A not so glamorous world
2009-07-07 10:29
I hope this doesn't turn out to be like the time you first heard Santa Clause was a figment of some marketer's imagination, I'd really hate to shatter your illusions, but I thought this might be of interest to people who have an interest in magazines in this country.
Being savvy media consumers I'm sure you've all by now seen (or just heard of) movies based on real magazine experiences like The Devil Wears Prada and How to Lose Friends and Alienate People; television shows like Ugly Betty, Sex and the City and Just Shoot Me; fictional magazine movies like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, or even the reality show Running in Heels.
These movies and shows all depict the US magazine industry as fast-paced and glamorous. A place where everyone from the tea-boy to the executive editor fires hilarious quips across the room, where gleaming white Apple iBooks can file stories in the blink of a fibre-optic cable from an opium den in the Himalayas and where magazine staff rub shoulders with society's high and mighty, falling into the celebrity category themselves. And, of course, where interns cry if they can't finish their 200-word assignment within their three-month deadline. (I actually do have a white iBook, I have asked Sir Ian Botham to pass the tomato sauce, and I did really make an intern cry once, but she was crap. That's where the similarities end).
You might also notice that in some of these movies and shows there are scenes of editorial planning meetings where staff gush ideas onto the lap of their omnipotent, serene and immaculately attired editor. That's what I thought I was getting into when I started studying journalism.
However, after working in magazines for almost 10 years in this country, I can tell you that the reality of shows like Running in Heels and the make-believe tinged with fact of The Devil Wears Prada is very far from the reality of our magazine industry. I haven't worked at a magazine in three years, so maybe things have changed by now, but the differences in the way the American magazine industry is presented on-screen and how it actually works over here are glaring (which is not to say we're inferior. In fact, considering our resources, we do a damn fine job).
Gorgeous office space with rows of trendy glass desks, Macs powerful enough to download data from the ISS and views of the city skyline? Naah. Not a chance. I had a pretty decent view of Table Mountain at my last gig, but before that I sat in a dimly-lit dungeon where the seemingly self-aware air-conditioning either blew Eskimo breath down your neck or the heater melted your cheese sandwiches before lunchtime.
I have it on good authority (I hosted a visiting American journalist from Conde Nast Traveller a few years back) that the staff sizes of magazines in the States, as seen in the movies, are pretty realistic. By comparison, local staff sizes are miniscule, so mistakes tend to creep in.
In a movie you'll see a caption writer fretting to meet a deadline. But that's all they do - write captions. Here the caption writer is most likely the features editor who has already written five features that month, been sued three times in the week, captioned every other feature in the magazine, commissioned features for the issue from freelancers, subbed the freelance copy, helped proof-read the rest of the magazine, more than likely re-written the ed's letter after he's gone off on another tangent, chosen pictures for a story, sat in planning meetings and discovered 45 new sex positions. All without tears.
Anyway, remind me to tell you the time we were on a tight deadline and we couldn't find our art director (who'd fallen asleep, severely hung-over, under his desk). You don't see that in the movies.
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