8 ms·

An Open Letter to Wired Magazine: We're breaking up

134 points by tswicegood 16y ago

kiba 16y ago
So what if Wired Magazine have a gender imbalance over its lifetime. What's the issue here? Is it more about being offended that wired magazine don't offer equal coverage to women entrepreneurs? Maybe there aren't just many tech entrepreneurs to cover.
- jolie 16y ago
  It's one thing to say that the magazine has gender parity issues in its coverage, but c'mon - a huge pair of boobs on the cover isn't exactly a step in the right direction.
- showerst 16y ago
  It's one thing to have an imbalance of sheer number, which may well be a reflection of reality. It's another thing entirely to make 90% of the women you do depict into sexbots. Putting ugly people on the covers doesn't sell magazines, but they could at least make some effort to depict reality.
  - kiba 16y ago
    Men like beautiful sexy women. Sexbots? Who would think of women as a bunch of automation, unable to think for herself, with no interests of her own, with no agenda of her own as sexy? It is not.
    - crux_ 16y ago
      If the picture of a body and not a person, "sexbot" seems an appropriate term. Perhaps the distinction is too subtle for you?
    - epochwolf 16y ago
      > Who would think of women as a bunch of automation, unable to think for herself, with no interests of her own, with no agenda of her own as sexy? It is not. I can think of a few people that seem to think that way in the way they talk about women.
  - pyre 16y ago
    > they could at least make some effort to > depict reality. A cover story titled: "You will most likely die alone, with no accomplishments to your name, and no one will remember you."
    - mfukar 16y ago
      But, that'll sell like crazy, dood!
  - Tichy 16y ago
    "It's another thing entirely to make 90% of the women you do depict into sexbots" Could it be just your imagination that turns those women on the covers into sex bots?
joelmichael 16y ago
She makes a good case. I'm no die-hard feminist, but this strikes me as trying to appeal to that most basic element of their mostly male readership at the expense of their female readership. Wired shouldn't be about that. Even though the whole magazine is kind of campy, and more reminiscent of science fiction than any serious study, this strikes me as more distasteful than funny or sexy. I don't want Wired to become prudish, but they have an opportunity to lead by example here.
- pragmatic 16y ago
  Why oh why, do most women focused magazines (which I see at the checkout counter, etc) have attractive women on them (Cosmo, etc) in various stages of undress?
  - joelmichael 16y ago
    I think that's a fair question. First of all, feminists typically decry Cosmo just as quickly as they would these Wired covers. So you can't really argue there is an inconsistency there; the fact of the matter is that not all women are feminists, and not all women are Cosmo readers. The two don't usually overlap. But I'm not going to suggest there is anything wrong with Cosmo. The purpose of Cosmo is to be a woman's magazine that focuses on various traditional interests of women, including attracting men. Their covers reflect that. My problem with Wired doing it is that it doesn't fit what Wired is about. Wired represents the tech community in a sense, so I feel it reflects on me a bit what they do. Historically, it's been a nearly all-male community, yes; but most of us agree we'd like that to change, and getting rid of things like this is not much of a sacrifice. Wired should be about cool tech stuff, and there's no reason that premise should prefer one gender over the other.
    - anamax 16y ago
      > Wired represents the tech community in a sense, so I feel it reflects on me a bit what they do. Nope. Wired is an attempt to attract eyeballs to advertisements. If you think that Wired represents you, great. If not, that's great too. Either way, that's your decision, not wired's.
mrduncan 16y ago
Things were looking up a couple months ago when you published that great article on Caterina Fake of Flickr and Hunch fame. That could have been a cover… Instead you went with Will Ferrell… Like it or not, a magazine with Caterina Fake on the cover just isn't going to sell as well on news stands as one with Will Ferrell on the cover.
- sudonim 16y ago
  Normals (to borrow a Chris Dixon term) don't know who Caterina is...
- tingley 16y ago
