Once a month we invite our member magazine publishers and enthusiasts to guest-edit our fortnightly email newsletter. The aim is to inspire others with magazine-related content, connect members and build our community so we can learn from each other.
This month our guest editor is Loma-Ann Marks, Editor In Chief & Director at Reclaim Magazine. You can follow Loma on LinkedIn and Instagram – remember to connect and say hello!
Tell us about yourself
I’m an award-winning editor, journalist and shoot director, currently editor-in-chief of Reclaim, the magazine for creative and conscious homes. I’ve worked on Reclaim since 2016 and during this time, have implemented a re-design, brought expert columnists on-board, re-focussed and re-designed the website, newsletter and social platforms.
In 2020, I won the BSME Editor of the Year Homes & Interiors, and was shortlisted in 2022 and 2023.
What’s on your mind?
At the time of writing, I’m getting our Autumn issue, with a theme of Craft, ready for press day. We’re collaborating with Craft Festival, and I’m creating some of the contra content which includes some design, a new skill for me which I’m enjoying. I’m also exploring aligned, long term advertising partners and finding ways to deepen existing relationships. More widely I’m thinking a lot about purpose, values and how Reclaim can be a force for positive change, inclusivity and connection. We have supported the charity Furnishing Futures for almost three years and I’m looking at ways to do more for them and other causes.
What’s the best article you’ve
read this month?
I’ve read and followed Carole Cadwalladr for a long time, ever since she exposed Cambridge Analytica/Facebook. I now follow her Substack How to Survive the Broligarchy and recently caught up with her post Springtime for Hitler, which explores how the media is normalising the political far right. She says:
“The assumption that newspapers work off – that people should trust them, that there’s a robust replicable process used to establish facts and report them – just doesn’t hold water with half the population now. That is the challenge for anyone working in the media right now.”
The article is a sobering read, but more importantly a call to action.
Show us an incredible magazine cover
It is so hard to choose my favourite magazine cover as each of those that stand out for me represent something different. The New Yorker’s 2016 ‘Purple Rain’ tribute to Prince after he died was so simple and beautiful – and made my cry more than I already was at his passing.
Annie Leibowitz’s 1991 Vanity Fair cover of Demi Moore was groundbreaking – finally we saw what a pregnant woman actually looked like!
But the one cover that, as a young teen, I looked at for months and still remember in detail is Tatler’s 1986 cover of real life couple Talisa Soto and Nick Kamen, shot by David Bailey. At the time, Nick Kamen was everywhere after the Levi 501s ad but I was still kind of gobsmacked to see a man on the cover of a women’s magazine. Not only that, he was being held by Talisa, and she was the one looking to camera. This cover perfectly encapsulated a time of cool glamour, fierce beauty and strength that I very much wanted to be part of. Yes, Tatler was about posh people but somehow its playful, tongue-in-cheek style made it feel within reach.
What’s your top tip for publishers?
My top tip for magazine publishers is to keep innovating and being creative. There is a lot of information at the moment around AI, print being dead (but not really) newsletters, video, podcasts. And all of this is useful and valid, but we can be in danger of losing what makes us unique, expert voices. The actual content – the story and voice and opinion of our brand can become lost in data points and meta tagging and open rates. Again, all necessary but the story is the whole reason for a magazine’s existence.
So with interiors magazines, imagery is a good example: because of shrinking budgets, we can’t all commission original shoots and stories for every page. But what we can do is have a strong point of view, commission more carefully, elevate our contributors, keep our design fresh and reflective of our voice.
But also critique that point of view, put it under pressure. Is what we were saying a year ago still valid? What’s changed in the zeitgeist and how can we reflect that in our own way? Not by jumping on a bandwagon or passing trend – but thoughtfully looking at our content and tweaking where necessary, adding in something new and exciting, upending the old tropes.
Questions for the community
What subject or issue would you like the International Magazine Centre Members Group to discuss and untangle over on LinkedIn?
My question is: How can we help each other find a smoother, more effective and ultimately more profitable way to deal with distribution and newsstand?
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