When the world of print magazines was healthier than it is today, you could have broadly divided them into two categories -
- mass-market magazines with large circulations, which possessed general appeal but also suffered from catering to their lowest common denominator;
- more niche publications with smaller circulations but a more dedicated audience, with a much higher conversion rate of them buying the actual products and services advertised on the pages.
US Vogue was on the mass-market side, whereas Vogue Italia was more of a niche title for the fashion industry. Cosmopolitan was mass-market whereas Tatler and Vanity Fair were niche. And so on.
In the ecosystem of magazines, there were reasons why a title came to occupy the space that it did, and whatever the level, their readership was still cultivated with care.
But Conde Nast has decided, in most cases, that the internet is
everything and print is an afterthought. So even if your country's Vogue leaned towards having a niche audience, it's mass-market now - with the lowest common denominator now being even lower than before. Because mass-market content designed for the internet is created with the awareness that digital attention spans are short, there's no point investing the same time, energy and money to create content with any depth. Just cut-and-paste across all titles.
In all of this, notice there are some Conde Nast titles that haven't changed so much - for example, Tatler and World of Interiors. Print titles for rich people, essentially. Conde Nast knows that, in some cases, the old niche model of speaking directly to a much smaller audience still yields a result. In some cases, you can't so easily present different content and still expect it to be eaten up.
But as time goes on, and you employ younger people who have no memory of interacting with print magazines as an adult consumer, even the niche model will fall by the wayside, because it will cease to 'mean' anything. People will look at the numbers, and think by prioritising the internet side of the title, they can better those numbers. They can simultaneously cut their costs and reach a wider audience!
Because the idea of quality has gone. It's gone from the products advertised on sale, it's gone from the imagery used to promote them, it's gone from the appreciation of who your audience is. It's gone from every level. It's
all mass-market now - at varying price points, which no longer bear any relation to what you're getting in return.
Conde Nast is going to wring every last drop of positive association from the "Vogue" logo until it has carpeted itself over in so many layers of mediocrity that in order to keep the cut-price circus going, it might even have to rename / relaunch some of its brands, in order to bring something new and exciting to the market.
.. and of course it's totally possible that if you're, say, a woman, you get the job for $80k only to realise the rest of your male coworkers in the same position are in the hundreds lol. A bit like the hierarchy thing you mention but at least you get an idea from the range..?
) and the US in general should call the shots in the entire industry. I guess she found a match in this country when it comes to her imperialist, power-starved mindset.