  I'm not sure I buy this argument, because Wired consistently ignores it regards to men. Like in 2005, when they put Blake Ross on the cover (issue 13.02). Or 2006, when Will Wright was on the cover (14.04). Or 2008, when they featured Ray Ozzie (16.12) and Shai Agassi (16.09). Or Craig Newmark in 2009 (17.09). None of these people is particularly well-known outside of tech circles. I did not go back all the way in Wired's cover archive to verify Royal's claim that no woman has been on the cover "for an actual accomplishment" since Sherry Turkle in 1996. But that is that is a fairly damning data point, assuming it is true.
  - achompas 16y ago
    Combined with another HNer's comment that 3/4ths of Wired's readership is male...well, you're selling to male geeks. So putting Will Wright on the cover of Wired is like putting Jon Hamm on the cover of GQ. (can't believe I made this comparison...)
MarinaMartin 16y ago
I read the first paragraph of this article and thought "this article is clearly written by an angry female." Lo and behold, the author's name is Cindy. Go Wired magazine for choosing your covers based on what will sell and not based on the loss of the five readers who might be offended by it. They can read "Bitch" (which is somehow not an offensive name for a magazine if written by feminists?). If Wired doesn't sell magazines, Wired doesn't exist.
- crux_ 16y ago
  To restate your first sentence: The author of the article (angry woman!) earned your dismissal of any points it had to make? golf clap
dotBen 16y ago
I have wired magazine sent to me for free (I'm actually not sure exactly how that came about) and I'm this close to calling them up and just having them stop the subscription all together - I barely even read the magazine, probably spending less than 5 mins skimming through it before it goes into the trash or the bathroom.
- sudonim 16y ago
  I somehow got rolling stone sent to me for free. I'd gladly trade... want to make a website to swap free magazine subscriptions?
- Tichy 16y ago
  Can't you just make them forward it to me instead? It always was too expensive for me - used to be 20€ per issue back in the day, not sure about now. Or donate to your local library.
gkoberger 16y ago
I don't get Wired's strategy. It seems now they're doing anything for readers- you can get a year subscription for $3.99 (if you find a good deal online), and they go with controversial covers like naked women and proclamations that "The Web Is Dead." Why can't they charge a bit more for a subscription ($36/year is still only $3/issue), and publish much higher quality content? I'd rather pay more for quality than read what they currently mail out every month.
- aneth 16y ago
  Because their money comes from advertisers, not subscribers.
- jbarciauskas 16y ago
  I don't think the 3.99 price is a signal of any kind of desperation. I read recently, I wish I could remember where, that subscription and newsstand sales make a smaller portion of magazine revenue when compared to ads. Publishers would give them away for free to push up their circulation and thereby their ad rates, except advertisers discount ads placed in free publications. So publishers run all kinds of special promotions to push up circulation without appearing to cheapen their product to their advertisers. That's one possible explanation, or it could be simple price segmentation - offering different prices through different channels to increase overall revenue.
- nkurz 16y ago
  Presuming this is a real question, it's a matter of economics. Magazines like Wired make most of their money from advertising. They've judged, likely correctly, that if they charge more for subscriptions, they will lose more profit than they gain. Magazines are closing down left and right. Wired is still in business because they have resorted to cheap tricks like "sex sells". While I applaud subscribers deciding they aren't going to put up with this any longer, I think you'd be mistaken if you think they could make more money by doing anything else.
sudonim 16y ago
Open question: Why do many women in technology make their gender the focus of their work? http://cindyroyal.com/ http://cindyroyal.com/
- throwaway6857 16y ago
  Because they can't code. The ones that can just code don't need to constantly raise the fact that they are women to distract everyone else from incompetence. When ever I hear "But, I'm a <insert victim group here>" I immediately assume they have sour grapes about the lack of achievement in their life. Everyone faces adversity, it's part of life, get on with it. The adversity you faced probably didn't make you a better coder and thus I don't care. I'm not running a welfare shop, if you want to sell you sob story go there. If you want to work, then let me know. Look at the woman who optimizes Facebook's CSS, the article isn't about how she is a woman, it's about how to optimize your CSS. Why? Because she knows a lot about CSS. Guess what? She has no problem getting work or respect!
