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.