Is the Death of the Fashion Magazine Nigh?

We all know that the print magazine is declining. Women’s fashion magazines have either decreased or halted their print production, opting for a much heavier focus on digital journalism. There are no longer any monthly women’s fashion magazines, with even the greatest staples like Vogue moving from 12 to 11 yearly publications. 

Photo: Getty Images via Vogue

Of course, this decline has been happening for years, so this is not exactly new information. All of the articles on the topic say basically the same thing; readership is down, print sales are declining, but the print magazine is by no means dead (in fact, Vogue’s print magazine still far outsells its digital counterpart).

There are, however, many other changes happening in the fashion journalism industry that directly relate to this changing media landscape that are not talked about nearly as much. Specifically, that is the way that writers are impacted by the shifting focus and structure of fashion magazines. When print magazines were a monthly staple, the structure was far more standardized. Magazines had a staff of writers whose full time job it was to write for the magazine, working with photographers, designers, advertisers, graphic designers, and et cetera in order to create the media that women and girls flocked to. 

Image via Pixels

Now, full time staff writer positions are few and far between. Instead, magazines are far more likely to turn to freelance writers, a more cost effective tactic. Freelance writing provides writers with more freedom, but it can be a real challenge to make a consistent living in a gig economy. 

Additionally, digital magazine articles means a different approach to advertising. Instead of being driven by advertising and consumer sales, much of magazine revenue now relies almost entirely on online advertisers. This means that clicks are the main goal of most articles. This leads to a priority on flashy headlines over actual content that people care about, shorter articles that generate more clicks and therefore more ad revenue. Because, really, how many articles about what Kylie Jenner wore in Paris do we really need? The answer is none, but that is what people click on. 

Image via The Guardian

This is a problem because it results in stale writing and a lack of disagreement or criticism throughout the industry. When articles are fueled by advertisers, writers are dissuaded or even forbidden from criticizing the industry. When there is so much censorship happening because magazines fear losing money, the quality of content is simply bound to decline, to no fault of the writers, who simply want to keep their jobs. 

Now, most critical and unique content is coming from independent content creators on apps like TikTok. The future of fashion journalism is definitely unclear, and as readers, the only power that we really have is to be wary that everything we do- even a click online- has some sort of impact