FW:Chicago magazine has wider scope, more modern outlook, fewer contirbutors
Back in July, I wrote about FW:Chicago - a new Chicago area magazine that would fill similar niche as Today's Chicago Woman magazine, which shut down late last year. At the time, they were online only, but they planned to launch a print version of the magazine in September.
Well, the first print issue of FW:Chicago is here.
A stack of FW:Chicago issues at Argo Tea's Lakeview location, at 3135 N Broadway Street
I picked up my copy late last week, and my first impression was that it was definitely smaller then TCW in terms of page size. At casual glance, it looked about as thick as average issue of TCW, but once I got home and did some comparisons to the last few issues, I realized that it was about 20 pages shorter.
(And, as an aside, I discovered that TCW got more pages since I started reading it in 2006, but the pge size actually got smaller)
First issue of FW:Chicago laid over penultimate issue of Today's Chicago Woman,
laid over the 2006 issue of Today's Chicago Woman
Thing is, when you read FW:Chicago, it feels about as packed in content as TCW was. It touches on a lot of similar ground as TCW, covering issues relevant to working women, profiling local businesspeople and other noteworthy individuals, reviewing local businesses and eateries, delving into social issues, and offering lifestyle tips. It has social pages and fashion pages (I'm especially happy about the later, since they were some of my favorite parts of TCW. I'm not ashamed to admit that I saved some issues for fashion photos alone - and FW:Chicago looks to be following that tradition). A few regular TCW features are missing - for example, there are no wedding pages - but TCW readers will find FW:Chicago covering a lot of familiar ground.
And yet, while it covers a lot of familiar ground, it goes about it in a different ways. For better of for worse, TCW was very much Sherren Leigh's baby, with a very distinct editorial voice. FW:Chicago Publisher Kendra Chaplin isn't Leigh, and she has her own vision for what a magazine should look like.
Today's Chicago Woman was always, first and foremost, a magazine that catered to middle-class-and-higher female professionals in white-collar fields. FW:Chicago aims for something broader. The women it caters to are still middle-class and higher, but they don't have to be white-collar professionals. They can be artists, teachers, social workers, even housewives.
The best way to demonstrate the difference in approaches is to look at how the two publications wrote about travel. TWC had articles about traveling to exotic foreign destinations. FW:Chicago published an essay where writer Hadley Austin compared her experience of traveling across United States with the experiences of early 20th century women that did the same thing.
FW:Chicago also feels more, for the lack of a better word, modern. It talks a lot more about apps and social networking than TCW ever did. And it had an entire page listing Twitter handles of every single person featuring in the issue - which, in an age where social networks can create connections and even potentially lead to job opportunities, is a pretty useful thing to have.
That said, there were things about this issue that gave me pause.
After I was about a quarter of the way through the issue, I started noticing that bylines seem to be repeating themselves. I went back to the credits page, and realized that an awful lot articles were written by print editor Jennifer Smith Tapp and Managing Editor Rebecca Taras-Lee. Like, the vast majority of the issue. There are two more contributing writers, plus some bits of content from area bloggers but that's it.
As I've written before, I've always been uneasy about editors also doing writing. The more responsibilities editors are juggling, the more likely they are to let things slip. And when you got two of your editors basically writing the majority of the magazine <>and handing the editing- that's an awful lot of juggling.
Compare this to Today's Chicago Woman, which, in its penultimate issue, had seven contributors, and an editor who wrote grand total of zero articles.
Or compare it to Evanston Magazine, which debuted earlier this year. Its third issue had seven contributors, and contributing editors who, again, didn't write any of articles.
As I mentioned in my original post about FW:Chicago, Chaplin told Chicago Tribune that she was planning to "run a lean operation." Which would explain the double-dipping and the juggling. But I'm not entirely sure that's such a good idea on the long run. I don't think non-journalists appreciate that all writing, even the fluff like a piece about perfumes, take time and effort. Writing a whole bunch of those is legitimately tiring (which is why I, personally, try to pace myself, taking breaks in between articles and trying to spread the writing out over the course of a week rather than trying to finish it up all in 1-2 days).
