Journalists at Grazia are experimenting with a host of real-time reporting tools and techniques, the magazine’s editor-in-chief explained at today’s FIPP World Magazine Congress.
Jane Bruton told delegates of her excitement that reporters were twittering live updates from fashion shows and filing web copy from events.
“We can talk to our readers on a minute-by-minute basis. We get instant feedback if we want to test out a story for our magazine – we can go online, we can go on Twitter,” said Bruton.
“Our fashion teams now – rather than sitting and taking notes – they’re Twittering from the front row, they’re running to the car, typing up instant web reports.
“The readers love it because they’re seeing everything through our eyes.”
Certain elements of the magazine are now web-first, for example, the pictures from the Style Hunter section, which attract hundreds of comments a week from readers.
“They [readers] feel involved, feel closer to the brand and feel closer to us as personalities. We’ve never been afraid of exposing the inner workings of the magazine,” said Bruton, who said the same exposure had been created offline when the magazine spent a week operating in a shopping centre.
“In the current climate the fact that people relate to our personalities and trust our brand is really crucial.”
For fellow panelist and GQ editor Dylan Jones, the key to online success is capturing the same luxury of the print magazine online, he said.
Being online has not changed the editorial stance of the magazine, which has remained central to the design of the website: “I think we’ve cracked it,” he added.
Read: BBC Good Food editorial director Gillian Carter on why the web hasn’t affected print sales.