Over a bowl of Mueslix, Jack Kliger informed me that women’s magazines long figured that “heavy” issues, such as abortion, didn’t mix with beauty and self-improvement.
“That notion,” said the publisher of 2.1-million circulation Glamour in Chicago last week, “has now been turned on its head.”
Few fields are changing as rapidly as women’s magazines and few are better examples of an established, “mature” American industry striving to reinvent itself and find consumers and advertising.
Glamour is entwined in wicked competition, one of about 20 major women’s magazines, including the so-called Seven Sisters-Family Circle, Woman’s Day, Good Housekeeping, Ladies’ Home Journal, McCall’s, Redbook and Better Homes & Gardens-which together sell a staggering 37 million copies a month.
Although the unknowing may assume they are stodgy bastions of fashion, beauty, service and home decorating, many are vibrant, have many superior (mostly female) editors and are producing some of the best journalism, including good investigative pieces.
But they do have and seek similar readerships, and all know that women simply have less time to read. In Glamour’s case, by the time Kliger showed up in 1988 after leaving Gentlemen’s Quarterly, ad pages were heading south and it was perceived as one-dimensional, focused on fashion and beauty and, as Klinger put it, “not as hip as Vogue or Elle, not as impactful as Cosmopolitan or Redbook.”
The problem was not adroit, 60-ish editor Ruth Whitney, who has exhibited Lou Gehrig-like longevity in running the monthly since 1968. According to Kliger, it was more the relative strictures on her, partly resulting from undue sensitivity to advertisers. Glamour’s strength, a sense of authority and practicality, had to be exploited.
“The editor had to feel she could take risks without fear of things happening,” he said. Advertisers were pushing editorial to be narrower, wanting more fashion and beauty.
Any “mature” business, Kliger argues, can fall prey to adopting the buzzword “change” without realizing first how consumers are changing. Conversely, it can find 1,000 reasons not to do anything other than the incremental. Glamour’s editors, not advertisers, discerned a demand by women “for what I can use rather than what I might fantasize about.”
That’s why Glamour started running health and fitness up front, rather than beauty stories, began a “Truth in Fashion” feature and turned to investigative pieces such as one on the increasing paucity of doctors who perform abortions. Readers “liked L’Oreal products and Ann Klein and wanted to improve the world, along with knowing about sexual harassment and date rape,” Klinger said. It meant a melding of style and substance.
And research, meant not to drive content but to provide accountability and prevent “an editor from editing for herself and a small group of friends,” became intense. After every issue, reader panels elicit opinions on each page, even cover headlines and the table of contents. For example, they helped refocus coverage of breast cancer from treatment to prevention and, after suggesting big interest in a story on how the body changes in the 20s, 30s and 40s, prompted stories on sex, health and looks at those ages.
These days, Glamour is healthy, with ad pages up and annual revenue exceeding $100 million, making it probably the most profitable of the privately held Conde Nast magazines, which also include Vanity Fair, Vogue, Self and Mademoiselle.
And Kliger seems content, especially at perhaps having been ahead of the curve. “These days,” he said, “all my competitors talk about style and substance.”
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Chicago lawyer Jack Bierig, whose clients include the American Medical Association, took a sentimental journey last week and came away a happy loser.
Bierig, 46, a partner at giant Sidley & Austin, was a member of the 1968 Brandeis University team that stands as all-time champs of “The G.E. College Bowl,” the quiz show that aired nationally from 1959 to 1970, first on CBS, then on NBC. Brandeis won five straight matches, finishing by humiliating Arkansas State University 515 to minus 10 (points were dedicted for wrong answers).
Brandeis, in Waltham, Mass., held a reunion, pitting the 1968 champs against current students. The new kids, sharper in hitting buzzers, won. But the old guys relived what Bierig calls a wondrous part of their past.
He was a South Shore High School graduate who gained a substitute’s spot on a team that included Chicagoan Alan Ehrenhalt, now executive editor of Governing magazine, and Evanston’s Eric Wexler, now aide to a California judge. Bierig’s one appearance came in the record fifth win in which he hit his buzzer first and correctly answered the following:
– “What is the only cell that has a haploid number of chromosomes?” (The germ, or reproductive, cell.)
– “The word for a kind of weather and the title of a short story published in 1902 are the same.” (Typhoon. The story is by Joseph Conrad.)
– “This party was in power in England from 1869 until-” Bierig interrupted with “The Liberal Party.”
Yet his most ingenious move had come months before, while home on spring break.
Brandeis figured that it would ultimately face the University of Chicago. On a lark, Bierig and Ehrenhalt showed up at a U. of C. practice “to scope them out.” When two substitutes didn’t surface, the coach, assuming the duo in jeans were U. of C. students, asked them to help play the starters. Their identities never came up as they helped thrash the starters, then split.
On their return to Brandeis, they fessed up, enraging their coach, a physics professor, who notified NBC. The network would take action if the U. of C. desired. Luckily for Brandeis, the U. of C. coach said Brandeis shouldn’t be penalized. The schools ultimately played twice, with the first match ending in a dispute that prompted a rematch won by Brandeis.
Brandeis got a silver cup and some money, the players got their choice of a small G.E. product. Bierig, who went to Harvard Law and briefly taught elementary school on the South Side, opted for a toaster oven.
“I almost took the electric toothbrush, though,” he recalls.
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Now it’s time to play “How Grossly Ignorant Are Your Public Officials?” Count the mistakes in this press release from Chicago Ald. Dexter Watson (27th):
“Aldermen, Dexter Watson, Alderman Jessie Miller, Alderman, Ed Smith Commissioner Danny Davis and the Public school from the West Side of Chicago, will deliver letter to Representative Michael Madigan and State Senate Majority Leader James “Pate” Phillips. Tuesday 25, 1993 at 1:00 p.m., at the State of Illionis Building.
“As you know, recently there have been many discussions regarding the upcomming school year. Based on the comments made by som of our elected officials, there seems to be a strong possibility that the schools may not open on time this fall. We are trying to avert this potential crisis, by organizing a letter writing campaign from the students who will be effected by this potential crisis.”
I count 15 spelling, punctuation, grammatical and factual errors. Miller spells his first name Jesse. It’s Pate Philip, who’s Senate president. And Illin . . . well, you caught that one.
There has been talk of televising City Council meetings. We’d be better served by broadcasting “Sesame Street” into the chamber.
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Press hyperventilation over Michael Jordan’s trek to the cultural sewer of Atlantic City-devoting zillions of words to it, then counseling that it wasn’t important-included WLS-Ch. 7’s perpetually tanned Chuck Gowdy showing true intellectual backbone: hectoring Jordan in a manner fit for a Nuremberg war crimes prosecutor, then concluding his Thursday report by wondering if this was “really anybody’s business.”
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As all the world knows, Bill Clinton held up Air Force One so Cristophe of Beverly Hills could cut his hair for $200.
But what would the haute snippers of Chicago charge me for a shampoo, haircut and blow dry aboard the Chicago Transit Authority 151 Sheridan bus?
Jimmy Bastopol of Giacomo Inc. said $250. John Lanzendorf of Timothy Paul said $200. Charles Ifergan, king of his own salon, said $120, “but you have to add my expenses on the CTA.”
Charles, I’ll throw in a token.
