Consistently first class stories, beautifully written and accompanied by the best photography. Vanity Fair is an editorial-led magazine. And it is the complete advertisers' package.
The advertising pages in VF are beautiful to look at - they don't yell at you, they beckon seductively.
It takes nearly a whole month to enjoy this magazine properly. I love it.
I also love the way they use their web site. vanityfair.com is really a PR and marketing tool masquerading as a full service magazine site. The site is free, but the magazine leaks articles, on to it one by one as promotion for the current and upcoming print issue.
There's nothing particularly radical in that. But when your site content is as strong as vanityfair.com you can take a different tactical approach.
Their approach is to use PR to drive print sales, which of course is where they make the real money.
They do this regularly. Sometimes it's an Annie Leibovitz cover like pre-internet the one of a pregnant Demi Moore.
Today it was a Christopher Hitchens piece about letting himself be subjected to water boarding. theage.com.au lapped it up.
The story was a reprint from The Guardian, two days ago. The Guardian writer had taken Vanity Fair's bait ... and their hook and their line and their sinker too. But theage didn't mind.
I can't understand why theage didn't just write its own version. They did do a video piece. But the way video is presented on the Fairfax sites it really just looks like an afterthought to the serious work of putting words together.By the way, if you're ever looking for Vanity Fair in an Australian newsagent you'll need to look in the "Women's" section.
Funny that ...
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