Is the Lack of Diversity Vanity Fair's Fault?

IN 2010, VANITY Fair magazine's Hollywood issue featured a bevy of white actresses on the cover (see below). And the magazine took hell from pundits across the country who complained that the magazine ignored a wealth of minority talent.

This year, the magazine ran a cover image featuring two African American actors among the 15 stars. People are still complaining (They are asking: "Are there no Hispanic or Asian actors or actresses worth featuring?").

Does a nationally distributed magazine have a responsibility to be diverse? Or should they profile whomever they feel is among the best rising talents?

Is it the magazine's fault if Hollywood is not promoting African-American or other minority actors?

Do We Need Magazines Anymore?

DO MAGAZINES STILL have a place in the world?

The number of magazine retailers has decreased by more than 11 percent since 2007, according to Advertising Age.

They also reported: "Single-copy sales have been experiencing a long swoon, falling 5.6% in the first half of 2010 from the first half a year earlier, 9.1% in the second half of 2009, 12.4% in the previous six months and 11.1% and 6.3% in the halves before that, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations."

Does that mean that people don't read print magazines anymore? Do you?

Some of the problems can be attributed to the lackluster economy. Technology can be blamed for some of the declines. And greater diversity of information outlets is probably a huge culprit.

How about this: is there any need for an all-local Philly music mag? Would you read it? Would you pay for it?

Jesse Pearson: "We Strive to be as Inclusive as Possible."

A GOOD MAGAZINE represents the editor, Vice magazine editor Jesse Pearson said in class yesterday.

"The mag needs to be about my curiosity," said the Levittown native who has lead the magazine since 2003.

This year, Vice did a photo spread involving bears (burly gay dudes) dressed as vikings. Pearson assigned a gay pornographer to do a Q&A with Karl Lagerfeld. That same issue features a fashion spread with models in caskets, looking like they're dead.

"It's just something I always wanted to do," Pearson said. "Models lead these really unhealthy lifestyles."

Actually, he said he always wanted to dress up actual dead people and photograph them. He probably could have done that. He has no editorial oversight whatsoever, he said.

Here are a few other things he said that stood out for me:

• The monthly magazine is free, so it is advertiser funded. But the advertisers have no influence on the content of the mag (Dickies did pull their ads after a male unit was displayed in all it's glory in the mag).

• A revealed testicle in a photo in the bear shoot had to be discussed with the publisher. It ran in the mag.
• There is occasional "branded content" but that is not usually handled by the small editorial team. "It makes me uncomfortable," Pearson said.
• He doesn't consider other mags to be competition because Vice is free.
• Since the mag is distributed for free, he really doesn't know who is the audience. "Doing this mag is like shooting into a vacuum," he said.
• His 88-year old grandmother reads Vice on her iPad.

• Every issue of the magazine has a theme, like catastrophe, Iraq, fashion, Appalachia, sellouts, etc.
• There are only four staffers on the US edition. But they have loads of freelance contributors, and there are more than 25 offices/ editions (each with their own staff) around the world.
• The contributors tend to have a connection to Pearson, and most have a similar ideology.
• He respects Jackass. "I think it's brilliant, like Vaudeville," he said.
• If Vice was a television talk show, it would be like Dick Cavett.
• He has no sell lines on the cover of the mag because he doesn't have to worry about newsstand sales. "I don't know who would do sell lines if they didn't have to," he said.

• Vice is not a hipster mag, nor do they claim set the standards for what is deemed "cool." Pearson said, "We strive to be as inclusive as possible."
• He is planning to step down from Vice after the next issue. He wants to work on projects beyond the one-month-at-a-time pace, maybe books and freelance stuff.
• "I love this city more than New York," he said of Philadelphia.

What stood out for you?

Vice Magazine: More Than a Hipster Bible?

ON TUESDAY, VICE magazine editor Jesse Pearson will visit class.

Vice magazine started in Montreal in 1994 as a government-funded project. It's now a for-profit, advertising-driven magazine circulated to more than one million people around the world and they have offices in 30 different countries.

The mag has stories from around the globe, about random subjects like fashion, immigration, music, skateboarding, hatred, Iraq and just about anything else. They publish an annual photography issue, and the work of world class photographers like Terry Richardson and Ryan McGinley are in nearly every issue.

Vice is very comfortable with male and female nudity, curse words, sexuality and stuff that isn't politically correct.

"Lenny Kravitz is the biggest fucking twat I've ever met in my life," Pearson said in 2003. "He is arrogant and dumb and boring. He even had a guy carrying the back of his extra-long cardigan like he was a fucking bridesmaid. Joe Strummer was surprisingly cool. Really personable and funny and didn't want anyone to leave. He had time for anybody that wanted to talk to him. He even wrote our DOs and DON'Ts one month."

The New York Times accused Vice of creating "a trailer-park sensibility, embraced with and without irony, that has taken hold among postcollegiate society."

In that same article, Robert Lanham, author of The Hipster Handbook, said, "Of all the magazines that are out there, I think that's the one that nails hipster culture on the head."

What an awful thing to say!

The editor of the UK edition says that Vice isn't just a hipster mag where young people can learn where to find the latest jeans. They are taking a different approach in appealing to the younger audience by doing "serious" work, like documenting drug abuse, prostitution and wars in the Middle East and Africa, among other subjects.

"There are people out there who want to learn," said Andy Capper, Vice's UK editor, "and who don't want to be talked down to."

Vice now has retail stores, an online broadcast outlet, a music label, a pub/ music venue in London and an ad agency attached to the global brand.

Check out Vice's website. What do you think?