» The Dirty Secrets of Your Trade

Magazines
My experience editing magazines is vastly different to that of ChaRleyTroniC.

It often depends on the scruples of the ad people and editor in question - as well as the interference of management - but PLENTY of content I've seen is written to please advertisers, if not written BY the advertisers themselves. Sometimes this is vaguely marked up as a 'promotion'. Often it is not.

Unless a mag's circulation and sale figures are audited by an independent company, they're just making them up. They usually only print half or a third of the copies they say they do, and sell even less.

Ditto on what people have said about competitions - if they're drawn at all, it's never random (you really think we're going to draw names out of a hat?!) and based purely on superficial reasons.

Sometimes magazines are sold in bags (I'm not talking about the modesty porn bags) because they come with another free mag or some crappy little extra 'gift'. This usually increases sales figures, but it ALSO gives editors a chance to lie on the cover teasers, because you can't check inside to see what's actually inside. I've seen plenty of these magazines go to print advertising articles that don't exist.

The photoshopping stuff is, of course, true. But it's not just done for celebrities - magazines will photoshop anybody appearing on their pages (like prize winners or reader photos) if they are distractingly ugly.
(Fri 28th Sep 2007, 15:19, More)