Back in Chicago Journal, my editor and I wrote the bulk of each issue 50/50. But we're talking bout a 12-page newspaper (well, 18 if you count the classifieds), not an 82-page magazine.
I hope that, as the magazine grows its advertising base, it would be able to recruit more contributors. The first issue barely had any ads, but that's common for brand-new publications that haven't had much time to establish a reputation. Hopefully, it would be able to pick up some of the advertisers from Today's Chicago Woman, the way Natural Awakenings picked up advertisers from Mindful Metropolis, as well as get some new advertisers on board.
Of course, it is always possible that Chalpin is planning on pulling a Wrapports and allocating all the revenue toward digital growth at the expense of its editorial side. But we'll see.
(Edited to add (21.09.2015): Poking around FW:Chicago website, I discovered that they do have contributor guidelines, which suggests that, at the very least, they're not adverse to getting more contributors.)
So long as I'm talking about things that can be improved, there are two features from TCW that I think FW:Chicago could benefit from. One, the networking column I mentioned earlier in the post. And two - TCW used to have the "In This Issue" pages, where they listed where readers could buy every single piece of clothing, furniture and other products that appeared in this particular issue. It's a very useful feature, and I'm sure plenty of Chicago businesses would appreciate it.
Overall, FW:Chicago touches on a lot of similar ground as Today's Chicago Woman while forging its own path. There is a lot to like in the debut issue, and is shows lot of promise.
Hopefully, the magazine will have the opportunity to live up to it.
----
The digital version of the issue is available here, and you can read some (but hardly all) of the articles that appeared in it on the magazine's website.
Finding a print version is a bit trickier. Unlike TCW, it doesn't have newspaper boxes all over the North Side. In an online editorial, Taras-Lee mentioned that it was available in all Chicago Fitness Formula Club locations (the fact that the chain has a nice back page ad in the issue is surely not a coincidence), but beyond that, she was vague, saying only that it was also available "in select stores, salons, and businesses all over the city." Personally, I didn't have that much trouble finding it - I found copies in the Starbucks on the southwest side of Clark/Belmont intersection, and, as of this writing, there are copies in Argo Tea's Lakeview location - but I'm not sure if they're available closer to where rempel, kaffyr and other Chicagoans reading this live.
Well, the first print issue of FW:Chicago is here.
A stack of FW:Chicago issues at Argo Tea's Lakeview location, at 3135 N Broadway Street
I picked up my copy late last week, and my first impression was that it was definitely smaller then TCW in terms of page size. At casual glance, it looked about as thick as average issue of TCW, but once I got home and did some comparisons to the last few issues, I realized that it was about 20 pages shorter.
(And, as an aside, I discovered that TCW got more pages since I started reading it in 2006, but the pge size actually got smaller)
First issue of FW:Chicago laid over penultimate issue of Today's Chicago Woman,
laid over the 2006 issue of Today's Chicago Woman
Thing is, when you read FW:Chicago, it feels about as packed in content as TCW was. It touches on a lot of similar ground as TCW, covering issues relevant to working women, profiling local businesspeople and other noteworthy individuals, reviewing local businesses and eateries, delving into social issues, and offering lifestyle tips. It has social pages and fashion pages (I'm especially happy about the later, since they were some of my favorite parts of TCW. I'm not ashamed to admit that I saved some issues for fashion photos alone - and FW:Chicago looks to be following that tradition). A few regular TCW features are missing - for example, there are no wedding pages - but TCW readers will find FW:Chicago covering a lot of familiar ground.
And yet, while it covers a lot of familiar ground, it goes about it in a different ways. For better of for worse, TCW was very much Sherren Leigh's baby, with a very distinct editorial voice. FW:Chicago Publisher Kendra Chaplin isn't Leigh, and she has her own vision for what a magazine should look like.
Today's Chicago Woman was always, first and foremost, a magazine that catered to middle-class-and-higher female professionals in white-collar fields. FW:Chicago aims for something broader. The women it caters to are still middle-class and higher, but they don't have to be white-collar professionals. They can be artists, teachers, social workers, even housewives.
