20 years of Grazia | The University of Sunderland

Published on 25, February, 2025

Two decades ago, Carole Watson, Associate Head of the School of Journalism and Communications at the University of Sunderland, helped launch Grazia as Deputy Editor. Now Carole shares her insight of how the magazine industry has evolved.

“Twenty years ago this month – before many of our students were born – Britain’s first-ever weekly glossy magazine was born.

The launch of Grazia was so top secret that I had to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) before being invited for an informal chat (over a long lunch at a hideaway Thames-side restaurant) to become the magazine’s deputy editor.

Until February 2005, fashionistas and beauty addicts had to wait a month for the likes of Vogue, Elle and Cosmopolitan to land in newsagents – and often the featured products were already sold out or way off-trend.

Grazia would be fast-paced, published every Tuesday, with the very latest hottest news in fashion, beauty, and showbusiness along with hard-hitting exclusives being gathered just days earlier. Our readers would have “first bragging rights” on the next big thing, whether a new anti-ageing cream or spring/summer skirt.

It was exciting, and I quit my job on a tabloid newspaper to join a highly-talented team.

In the weeks before launch, we worked covertly from our Covent Garden offices working on exclusive content which would appeal to the Grazia target reader with an interest in everything from politics to nail polish.

By spring, we could have appeared on Mastermind specialising in any of the following subjects: the Jennifer Aniston/Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie love triangle, Kate Moss and Pete Doherty’s on-off romance, weird celebrity diets, or Mulberry’s latest IT handbags (yes, I nabbed a press discount on an oak Roxanne).

We knew we’d made the zeitgeist when the likes of Madonna wanted to be interviewed by Grazia and feature in our pages.

And when we say we launched a magazine (amid much blood, sweat and tears), that is exactly what we did.

No website. No Instagram, Tiktok, Facebook or X. No email shots.

We relied on old-fashioned advertising and word of mouth to get sales – and a banging cover image every week of what we called “A List fashionista in personal crisis.”

Today, I feel like a Grazia-saurus telling students about this launch.

Journalists of today, working on Grazia (as some of our graduates have) or any other major brand, need to be able to multitask with so many more skills than we needed.

No waiting a week to see the new high street collab in print – go off and do a TikTok right now.

Breaking news on Claudia Winkleman’s Traitors outfit hits online straight away, with hyperlinks to buy her Doc Martens or Bella Freud jacket.

So, has this immediate access to content, via your phone, killed off magazines?

Back in 2013, Grazia editor in chief Jane Bruton said magazines would never die as you can’t read an iPad in the bath.

Since then, with a digital-first generation of readers and a pandemic hitting sales and revenue, Grazia’s print edition has gone fortnightly (although they do publish beautiful one-off specials, Grazia Casa and Grazia Beauty).

Their website graziadaily.co.uk reaches over two million users per month and they have 460,000 followers on Instagram.

We will never see the heady days of 2005 again when women bought print magazines by the armload.

But there are still careers for journalism students who want to create lifestyle content using a much more creative skillset of digital tools to tell their stories.

Here at Sunderland, we focus as much on video journalism and social media storytelling as traditional skills such as writing.

It makes my heart sing that many of our journalism students, born after the start of the millennium, still want to make good old print magazines on subjects varying from football to vintage fashion for their final year projects instead of websites.

So don’t write them off just yet. And pick one up for your next bubble bath.”

So, what skills can students expect to learn at the University to help kickstart their careers in the magazine industry?

Liz Lamb, Senior Lecturer in Journalism and Programme Leader for BA (Hons) Fashion Journalism, reveals all.

“The circulation figures of print magazines may well have declined since Grazia’s heyday, but a job in the industry is still an exciting career choice.

Just like newspapers, magazines have adapted to the online world by offering a multimedia experience, and we ensure that students on all our journalism programmes are equipped with the real-world skills that magazine editors demand.

From writing long-form journalism and producing print magazines for final-year projects, students are also taught how to illustrate articles with eye-catching imagery and multimedia content to engage an online audience.

They learn how to turn data into infographics to make their feature articles more engaging, embed SEO into headlines and copy so they get hits on their stories, use analytical tools to see what content is most popular, and enhance their written words with audio and video to add value that you can’t offer in print.

In feature-writing classes, students learn how to find fresh content ideas, source the best contacts to interview, pitch their ideas at a features conference, and then write in an entertaining way for both print and online publications.

This ensures our students can produce work for different target audiences using a variety of writing styles, including reviews, opinion columns, crime backgrounders, business and analytical features, and in-depth investigative pieces.

Students are also taught how to design and edit magazine pages using the latest software, promote their articles in an appealing way via social media, and gain real-world experience by undertaking work placements at magazines as part of our employability module.

Many of the journalism lecturers have worked as features writers and magazine editors, so they have a wealth of knowledge and experience to pass on to students, as well as contacts who often visit and give masterclasses.

The work we do at the University meets industry standards and helps prepare students for exams in Practical Magazine Journalism and Design and Editing Skills, operated by the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ).

By graduation, along with their degree and NCTJ diploma, students will have a series of lifestyle articles, plus a print magazine or website, that they can show to employers when hunting for jobs, internships, or placements.

In the competitive world of magazines, this is a valuable tool that showcases their skills and abilities. Many students have secured jobs and internships thanks to the work they have produced with us.”

If you are interested in studying Fashion Journalism at the University of Sunderland, find out more here.

You can also find out more about the University’s other Journalism and PR courses here.