filed under Local Media
Get Magazine Magically Includes Advertisers In New Issue
4:13PM ON
03/02/2008
BY
Matthew Lawrence
There used to be Options. It was small, it was sorta tedious, and it was mostly press releases about the Community. And by Community I mean the Gays.
But Providence has a really big Community, and it needed more than Options. Over the years, a few gay rags have come and gone, and now there’s get. It’s free, the cover photography is always mystifying, and the editors seem to have trouble filling up all of its pages for each issue.
They don’t number issues for some reason, but I think get’s been around for about two years now. It’s relatively glossy and it comes out on time every month, which means it stands out more than, say, the weekly gay newspaper Divine Providence. And it’s read by 15,000 people, according to the cover of the new issue.
Too bad it exists mainly to cater to the whims of its advertisers.
This month, a cover model dressed in some kind of mossy halter thing and a skirt held together with–what is that, plastic mistletoe?–holds some sort of broccoli bouquet thing. There’s also a mossy barrette thing involved. It’s apparently part of the “bodyscapes” show Tom Stio’s having at the Gallery at 17 Peck, judging from the verb-free headlines. OK, fine, whatever. I’ll even accept the quotes as part of the title thing now that The Long Blondes are doing it.
But flip the magazine over, and you’ll see a full-page ad for the Gallery at 17 Peck. And that’s where the trouble begins.
Then look through the magazine. In the letter from the editor, there’s a mention of the “bodySCAPES” show (this time with a capital SCAPES), and we learn the magazine is hosting a party there on the 14th. Fun!
Page 3 has a half-page ad for the show. Page 4, the contributors page, has a bio of Stio. Page 5 has a banner ad for the show, as a featured thing to do this month. Stio photographed bearded Matt Tracy and bearded Matt Jennings for the (interesting) article on slow food on page 8. He also took the photos on page 17 and 18. And then there’s amother full-page ad for the show on page 26, and a full-page preview on 27. Then there’s a half-page ad for Stio’s studio on page 32.
That’s ten pages plus both covers of a 32-page magazine devoted to one photographer’s show at one gallery. That’s not magically inclusive at all. That’s ridiculous.
I wouldn’t mind so much if this happened in something like Divine Providence, the weekly paper for gays, which comes off as quaint despite the fact that it boasts a circulation of 14000. Divine Providence has a fashion column written by a vintage store owner, a travel column written by a travel agency, and generally supports the idea that “gay” means “really into Mirabar,” with about a third of its total space (including ads) devoted to the downtown clubs. But–and maybe this is just me–I don’t mind that. Maybe because Divine Providence doesn’t claim to be inclusive at all–it’s a little unpretentious downtown paper that didn’t even put out an issue this week because its editor has some personal matters to deal with. But get, with its much bigger staff and pizazz and everything, seems more authoratative and, unfortunately, totally false.
March 2nd, 2008 at 6:15PM
ethan Says:
Too bad that, according to both magazines, “gay” means “emphatically not me”, no matter how much I’d beg to differ.
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