KEY POINTS:
In too few years I'll be 60. I'll also, fingers crossed, be financially more secure than ever before in my life. As well as having health and life insurance, plus a superannuation fund, I'll also have money saved for emergencies. I'll still be working, but not as a
journalist. Because, according to advertisers, I'll be over the hill. My money - plus my husband's money and the money of our similarly aged friends - counts for naught.
I know this because of a business story in the New Zealand Herald this week, signalling changes for two Australian Consolidated Press magazines with which I've had a long association - North & South and Metro. According to this article, senior management at ACP told staff about restructuring plans, which could see both publications produced by the same executive editor and art director.
Furthermore, the report stated, critics say North & South has lost its successful formula and now appeals to an "older skew" - people over 60 - which has "limited appeal to advertisers".
This criticism is so extraordinary I scarcely know where to start. I'll begin with spelling out why current affairs magazines are produced; it's not solely to showcase the products of companies. Without advertising, magazines like North & South would not exist (or would have to retail for around $20 a copy). No, the raison d'etre for these mags is to cater to readers who want to go behind the newspaper headlines and find out more about social issues, politics, business, the arts - a wide range of topics - using honest, feisty, gutsy and investigative journalism. Yes, that can piss people off, sometimes to the extent of suing for defamation or complaining to the Press Council.
Secondly, what sort of criticism is it that focuses solely on "appeal to advertisers" and not on readers, particularly when the (anonymous) critic is talking about current affairs magazines? Ignorant criticism, that's what. What's wrong with a magazine's readership being largely aged 50 to 60? Shouldn't the criticism be directed at the advertising agencies which insult these consumers by dismissing their spending power as unimportant?
I look around at my close friends - like me, nearing 60 - and see a large number of people with substantial disposable income. They don't make the rich lists, but boy, do they buy quality. Cars, for instance, worth $250,000. Beach houses, facial treatments, charge accounts at quality department stores like Smith & Caughey and Kirkcaldie & Stains.
And me? I never walk out of a bookshop without spending nearly half my income on items from my "books to buy" list compiled from reviews. Yes, they're probably cheaper on Amazon, but New Zealand booksellers deserve support.
These are the wealthy consumers, all 60 or over, who read and give me feedback about North & South. Sure, they don't spend their money on fashion statement mobile phones, the latest iPod, triple-figure sunglasses, a bottle of water to suck on all day, or whatever else the young, ad-agency-friendly IT kids spend their income on. Instead, they're people who've worked for the best part of four decades, educated their kids, paid off their mortgages, are still going to work every day and can afford a few luxuries in life.
But North & South is criticised for giving these people what they want each month.
I've wanted to be a journalist since I was about 7, and despite the occasional departure from feature writing, that's what I've done since I trained in magazine journalism at Wellington Polytechnic (as it was) in 1972. I've been lucky to have great editors, beginning with Jane Hill (now Tresidder) at Eve magazine, continuing with Warwick Roger at Metro, and now, perhaps, ending with Robyn Langwell at North & South.
Because, we're told, ACP plans the "disestablishment" of stand-alone editors for both magazines. Instead, an executive editor who has cachet with advertising agencies, could oversee both publications. Editors, it seems, are an anachronism.
I find that sad and depressing. Roger once told me that good advocacy feature writing, backed up with research and interviews, means leaving the reader wanting to either hit you over the head or shake your hand. If you accomplished neither, you'd failed. Langwell, for whom I've written on and off since North & South was first published in 1986, is the toughest, canniest, most intuitive editor I've known. She's also the most encouraging, supportive, inspiring boss who, each month, takes thousands of garbled words I've strung together and makes me reshape them into something intelligible. Her writers have won more journalism awards than I can count. If, as some are suggesting, there is no place for her in the new North & South, then one thing's for sure - a lot of dodgy politicians, useless teachers, child bashers, business crooks and money-wasting bureaucrats will be happy.
But what would I know? I'm nearly 60. So why do I not feel confident for the future of serious, forthright, magazine journalism in lthis country?