  - araneae 16y ago
    Yup. Cindy here really isn't in technology. I know plenty of women who actually do work in real technology and the few that have public blogs rarely write about women's issues.
    - crux_ 16y ago
      Probably because if they do, they'll be accused of being unable to code.
  - dasil003 16y ago
    Well, if we're talking about the way women are treated in tech workplaces, then I think there is a real issue to be discussed there. But I have a hard time working up any sympathy on the magazine cover issue, because it's unclear to what extent Wired actually shapes culture as opposed to simply reflecting it, and are we going to start dredging up statistics on covers to show every possible issue that they aren't on the right side of?
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
Female 16y ago
I am a woman, and I subscribe to Wired, and my reaction when I opened my mailbox and found that cover was "Oooh look, honey, boobies!" Quite literally. I guess I should, as a caveat, mention that I'm very sex positive and not entirely straight. But I personally believe that bodies aren't obscene, no matter what context they're in. Even if that context is an attention-getting cover on tissue engineering. Trust me, that's a pretty good use of boobies.
- gaoshan 16y ago
  It bugs me that, as a man, I feel like I can't say this (though I think it). Thank you for doing it!
- boha 16y ago
  It's not a matter of obscenity. That is not the author's contention. She is pointing out the disparity between covers featuring men and covers featuring women: Men are presented as people--pioneers, leaders, innovators--but women are presented as objects--sex symbols, characters, models. Using an anonymous woman's chest makes the objectification even more egregious. Women in tech fight an uphill battle to be recognized for their accomplishments and not just their gender identity. For the author to say that a media mainstay (Wired) in the tech arena should be trying to fight that imbalance instead of aggravating it is justifiable and welcome.
  - jamaicahest 16y ago
    Would it have been equally offensive, had they used an anonymous penis? Or does equality only apply to women?
  - sp4rki 16y ago
    Men make probably more then 90% of the middle to higher up positions in tech. Women founders of startups make around 4% of the total founder pool. What are people supposed to do? Invent important women in the tech industry out of thin air? The important women make a name for themselves, and I'd argue that the good ones have it better since it's easier to be acknowledge as an important contributor as a woman, since there are so little of them. I'm sure a great developer probably has a harder time getting some exposure, than a women at the same level (a great woman developer, a woman that's just like 90% of them won't get noticed, and neither will the men) and with the same opportunities. In my experience, great female developers are always a big deal. Everybody loves them, and they get more exposure than their peers at the same level. The one's that complain are the one's in the trenches complaining on why they have to share a bathroom.
nkassis 16y ago
I'm got to admit that for the first time I had to make extra effort to hide the cover of my magazine while reading it in the subway. I don't personally care about it one way or another but they sure can't say it wasn't meant to be provocative.
mcantelon 16y ago
People still care about Wired Magazine?
aneth 16y ago
I don't have much sympathy for the shameless use of breasts argument, as that's just American prudery. Having featured only a few women for actual accomplishments could be a real problem - except that it can probably be at least somewhat explained with a few observations: How many women did you see at Startup School this year? I'd guess the number was under 5%. What percentage of successful tech entrepreneurs you know are women? How many women are in YC? Based on these number, women may be over-represented for their digital accomplishments on Wired covers. I do hope that changes, I'm always happy to see women entrepreneurs, and Startup School attendance is by no means a valid scientific study, but it does give us some indication as to why so few women are featured.
- brudgers 16y ago
  >"How many women did you see at Startup School this year? I'd guess the number was under 5%" [Assuming the author is accurate] If you go back to 1996 for Sherry Turkle you're at ~0.5% of Wired covers...i.e. about an order of magnitude less than the startup school representation if all covers were technology (which of course they are not). Quick & dirty survey of Ted Talks tagged with "Technology" = 38/294 talks by women (~13%). http://www.ted.com/talks?tagid=1 http://www.ted.com/talks?tagid=1
