, the limitations and obstacles
I encountered in the development of the project and the importance of the choice made to present
the articles in the style of magazine pages. The conclusion will discuss possible future outcomes of
the project. These include the next steps that could be taken to compile a business proposal and
market research to determine whether the magazine would be a viable commercial product.
Exploring Australian Women’s Magazines 1314 Andrea Andric
LITERATURE REVIEW
This literature review looks at the body of work produced by Australian journalists and
scholars about the mechanics of feature writing. It will focus on Matthew Ricketson (2004)
and Tanner, Kasinger and Richardson (2009) as contemporary Australian nonfiction
theorists as well as touching on industry publications and journalists present in the
Australian magazine market that have directly informed journalistic discourse, and
practice, in magazine writing. Throughout the course of my research I have found that these
texts, as well as other notable textbooks written on feature stories by Sumner and Miller
(2005), Cunningham and Turner (2006), Kramer and Call (2007), Grundy (2007) and their
predecessors, Zinsser (1976) and Blundell (1988) propagate core values of non-fiction and
journalism writing.
WHAT IS A FEATURE ARTICLE?
“Submerged in an ocean of information, people are crying out for
life-line articles that seek to make sense of the daily rush of complex,
chaotic events” (Ricketson 1999, p. 184).
Ricketson (2004) and Sumner and Miller (2005) distinguish between hard news and
feature stories. They define hard news as stories written in the inverted pyramid, with the
most important facts at the beginning and the least important at the end. They say hard
news assumes the importance of information over emotion. Feature articles, according to
Ricketson (2004), are different to hard news because they contain emotion and analysis as
well as information. Sumner and Miller (2005) define features as articles that contextualize
the hard news story and go beyond the headlines, and the standard who, what, when and
where, to explore the “why” and the “how”. They add that these stories explore the wider
ramifications and implications of the news to the reader, providing background information
and explanation of events and trends. Sumner and Miller say, “If news reporters tell readers
‘here’s what’s happening,’ feature writers add ‘and here’s what it means to you’” (Sumner
& Miller 2005, p. vii). Writing the feature articles, which comprise my project, this was
important because it meant I could explain the relevance of the issues and people I was
writing about to the reader. It also allowed me to elaborate and write longer articles, in the
instances of Julia Gillard’s Solution and the designer profile of Ana Diaz to explain the ‘why’
– a luxury not afforded in hard news. This warranted longer, more carefully crafted, articles
typical of magazine writing.
Exploring Australian Women’s Magazines 15Ricketson (2004) says feature stories decode the news instead of merely presenting it.
“Feature stories…flesh out the daily news skeleton by revealing emotions inherent in news
stories and clothe it by backgrounding and analysing the meaning of events” (Ricketson
2004, p. 4). This is one of the most appealing aspects of feature articles and it is what I am
aiming to do in my political analysis piece. (See Appendix 1). Sumner and Miller (2005)
argue this is increasingly one of the more important aspects of feature articles because the
immediacy of radio, television and the Internet means the facts are available as soon as they
appear, but their context and implications fall outside the scope of hard news.
In the context of my project, feature articles are important because they, according to
Ricketson (2004), make up the bulk of magazine content and also because they have a less
rigid structure, which allows for experimentation with personal voice, tone and style.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NEWSPAPER FEATURES AND
MAGAZINE FEATURES
“By 1992 the size of the magazine market in Australia surpassed the
newspaper market for the first time - $810 million to $762 million”
(Ricketson 1999, p. 176).
There is a difference between newspaper features and magazine features. Ricketson (2004)
and Sumner and Miller (2005) recognise this difference. However, Sumner and Miller
(2005) note five specific distinctions that can be made between the two. Since my project
focuses on magazine writing I think it is important to make this distinction because
it affects the type, length and tone of my articles. For the complete project please see
Appendix 1.
As Sumner and Miller (2005) note, newspaper features are usually shorter and related to
the news of the day. Ricketson (2004) notes that the average length of a newspaper feature
can be between 1500-2000 words. Magazine features rely more on trends and issues in
the niche market they cover and thus have a longer shelf life. This extended shelf life is
also due to the amount of time that magazines have between editions (monthly, quarterly,
weekly) as opposed to newspapers, which are mostly published daily, tri, bi or weekly.
Newspaper features usually also aim to please a localised audience, whereas most magazine
writing is directed toward a “diverse but narrow target audience with specific interests and
demographic characteristics” (Sumner & Miller 2005, p. 8). This was important to me as a
writer because it informed the decisions I made about story ideas and also, the amount of
detail covered in the articles. When I thought about starting the project and the research,
I took into consideration the types of articles that are typical of women’s magazines. As
16 Andrea AndricRicketson (2004) notes the bulk of magazine content is feature articles, but in women’s
magazines there are also ‘packaged’ stories, these stories are accompanied by a fashion spread
or ‘break out boxes’. There are also features of varying lengths, some even shorter than the
typical 1500-2000 word feature.
