NZST 511/ Contemporary New Zealand

A content review of New Zealand Listenercovers 2000-2005: A case of “we are what we see”?

Opting to study a general interest weekly magazine such as the New Zealand Listener (“the Listener”) - now into its 66th year of publication - presents a platform for any number of potential research angles relevant to New Zealand Studies.

To begin with, the Listener, born as an arm of the New Zealand Government’s public broadcasting service and today published by APN Specialist Publications NZ Ltd, occupies a special niche, maintained through the unusual smorgasbord-like range of its content and its continued success.

In its own publicity[1] the magazine states it is “the country’s only national, weekly current affairs and entertainment magazine”, covering “the political cultural and literary life of the country, as well as carrying television and radio programme listings”. It could, justifiably I think, go one step further and use the description ‘national icon’ - as Australia’s longest running magazine, The Bulletin, does[2]. The fact that it doesn’t, seems somehow in keeping with a modest, understated presence in the market – a home grown characteristic.

In deciding to limit my research to a content review of Listener covers, I have taken the ethos of the broad cross-disciplinary approach that infuses the Master of New Zealand Studies programme[3] and sought, in particular, to draw from Journalism and History rather than, say, Media Studies. For the most part that inclination is a “reflexive” choice, based on my experience in the profession of Journalism and a strong belief in the importance of exploring connections between Journalism and History.

THE FUNCTION OF MAGAZINE COVERS

As Managing Editor of the Atlantic Monthly, Cullen Murphy has provided some cogent points about magazine covers for the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA), the US industry association for consumer magazines[4]:

  • the cover story is the engine. It is one of the most important parts of the magazine.
  • there is no substitute for clarification. Information must be concise, accurate and educational.
  • “To some readers, sometimes, Donald Rumsfeld can be as interesting as Britney Spears.”

Magazine publishers, editors, and circulation directors know the importance of the cover image as both a newsstand impulse buy and as a brand[5]. The cover image and design reinforce the brand, an important identification factor because the average reader is likely to spend only three to five seconds scanning a magazine cover before deciding whether to buy that issue[6].

In a discussion of the history of Atlantic Monthly covers, Murphy presented how they had changed since the magazine’s inception in 1857. In the beginning the covers on Atlantic Monthly were dominant easy messages with simple bold graphics, then after a few decades covers were used to “show the readers what’s inside of the magazine”. Murphy described his readers as educated and involved, stating: “The cover doesn’t really need to grab the attention of readers, like Cosmopolitan or Newsweek, as much as it needs to contain a decent amount of information that will draw people to read”[7].

As observed by Dr Gerald Grow[8], magazine covers have, over time, changed radically, and that change can be observed by “following how magazines used cover lines from early, bookish designs, through the emergence of the poster cover and its dominance, through the integration of type with art, to the proliferation of cover lines at the beginning of the 21st century”.

In terms of the mechanics of the vast majority of magazine covers today, it should be sufficient to say that different magazines have their own kind of cover which “following the axes of the ephemeral and the enduring is both always different and changing (featuring new topics and new models etc) and yet always the same and regular (same layout, same overall look)… The cover works as a system of interacting visual and verbal codes, a model of interpretation, if you will, for the reader and how s/he is going to position her/himself in relation to the magazine as a whole. Of course, this is in a persuasive (rather than compulsory) sense. For, as much as the cover’s function is to sell the magazine (primary advertisement) and position the reader positively towards its contents, it cannot dictate how the magazine is used”[9].

MAGAZINE RESEARCH IS NOT DEAD

From a range of prior scans and reviews, particularly in the literature of Journalism as an academic discipline, it is apparent that while magazine research is not dead, research of magazine covers is relatively limited. Amongst this research the most relevant article I could locate was titled “The art and science of magazine cover research”[10].

Some well-stated, provocative observations made in the article include:

  • Because covers are primarily art and not text, they can’t be studied by content analysis as easily as text for ‘positive,’ ‘negative,’ or ‘neutral’ directional content.
  • Editors and journalists assume that the cover is simply a way to sell the magazine[11]. It never occurs to editors whether their covers are an accurate reflection of the demographics of society, of social trends, or whether they reflect any of their own political or ideological orientations.
  • Magazine covers not only offer information about what’s inside a particular issue, they also provide significant cultural cues about social, political, economic, and medical trends.
  • As both historical artifacts and marketing tools, magazine covers deserve closer study. Unfortunately, the topic has not attracted many scholars.

Magazine cover research has tended to shed most light on questions of representation, covering issues such as gendered messages on magazine covers[12], teen culture, racial diversity[13], and with a preponderance of attention given to covers of men’s and women’s magazines. Studying magazine covers has also been a staple of many media literacy classes and class exercises.

