journalism – Page 4 – Rob Mansfield: Content-ment

The closure of more! magazine is another nail in the coffin of traditional publishing

In January 2001, I stepped through the office doors of more! magazine to begin two of the most entertaining and educational years of my career, so I am immensely sad that today Bauer Media has announced that the magazine is closing.

Quite simply, more! magazine was an institution. You’d be hard pushed to find a woman who didn’t flick through its pages at some point during her formative teenage years, either giggling at Position of the Fortnight, or laughing at the latest celebrity gossip.

For me, one of the great things about more! was that it had a proper personality. Cheeky and irreverent, humour was at the centre of its appeal, but it didn’t shy away from the topics that were important for young women.

While there, I wrote countless sex and relationships features, but I also reported on subjects such as rape, drugs and egg donation.

Easy target

For many, more! was an easy target for feminists claiming that it degraded women, was too exploitative and focussed too much on the ladette binge-drinking culture of women in their late teens and early 20s.

But the core audience that more! catered to – especially during its glory years of the mid-90s through to the early 2000s – existed (and still exists) and needed someone to speak to them and empower them.

There are young girls out there who need someone to make sense of their world, to give them a voice, and not treat them as some sort of alien species. Most of the time, more! fitted that brief to a tee.

Office life

What was key for me, as well, was that those of us on the magazine also thoroughly enjoyed putting it together and cared about the readers.

For 2 years at more!, I had the most fun I’ve had in any job over the past 19 years, learned huge amounts and made some amazing friendships.

Unsustainable

That more! is no longer sustainable as a commercial concern, is hugely depressing. I’m sure that there are many women out there who still fit the description of the core more! reader, but they no longer need to wait a fortnight to read the latest celeb gossip, pore over fashion and beauty tips, or get advice about sex and relationships.

Selling 100,000 copies a week is still pretty impressive, but clearly advertisers no longer bought into the brand.

Paul Keenan from Bauer said: “The prospect of continuing challenging economic conditions has led us to reach this decision as the title has become unviable.”

I feel hugely sorry for Channy Horton and her team and I also feel very sorry for the young women who will never get to experience more! in its true glory.

They may be lots of ways of finding the same thing on the internet nowadays, but it won’t come in the same fantastically-funny, well-written and joyously entertaining 140-page package that more! always was.

RIP!

What’s happened to correct English spelling and grammar?

In the week that the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee took place in the USA, it seems faintly ironic that I’m posting on the decline in spelling and grammar.

I regularly spot awful typos and grammatical howlers in both online and offline media and enjoy posting them on Twitter or Facebook, but there’s always a part of me that does so with a heavy heart.

Yes, know I may sound a bit like an old fart, but I’m not quite that rigid that I’m bemoaning the demise of the Queen’s English Society that officially admitted defeat earlier this month.

Superdrug Facebook ad — Can you spot the deliberate mistakes?

You see, we all make mistakes and things slip through the net occasionally, especially when publishing at speed online, but there’s no excuse for some things.

As I hope you can see from the terrible Facebook ad on the right, it’s clear that things are going awry when a brand such as Superdrug will let something pass without anyone spotting it.

What’s going wrong?

What’s sad is that this has only happened in the last few years and, as I see it, there are a few key reasons why.

1) Cost cutting: in order to maximise profit, successive CEOs have justified slashing staff costs and, in the print industry especially, this has led to outsourcing of key services, such as subbing, or ditching them altogether.

2) Print first, change later: the web is partly to blame – it’s so easy to go and update something after publication in seconds. This means that many people don’t consider it important to read through copy or look closely at a page before hitting the ‘Publish’ button any more.

3) Spellcheck: within the last month, new research has shown that many people don’t even use spellcheck and those that do now find themselves unable to spell everyday (note: correct usage) words, such as ‘definitely’, ‘separate’ or ‘necessary’.

4) Txtspk: This is a bit of an old chestnut and I accept that language needs to evolve, otherwise we’d all still be reading books written in the style of Chaucer. However, it has now reached a point at which textspeak has become the norm in everyday written communication.

While major linguistic change often comes from the ground up, that’s not a reason for it to accelerate because major companies can’t be bothered.

Spelling and grammar may not matter as much in the modern world as they used to, but, for me, it’s all about comprehension.

Sure, people change the way they write and speak, but that doesn’t mean everyone should completely ignore rules. In my humble opinion (IMHO) brands who produce mass-market communication are those who ought to, at least, promote some semblance of correctness.

Doubtless in 10 years time, this sort of argument may seem quaint and charmingly outdated, but it’s important that some of us try to stick up for some sort of consistency. Otherwise, all we’ll be left with is what I like to term ‘Grammanarchy’.

Remember, you read it here first.

Why we need to reward proper writing and content again

How much would you pay a reputable writer/journalist to write something for you, if you’re publishing online?

If you’re one of the new breed of comment-filled, blog-style portals, such as The Huffington Post, XOJane or others, the answer is very little to bugger all.

After almost a year, reports vary as to how successful AOL’s launch of The Huffington Post in the UK has been, but AOL has shut down a lot of its separate named channels, ie Entertainment, to funnel everyone to HuffPo’s equivalent. (Visit the AOL UK homepage to see what I mean)

What’s in a name, you may ask? Maybe nothing, but what has changed is the use and, some might say, abuse of journalists. Where before people used to pay for a writer to craft some carefully-honed words on a subject, now HuffPo very rarely coughs up. Apparently, it’s a kudos thing to appear there.

Admittedly, things had been going downhill for a while with many writers being asked to drop their rates for online work, but this has taken it to a new low.

But the Huffington Post isn’t the only one to blame. XOJane – the sassy, edgy, online successor to Jane Magazine – is soon to launch a UK version and, rumour has it that journalists are being tempted with the offer of writing a ‘post’ (an article by any other name) for just £30.

Without wanting to sound all Linda Evangelista about it, who’d want to wake up and write for that frankly-insulting amount?

Adapt or die?

There are those people who say that writers should just ‘man up’ and accept that the world of work is changing and adapt or die.

To them, I say, fine. There’s nothing wrong with adapting, but it helps if others adapt with you. A good contributor is good, no matter where their content ends up (offline, online, broadcast, etc). If someone spends time doing something, the least you can do is reward them commensurately for their effort.

Yes, there are thousands of amateur, part-time, bored bloggers who are happy to contribute their thoughts for nothing, and, if that’s the case, let them do so.

But if a trained, experienced professional who knows what they’re doing offers their services, do the decent thing and respect them for their knowledge and ability.

Is the internet really that different?

However, the overriding argument for rewarding someone properly for their labours comes with the visibility of the work.

Admittedly, very few people have worked out how to make money out of internet content, but that doesn’t mean the quality should be any less good than the paper variety.

In fact, there’s an argument that brands and organisations should spend more on online content, because it doesn’t disappear at the end of the day/week/month.

By that I mean, once a magazine has been read, how often do you go back to an old issue and hunt out a specific article. Exactly. It’s gone.

With web content, although it can be expunged, it tends not to be and is often left published in perpetuity. High-quality content reflects superbly on your brand and encourages users to think better of you, rate you as experts and be more trusted.

The corollary is fairly obvious. Poor writing, video, images, etc, make you look bad. Who trusts a site that consistently publishes mistakes, terribly-argued comment or sub-standard pictures and film?

Just because you publish a lot, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s quality – probably more so if you don’t pay for it.

It takes a while, but quality content (and often I mean writing) genuinely does win out. Everyone may think (and tell you) they’re a writer. Only a small proportion actually are.