While I wanted to keep some similarities with the women’s magazines that exist in the
Australian market today the project makes a proposition about the content of these
publications. The similarities between my project and the content of women’s magazines are:
it is written in the form of feature articles, there is a concentration on fashion, the design
of the magazine pages; the articles are written in a conversational tone; the use of language
specific to fashion; common themes involving fashion and empowering women through
providing positive and strong examples; and it makes assumptions about women’s interests.
However, this project presents a point of difference in the assumptions it makes about
women’s interests – incorporating political commentary and focusing on fashion thereby
eliminating the bulk of advice, service articles and male-objectification articles and images
present in general-interest women’s magazines. These assumptions target a niche audience,
which will be discussed in Chapter 3, and present a magazine concept as yet untested and
untried in Australia.
Sumner and Miller (2005) also note that while newspaper articles aim at remaining detached
and ‘objective’, magazine feature writers have more freedom to employ their personal voice,
interpretations, world-views and style. This is probably the most important and interesting
aspect of magazine feature writing in relation to my project because it allows an exploration
of literary voice and style.
The way newspaper and magazines function is also notably different. Newspapers employ
more staff and a few editors and magazines employ many editors and rarely any full-time
writers. According to Sumner and Miller (2005) freelance writers contribute most magazine
content. This works to the benefit of magazines because most are published nationally and
sometimes syndicated internationally, thriving due to the plurality of the contributor voices.
This is why the articles comprising my project indicate examples of the type of content in
this magazine concept. It is also one of the limitations of the project, an issue that will be
discussed further in Chapter 4.
Another important point of difference, according to Sumner and Miller (2005), is that
due to the longer time that magazines have between publishing, their readers expect more
complexity, analysis, originality, depth, sources and accuracy. Sumner and Miller say,
“magazine writing is more intellectually challenging for the reader and the writer” (Sumner
& Miller 2005, p. 9). American journalist and author Michael Evans (2004), also says readers
might set aside a whole afternoon with their favourite magazine whereas newspapers are
Exploring Australian Women’s Magazines 17designed to be scanned or flicked through. What these authors agree on unequivocally is
the importance of the reader, and of capturing and keeping reader interest. Blundell (1988)
emphasises keeping the writing interesting. This has influenced my writing style because
one of the objectives of the project was to experiment with putting a more serious political
commentary feature into the genre of the woman’s magazine and in order to keep the
interest of the potential reader the tone and style of the article need to be appealing. In the
resulting article Julia Gillard’s Solution I tried my hand at a more conversational tone and
used examples such as, “Last year we had the largest boat arrival rate in 30 years but even at
that rate it would take at least 20 years to fill the MCG”. I felt this example would be more
interesting to the reader rather plain statistics or numbers, which might also be confusing.
According to Ricketson (2004) magazine features are usually longer than newspaper features
and therefore have to work harder at grabbing and maintaining the readers’ attention.
Blundell (1988) says in his introduction journalists have a responsibility to “…be tellers
of tales as well as purveyors of facts” (Blundell 1988, p. x). The general advice from both
Blundell (1988) and Ricketson (2004) in order to tell an interesting story is to do a lot of
thinking, reading and talking. These were the processes I employed writing the articles
that comprise the project and they formed the bulk of the pre-writing stage. (Pre-writing
is discussed more thoroughly in Chapter 3). In brief, I brainstormed story ideas then
discussed them with peers to gauge their opinions on the issue of asylum seekers. I also read
publications such as The Monthly magazine, The Australian and The Age newspapers and
Crikey to see what had already been written on the issue.
THE NUTS AND BOLTS
NEWS VALUES
While features are structured differently to hard news articles they still
share some news values. Ricketson says, “news and features are not
different worlds but different approaches to the same world”
(Ricketson 2004, p. 9).
Ricketson (2004) identifies news values as: ‘impact’, ‘relevance’, ‘proximity’, ‘prominence’,
‘timeliness’, ‘conflict’, ‘currency’ and ‘the unusual’. These news values are the most
commonly identified in other textbooks as well. Sumner and Miller (2005) and Blundell
(1988) have similar lists. These news values indicate the importance of news, however they
are more strongly associated with newspaper features. Ricketson (2004) notes all the news
values won’t all apply to feature articles all of the time. Ricketson says, “Some features are
published without any connection at all to the daily news agenda” (Ricketson 2004, p. 9).
18 Andrea AndricSumner and Miller (2005) note that a feature should adhere to at least one of the news values
in order to be relevant and successful. The news values that I have identified in my feature
articles (See Appendix 1) are:
Relevance – making the news relevant and understandable to the reader, instead of being
abstract. Rather than presenting the reader with a summary of events my aim is to provide
them with analysis and insight relevant to their interests. For example, in the column A
Question of Style I say: “This season Gillard’s asylum seeker policy is getting thrown out by
the High Court, in 2001 Howard was lambasted for the handling of Tampa”. This comparison
is relevant to the potential readership of the publication because it uses examples from
Australian politics and contextualises the argument of repetition and cycles within policy-
making.
