Introduction to Journalism - Features Exercise

The magazine that I have picked up that I wouldn't normally read (or in this case even pick up unless I was pretty much at the end of my boredom tether) is "New!", one of those typically trashy gossipy magazines you normally see people reading while they're waiting for their hair appointment to open up. Much to my surprise, apparently people pay money for these and even read them for fun sometimes. I know, I could hardly believe it myself, but apparently its true! Anyway, from what my primitive, frontal-lobe-only male brain could gather from this magazine (mostly consisting of a lot of pictures of fat chicks hanging out with slutty chicks but all wearing very pretty clothes), this is the contents of the features:

* Chanelle - "I've found it so hard to lose my baby weight" (i.e. Moderately famous woman gets pregnant, becomes a whale, has baby, continues to eat pies whilst everyone watches and feels sorry for her, then decides to lose it all so she can appear in pictures wearing a bikini once again. Everyone feels a bit good for her for a millionth of a second, finds out her secret behind it all (that she stopped eating bloody pies) and moves on with their life.)

* Cheryl Let's Rip - "Cher's Doing My Head In!" (i.e. An entire two/three page feature about the X Factor, to which only people who are still vaguely interested in X Factor will know anything about. For the rest of us that have given up caring, and still have faith that the music community might actually prevail over the glorified karaoke that is X Factor, there's lots of pictures of Cheryl Cole to look at. Good Times. Unfortunately, she does still look like a hooker. Bad Times.)

*Natalie - "I'm back in my size 12 clothes" (i.e. Notoriously heavy Eastenders regular has a few kids, gains some pounds, loses them again all whilst our attention was on X Factor and therefore we missed the whole thing and don't care anymore. Sorry.)

*Jordan freaks out over Essex Girl Amy - "She makes me feel so ugly!" (i.e. I wonder why that would be then...)

And those are just the cover featrues. Aside from those, this mostly celebrity personality led printing relies on a lot of pictures of recognisable female celebs either looking totally and utterly fabulous in their designer clothes that are far too expensive for you to afford, or looking like they just rolled out of bed in their pj's thus verifying the truth that everyone does indeed look like crap sometimes. Ironically enough, theres probably more pictures of women in this than there are in most guys magazines.

Basically, "New!" consists of a lot of Celebrity Gossip features, Celebrity Interviews and True Stories (mostly about weight loss and things like that), which make for ideal light reading until the last person is done with their perm and you can get your hair trimmed back again.