For years, people were forced to read the monotonous, mundane words printed in black and white, offering almost no additional value beyond the information on the page. It is a privilege to learn information in an ‘objective’ manner, but there is a reason that readership among adults is at a low.
People have become much more audio-visual and drawn to photos, videos and podcasts — they’re quicker and provides a medium that requires less cognitive consciousness. You feel more like you’re having a conversation with someone and less like you’re doing assigned homework in high school. Writing is a form of self-expression, and it should be treated as such, just like speaking in a video or podcast. Words on a page without any kind of personality are like raw vegetables without being cooked or any kind of seasoning — bland and lacking flavor.
As America currently tries to redefine what it means to run a business that is both successful and professional, you can find publications on the spectrum spanning from “stiff and impersonal” to “trying too hard to sound like they’re relatable.” There do, however, remain a select few that are able to strike a balance and maintain a sense professionalism in reporting while bringing in a tone of familiarity.
Many magazines are trying out the ‘BFF’ voice in pieces from ELLE, Vogue, Allure and Nylon, but it’s just a tad too informal and honestly makes it sound a little too much like how you would expect a stereotypical girly girl to talk. The difference between how these publications conduct themselves vs. how PAPER Magazine does business lies in the delivery. Internet culture has created a space where everyone speaks in a very informal tone and it more or less is a consistent regardless of who you are, what gender you identify as, what your sexuality is, etc.
Magazine after magazine will cover the same: fashion/beauty trend topics. There’s no denying that there’s a niche for that, but honestly speaking, it can get a little stale. The internet is in constant flux and change and always keeping things new — PAPER capitalizes on that. Even the fashion and beauty fields that these magazines report on are catching onto that and trying to reinvent themselves and their brand strategy in the digital age.
PAPER knows its audience: young people, millennials, Gen X, Gen Z, etc. What do people in this demographic want? MEMES. MEGA CELEB UPDATES. INTERNET NEWS.
You really cannot gloss over PAPER‘s social media team because they are doing some HEAVY lifting over there. PAPER understands that the majority of articles get read via social media traffic. The only way to ensure a successful online presence is to have a master of social media crafting memes, making breaking news relevant, and holding a consistent and relatable tone — each of these is worth its weight in gold.
A lot of people like E! News for similar reasons — they deliver news on pop culture while having a friendly and personable tone. They are often lauded for their clever captions on Instagram, but even they can come across like they’re trying too hard sometimes. COMPLEX is a better example of a [digital] publication that knows its audience and has the same ‘relatable internet’ tone as PAPER. The difference is that they extend the internet voice and perhaps sacrifice relevant news because of it.
In school, journalists are taught to write in another language called AP style, and while it’s important to have a standard of writing and grammar, we have progressed as a culture and industry to the point where we don’t need to relay information in an overtly professional tone. When people read, you want to speak write in a familiar way that makes them comfortable — that’s where loyal readership comes from.