View all newsletters
Sign up for our free email newsletters

Fighting for quality news media in the digital age.

  1. Archive content
February 2, 2007updated 17 May 2007 11:30am

Dazed opens up mag making process with ideas network

By Press Gazette

Online content is fostering a new openness in magazine publishing according to the editor-in-chief of Dazed and Confused. Nicki Bidder, editor-in-chief of the style monthly said that its ‘ideas sharing network”, dazeddigital.com, would act to open up the magazine making process as well as invite young talent onto its projects on a larger scale than ever before.

Dazed Digital’s content ranges from multimedia extras from the magazine’s fashion and feature shoots, a worldwide network of bloggers and contributors, audio and video broadcasts and Rise, a section devoted to up-and-coming talent. The fashion for user-generated content has been high among style magazines, heavily dependent on breaking new talent and trends first. The next issue of Marmalade magazine – a bimonthly underground style magazine – will be completely produced by MySpace users – the social networking site’s first foray into print publishing.

Bidder said: ‘Dazed Digital is different from the authoritive way that magazines produce an edition where you never see the process in a state of flux. Magazines are so used to packaging everything – that’s the really great difference.

‘We’re producing somewhere in-between random, unedited, unqualified content and something very slick and user-friendly.’Bidder said Dazed would act as an ‘authoritive’editor of online content. ‘One of the downsides of the enormous growth of the internet and user-generated content is that people are overexposed and desensitivised in some way – that there’s so much out there but so little great editing and original content edited in a way that you trust,’she said.

Bidder said the magazine and online proposition do not replicate each other’s content and staff have had to adapt to new technology. ‘Everyone’s a producer – our production skills are raised. Instead of just commissioning a profile, we think of it as a multimedia project,’she said.

But the magazine, which started life as an independent in 1992, will remain important to the brand. ‘There’s still a massive aspiration for something culturally authoritive that looks beautiful on a page. There’s something very real and beautiful about the way things are designed on a page. It strikes me that people have become very demanding and want both.’

Content from our partners
MHP Group's 30 To Watch awards for young journalists open for entries
How PA Media is helping newspapers make the digital transition
Publishing on the open web is broken, how generative AI could help fix it

Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog

Select and enter your email address Weekly insight into the big strategic issues affecting the future of the news industry. Essential reading for media leaders every Thursday. Your morning brew of news about the world of news from Press Gazette and elsewhere in the media. Sent at around 10am UK time. Our weekly does of strategic insight about the future of news media aimed at US readers. A fortnightly update from the front-line of news and advertising. Aimed at marketers and those involved in the advertising industry.
  • Business owner/co-owner
  • CEO
  • COO
  • CFO
  • CTO
  • Chairperson
  • Non-Exec Director
  • Other C-Suite
  • Managing Director
  • President/Partner
  • Senior Executive/SVP or Corporate VP or equivalent
  • Director or equivalent
  • Group or Senior Manager
  • Head of Department/Function
  • Manager
  • Non-manager
  • Retired
  • Other
Visit our privacy Policy for more information about our services, how New Statesman Media Group may use, process and share your personal data, including information on your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications.
Thank you

Thanks for subscribing.

Websites in our network