Proximity – the premise of my project is that it speaks to Australian women from a particular
socio-economic background and the content of the three articles will reflect this. This is
perhaps best demonstrated in the article Julia Gillard’s Solution. I chose an issue (the asylum
seeker policy) and a politician (Prime Minister Julia Gillard) relevant to an Australian
audience. The designer profile piece on Ana Diaz and the Q&A with Amelia Agosta are about
Australian designers and the column A Question of Style uses examples from Australian
politics.
Currency – while the nature of magazine features – and this project being undertaken
over the course of a year – means that the articles cannot be timely but they can provide
background information on a current issue, trend or theme. Julia Gillard’s Solution tackles
the issue of the asylum seeker policy, which has been covered by the media extensively in
2011. Whereas the designer profile on Ana Diaz has currency because she is a relatively
unknown designer but indicates an upcoming trend. This is also a characteristic of fashion
magazines – identifying and championing trends.
TYPES OF FEATURE ARTICLES
Ricketson (2004) identifies a few broad categories of feature articles: the ‘colour story’,
‘human interest story’, ‘news feature’, ‘backgrounder’, ‘lifestyle feature’, ‘travel story’, a
‘general feature’, ‘interview piece’, ‘profile’, ‘investigative feature’, ‘column’ and ‘review’.
The articles that I have written as part of my project can’t be strictly defined by one of these
categories but I can identify the following as guides:
Interview Piece/ Profile – Even though Ricketson (2004) says that interview pieces can
be lazy and deteriorate to a simple Q&A, or “extensions of the PR industry” (Ricketson
2004, p. 24), they are a staple of magazines. He lists Rolling Stone and Playboy as the two
Exploring Australian Women’s Magazines 19magazines that were renowned for their interview pieces. Profile pieces are also popular in
women’s magazines because they are quick and easy to read. One of the aims of the profile,
according to Ricketson (2004), is to provide a few perspectives on one issue. Further, “some
aim to portray a particular job or group of people, one of whom is chosen as representative”
(Ricketson 2004, p. 25). I experimented with this genre using the interviews of two young
Australian fashion designers to create two articles This also provided the opportunity to
experiment with the packaging of stories, which is when stories in magazines are bundled
together as a showcase of a particular industry or issue.
Column – In The New Journalism (1973) Tom Wolfe critiques columnists and Ricketson (2004)
cites Zoe Heller, who wrote a ‘girl column’ for The Sunday Times, as saying that the experience
was “dispiriting”. However, Ricketson notes, “A good columnist brings knowledge, wit and
personality to their publication” (Ricketson 2004, p. 27). The columnist can also develop a
sustained relationship with their readers. “Good pundits have strong followings and apply
broad general knowledge and experience to the issues of the day” (Ricketson 2004, p. 28).
Tanner, Kasinger and Richardson (2009) also argue that columnists help readers identify (with)
the publication and can be a “vital” component to a publication. They cite Fleet Street editor
Brian MacArthur who wrote: “Good columnists set us up for the day, help to define our views,
make us argue or agree with them and quarrel with friends or colleagues” (Tanner, Kasinger
and Richardson 2009, p. 326). Tanner, Kasinger and Richardson (2009) argue columns are a
“growth industry” especially with the evolution of blogging.
Columns are also extremely popular with fashion readers and writers because they allow the
writer to bring his or her wit, personality and knowledge into the writing. Two of the best-
known Australian fashion columnists are Maggie Alderson from Good Weekend magazine
and Patty Huntington from The Sydney Morning Herald. Columns are also finding their
way back into publication such as Cosmopolitan, which features a sex and relationship
column by an anonymous writer. The conversational tone of columns and being able to give
a personal opinion on an issue inspired me to write A Question of Style. The column draws
some parallels between the worlds of politics and fashion and therefore joins the two fields of
interest in the magazine.
News Feature/Backgrounder – According to Ricketson, “Many readers struggle to find time
to keep up with news daily and welcome articles summarising and explaining news events”
(Ricketson 2004, p. 17). With my project I want to make the assertion that it is possible to
have a political analysis piece in a commercial Australian woman’s magazine. That is why I
used Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s one-year anniversary as an opportunity to discuss asylum
seeker decisions the government has made in the past year. I also aimed to provide some
background about Gillard’s political career rather than focusing on her personal life, which
has been the focus of many Australian women’s magazines (The Australians Women’s Weekly
August 2011 issue features an extensive article with the headline: Julia Gillard On Dating,
Drugs & Life With Tim: Her Most Revealing Interview Yet) at the time of the anniversary.
20 Andrea AndricOne of the limitations of this project is timeliness. Since the project was undertaken over the
course of a year, the asylum seeker policy debate and Julia Gillard’s anniversary were covered
with an assumed publication in August 2011. This issue of timeliness will be discussed
further in Chapter 4.