  - sil3ntmac 16y ago
    To be fair not all covers of Wired feature a person. I did a google image search to check though, and ran into this: http://mrmagazine.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/wired.jpg http://mrmagazine.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/wired.jpg ...which seemed a bit more of a stretch than putting up breasts for the tissue article (albeit this is a back cover).
    - brudgers 16y ago
      I more or less admitted that in my post. I was curious if the representation of women in Ted talks tagged with "technology" was skewed, so I searched the Ted talks tagged as "business." 25/156 are women by women. Again about 15%.
- 16y ago
OneWhoFrogs 16y ago
Keep in mind those of us still in high school. My mom is the one who collects the mail and the latest cover led to an awkward conversation. It is wholly unnecessary for a technology publication to have that cover. At the very least, they should have limited it the newsstands.
- protomyth 16y ago
  My sympathy on that conversation, but I think calling Wired a technology magazine might not be terribly true anymore. It is more a pop culture magazine that happens to show tech.
- count 16y ago
  Why was it awkward?
mrduncan 16y ago
Wired's cover browser goes back to 1993: http://www.wired.com/wired/coverbrowser/ http://www.wired.com/wired/coverbrowser/
petercooper 16y ago
As Dan Savage said, I'm glad to be a man because we seem less complicated (though he was commenting on genitalia). If Wired had a picture of some guy's schlong on the cover, I wouldn't, as a man, find it "unfriendly." I can't even imagine how it feels to be so intimidated by pictures of other people. Stick goatse on a magazine and it probably wouldn't stop me buying it. But any decision to stop reading Wired seems wise to me - it has its moments but the odd issues I buy when traveling are packed with gimmicks and populist dross. Pick up magazines like Communications of the ACM instead (sadly not at airport stores) - no gimmicky covers or chesticles in sight there!
- jamesaguilar 16y ago
  I'm sure you would feel differently if the average appreciation of your gender was for its usefulness as a sex object, baby producer, and/or domestic slave. You would not feel intimidated by your representation in this way because there is such a constellation of social roles for men that are portrayed regularly in the media and other venues. Things are certainly not as bad as they once were for women, but a quick glance at sites like http://bechdeltest.com/ http://bechdeltest.com/ will make it clear that all is not well in the world either. Pardon me if my tone is a bit harsh, but honestly your comment comes off like you think it's pejoratively "complicated" for this woman to recognize and decry the objectification of her gender and its under-representation in a widely circulated magazine. By contrast you seem to feel that men are approbatively "simple" for not worrying about such things. The reality of course is that there is simply less on this front for men to worry about and this has nothing to do with one gender being complicated and the other simple. Perhaps that was not your intent, although I have to tell you that if it was I find it pretty offensive.
  - stevenbedrick 16y ago
    This. This, this this. That is all.
  - ja30278 16y ago
    I've never understood how it's possible to be offended on someone else's behalf, particularly on a perpetual basis, as your tone leads me to believe you must be. Your pejorative reading of "complicated" is far out of proportion to the original comment. Like it or not, gender differences extend beyond just having different sex organs. Men and women differ in lots of ways, including in typical emotional response. It's entirely reasonable to point out that women may respond differently to visual depictions of nudity in the same way that it's reasonable to point out that they tend to be less hairy.
sabat 16y ago
For me, the silly covers are only part of the problem. The rest: (editor) Chris Anderson's hyperbole. The web is dead! Everything will be free!
aresant 16y ago
I think this is more a case of mistaken identity. Where did Wired get all the journalistic cred that Cindy seems to be lamenting the loss of? I've been a reader for years, and it's essentially Maxim for geeks. Add to that Wired readers are overwhelming male - 75% according to their latest media kit: http://www.condenastmediakit.com/wir/circulation.cfm http://www.condenastmediakit.com/wir/circulation.cfm Conde Naste is in the business of making money with Wired, not journalism. Or is that too cynical?
