Teens & magazines
What do they want to see in publications geared
exclusively to them?
By Lauren Bishop
Enquirer staff writer
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041120/LIFE/411200326
(note: Images added by media educator Frank Baker)
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Tired of the trendy teen magazines? Here are a few
alternatives.
Blackgirl. In 2002, Atlanta teenager Kenya Jordana James, who
spoke at a Cincinnati youth forum in March, founded Blackgirl magazine
to bring African-American history, entertainment and lifestyle news to
12- to 15-year-olds. The current issue features interviews with rapper
Talib Kweli and band B2K (www.blackgirlmagazine .com).
Girls' Life. Founded in 1994, Girls' Life now is the No. 1
magazine for 10- to 15-year-old girls, with a readership of 3 million.
It's also a four-time recipient of the Parents' Choice Award from the
Parents' Choice Foundation. The current issue features articles about
turning your crush into your boyfriend, fixing a friendship, how to get
happy and making holiday gifts (www.girlslife.com)
.
New Moon. Advertising-free, New Moon is aimed at girls ages 8 to
14 and edited by them, too. It features fiction, poetry, artwork,
cartoons and articles about girls around the world. The current issue
includes an interview with actress and comedian Janeane Garofalo and
articles about the allure of villains, fighting back against mean girls
and the dangers of dieting (www.newmoon.com)
.
Teen Voices. Like New Moon, Teen Voices has teen editors and
contributors. The quarterly, nonprofit magazine was created 14 years ago
to reach teens and young women of color who live below the poverty line
in urban areas. The current issue includes articles about same-sex
marriage, Angelina Jolie and the presidential election, and it has more
articles online (www.teenvoices.com)
.
Lauren Bishop
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Take a look at the teen magazine section of
any bookstore or newsstand, and you'll find the choices - not to mention the
neon colors and dazzlingly white smiles of today's teen idols - dizzying.
Not that long ago, young women in the market
for a teen magazine had few choices: Seventeen, Teen and YM. But things are
changing. The market is now dominated by so-called "little sister"
publications, namely Teen People (the first to debut, in 1998), CosmoGirl!,
ElleGirl and Teen Vogue.
And soon, 60-year-old Seventeen will be the
last of the old-guard teen magazines on the newsstands. Because of declining
circulation, YM will cease publication after its December/January issue, two
years after Teen's demise .
The remaining magazines that target this
market - including newcomers such as Justine and a batch of celebrity-obsessed
publications such as Twist and J-14 - all are vying for the dollars of the
roughly 33 million 12- to 19-year-olds who spent more than $175 billion last
year, according to Illinois-based market research firm Teenage Research
Unlimited. And contrary to prevailing wisdom, teens are not turning exclusively
to the Internet as their information source.
"If Teen Vogue says something is in
style, then they believe it. Seventeen is seen as the big sister and best friend
all rolled up into one," says Michael Wood, vice president of Teenage
Research Unlimited. "These magazines have worked very hard to position
themselves with authority, and I just don't see girls going elsewhere for that
kind of information."
So what do teens think of the publications
that are supposed to speak to them? To find out, we gathered five local 15- and
16-year-olds, friends and sophomores at Summit Country Day School, and let them
speak their minds.
What they like
The friends' favorites are Teen People and YM,
which some were disappointed to hear was folding.
"It relates to us better than other magazines I've read," 15-year-old
Emily Earles of Hyde Park says of YM. "It's less about the celebrities and
more about helping you improve things in your life."
Charlotte Seidner, 15, of North Avondale adds that she likes how YM shows you
how to make an outfit for less than what you'd spend to buy it.
Teen People won praise for interviewing celebrities (rather than making stuff up
about them, says 15-year-old Christina Ng of Hyde Park), its music coverage
("I really like a bunch of different kinds of music and knowing what CDs
are out," Earles says), its layout (they deemed Seventeen's
"boring") and its models.
"It's really nice to see clothes on normal-looking girls than really tiny
girls," says 16-year-old Caroline David of Hyde Park.
Teen Vogue does the best job of showing which clothes are in style, the friends
say, but they say the clothes Teen Vogue features cost much more than they'd
normally spend.
What they hate The friends say they're tired of too many ads and sick of
seeing the same celebrities on the magazines' slick covers (namely Mary-Kate and
Ashley Olsen and Hilary Duff).
"It gets old after a while," David says. "You don't need to read
50 articles about Mary-Kate (Olsen)'s anorexia. That's even on CNN."
Ng says she'd rather read about a regular teen's story than Mary-Kate's.
"You read that she's got therapists on both coasts and she's got a $4
million loft in Greenwich Village," she says. "You can't relate to
that."
They also hate too-intricate hair and makeup
ideas.
"A lot of it is really time-consuming
processes that we don't have time for at 7:30 in the morning when we're late for
school," Ng says.
It's all enough to make them pick up a
magazine aimed at a wider audience, which many of them do - especially People.
"I think it has a lot more
substance," Ng says. "It's not as much makeup or quizzes that are
called, 'Are you addicted to guys?' It's more like real-people articles."
Justine magazine
Justine was launched in April and its fourth
issue is now on newsstands. It's marketed as a wholesome alternative to the
other teen magazines. But the teens we talked to called it "little kid-ish,"
"juvenile" and "cute" but "like American Girl
magazine" (and they didn't mean that in a good way).
"It reminds me of when I used to read Girls' Life when I was 10 years
old," says 16-year-old Emily Skiba of Anderson Township.
The teens' verdict: Justine is better suited to tweens.
What they'd like to see Skiba says she'd like to read more
"real" and serious articles in teen magazines, not just articles about
other teens' traumatic experiences, or shopping.
Ng and David say they'd like to see more news
about important current events, including national politics. "So many
teenagers don't even watch the news or pick up a newspaper," Ng says.
None of the magazines really has an edge over
the others, Skiba says.
"They all have celebrities on the
cover," she says. "They all have horoscopes. It seems like to really
be successful, some of them will have to do something to define
themselves."
And teen magazines may not be as vital as
their publishers wish they were. Earles says she can get most of the information
she finds in teen magazines from somewhere else - namely her friends or older
sisters.
"I can always to go them," she
says.
E-mail lbishop@enquirer.com