POLITICAL WRITING
Political features can be built around many different aspects of politics such as political
initiatives, legislation, reports, elections and changes of government, parliamentary Question
Time, intergovernmental relations, political wrongdoing and scandals and leadership
challenges to name a few. Tanner, Kasinger and Richardson (2009) argue that in a liberal
democracy, like Australia, the media assumes the role of watchdog. This role comes with the
“responsibility of keeping society abreast of what governments – and other sections of society,
including business and sport- are doing” (Tanner, Kasinger and Richardson 2009, p. 256).
This public-political discourse is also important for showcasing a diverse range of opinions
and offers the public an explanation of policies or probable consequences of these policies.
According to Tanner, Kasinger and Richardson (2009) politics provides a rich source of
material for issues-based features and tends to be written by two groups of people. The first
group includes political journalists, mostly operating out of the Canberra Press Gallery
or one of the state-based press galleries, and the second are experts and representatives of
various interest groups.
Well-known Australian political writers include Michelle Grattan, Laurie Oakes, Matt
Price, Mike Steketee, Annabel Crabb and Alan Ramsey. These writers, according to Tanner,
Kasinger and Richardson while “critical in their writing, can always be expected to be fair”
(Tanner, Kasinger and Richardson 2009, p. 257). Specialists, such as academics or former
politicians, representatives of special interest groups and lobbyists often write opinion pieces
or are cited as experts in their field. According to Tanner, Kasinger and Richardson (2009)
they write from the perspective of a particular ideology or political stance.
Columnists such as Piers Akerman, former editor of the Herald Sun, Janet Albrechtsen from
The Australian, and Gerard Henderson, from The Sydney Morning Herald and Andrew Bolt
are often considered to be conservative; David Marr, former presenter of ABC’s Media Watch
and Phillip Adams, ABC Radio National presenter and columnist for The Australian, are seen
to be left-wing and Robert Manne might be labelled as ‘contrarian’.
Political features are often foreshadowed by hard news reports, TV news bulletins and
the immediacy of radio and Internet updates but they fulfil some important aspects of all
feature writing – explaining the why and the how of a story, simplifying complex issues and
Exploring Australian Women’s Magazines 21providing background information on a person, issue or political trend. However, these
articles are not only confined to newspapers such as The Age, Herald Sun or The Australian.
Ricketson (2004) names two Australian newsmagazines: The Bulletin and Time Australia and
three with a focus on current-affairs: Quadrant, Eureka Street and Dissent. Published since
May 2005, The Monthly magazine can also be added to that list.
These magazines give their contributors more space and longer word counts to write political
features, essays and political commentary and opinion. While researching and writing Julia
Gillard’s Solution I was most influenced by The Monthly magazine and in particular Annabel
Crabb’s essay Prime Minister, Interrupted (The Monthly, August 2011). Crabb’s conversational
tone in the article is something that I hope I have achieved in Julia Gillard’s Solution
therefore making the issue more interesting to read about than if it were written in hard news
style. Crabb also frames her argument with solid evidence, research and interviews. This is
also something I tried to emulate as it makes the article more journalistically balanced. For
example, in Julia Gillard’s Solution I criticise the Prime Minister about the asylum seeker
policy but also say, “To be fair, Gillard is not the first prime minister to struggle in the first
12 months of office, by far”.
FASHION WRITING AND FASHION MAGAZINES
“You need to sleep with the enemy and not wake him when you leave”
(Tonchi, cited in Petronio 2008).
According to Ana Konig, fashion writing is a very specific form of journalism and has more
in common with feature writing than news journalism (Konig 2006, p. 209). It adheres to
the journalistic values Ricketson (2004) and Tanner, Kasinger and Richardson (2009) have
identified and desires to tell a story. Because it falls under the broad heading of ‘feature
writing’ it allows the writer to do so creatively.
Key Australian fashion writers include Janice Breen Burns and Rachel Wells from The Age,
Georgina Safe from The Australian, Patty Huntington from Frockwriter and Maggie Alderson
from Good Weekend Magazine.
Recently fashion blogs such as Lady Melbourne by RMIT Alum Phoebe Montague and The
Sartorialist by American photographer Scott Schuman have made an impact on fashion writing
and photography. However, the exploration of the effect of social media and blogs on the
fashion industry and magazines to its deserved length is beyond the scope of this exegesis.
Fashion articles are generally shorter features packaged with a fashion spread. This is
something that I have kept in mind while producing my fashion stories because it is
22 Andrea Andriccharacteristic of fashion magazines. These are publications such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar,
W and InStyle. The American Vogue is seen to be a leader in the industry because it demands
a level of excellence both in the photography and fashion writing.
