WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2009

‘Di lang may

silver lining,
may rainbow pa!
H 3

Reinventing the magazine SIMlessly

By Pennie Azarcon-Dela Cruz that SIM continues to publish, so that occa- gay issue, the Filipino male, the one on ac-
Executive Editor sionally, we can find enough space to do tion movies and Pinoy kontrabidas, our ers a heck of a
Sunday Inquirer Magazine theme issues readers can keep as reference green themes, issues on entrepreneurship, good read
materials, issues we can be proud of be- all kinds of moms, the Pinoys’ sweet tooth, whenever we
CHANGE, SOMEONE ONCE SAID, IS INEX- cause they keep our passion for writing the photo issues, that one on addiction, can.
orable. Yet nothing meets with more resis- afire. summer reading, women and business, 2000
1986
tance. running, surviving a breakup and other Only constant
Change might as well be the Sunday IN- Haunted Baguio and other stories matters of the heart, and so on. And that’s Change, we are always reminded, is the
QUIRER Magazine’s middle name. From its While we write about shopping to ac- just for this year. only constant. And the biggest change so
conception on March 5, 1987 to its latest is- commodate advertisers, we also make sure Whenever space permits, we go the extra far is that of readership: younger, Net-
sue, the Magazine has undergone several we give readers stories and issues so they mile to think up topics and themes readers savvy, admittedly with a short attention
incarnations, not a few of them provoking can stay in bed all day on Sundays. Remem- would find helpful, informative, entertaining. span but all too willing to spend and, there-
surprise, outrage or disappointment. ber the “Haunted Baguio” issue? What Theme issues that had us all worked up, be- fore, eager to know what’s out there.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, readers have about those issues on weird cuisine, chil- cause we realize that we do not always have Keeping this in mind, we resolve to keep rein-
cautioned us often enough, but we were first- dren and the Net, touring the country’s top the opportunity to flex our writing muscles, venting ourselves to keep up with the times.
time parents besotted with our begotten and cities on P500 a day, that loving tribute to given the ads that often crowd out our pages. We’d like to think, and this we promise ourselves
determined to present a perfect package to the Cory, those health and fitness reports, our Thanks to these ads, we manage to give read- and our readers, that the best is yet to come. TODAY: The hero
public. And so we’ve experimented with size,
expanding to being a broadsheet at one time,
shrinking, and finally settling for the current
9×12-inch glossy rag.
From the occasional colored pages, we
tried a black and white format, and went
for an expensive redesign. Why, we even
changed our binding and dropped one sta-
ple off our pages! Some readers went
apoplectic, but that single staple, we found
out, paid half our salary. It stayed off.
Not content with that, we looked at our paper
and realized that we had become a dirty maga-
zine. Newsprint causes smudging and thirstily
drank in the color off photographs, making
them look muddy and murky. We finally
switched to glossy coated paper and found it ex-
tremely friendly to colored photographs.

Sunday kind of reading

But we aren’t finished yet. We’re rein-
venting the magazine to fit the day’s char-
acter. We’re a weekend publication, the
lighter side of the news, the break from the
daily grind of bad news that people have
come to expect all week. Our stories, we de-
cided, must be lighter, shorter and meant
for a leisurely Sunday kind of reading.
And lists, did we mention lists? People like
lists. Makes for easier reading too. We also
want to give readers info they can immediate-
ly digest and use. Stay off the heavy stuff,
we’ve been asked. Leave that to the daily. You
can’t do justice to issues in a page, which is the
suggested length of stories for SIM.
So, are we now into fluff? Are we dumb-
ing down readers?
Not at all, just making sure our stories
are accessible and would reel in even those
who’d rather watch TV or YouTube. Being
informative doesn’t mean we have to sound
ponderous. Being readable doesn’t mean
we’ve gone Paris Hilton.

Real people
It also doesn’t mean giving people only
what they want. Which, judging from the
results of the Most-Read Stories and Fea-
tures in the daily, are mostly celebrity gos-
sip and show biz news. Sure, we’d have per-
sonality features and celebrity covers, but
the Magazine, the INQUIRER editor in chief
likes to remind us, is all about people, real
people. Have the artistas, Pacman, the
politician of the hour, but also ordinary
folks tell their own stories and speak in
their own voice.
What about all those ads? Sometimes an
entire Magazine is devoted to ads and
there’s nothing to read, some readers have
complained. And what’s with those write-
ups that end up selling us stuff, others have
protested. They’re called “advertorials,”
dear readers, a hybrid of ads and editori-
al—an ad in the form of an article. We had
been told—and naively believed—that the
differently-colored page where some sto-
ries are laid out would clue in readers that
this is an ad, therefore read with a barrel of
salt.
But alas, not all readers are as sophisti-
cated, and might actually think this is a le-
git story cloaked with SIM’s and its staff’s
credibility. Wouldn’t that be breaching jour-
nalism ethics? We agree heartily. Which is
why such advertorials now sport ADVT (ad-
vertisement) at the end of each piece. No,
we’re not passing off ads as editorial fea-
tures, and have stood our ground on this
since those reminders from the Philippine
Journalism Review.

71.54% growth
Sure, some SIM issues have become vir-
tual advertising catalogs, given that most, if
not all, the magazine pages have been
yielded to ads. Not the most ideal situation,
admittedly, but an inescapable fact in jour-
nalism. Newspapers depend on ads to sur-
vive, especially in these times when televi-
sion, radio and online news have proven to
be tough rivals. Ads pay the rent—the pa-
per, printing costs, salaries of writers,
artists and photographers, the cost of flying
the Magazine to various points of the coun-
try and putting us out in the streets.
Like those relentless commercials during
a Pacman bout that viewers love to hate,
ads are all about the bottomline. Repackag-
ing the Magazine to accommodate more
ads has meant a 71.54% growth from last
year. The figures are four-fold compared to
2006 when SIM was in broadsheet format.
Ads make sure readers continue to get
SIM on Sundays for free. They also ensure