In this interview with People‘s British editor in chief, a couple interesting points come out. The first is that print is still very much alive, if you have a product that people want. But perhaps more relevant to this blog is the discussion of “diversity” on magazine covers.
Magazines are under a lot of pressure to have “diverse” covers. “Diverse” here being judged only by the categories that please the woke: sex/gender, skin color, and maybe sexual orientation and that sort of thing. Diversity never means anything that I would care about, like political differences, or different opinions, for example. I find the color of someone’s skin, or who they get naked with, far less interesting than their ideas. (If they have any.)
To me, the woke version of “diversity” is superficial diversity for superficial thinkers, and leads in exactly the wrong direction. It makes it seem that judging people by superficial characteristics is some moral virtue, rather than what it really is.
In the context of magazine covers, it reminds me of the saying, “get woke, go broke,” because the purpose of a magazine cover is to sell the magazine. When you stray from something that simple and essential to your purpose, you’re likely to lose money.
Of course it’s possible that more diverse cover photos (more diverse in woke terms, that is) are more effective at selling magazines, but that isn’t very likely. If you’re picking an image to serve a purpose — e.g., “buy this magazine,” or “click on this buy button” — and then you add another factor to your analysis (but it has to be “diverse!”), you’re almost certainly going to detract from the original purpose. That’s just the way things work. Consider, for example, “I want the sharpest knife, but it has to pink” against “I want the sharpest knife.”
Having said that, a business can (and I would say should) have a social conscience and try to do what’s right, even if that detracts a little from the bottom line. If you consider the woke version of diversity some sort of social good (I do not), then … what’s the best way to navigate this?
A sensible magazine editor would get the numbers. Run the “best cover” against the “best woke cover” and see how much it’s costing you (it’s almost certainly costing you), then decide if it’s worth the alleged social benefit.
The worst thing to do is simply to allow the woke crowd to force you into an ideological approach to a business issue without any idea of how much it’s hurting your business.
> Having said that, a business can (and I would say should) have a social conscience and try to do what’s right, even if that detracts a little from the bottom line.
Stephen Bainbridge (most recently in the news for his “You want a diversity statement, UCLA? Okay, here’s one” response) makes strong arguments that at least at the corporation level, shareholder wealth maximization is still the appropriate norm, and attempts to add in some kind of social responsibility aspect to the decisionmaking are ill-advised.
I don’t know what I think of all this.
A man walks to the corner drugstore to pick up something to read. He sees two magazines on the rack. One has a picture of Caitlyn Jenner on the cover. The other features Allyson Felix. Which one does he buy?
Depends on the man making the purchase.
QUOTE:Stephen Bainbridge (most recently in the news for his “You want a diversity statement, UCLA? Okay, here’s one” response) makes strong arguments that at least at the corporation level, shareholder wealth maximization is still the appropriate norm, and attempts to add in some kind of social responsibility aspect to the decisionmaking are ill-advised.
Why would these need to be mutually exclusive? Can’t both co-exist, even if shareholder value is the primary norm?
William: in the end I think because a dollar spent on something is a dollar not spent on something else.
If you spend $50k on cleaning up a nearby park, an obvious public good and worthy cause, that’s money that can’t go into the pool for dividends.
There might be cases where you can argue the investment brings back a hard-to-quantify improvement in public sentiment toward your company, which will ultimately help shareholder value, but those arguments often feel like the sort of thing you reach for when you know what the conclusion has to be beforehand.
Your argument assumes that the dollar spent on “something else” has no or little value. That’s not consistently true. The “something else” could appeal to another part of a market, which there is tangible, quantifiable value….based on the overall objectives of the organization.
It is certainly a good thing that no one is excluded on the basis of race, gender, etc., as some people obviously were excluded in the past. It seems to me that you can still make lots and lots of money while conveying that message. You want to maximize share holder wealth for sure, but not by publishing a magazine called “White Nation” or something like that.
Every company I’ve worked for has tried to “do right” in some small way. I don’t think I would work for a company where “shareholder wealth maximization” was the *only* goal.
Scott — I had to look up Allyson Felix. But I don’t want to be associated with Jenner in any way, so I would not buy a magazine with him on the cover.
Did Caitlyn Jenner commit a murder or something? I don’t keep up with with news about celebrities.
Lol! 😂
Murder? Quite possibly: when Bruce disappeared, Caitlyn was identified as a person of interest.
The butterfly does not murder the caterpillar.
But sometimes the caterpillar murders the butterfly.
Indeed. I know of some very sad cases in which the caterpillar murdered the butterfly – in cold blood no less. We need to do something about these killer caterpillars.