Having always been an avid reader of these magazines I paid particular attention while
writing the articles to the standard of writing in these publications. This is something that
I had always admired about them and what seems to set them apart from other women’s
magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Cleo. In particular I looked at how the writers at
Harper’s Bazaar created ‘fashion narratives’. Importantly, it is not just the content of the
feature articles within these magazines that creates the fashion narratives but the magazine
as a whole. The fashion spreads and products advertised in the magazine present a cohesive
narrative about the status of fashion. This is also an indicator of the business model fashion
magazines employ. Projecting certain images of luxury high-end fashion is followed up by
content and the products advertised in these magazines.
While a relatively small amount of research has been done on magazines in Australia,
Queensland-based academic France Bonner stands out having contributed to books such as
Fame Games: the production of celebrity in Australia (Turner, Bonner and Marshall 2000)
and the essay on magazines in Cunningham and Turner’s The Media and Communications
in Australia (2006). The need for more research on magazines has been outlined in Australia
by Turner et al (2000) and internationally by Anna Gough Yates (2003) and Tim Holmes
(2008). The bulk of the academic research about women’s magazines was initiated by feminist
scholars and will be discussed in Chapter 2. However, this research talks about general
interest women’s magazines and there have been no comprehensive studies of high-end
fashion magazines in particular.
The binary nature of fashion magazines is perhaps best described as the effort to eke out a
distinction between the advertorial and editorial content. It may well be that this in itself is
reflective of the different ways of perceiving these magazines. They can be perceived either
as propagators of a superficial multi-billion dollar industry or a legitimate cultural force of
artistic and creative energy. Unlike other women’s magazines such as Cleo, Cosmopolitan
and Marie Claire high-end fashion magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar have a
clear and well-understood message: the perceived importance and beauty of fashion. All of
the images presented by these magazines are geared toward this one message and all of the
content reflects it as well. Both fashion and general interest women’s magazines propagate
these values because their business model, one that has been invariably successful, suggests
that these images generate revenue. The relationship between magazine journalism and
commercial interests will be discussed further in Chapter 2.
Exploring Australian Women’s Magazines 23THEORY
WOMEN’S MAGAZINES THEMES
Women’s magazines have a long publishing history. In Australia one of the oldest women’s
monthly magazines, The Australian Women’s Weekly, continues to enjoy high circulation
numbers (according to Roy Morgan Research on the ACP magazine website the circulation
for the period of January to June 2011 is 491,352) and just celebrated its 75th anniversary.
Women’s magazines, thematic like their predecessors in newspapers - the women’s pages –
are defined by the nature of their content and themes. According to Brooke Kroeger (1994)
women’s pages concerned themselves with society’s stories, fashions and lifestyle features.
Ricketson (1999) cites Henry Mayer whose study of the Australian news media outlines
“women’s features, which took in cookery, fashion, social, weddings, shopping, babies and
personalities” (Ricketson 1999, p. 171). These themes were understood to be of interest to
women. In her study of women’s American magazines Walker (1998) identifies a mix of
common elements:
Fiction (primarily short stories, but sometimes serialized novels);
poetry; articles on fashion and personal appearance; advice on
household management – including cooking, cleaning, budgeting,
child care, home decoration, and martial harmony; and features about
or written by famous people. In varying degrees, the magazines ran
articles on issues of wide cultural significance beyond the home, though
always selected according to the editors’ perceptions of women’s roles
and interest: for example, profiles of presidential candidates, articles
on advancements in medicine, the advantages and disadvantages of
television, and the American educational system (Walker 1998, p. 2).
The Australian Women’s Weekly website outlines the following as elements perceived to be
indicative of contemporary women’s interests: fashion, beauty, health, home, craft, gardening
and cooking. However, according to Ricketson (2004), The Australian Women’s Weekly’s Tilly
Shelton-Smith became the first Australian woman to cover the war in Singapore and Malaya
but in recent times has stopped featuring political commentary or reportage. The Australian
Women’s Weekly and magazines such as Cleo and Madison and their syndicated peers such as
Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire are considered to be general interest women’s magazines.
As the typical lifestyles of western women have changed and diversified profoundly over the last
few generations, representations and images of women in the media in general have changed.
24 Andrea AndricThe content of general interest women’s magazines has also evolved because the social, political
and economic status of women has changed. The changes in women’s magazines have largely
been credited to American Cosmopolitan magazine under the editorship of Helen Gurley
Brown. (Hebron 1983; Winship 1987). This commercially successful magazine was a departure
from the dominant women’s magazines at the time, yet not a feminist publication such as Gloria
Steinem’s Ms. In the early ‘70s. As shown by Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo (2011), an ABC
TV movie, the Australian counter-part, Cleo, did a similar thing for Australian female readers
under the editorship of Ita Buttrose when it premiered in 1972.
These magazines started featuring content that talked about sex and sexuality, gave a voice to
issues previously not discussed in commercial media and answered readers’ questions on these
issues. Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo (2011) shows how Ita Buttrose and her team of journalists
led the way in articulating a new way of thinking for Australian women in the changing
cultural, political and economic landscape. Cleo featured witty and intelligent articles and gave
a new confidence to women in the discourse against the entrenched patriarchy, perpetuated by
commercial media that had defined the relationship between the sexes for far too long. But as
Buttrose’s first editorial letter points out, Cleo wasn’t an aggressive Women’s Lib supporter and
sought to retain and bolster women’s feminine qualities.
