My early 20s collided with the apex of magazine culture. It was a pre-influencer society (remember that?) and we bestowed magazine editors with the kind of cachet that barely seems conceivable now. It was the age of The Devil Wears Prada and we enthusiastically derided (while secretly deifying) the glittering galaxy of women’s magazines. It may be frivolous, we conceded – but boy, is it pretty.
By the time I’d landed an outwardly prestigious role as acting editorial coordinator at the late, great Grazia magazine (the print version, thank-you very much), I was riding high on mail-sorting and lunch-fetching, knowing that if I clocked enough coffee runs I’d one day be the kind of cool, detached features editor who’d been in her plum gig so long she’d decline more party invites than she accepted. Were my ideas of a future in Australian lifestyle journalism misguided? Very, as far as the latest slice off the industry proves.
Although the Australian publishing industry has been held at knifepoint for years, the spread of coronavirus escalated the hostage situation. Thousands of jobs and hundreds of titles from News Corp to the ABC have been sliced, with digital publications also facing the chop: local Buzzfeed and 10 Daily newsrooms have folded and Vice Media has been reduced to the bare minimum. Mercury Capital’s announcement last week that a clutch of former Bauer Media women’s lifestyle magazines – including Harper’s Bazaar Australia, Elle Australia, InStyle Australia, NW and Women’s Health – were destined for the dump heap was yet another blow.
The industry has been sentenced to death by a thousand paper cuts but it’s those behind the bylines that are slowly bleeding out. As a new set of seasoned journalists faced the guillotine, I thought of the budding ones, who were surely watching on in horror. Now, forced to survey a barren desert of professional prospects, I despair for the future journalists, frantically chasing after rare and skeletal tumbleweeds of opportunity.
My first writing job was at the now-axed NW, the celebrity “news” magazine that paraded its unwokeness shamelessly. For me, that job – no matter how objectionable the content could be – was a foot in the door and a formative foray into turning words, pictures and glossy paper stock into something much, much more.
“It’s really sad for you,” my husband observed. “You gave these places the best years of your early career. You said, ‘Sure, I’ll do the entry-level stuff because later, I’ll be rewarded with a great job at the top and a long, hopefully successful career.’ Then, the industry died on you.”
To me, it’s like marrying an ailing yet wealthy geriatric for the future promise of financial gain only to discover upon their death there was no fortune left. It had been squandered and pillaged, right under my nose, by people who wouldn’t even be around to enjoy it. To this industry, and to Bauer Media specifically, I gave all the kind of naive, boundless energy and drive that only a young, hungry writer with no mortgage, children or responsibilities can muster. A decade later, a career in journalism looks less like a promising place of progression and more like a scramble to an underground bunker that’s only big enough for very few (and even fewer now, considering social distancing).
The typical accelerator-like environments for young writers – boredom-riddled intern cupboards, small-time beats at longstanding regional newspapers – are on the brink of extinction, save for the promising paths of a few thriving youth media publishers. At least for me, I’ve had the opportunity to be a part of something that feels as though it has a future; the hope of a long, creative and impactful career existed for me at one point. I have the privilege to mourn what once was; those at the starting line will be hard-pressed to find this feeling at all.
As titles collapse on to each other like crumbling cultural pillars, I wonder if there will ever be a place for interns to toil in the art of coffee making and proof running. Will the idealistic upstarts ever know the feeling of finally securing their first byline after months – years even – of signing for someone else’s parcels? Mundane tasks undertaken for the distant promise of professional reward were rites of passage and the glimmers of mentorship that began in those busy newsrooms scaffolded future careers. Now there’s little time for editors to sit alongside you and coax your clunky writing into something worthy of printing; in this constricting world of content, volume equals success and speed trumps accuracy. Where does that leave a writer? Asking, constantly: how can we continue, or raise the next generation of journos, when there are no pages left to write on?
Bridget de Maine is a Sydney-based freelance writer.
