She Can Bring Home the Lup Cheong
The inaugural issue of Hawai`i Woman magazine is out, and probably on newsstands now (although I haven't seen it anywhere).
Is This Anything?
I'm a magazine junkie. I love the idea of a publication's audience specificity, and I go nuts with excitement thinking about how these audiences make up their own cultures, with their own languages and traditions. Wine Spectator has its audience and language, while readers of The Source have languages and traditions that are entirely different. A wanna-be writer, I'm turned on by the stuff that makes one character different from another, and I guess this is why I got excited by Erica Engle's story in the Star-Bulletin a few weeks ago.
I got my free first issue Thursday, and have read every word of it, so here's a quick review.
Stupid Human Tricks
The first thing I noticed was the masthead. Publisher: Kristine Ellis-Fujimoto. CEO: Paul T. Fujimoto. Advisory Board (among others): Joan M. Ellis and Doug Ellis, Jr. Additionally, the Managing Editor is former Miss Hawai`i Billie Takaki, who happens to be the subject of the cover article.
May We See Your Photos Please?
Managerial incest aside, the magazine seems to be a glossy, noble attempt to mix inspiration, business, fashion, and culture--equal parts O and Honolulu, with a little bit of Mid-Week thrown in.
The pages are slick, the photos glossy and in color. There's a fashion section with photos of stuff you can get at a shop owned by one of the magazine's contributing writers. The layout looks just a bit amateurish (I don't know much about magazine layout, so my opinion here may not mean much), with large fonts making up for short pieces in some places, and sections with two pieces per page.
Features are stories about Billie Takaki, Mamo Howell, and Betty White (not the Golden Girl), with an autobiographical story by Dr. Lili Kawaharada Horton, a local orthodontist. There are smaller pieces about hiking Diamond Head and about low voter turnout in Hawai`i, which the table of contents calls "columns," but which look like mini-features to me, unless they're planning to run a "trail of the month" thing and a "social problem of the month" thing.
"Departments" are financial, art, home, fashion, humor, beauty, health, fitness, travel, astrology, and inspirational. Of these, the home piece was the best-written and the most interesting. The writer is a designer, who highlights here one of her projects, describing quite nicely a home that's nicer than yours, illustrating the article with very nice photos. Most of the other "department" pieces are short--about four paragraphs each.
Celebrity X-Ray Challenge
The writing is well-intentioned, but needs serious work. Most of the pieces are technically sloppy (bad punctuation, misplaced modifiers, shifts in point-of-view), but the editors get bonus points for only ONE comma-splice in the whole issue (I know for a fact that the managing editor's twelfth-grade English teacher took an automatic ten percent off every essay grade for each comma-splice, so it's nice to see that some lessons stick). Stylistically, sentences lack creativity and, in some places, variety. The writers sound like star-struck fans of the women they profile. The writing tends to lack focus and organization. In the cover story, for example, the writer resorts to asking rhetorical questions as a way to introduce information:
"Does she ever get bored? She is a powerhouse of energy..."I'm not exaggerating: These excerpts are from four consecutive paragraphs.
"What else is on Billie's plate? Most recently she..."
"What is Billie's goal? To be a high school English teacher."
"How does one define Billie Kiyoka Takaki? She is a kind, loving..."
It would be nice to see some deeper, more challenging subjects in the interview pieces, but the prevailing mood is warm and fuzzy. Don't look for anything too insightful or gripping.
On the other hand, two longer pieces by someone named Cheryl Chee Tsutsumi were mostly quite well-done. Her writing is clear and she knows how to use a quote. I'm hoping the magazine keeps her busy in future issues.
Will It Float?
Okay, Hawai`i doesn't need a magazine like this any more than anyone needs any magazine at all. I like the idea of any locally-produced magazine with local audiences in mind, especially since it gives local writers more opportunities to get their stuff in print.
If it's going to be successful--and by that I mean successful in accomplishing what it wants to do--it needs to hire better writers, tone down the ingratiating tone, and quit patting itself and its writers on the back. There needs to be a balance between objectivity and "We Are Hawai`i Woman, Hear Us Roar!" I love the idea of featuring admirable women who aren't in the spotlight, but the magazine will grab more readers if it also finds columnists with names people recognize.
The magazine also needs to hire a competent copy editor. The types of grammatical and mechanical errors in this first issue's writing are embarrassingly minor-league. Any publication that hopes to inspire excellence is going to have to hold itself to decent standards of excellence itself, and I sincerely hope the editors find someone who knows what she is doing.
Top Ten Questions Inspired by Hawai`i Woman
- Where can you buy this?
- Why is the website so empty?
- Are people going to subscribe to this thing?
- Is there an audience for a magazine like this?
- Should locally-produced magazines aspire to the slick professionalism (and great writing) of mainland-looking publications like Honolulu or try to create something uniquely Hawai`i in look and feel?
- How strictly should a magazine like this stick to its intended "Published by Woman of Hawai`i for Woman of Hawai`i" mission? Should it refuse contributions by men?
- The magazine's "departments" are common to just about all women's general-interest periodicals. Are the editors missing some uniquely local interest?
- Does it matter that a considerable chunk of the ads are for businesses whose proprietors are contributors to this magazine?
- Why doesn't anyone know where to put a comma anymore?
- You know what would really sell? A magazine called Foxy Women of Hawai`i.