By LAUREN LIPTON
Published: July 20, 2008
THINGS were touch-and-go at Glamour on July 3. Many employees at the magazine’s publisher, Condé Nast, had the go-ahead to leave work early for the long holiday weekend. But for those toiling feverishly on Glamour’s September issue, the possibility was up in the air until the last minute. By the time Ayana Byrd, an articles editor, left at 5 p.m., the elevators that Glamour shares with magazines including Portfolio, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker felt deserted.
In their July and August issues, Glamour features the perfect $795 beach hat; O, The Oprah Magazine, shares recipes for an alfresco dinner party; and Vogue suggests a Caribbean getaway. It’s time to relax and have fun. Except, that is, for the employees at women’s magazines, who every summer find themselves languishing in the office towers of Hearst, Condé Nast, Time Inc. and other publishing companies.
At stake are the fashion-packed, advertising-filled September and October issues, which ship to the presses in July and August and are always subject to such intense scrutiny by top editors and their corporate bosses that late changes are almost guaranteed. This year, as the women’s publishing sector contends with declining advertising in most cases, and smaller staffs and major design changes in some, there is an unwelcome new twist: the traditional half-day on summer Fridays is starting to look like an endangered species.
An industry tradition that for years let publishing employees leave by lunch for the Hamptons Jitney or a drive upstate is being canceled this season at Martha Stewart Living. Instead, the company is giving employees two Fridays and the week off between Christmas and New Year’s. At Elle, summer hours that until last year went into effect on Memorial Day weekend now don’t start until July. And at In Style, which unveiled a major redesign on Friday with its August issue and is still closing the September one, summer hours are being considered on a “week by week, hour by hour” basis, said Charla Lawhon, the managing editor. “Everyone is much more on the ground this year because we have more work to do.”
To be sure, busy summers are not new at women’s magazines, and most employees understand that they come with the job. Although fall is an important time for all magazines, women’s titles are particularly dependent on advertising from fashion designers and retailers, who take advantage of the change of seasons to tout their collections to readers generally eager to get out and shop. Vogue, for example, does about 20 percent of its annual advertising business with the September issue, said Thomas A. Florio, senior vice president and publishing director of the Vogue group.
But with April, May and June ad pages sharply down at most women’s fashion and beauty magazines, there is more pressure than usual to do well this fall. Some publications, like Glamour and In Style, are redesigning their magazines. Skittish advertisers are also making more editorial demands. “It’s definitely pushed up a notch — ‘feature my clothes, do a profile on me,’ ” said Carol A. Smith, senior vice president and group publishing director of Elle, where ad pages were up for April, May and June over the same period last year.
At Seventeen, the September back-to-school issue had about 25 percent more pages than a normal issue, with no additional help other than an army of summer interns. “It’s a brutal grind,” said Ann Shoket, the magazine’s editor in chief. “When Friday afternoon rolls around, I can hear everyone’s cellphones ringing, and I see the resignation in their faces because we’ve got to ship more pages.”
Ms. Byrd, of Glamour, had her strategy figured out this year. She left for a two-week vacation in late April, before her magazine’s fall issues started production, editing and turning in her stories before flying to a wedding in Greece. “When I came back, we had a new creative director,” she said — and a complete redesign of the magazine. That meant Ms. Byrd had to rethink and rework articles that she had thought she’d finished. “You come back from vacation like, la-di-dah — oh, O.K.,” she said.
This year, Ms. Shoket took work with her to the Hamptons on Fourth of July weekend. (“It’s the chic new accessory — page proofs,” she said.) Cindi Leive, the editor in chief of Glamour, said she hasn’t had a Fourth of July since 1992.
Still, another tradition in magazine publishing — top editors leaving early while underlings are left behind — hasn’t entirely been overturned. Earlier this summer, the glass hives within the Hearst Tower on Eighth Avenue buzzed with drones working late, yet Amy Gross, the editor in chief of O, could be seen going down the lobby escalator more than one Thursday afternoon, a bright yellow rolling bag in tow. (Ms. Gross, who retired this month, traveled often on business, said a spokeswoman for the magazine. “If someone saw her with a suitcase, that would not have been the least bit unusual,” she said.)
While publishing companies attribute the changes in summer hours to everything from fluctuations in printing schedules to, at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, increased business in both its media and retail areas, publishing insiders suspect other forces are at play. In the tough economy, it’s more about squeezing as much as possible from fewer employees, some say, and jobs are so scarce that nobody is going to complain.
Shea Daspin is one who’s not complaining. An intern at Interview and new to the city, she has worked long hours on the culture magazine’s September fashion issue. “Obviously I like to get out when it’s light out so I can go for a run or something, but I don’t mind if my internship takes up my whole day,” she said. “I don’t go to the Hamptons or anything.”
Fashion and beauty magazine employees also get perks those at other companies don’t enjoy. In Style gives its people summer goody bags, which this year included books, bronzer and a Rihanna CD. At Marie Claire, Joyce Corrigan, senior editor at large, said that the beauty department is always setting out free sunscreen and that there is “a ridiculous amount of chocolate around to keep the energy up.”
Still, some can’t shake the feeling that summer shouldn’t be this way. An intern at Condé Nast is envious of friends with internships in other fields. “They’re out having their cool New York summer,” the intern said in an e-mail message. “Those of us in the magazine world are here past dinner, and then by the time we leave are far too tired to go out drinking. I guess it’s a good thing. It’s an honor that they take us seriously enough to work us this hard. But, man, I’d love a nap.”