Today these general interest women’s magazines publish a broad range of feature articles to
cater to the perceived changes in women’s interests. According to Gauntlett (2008) themes in
magazines include: men as sex objects, sex and sexuality, relationships, transformation and
empowerment. These themes are more prevalent in general interest magazines that cater to
women in their 20s and 30s such as Cleo, Madison and Cosmopolitan. However these themes
can be seen in all women’s magazines to varying degrees.
A prominent ‘sub-genre’ of women’s magazines is the high-end fashion publication. The two
major fashion publications in Australia are Vogue Australia and Harper’s Bazaar Australia.
Other Australian magazines such as Russh, Yen, Frankie and Nylon cater to an alternative
fashion audience and have been around since the mid-2000s. These publications that
informed my writing style and focus in the two fashion articles I produced as part of the
project. The distinctive and conversational tone and style of the articles in these magazines
appealed to me as well as their broad scope. For example, featuring lesser-known designers,
models and brands and having a more localised focus catering to their specifically Australian
audience. These magazines are almost niche in nature because they focus almost solely on
the fashion industry. Their readership profiles are also vastly different to that of publications
such as Cleo and Cosmopolitan. This issue of audience and readership will be discussed in
more detail in Chapter 3.
Exploring Australian Women’s Magazines 25CRITIQUES OF WOMEN’S MAGAZINES
Media commentators like The Australian’s columnist Mark Day have said that women’s
magazines today are “the least credible print products” (Day, 2005). Sue Turnbull also
notes, “the focus on ‘serious’ journalism excludes more popular and tabloid forms of media,
especially those favoured by young people and women” (Turnbull as cited in Cunningham
& Turner 2006, p. 80). In fact, women’s magazines have been criticized for almost as long as
they have existed. As Walker points out:
As early as 1917, Current Opinion published ‘An Indictment of Women’s
Magazines Edited by Men,” which sounded one of the enduring critiques
of the magazines: that male control of periodicals intended for women
readers was just one more example of men exerting authority over
women’s lives (Walker 1998, p. 228).
Studies of women’s magazines, beginning with Betty Friedan’s seminal book The Feminine
Mystique (1963), were instigated by and, for a long time, remained the domain of feminist
scholars. The studies that followed by Cynthia White (1970) and Marjorie Ferguson (1983)
paved the way for Shevelow (1989), Ballaster et al. (1991), McRobbie (2000[1991]), McCracken
(1993), Hermes (1995), Beetham (1996) and Gough-Yates (2002).
The power-oriented critique of magazines offered by feminist scholars from first wave
feminists, predominantly from the 1970s, rejected women’s magazines because they deemed
them incompatible with the Women’s Liberation movement. Summarising the feminist
position espoused at the time by McRobbie and her peers, Gough Yates (2003) said they
argued magazines, being the products of monolithic media corporations, were guilty of
“conspiring in the promotion of both capitalism and patriarchy” and of being a “key site
through which oppressive feminine identities are constructed and disseminated” (Gough
Yates 2003, p. 7).
Joke Hermes (1995) also challenged the older feminist criticism by saying these feminists
spoke “on behalf of others who are, implicitly, thought to be unable to see for themselves
how bad such media texts as women’s magazines are” (Hermes 1995, p. 1). Disparaging the
‘holier than thou’ moralism of this perspective, she advocated a more post-modern and less
moralistic approach that acknowledged the agency of readers, writers and editors.
Dominant studies into women’s magazines, by scholars such as Hebron (1983) and Winship
(1987), were based on the work of Italian Marxist writer Antonio Gramsci (1971) and depicted
women’s magazines as a site within civil society that was part of the hegemonic framework
that subordinated women. Over the next two decades magazines changed dramatically, to
26 Andrea Andricsome extent led internationally by the success of the American Cosmopolitan under the
editorship of Helen Gurley Brown. Her clear calls for cultural change and empowerment
of women challenged the view that women’s magazines were, by their nature, repressive
and presented them as something clearly more complex. In response, academic researchers
were drawn to the work of post-modern and post-structuralist theorists, especially French
philosopher Michel Foucault.
In brief, Foucaultian discourse on a topic, or within a profession or culture, is “a field of
‘what can be said and what can be thought’” (McHoul & Grace 1993, p. 34). As a result of his
work, research into magazines in the last three decades (Hermes 1995; Gough Yates 2003)
has begun to analyse the role magazines play in the lives of contemporary women and the
cultures they live in, providing an alternative perspective to the earlier assessments that
framed readers as naïve and gullible.
