Lorraine Candy, the former Editor-in-Chief of The Sunday Times Style, Cosmopolitan and ELLE, received the BSME Mark Boxer Award, which recognises outstanding contributions to the magazine industry at this year’s BSME Awards. In this BSME Live! webinar, she chats with Grazia UK Editor and BSME Chair 2021 Hattie Brett about her three decades in print and digital media.
Summarised by Angela Locatelli, Editorial Admin Assistant, APL Media
1. ”The best job in the world”
“If you’re a really nosey person and you want to find out more, being able to ring up and open a door and walk into all these worlds because you’re a journalist is just brilliant,” said Lorraine, looking back on the time she spent in the media industry. “It’s given me a knowledge of other people that you don’t get in many careers. That’s what it’s given me back — an ability to have fun.”
2. Newspapers and lessons in rigour
Working on local and daily newspapers taught Lorraine the importance of accuracy. “I learnt to get my facts right — you live and die by how you spell someone’s name,” she said. “I learnt to never enter an argument without knowing all of the facts, never ask a question without knowing all of the facts, and never go to interview anyone without knowing all of the facts.”
3. Knowing your audience is essential to running a business
“If you edit a glossy magazine, you’re running a business,” said Lorraine, providing ELLE, where she worked for 12 years, as an example. “We had a set of business objectives as well as a set of editorial objectives. All media is a business — we mustn’t lose sight of that — delivering what an audience wants. If you don’t know what the audience wants, you’re slightly cheating them out of the money they’re spending.”
4. With podcasts, find a niche and serve it
Before launching a podcast, think about what your audience needs and what is already being delivered to them, said Lorraine, who co-hosts Postcards from Midlife with Marie Claire Editor-in-Chief Trish Halpin. “There was no podcast talking to women our age,” she added. “Women over 40 are pretty much invisible in most media, and we thought that was a massive strength — there are so many women we could serve with a very specific set of questions.”
5. Podcasting is not a hobby
For a podcast to be successful, you need to think of it as a job. “You need to properly deliver, especially on a weekly basis,” said Lorraine. “We do a ton of research, we write a script, we research all the guests, we interview them before they go on. You need a really good producer who can edit, and you need to have a six-month plan, as with any kind of content business.”
6. Have a personal brand
“It’s a good idea to have a personal brand going alongside the brand you’re working for, and it’s a good idea to stand for something because it gives you a USP,” Lorraine said. But, she continued, only do something if you’re going to do it well. “If you have a side hustle, you need to have an end goal with it. If I keep a parenting column, then I’m going to write a parenting book at some point — I have to think about how all that will fit together.”
7. Rely on digital experts
“There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors around digital,” said Lorraine. “It’s content, and journalists are good at content, but you do need digital experts around you to talk about audience, how the internet works, how you are going to get your content to the people who need to see it.” Her advice: bring those people in and work together. “The days of being ‘them’ and ‘us’ with print and digital are going, hopefully.”
8. Question your career
“We tried to make it fun, but we didn’t always get it right,” said Lorraine about her career as editor of Cosmopolitan and ELLE. “We still had a Cosmo centrefold [pictures of scantily clad or naked men], which I slightly cringe about now, but it was of its time. You can all look back at your career and think, should I have questioned some of the things I’ve done slightly more? Or could I have pushed harder with some of the campaigns I did?”
9. It’s never too late to start
Is it ever too late to get a break in the magazine industry, asked a member of the audience? “When I was at The Sunday Times last year, we had an amazing woman who came as an intern, and she was 42. She’s now got a job there,” said Lorraine. “You just need to focus on what you want to do, be well researched, target where you want to go, and apply yourself to do that. Be careful not to tell yourself negative things before you start your journey.”
10. If you want to do it, do the research
If you’re going to apply for any position, Lorraine suggested, highlight what you can bring to the business. “What’s the benefit to the person you’re applying to? That’s the bit you’ve got to sell,” she said. “Make sure you’ve read the publication you are applying to. It’s very easy to see a transparent lack of interest and very common for me to have interviewed people who hadn’t really read beyond the last issue of my magazine.”