The best way to demonstrate the difference in approaches is to look at how the two publications wrote about travel. TWC had articles about traveling to exotic foreign destinations. FW:Chicago published an essay where writer Hadley Austin compared her experience of traveling across United States with the experiences of early 20th century women that did the same thing.
FW:Chicago also feels more, for the lack of a better word, modern. It talks a lot more about apps and social networking than TCW ever did. And it had an entire page listing Twitter handles of every single person featuring in the issue - which, in an age where social networks can create connections and even potentially lead to job opportunities, is a pretty useful thing to have.
That said, there were things about this issue that gave me pause.
After I was about a quarter of the way through the issue, I started noticing that bylines seem to be repeating themselves. I went back to the credits page, and realized that an awful lot articles were written by print editor Jennifer Smith Tapp and Managing Editor Rebecca Taras-Lee. Like, the vast majority of the issue. There are two more contributing writers, plus some bits of content from area bloggers but that's it.
As I've written before, I've always been uneasy about editors also doing writing. The more responsibilities editors are juggling, the more likely they are to let things slip. And when you got two of your editors basically writing the majority of the magazine <>and handing the editing- that's an awful lot of juggling.
Compare this to Today's Chicago Woman, which, in its penultimate issue, had seven contributors, and an editor who wrote grand total of zero articles.
Or compare it to Evanston Magazine, which debuted earlier this year. Its third issue had seven contributors, and contributing editors who, again, didn't write any of articles.
As I mentioned in my original post about FW:Chicago, Chaplin told Chicago Tribune that she was planning to "run a lean operation." Which would explain the double-dipping and the juggling. But I'm not entirely sure that's such a good idea on the long run. I don't think non-journalists appreciate that all writing, even the fluff like a piece about perfumes, take time and effort. Writing a whole bunch of those is legitimately tiring (which is why I, personally, try to pace myself, taking breaks in between articles and trying to spread the writing out over the course of a week rather than trying to finish it up all in 1-2 days).
Back in Chicago Journal, my editor and I wrote the bulk of each issue 50/50. But we're talking bout a 12-page newspaper (well, 18 if you count the classifieds), not an 82-page magazine.
I hope that, as the magazine grows its advertising base, it would be able to recruit more contributors. The first issue barely had any ads, but that's common for brand-new publications that haven't had much time to establish a reputation. Hopefully, it would be able to pick up some of the advertisers from Today's Chicago Woman, the way Natural Awakenings picked up advertisers from Mindful Metropolis, as well as get some new advertisers on board.
Of course, it is always possible that Chalpin is planning on pulling a Wrapports and allocating all the revenue toward digital growth at the expense of its editorial side. But we'll see.
(Edited to add (21.09.2015): Poking around FW:Chicago website, I discovered that they do have contributor guidelines, which suggests that, at the very least, they're not adverse to getting more contributors.)
So long as I'm talking about things that can be improved, there are two features from TCW that I think FW:Chicago could benefit from. One, the networking column I mentioned earlier in the post. And two - TCW used to have the "In This Issue" pages, where they listed where readers could buy every single piece of clothing, furniture and other products that appeared in this particular issue. It's a very useful feature, and I'm sure plenty of Chicago businesses would appreciate it.
Overall, FW:Chicago touches on a lot of similar ground as Today's Chicago Woman while forging its own path. There is a lot to like in the debut issue, and is shows lot of promise.
Hopefully, the magazine will have the opportunity to live up to it.
----
The digital version of the issue is available here, and you can read some (but hardly all) of the articles that appeared in it on the magazine's website.
Finding a print version is a bit trickier. Unlike TCW, it doesn't have newspaper boxes all over the North Side. In an online editorial, Taras-Lee mentioned that it was available in all Chicago Fitness Formula Club locations (the fact that the chain has a nice back page ad in the issue is surely not a coincidence), but beyond that, she was vague, saying only that it was also available "in select stores, salons, and businesses all over the city." Personally, I didn't have that much trouble finding it - I found copies in the Starbucks on the southwest side of Clark/Belmont intersection, and, as of this writing, there are copies in Argo Tea's Lakeview location - but I'm not sure if they're available closer to where rempel, kaffyr and other Chicagoans reading this live.