Read More......
Published: July 20, 2008
THINGS were touch-and-go at Glamour on July 3. Many employees at the magazine’s publisher, Condé Nast, had the go-ahead to leave work early for the long holiday weekend. But for those toiling feverishly on Glamour’s September issue, the possibility was up in the air until the last minute. By the time Ayana Byrd, an articles editor, left at 5 p.m., the elevators that Glamour shares with magazines including Portfolio, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker felt deserted.
In their July and August issues, Glamour features the perfect $795 beach hat; O, The Oprah Magazine, shares recipes for an alfresco dinner party; and Vogue suggests a Caribbean getaway. It’s time to relax and have fun. Except, that is, for the employees at women’s magazines, who every summer find themselves languishing in the office towers of Hearst, Condé Nast, Time Inc. and other publishing companies.
At stake are the fashion-packed, advertising-filled September and October issues, which ship to the presses in July and August and are always subject to such intense scrutiny by top editors and their corporate bosses that late changes are almost guaranteed. This year, as the women’s publishing sector contends with declining advertising in most cases, and smaller staffs and major design changes in some, there is an unwelcome new twist: the traditional half-day on summer Fridays is starting to look like an endangered species.
An industry tradition that for years let publishing employees leave by lunch for the Hamptons Jitney or a drive upstate is being canceled this season at Martha Stewart Living. Instead, the company is giving employees two Fridays and the week off between Christmas and New Year’s. At Elle, summer hours that until last year went into effect on Memorial Day weekend now don’t start until July. And at In Style, which unveiled a major redesign on Friday with its August issue and is still closing the September one, summer hours are being considered on a “week by week, hour by hour” basis, said Charla Lawhon, the managing editor. “Everyone is much more on the ground this year because we have more work to do.”
To be sure, busy summers are not new at women’s magazines, and most employees understand that they come with the job. Although fall is an important time for all magazines, women’s titles are particularly dependent on advertising from fashion designers and retailers, who take advantage of the change of seasons to tout their collections to readers generally eager to get out and shop. Vogue, for example, does about 20 percent of its annual advertising business with the September issue, said Thomas A. Florio, senior vice president and publishing director of the Vogue group.
But with April, May and June ad pages sharply down at most women’s fashion and beauty magazines, there is more pressure than usual to do well this fall. Some publications, like Glamour and In Style, are redesigning their magazines. Skittish advertisers are also making more editorial demands. “It’s definitely pushed up a notch — ‘feature my clothes, do a profile on me,’ ” said Carol A. Smith, senior vice president and group publishing director of Elle, where ad pages were up for April, May and June over the same period last year.
At Seventeen, the September back-to-school issue had about 25 percent more pages than a normal issue, with no additional help other than an army of summer interns. “It’s a brutal grind,” said Ann Shoket, the magazine’s editor in chief. “When Friday afternoon rolls around, I can hear everyone’s cellphones ringing, and I see the resignation in their faces because we’ve got to ship more pages.”
Ms. Byrd, of Glamour, had her strategy figured out this year. She left for a two-week vacation in late April, before her magazine’s fall issues started production, editing and turning in her stories before flying to a wedding in Greece. “When I came back, we had a new creative director,” she said — and a complete redesign of the magazine. That meant Ms. Byrd had to rethink and rework articles that she had thought she’d finished. “You come back from vacation like, la-di-dah — oh, O.K.,” she said.
This year, Ms. Shoket took work with her to the Hamptons on Fourth of July weekend. (“It’s the chic new accessory — page proofs,” she said.) Cindi Leive, the editor in chief of Glamour, said she hasn’t had a Fourth of July since 1992.
Still, another tradition in magazine publishing — top editors leaving early while underlings are left behind — hasn’t entirely been overturned. Earlier this summer, the glass hives within the Hearst Tower on Eighth Avenue buzzed with drones working late, yet Amy Gross, the editor in chief of O, could be seen going down the lobby escalator more than one Thursday afternoon, a bright yellow rolling bag in tow. (Ms. Gross, who retired this month, traveled often on business, said a spokeswoman for the magazine. “If someone saw her with a suitcase, that would not have been the least bit unusual,” she said.)
While publishing companies attribute the changes in summer hours to everything from fluctuations in printing schedules to, at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, increased business in both its media and retail areas, publishing insiders suspect other forces are at play. In the tough economy, it’s more about squeezing as much as possible from fewer employees, some say, and jobs are so scarce that nobody is going to complain.
Shea Daspin is one who’s not complaining. An intern at Interview and new to the city, she has worked long hours on the culture magazine’s September fashion issue. “Obviously I like to get out when it’s light out so I can go for a run or something, but I don’t mind if my internship takes up my whole day,” she said. “I don’t go to the Hamptons or anything.”
Fashion and beauty magazine employees also get perks those at other companies don’t enjoy. In Style gives its people summer goody bags, which this year included books, bronzer and a Rihanna CD. At Marie Claire, Joyce Corrigan, senior editor at large, said that the beauty department is always setting out free sunscreen and that there is “a ridiculous amount of chocolate around to keep the energy up.”
Still, some can’t shake the feeling that summer shouldn’t be this way. An intern at Condé Nast is envious of friends with internships in other fields. “They’re out having their cool New York summer,” the intern said in an e-mail message. “Those of us in the magazine world are here past dinner, and then by the time we leave are far too tired to go out drinking. I guess it’s a good thing. It’s an honor that they take us seriously enough to work us this hard. But, man, I’d love a nap.”
RSS Feed (xml)