DICHOTOMIES OF WOMEN’S MAGAZINE CONTENT
Feminist studies of women’s magazines have repeatedly pointed to the dichotomy of
information and images projected in the content of these publications. For example, as Janice
Winship points out:
Cosmo does not bother being consistent: one article would encourage
readers to be happy with their body size, whilst another would
encourage slimming; men are given both sympathy and criticism;
marriage might be endorsed or condemned; romance and fidelity might
be good or bad, depending on the article; and the style might be serious
or silly (Winship cited in Gauntlett 2008, p. 57).
However contradictory Cosmo’s messages and fantasy lifestyles may seem, it is important
not to forget that it was once a “vehicle for liberation and change, giving voice to ideas and
perspectives which had not previously been in mass circulation” (Winship cited in Gauntlett
2008, p. 58). According to Kayt Davies thesis, Women’s Magazine Editors: Story Tellers and
their Cultural Role (2009):
As women have negotiated and struggled to assume new positions in
both old and newly constructed social settings, women’s magazines have
changed with them – perhaps leading the way, perhaps as a medium
through which the struggled occurred, perhaps merely reporting its
passing (Davies 2009, pp. 4-5).
Exploring Australian Women’s Magazines 27In Gauntlett’s study, “most readers agreed that the magazines communicated a picture
of assertive, independent women – although the emphasis on looking beautiful, too, was
generally inescapable” (Gauntlett 2008, p. 215). This tension, while problematic for first wave
feminists, was welcomed by editors such as Ita Buttrose in the ‘70s whose first editorial letter
states:
Like us, certain aspects of Women’s Lib appeal to you but you’re not
aggressive about it. And again like us, you’re all for men – as long as
they know their place! (Cleo Magazine, November 1972).
However, this liberation both in the way women’s magazines are perceived and the type of
content they feature happened in the ‘70s. Today, general interest women’s magazines still
feature a similar story cycle predicated by Cleo in Australia and Cosmopolitan in America.
So while Davis (2009) asserts that women’s magazines had grown with their readership it
appears a certain status quo has once again been established. This time the images are not
that of the oppressed housewife but the liberated super-woman whose sexual appetite is
seemingly unbridled. It is this socio-political context and unquestioned business models in
place for the creation of Australian women’s magazines, which spurred me to undertake a re-
negotiation through practice-led research. However, this project and exegesis recognise that
the audience for this proposed publication is niche and this audience is outlined in Chapter 3.
ADVERTISING AND JOURNALISM IN WOMEN’S MAGAZINES
Often, women’s magazines are questioned about journalistic probity in the creation
of editorial content and a reliance on commercial products and commodities. Fashion
magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, which rely heavily on the fashion industry
for their content, are generally not discussed in Australian journalism textbooks. Tanner,
Kasinger and Richardson (2009) give a few examples from Vogue and Marie Claire but
academics and journalists generally disregard these magazines, lumping them under the
umbrella term of ‘women’s magazines’. When speaking of ‘quality’ magazine journalism
most journalistic discourse focuses on magazines such as Time, The Atlantic Monthly, The
New Yorker and other similar publications.
Gough Yates (2003) recognises that the magazine industry has always been commercially led
and market oriented but according to her, “one that depends heavily on social and cultural
[emphasis by Gough Yates] processes for its effective operation” (Gough Yates 2003, p. 6). In
her study of the evolution of British women’s magazines through the 1980s and 1990s Gough
Yates (2003) documented a series of significant shifts in the print industry’s efforts to identify
and target female markets. She labels magazine editors as “cultural intermediaries” (Gough
28 Andrea AndricYates 2003, p. 153) who have the power to influence women and put companies who have
something to sell in direct view of the women who will buy their products. It is interesting
to note that most of Australia’s high circulation women’s magazines, such as The Australian
Women’s Weekly, assure advertisers they are women’s ‘trusted friends’.
Some of the ideals of journalism are its attachment to neutrality, objectivity and freedom
from commercial interest, which makes this an uncomfortable topic, but it has been
pointed out that “advertising money pays for most of Australia’s media, and one cannot be
understood without the other” (Windschuttle 1988, p. 3). Turnbull also notes:
For the commercial media, audiences mean money. At the most basic
level, the commercial media derive their money from the sale of a media
product to a consumer. Most commercial media, including the Internet,
derive the greater part of their income from advertising (Turnbull as
cited in Cunningham & Turner 2006, p. 81).
Critics would therefore argue women’s magazines operate a business model driven by the
commodity of advertising space rather than the interests of their readers. However, in The
Content Makers (2007) Australian journalist and author Margaret Simons points out:
There is nothing strong, independent or edifying about penury. If
experienced journalists are to be employed, to find things out, if
journalists are to be developed and trained, if institutional cultures are
to be built to support them in their dirty, vital work, then there must be
money (Simons 2007, p. 17).
It is this negative perception of women’s magazines that has tainted, not only critics, but also
readers’ opinions of these publications and created a general consensus of women’s magazines
as being unreliable sources of information.
