Grazia Very Much Glossy women’s weekly Grazia celebrates its third birthday with sales of nearly 1 million copies per month. Editor-in-Chief Jane Bruton retraces her path to success with Kate Tregoning and explains why the reader always knows best. “Oh, I’ll sing anything…badly!” Jane Bruton has a decidedly chirpy tone considering she is hungover from a night of karaoke to celebrate her – whisper it – 40th birthday. Unlike most hungover office workers, Jane can’t afford a duvet day. She is the editor of the publishing breakthrough of the decade, the most popular UK women’s weekly magazine, which hardly allows her time for an aspirin. Grazia launched in 2005 to fill a niche gap in the market. Although the brainchild of journalist Fiona McIntosh, she never intended to be Grazia’s editor. “I was on maternity leave actually, says Bruton and they rang me up three weeks after we had our son.” When many would have hung up the phone, Bruton saw an offer she couldn’t decline. “I knew that I’d kick myself. It was such an exciting opportunity and I just knew it’d be a completely revolutionary magazine – nothing like it had ever been done before.” Three years on, it now sells 965,000 copies – which equates to more in one week than any other glossy sells in a month. For her achievements, Bruton was awarded BSME Editor of the Year 2006. Growing up in Wigan – “well, Ashton-inMakerfield, but nobody’s ever heard of that’ – Bruton was captivated by the capital but hoped a career more glamorous than journalism would take her there. “I got to the end of my degree and realised that I didn’t know what I was going to do next, she recalls. “I still wasn’t sure I wanted to be a journalist. I had some really crap jobs, like I worked in a theme park and had to blow up all the balloons!” Bruton has the appearance of a very normal, down-to-earth woman, who just happens to have landed the job of her dreams. In reality she has a talent for editing, every publication she has worked on can boast increased sales, and has won countless awards in her time. On the surface, her light-heartedness could seem ditsy, but when Bruton begins to speak, she means business. She talks endlessly and with conviction about the magazine she lives and breathes. “I love going on holiday because then I can read it properly – like a reader.” She won’t print anything she hasn’t been gossiping about that week, or that she herself wouldn’t be interested to read. Knowing, or being, her reader is precisely where her genius lies. “I’m lucky because this is so me. You don’t get that with a lot of magazines. Chat wasn’t…but I made it work. I was good at the real life stories. It’s a bit like being a method actor I suppose.” Typically, Bruton doesn’t like to blow her own trumpet too long, attributing Grazia’s success to her entire work force. “I think it’s that diverse mix of people, from the monthlies, from Vogue, from newspapers we have the perfect team. And they’ve learned so much from each other – I’ve got the newsiest fashion team and the most fashionable news team!” She will admit to “many mistakes, but no regrets.” In September
2007 Grazia printed alarming paparazzi images of Amy Winehouse looking distressed in her blood-splattered ballet pumps. Maintaining her belief in the importance of taking risks, Bruton defends her decision to run the story. “The Amy cover felt like the right time,” she says with conviction. In contrast to the gritty headlines, Grazia has a large high-fashion content. “I was always massively into clothes,” she admits. “At the moment I really want a Chanel 2.55 bag – the classic black one. I’m really into the YSL collection for A/W too, so I’m hoping I can order a few pieces from that – I really love it. ”I do get sent a lot of things but what I tend to do at Christmas is put most of them into a raffle for the rest of the office, because I think it’s a bit unfair that all these bags keep coming for me and everybody else is working just as hard.” Unlike the fashion department of other weeklies, Grazia is loaned samples from the most exclusive and highly priced designer collections, reflecting its high regard within the fashion industry – despite not having solely fashion content. Due to the fast turn around of the magazine, it is able to react to trends with much more immediacy than its monthly rivals. The women who read Grazia for fashion inspiration, rather than Vogue, want to be one step ahead of the next girl. The writers attend the shows and regurgitate the trends as any other fashion team would. But unlike the monthly titles, Grazia is not written three months in advance, meaning their staff have to react to trends much faster than their competitors, adding new ideas and images weekly. Like her readers, Bruton wants to peek into the worlds of Kate Moss and Agyness Deyn, warts and all. But she draws the line at images she considers too intrusive and has made the bold choice in today’s critical culture by never printing circles of shame, celebrity beach cellulite or acne, only photographs the subject is aware has been taken – reiterating, ‘we are not a celebrity weekly!’ Big on equality, Bruton can be seen mucking in with the rest of her team, right in the middle of an open plan office, instead of boxed away in a corner. “The pace is so fast, you have to make decisions really, really quickly, and if I was in an office I’d just have a constant queue of people at the door. I need to be in with the team and we need to brainstorm ideas and pick up on what people are talking about, so I don’t think an office would work.” Bruton admits there are difficulties in retaining a polished façade while working such long hours, but she does her best to fit the bill. As a powerful figure in publishing there is temptation to almost become a caricature, but Bruton doesn’t feel the urge for an eccentric signature style. “I couldn’t do a Carine Roitfeld. (editor of French Vogue),” she says, but she does look up to US Vogue’s iconic Anna Wintour, and has a photo of herself with the editor at a lunch Grazia hosted in her honour. She becomes slightly shy, “that photo’s a bit of a joke really, but Anna’s the most successful and well known editor in the world. And who wouldn’t aspire to that?” Kate Tregoning
“I had some really crap jobs, like I worked in a theme park and had to blow up all the balloons!”
segue 11