CONTENT ANALYSIS FOR JOURNALISM’S SAKE

Without having discovered a clear model among the great variety of largely atheoretical ‘content analysis’ techniques that might be open to classifying the content of magazine covers, it is interesting to note and briefly discuss the concept that content analysis is the mark of an “able editor or journalist”[14].

This “action research” concept refers to a guiding principle that knowing and researching the content of a publication is a sound imperative to inform journalistic practice and decisions about such things as story ideas and angles and allows (this time more from an editorial management point of view) for the use of content analysis as both a measurement and a planning tool to ensure that a publication is focused on the topics that meet the goals of the publication and its publisher.

In the attempt that follows to review/survey Listener covers I have been conscious of the journalistic eye particular to print journalists; the traditional instinct to wonder what issues were pre-occupying people at a given time (their common denominators and their pay packets), the sub-editor’s bent for puns and teasers and tabloid touches (from Exclusive to Gotcha!), the signs of a good story as well as a good headline, the exigencies of meeting weekly deadlines and the predictability and ‘cyclical’ nature of issues. While not having worked on a commercial magazine I also expected to encounter a set of magazine conventions in play, such as the added texture in the layering of cover lines to seed curiosity in a possible reader, the use of a direct voice to identify with readers and the promotion of columnists adjudged useful to the magazine’s reputation.

I have made no assumptions or observations about editorial practice or market/ readership decisions (such as those based on demographics or psychographics) or aspects of design or complex ‘decoding’.

In commencing this study my one definite starting point was an early decision to make the ‘sample’ large enough to generate a longitudinal aspect to any patterns that might emerge. To achieve this I have reviewed 300 covers, texts and images from the period January 2000 to September 2005.

My approach has been to seek out some neutral-factual ‘findings’ that can indicate whether there is a distinct ‘narrative’ that emerges by looking at the groupings of topics covered by the Listener, the occurrence of unmistakably ‘New Zealand’ names and topics and an analysis of other features or factors that could enrich further study or simply prove a worthy secondary source of information.

The preliminary findings arrived at here are based on a set of essentially descriptive lists I have created after a detailed ‘reading’ of each of the 300 covers (more than 200 sourced from a household collection). This collective ‘spreadsheet database’ of lists addressed:

  • Who was pictured on covers;
  • Descriptions of the key visual elements of each cover treatment or illustration;
  • ‘Topic groups’ that the lead item or cover story on each cover could be assigned to;
  • Lists of the key catchwords used in the title on the magazine below the masthead (using a basic rule of retail that the catchwords would be eye-catching and visible from some distance); and
  • A partial analysis of key words found in cover lines apart from the major headline.
MIXING SIMPLER OBSERVATIONS WITH MORE AMBITIOUS QUESTIONS

What will follow then, is a topline summary of features of the Listener, based on the evidence of its covers, that will be a partial documentation of the ‘slices of history’ it has captured and presented for its New Zealand readership.

The first, simple question is what was (literally) covered, when and how and this can lead on quite quickly to observations about representation. The larger, harder question is what happens after the cover is ‘put to bed’?[15] - at what point, if any, do Journalism and History become ‘bedmates’?

Professor David Abrahamson[16] is a leading commentator on the antagonisms between the two disciplines of Journalism and History. Writing in the newsletter of the History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC)[17] he has stated[18]:

History is trying to relate the past to the present and journalism is trying to relate the present to the future. If this is true, it might also be true that similar contrasts can be

found in the norms by which these two cultural products are valued. History,

for example, has professional standards established and policed by peers of

associations such as AEJMC and the scholarly press. Journalism largely relies

on marked acceptance by the reading and viewing public… [yet] despite the contradictions, it is clear that not only do historians need journalism, but that journalism, if it is to fulfill its social mission at all, clearly has a desperate need for a sense of history.

Dr Carolyn Kitch, an Associate Professor in the Department of Journalism/ Communication and Theater at Philadelphia’s Temple University, has presented another view of this relationship. In her recent book Pages from the Past: History and Memory in American Magazines[19] Kitch examines a process in American journalism she identifies whereby cultural narratives are constructed and reconstructed over time in ways that draw on the past to make sense of the present and future.

Kitch makes the reasonable proposition that magazines have become important social commentators of a nation’s life, and that among all journalistic media, magazines have a special relationship with memory and perform “archival and touchstone functions” especially well.