It should be noted, Marie Claire regularly features human-interest pieces about current and
world affairs, and magazines such as Russh have themed editions with essay-length features
devoted to topics such as music. So far there hasn’t been a truly Australian publication (Marie
Claire was founded in France and is ‘imported’) that combines political commentary such
as that in The Monthly with fashion. Perhaps it is because the business model of women’s
magazine dictates a certain field of interests, discussed previously, but in the light of the
readership statistics of The Monthly magazine it is clear there is a niche female readership
interested in politics and therefore the introduction of these type of features wouldn’t be
harmful to women’s magazine sales.
Exploring Australian Women’s Magazines 29METHODOLOGY
PRACTICE-LED RESEARCH
“In order to get the precept of journalism you have to do it every day”
(Gideon Haigh, lecture at RMIT University, Melbourne, September
2011).
The decision to undertake this study as practice-led research stems from my firm belief
that practicing journalism is the best way to become a better journalist. All of the literature
on journalistic practice and feature writing reviewed in this exegesis (Zinnser 1976;
Blundell 1988; Ricketson 2004; Sumner & Miller 2005; Tanner, Kasinger and Richardson
2009) suggests practicing journalism makes for better journalism. Quality of journalism is
important to my project because it makes a claim about re-negotiating the idea of women’s
magazines. As I have already discussed, critics of women’s magazines view them as an
unreliable source of ‘quality’ journalism. I felt re-negotiating women’s magazines from a
journalistic point of view is best undertaken as practice-led research. I also felt that a project
was the best way to demonstrate the ideas I had about the type of content I imagine would
shape a re-negotiation of women’s magazines.
According to Sandra Burr, “there are many burning issues facing the higher education
sector in relation to creative and practice-led research.” (Burr 2009, p. 2) Many of these
issues involve the validity of creative practice within the context of the university and the
relationship between the exegesis and the work itself. According to Linda Candy (2006) there
is another important distinction to be made in the scholarly discourse. This, she argues, is
the distinction between practice-based and practice-led research. She defines them in the
following ways:
1. If a creative artefact is the basis of the contribution to knowledge, the research is
practice-based.
2. If the research leads primarily to new understandings about practice, it is practice-led.
(Candy 2006, p. 1).
Further, Candy (2006) argues that practice-led research isn’t as new in the academy as it
looks, with the University of Technology in Sydney (UTS) introducing doctorates in Creative
Writing in 1984. Burr (2009) notes, from the Creative and Practice-led Research Symposium,
the landscape of the academy changed “with greatly increased demand for research higher
degree places in creative practice” (Burr 2009, p. 2). This changing landscape also means
30 Andrea Andricdifferent things for the way that research is conducted, validated and the way propositions
within disciplines are made. Further, Bell (2004) argues, “when critical theory and creative
practice become disengaged from each other within a field like media arts each domain pays
a heavy price in terms of loss of critical purchase” (Bell 2004, p. 737).
In the discipline of journalism it is therefore appropriate to learn through practice. As Candy
(2006) argues: “The significance and context of the claims are described in words, [but] a
full understanding can only be obtained with direct reference to the outcomes” (Candy 2006,
p. 1). The outcomes in the instance of my research problem are the articles comprising the
project. Therefore a re-negotiation of women’s magazines would be impossible to comprehend
without direct reference to these articles.
AUDIENCE/READERSHIP
Michael Evans outlines the importance of of thinking about a target audience or readership
extensively in his book The Layers of Magazine Editing (2004). He argues that identifying a
readership, having a clear mission statement and sticking to the perceived interests of that
readership keeps magazines in business. The Australian magazine industry is fairly large.
(For a list of magazine titles and readership figures please refer to Appendix 4). According
to Frances Bonner (2006), “Australians are renowned as the second highest per capita
consumers of magazine in the world after New Zealand” (Bonner cited in Cunningham &
Turner 2006, p. 193). Using an industry estimate based on ABC audited and non-audited
magazine sales in 2009, the Magazine Publishers of Australia claim more than 230 million
magazines are purchased annually. “That’s more than 13 for every person aged over 14 years”
(MPA 2011).
Ricketson (2004) notes that while newspapers are mainly driven by the news (and the news
cycle) “magazines are driven to meet the needs and desires if their readership” (Ricketson
2004, p. 8). As Turnbull notes, “it follows, then, that the commercial media have a great
deal of interest in knowing who their audience is an exactly what will attract and hold
their attention” (Turnbull as cited in Cunningham & Turner 2006, p. 81). While I haven’t
conducted any organised audience research, as this is outside the scope of this project, I have
a firmly established idea of my target readership.
My imagined target readership is closely modelled on the readerships of magazines such as
Vogue and The Monthly. While these two publications are seemingly different, it appears
their readerships, according to Roy Morgan research, are quite similar. In short, most of the
readers of both publications are 25-49 years old and identified as being part of the A/B Socio-
Economic Quintile. In the case of The Monthly, 69.49 per cent of its readers have a tertiary
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