Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 1, February 2001 | Page 28

24

Popular Culture Review

True life material consists of stories from and about “ordinary” people (but
always edited by a journalist) in contrast to articles by journalists which feature
interviews or discussions of celebrities or other issues. The decrease in the number
of practical ‘how to’ articles (sewing, knitting, craft) and the move away from the
previous didactic, ‘us and them’ quality that used to characterise women’s weeklies,
means that the previously clear line between producers and readers has become
blurred, with weekly magazines launched in the late 1980s/early 1990s invariably
adopting a true life theme. The effect of this shift from fiction and articles by
journalists to material from readers and ‘ordinary’ people is to offer readers the
possibility of participating in their favourite weekly - a line fro H