- wooster 16y ago
  You might want to read the history of Wired magazine on Wikipedia. Early Wired was a much different beast than the Wired magazine of today.
  - aresant 16y ago
    Fair point - wow, that makes my impression of the brand even more depressing.
  - lhnn 16y ago
    Glanced through the wiki; I didn't see much about its amazing journalistic past that sets it apart from today. Wired is a geeky magazine with sensationalist headlines that nevertheless can be interesting most months. Once again, a woman is complaining because a magazine accurately targets its readers (though, even I was put off by the almost desperate obvious baiting with this month's cover). When I saw the 'boob' cover on TFA, before seeing the blog title, I knew it was going to be a feminist complaining about how misogynist and mean geeks and the geek ecosystem are. P.S.: Misogyny is the hatred of women. Most geeks love women! Their lack of presence in the IT world is what makes us surprised to find a competent female in our field... there are so few competent IT people anyway, so the cross-section of two minorities is rare.
    - ahi 16y ago
      Horny for women and loving women are two very different things.
Legion 16y ago
A lot of comments to this article are about the declining quality of Wired magazine. So, that leads to the question: is there any other technology-centric print media worth subscribing to instead?
- pchew 16y ago
  MIT's Technology Review: http://www.technologyreview.com/ http://www.technologyreview.com/
- daten 16y ago
  Communications of the ACM http://cacm.acm.org/ http://cacm.acm.org/ Linux Journal http://www.linuxjournal.com/ http://www.linuxjournal.com/
  - Legion 16y ago
    Is Linux Journal the stand-out Linux publication? I have never gotten around to assessing them all, and if there's one that is head-and-shoulders above the rest, I would love to subscribe to it. But I am an experienced Linux user and don't want "how to install Ubuntu on your PC alongside Windows" tutorials all the time. (Beginner articles are OK, just as long as it's a part of the magazine and not the front-page focus).
joeycfan 16y ago
Wired went downhill after it stopped being bi-monthly. I still read every issue, though.
jlees 16y ago
Oh god. I hated this cover when I got it at work. Wired just didn't consider its female readership at all with this cover.
Tichy 16y ago
If there were more women on the cover, she would probably complain that there are too many women on the cover. I looked at the cover browser and my superficial impression is that they don't put people that often on the cover anyway, and even if they are male, they also tend to be actors or jokes. Thank you for the reading recommendation of "The Memoirs of a Token: An Aging Berkeley Feminist Examines Wired." That sounds exactly like the thing I always wanted to read.
alexophile 16y ago
As a point of curiosity, I figured I'd go to Wired's website and search the obvious choice: Marissa Mayer. She was the first female employee at Google and is now their VP of Search Product and UX - easy on the eyes too. As a fan of the magazine, I was pretty disappointed in the results: 3 articles - none of which were in print (or meaningful.) Of those three, one[1] was pretty procedural, but the other two[2][3] seemed downright dismissive of someone who was the youngest person ever to make Fortune's list of "50 Most Powerful Women in the World" [1]http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2007/06/googles_marissa/ http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2007/06/googles_marissa/ [2]http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2008/04/marissa-mayer-t/ http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2008/04/marissa-mayer-t/ [3]http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2008/02/marissa-mayer-r/ http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2008/02/marissa-mayer-r/
anamax 16y ago
Magazine uses pretty women to try to attract some men - oh the horror. (However, men as success objects is just fine, but I diagress....) Look - wired doesn't "represent" anyone. It's a vehicle for attracting eyeballs to advertisements. It isn't obligated to appeal to "you" for any value of you.
brc 16y ago
Ironi ally this edition was the first inane bought in years not because it had boobs on the cover but despite that. I bought it for departure gAte reading and had old ladies were staring at me like I was reading porn.