Abrahamson has also argued that magazines have vital differences from other media forms by conceptualizing the distinctive place of magazines as ‘magazine exceptionalism’:

If one thinks even briefly about newspapers, one comes to the conclusion that they are almost all geographically bounded in some way. If one thinks about broadcast, it is generally agreed that the medium is largely derivative… My thesis is that what is unique to magazines… is that they not only reflect or are a product of the social reality of the times, but they also serve a larger and more pro-active function -- that they can also be a catalyst, shaping the very social reality of their moment[20].

Does the New Zealand Listener have a role in capturing or advancing the social reality of the times? Does it explain the meaning of New Zealand, to New Zealanders and others? Does it provide a time and place – a documentary tradition – where history and memory mingle in the story of ‘our’ own lives?

These are good ‘launchpad’ questions to keep in mind, but trailing any deeper afield, into a discussion of national identity and the role of popular culture for instance, would be well beyond the length and scope of this essay.

For the purposes of this essay my frame of reference is closer to the work done by Carolyn Kitch, cited earlier[21]. Kitch describes her book as an exploration of the role of journalism in creating and challenging public notions about race, gender and generation – and eventually the weaving of those particular concepts into a broader national ideal. Setting images in place and pushing boundaries.

Kitch openly adopts the view of historian Michael Kammen – made in regard to media in general – that magazines have taken on a large responsibility for explaining the nation that they help to imagine. Furthermore Kitch states that magazines have gained, by virtue of their strong identification with their readers, a special position of authority from which they participate in and build the life of both their real and imagined communities.

The first chapter of her book and its assessment of “newsmagazines’ self-appointed status as national leaders” support this view[22]. Then in subsequent chapters she surveys aspects of magazines in relation to the way:

  • that they underpin the role of celebrity in culture in their tributes to and memorialisation of public figures.
  • that they define populations and their own audiences in terms of generational identity, for example the Boomers and Generation X.
  • that 30 national consumer magazines have, often through common editorial approaches, celebrated their own anniversaries in ways that have allowed them to speak not just for their own institutional histories but also on behalf of ‘society’.
RESULTS OF THE CONTENT REVIEW OF 300LISTENER COVERS

1. Facing The Nation – “Gonna see my picture on the cover”

Being the featured person on the cover of any high-circulation national magazine – be it Rolling Stone or Time or the Listener – is an automatic entrée to a Warholian moment of fame. For as Malcolm Muggeridge once said the cover spot on a magazine like Time is “post-Christendom’s most notable stained-glass window.”[23]

Taking Muggeridge literally, the regularity of appearances that Helen Clark, Prime Minister of New Zealand, has achieved on the Listener cover spot over the last 5-6 years would earn her a church.

Helen Clark appeared in the leading cover image on 13 covers of the 300 reviewed, including two abstract graphic treatments – one where she was photo-shopped as the Statue of Liberty and the other in which she was depicted as a soldier in the style of a war comic. Clark was the sole public figure featured on the cover for 9 of these 13 cover appearances. One of her ‘shared’ appearances was in tandem with US President George W. Bush alone, one with Bush and Opposition leader Don Brash, and one each paired with politician Winston Peters (in a prescient mock wedding) and Don Brash.

Clark’s nearest rivals for greatest number of total appearances on the cover were a considerable way back: Opposition leader Don Brash (4), broadcaster Kim Hill (4), politician Winston Peters (3), TV3 personality John Campbell (3); and two appearances each for: Campbell’s TV3 partner Carol Hirschfeld, TV personality Jeremy Wells, Radio New Zealand host Linda Clark, broadcaster Paul Holmes, All Black rugby legend Colin Meads, and the most youthful face, actor Keisha Castle-Hughes, star of Whale Rider, the international movie hit and celebration of Maori culture.

Public figures[24] repeated on the cover of the Listener, January 2000-September 2005

---- for full source details see Appendix 1

Number of times public figures made an appearance as (or as part of) the primary (large) cover image / c.102
And from this 102:
Public figures ‘world-famous in New Zealand’ / 87
Public figures from outside New Zealand / 15
Overall number of males / 66
Overall number of females / 36
Maori and Polynesian appearances (including repeats) / 14
Number of times public figures featured in secondary (smaller) images, montages, insets or cameo shots / c.100
And from this 100:
Public figures ‘world-famous in New Zealand’ / 88
Public figures from outside New Zealand / 12
Overall number of males / 60
Overall number of females / 40
Maori and Polynesian appearances (including repeats) / 18

Politicians, including the Prime Minister’s haul, accounted for 26 cover appearances, closely followed by being a ‘celebrity’ on the New Zealand media scene, which drew 22 appearances. A full breakdown of cover appearances and dedicated cover images, for New Zealanders identifiable with a particular source of fame, was: