PacMags unveils new quarterly print edition of Girlfriend and reveals sister digital title
Pacific Magazines has launched its teen girl magazine Girlfriend with a quarterly print edition complemented by four additional digital editions of the title each year.
The new quarterly edition of Girlfriend
The relaunch of the magazine was announced in November last year when Pacific Magazine sold off fellow youth titles K-Zone and Total Girl to special interest publisher Nextmedia. The announcement of the changes to Girlfriend followed on from Bauer Media relaunching rival magazine, Dolly, as mobile-first and bi-monthly however came before Bauer Media closed the print edition of Dolly.
Speaking to Mumbrella, Tamara Davis, Girlfriend content director, said the closure of Dolly, while sad for the industry, gives Girlfriend an opportunity as the last teen girl magazine on the print market.
Doesn’t look like the editorial team at Girlfriend have learnt anything from Dolly’s demise. Still talking down to an increasingly smart and cynical demographic. And all that pink! And it’s not even pastel. 😛 I give it 12 months before it goes the same way. Australian publisher need to diversify their staff and stop hiring internally all the time if they want any of these mainstream titles to survive.
How talking down, Michael? And many of the team members have experience outside of mag land.
If you look at titles for, let’s just say, ‘young women’ in the states at the moment there is a massive shift towards thoughtful intelligent reporting lead by the likes of Teen Vogue and Nylon that taps into a generation mags produced by Australian mainstream publishers seem unwilling to properly engage with, hence the flogging of irrelevant typographies such as ‘Gen Z’ and references to ‘Snapchat’. It’s so clueless it makes me want to die. Just be brave and speak to your audience in their own language because no one is fooled by that mouldy old marketing jargon anymore.
@ Michael – would love to know how many recent issues of Girlfriend you’ve read, and whether you enjoyed Australian novelist and journalist Emily Maguire’s feature on cultural appropriation and, in another issue, her exploration of menstrual shame. Both of those pieces were in Girlfriend, and both of them, I would imagine, would fall under the category of ‘thoughtful, intelligent reporting’ that you’re looking for in your teen magazines. And those are just two off the top of my head – I seem to recall pieces on casual racism, on how to help a friend who’s coming out, on gender fluidity, on sexual assault… I could go on.
Thanks for clarifying Michael. I think there is a difference in the language used when speaking to trade press (and potential advertisers) as above and speaking to the reader. Teen Vogue and Nylon are fantastic titles and both make use of social channels like Snapchat and Instagram, as well as creating longer-form magazine content, as does Girlfriend. As Tamara has suggested above I believe this audience values a balance between longer, in-depth pieces which tend to suit print and short digestible mobile pieces, and both serve the audience in different ways.
What did you think of the new issue when you picked it up Michael? I’m interested to hear your breakdown of the articles and coverage inside. I would also love a summary of your opinions on the other Girlfriend magazines in your personal collection, and why you believe there is no intelligent reporting available within those pages.
I’m sure you wouldn’t have made any of the above observations without having read the magazine in question.
As this is a site about advertising, you will also have realised that this article is about one element of the Girlfriend magazine and website, and not a reflection of the editorial focus?
Girlfriend is good but they don’t want to go down the same path has Dolly their staff should do more then the same stuff over and over to make it more interesting they don’t have the right textures to make it more interesting and desirable