Yahoo! Shine, WoW should woah…!
‘New media, new women’s media’. So say the launch publishers for Women on the Web (the url www.wowowow.com, as the Guardian writer who brought it to the UK’s attention noted, had to be purchased from a porn provider). The site has some high profile backers and bloggers, and is another sign, according to Viv Groskop writing in The Guardian, that:
women are offering up intelligent online content that stands in stark comparison to the narrow focus of many of the women’s magazines to be found on the news stands.
I’ve been following women’s magazines online for a while (especially the FWord and TheLipster, after I was introduced by some friends who were organising Ladyfest Brighton (ps. yes I’m a bloke)) and the Guardian article piqued my curiosity, so went to have a look. I was excited with the launches of Monocle and (less so) Intelligent Life last year–predominantly for the male market–and thought this might be the year for more on the intellgent women’s title and a freeing up of the magazine space. Of course Nova tried the comeback in 2000, and it fell flat. But we’ve moved on a lot since then.
Of Wowowow, I’ve not been the only one to think what the hell happened? It looks terrible, firstly, but more importantly what you get from the off: horoscopes, fiction about fat women, lying women, timid women…; Question of the day: “what musical comedy from your or your parent’s youth still resonates with you today?” And now Yahoo are getting into the market, which at least looks a hell of a lot better.
Same categories (health, sex etc) because it’s not essentially a new title, but an aggregation of some of the bigger publishing names already existing, e.g. Elle. It is developing its own editorial team, but it’s plugging directly into the mainstream women’s magazine market. I’m going to come back to this, because I fear if I/we don’t, then this new space we’ve found to express our independent interests will itself become owned by and characterised as a mainstream place of publishing.
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