134 points by tswicegood 16y ago

kiba 16y ago

So what if Wired Magazine have a gender imbalance over its lifetime. What's the issue here? Is it more about being offended that wired magazine don't offer equal coverage to women entrepreneurs? Maybe there aren't just many tech entrepreneurs to cover.

jolie 16y ago
It's one thing to say that the magazine has gender parity issues in its coverage, but c'mon - a huge pair of boobs on the cover isn't exactly a step in the right direction.
showerst 16y ago
It's one thing to have an imbalance of sheer number, which may well be a reflection of reality. It's another thing entirely to make 90% of the women you do depict into sexbots. Putting ugly people on the covers doesn't sell magazines, but they could at least make some effort to depict reality.
- kiba 16y ago
  Men like beautiful sexy women. Sexbots? Who would think of women as a bunch of automation, unable to think for herself, with no interests of her own, with no agenda of her own as sexy? It is not.
  - crux_ 16y ago
    If the picture of a body and not a person, "sexbot" seems an appropriate term. Perhaps the distinction is too subtle for you?
  - epochwolf 16y ago
    > Who would think of women as a bunch of automation, unable to think for herself, with no interests of her own, with no agenda of her own as sexy? It is not. I can think of a few people that seem to think that way in the way they talk about women.
- pyre 16y ago
  > they could at least make some effort to > depict reality. A cover story titled: "You will most likely die alone, with no accomplishments to your name, and no one will remember you."
  - mfukar 16y ago
    But, that'll sell like crazy, dood!
- Tichy 16y ago
  "It's another thing entirely to make 90% of the women you do depict into sexbots" Could it be just your imagination that turns those women on the covers into sex bots?

joelmichael 16y ago

She makes a good case. I'm no die-hard feminist, but this strikes me as trying to appeal to that most basic element of their mostly male readership at the expense of their female readership. Wired shouldn't be about that. Even though the whole magazine is kind of campy, and more reminiscent of science fiction than any serious study, this strikes me as more distasteful than funny or sexy. I don't want Wired to become prudish, but they have an opportunity to lead by example here.

pragmatic 16y ago
Why oh why, do most women focused magazines (which I see at the checkout counter, etc) have attractive women on them (Cosmo, etc) in various stages of undress?
- joelmichael 16y ago
  I think that's a fair question. First of all, feminists typically decry Cosmo just as quickly as they would these Wired covers. So you can't really argue there is an inconsistency there; the fact of the matter is that not all women are feminists, and not all women are Cosmo readers. The two don't usually overlap. But I'm not going to suggest there is anything wrong with Cosmo. The purpose of Cosmo is to be a woman's magazine that focuses on various traditional interests of women, including attracting men. Their covers reflect that. My problem with Wired doing it is that it doesn't fit what Wired is about. Wired represents the tech community in a sense, so I feel it reflects on me a bit what they do. Historically, it's been a nearly all-male community, yes; but most of us agree we'd like that to change, and getting rid of things like this is not much of a sacrifice. Wired should be about cool tech stuff, and there's no reason that premise should prefer one gender over the other.
  - anamax 16y ago
    > Wired represents the tech community in a sense, so I feel it reflects on me a bit what they do. Nope. Wired is an attempt to attract eyeballs to advertisements. If you think that Wired represents you, great. If not, that's great too. Either way, that's your decision, not wired's.

mrduncan 16y ago

Things were looking up a couple months ago when you published that great article on Caterina Fake of Flickr and Hunch fame. That could have been a cover… Instead you went with Will Ferrell… Like it or not, a magazine with Caterina Fake on the cover just isn't going to sell as well on news stands as one with Will Ferrell on the cover.

sudonim 16y ago
Normals (to borrow a Chris Dixon term) don't know who Caterina is...
tingley 16y ago
I'm not sure I buy this argument, because Wired consistently ignores it regards to men. Like in 2005, when they put Blake Ross on the cover (issue 13.02). Or 2006, when Will Wright was on the cover (14.04). Or 2008, when they featured Ray Ozzie (16.12) and Shai Agassi (16.09). Or Craig Newmark in 2009 (17.09). None of these people is particularly well-known outside of tech circles. I did not go back all the way in Wired's cover archive to verify Royal's claim that no woman has been on the cover "for an actual accomplishment" since Sherry Turkle in 1996. But that is that is a fairly damning data point, assuming it is true.
- achompas 16y ago
  Combined with another HNer's comment that 3/4ths of Wired's readership is male...well, you're selling to male geeks. So putting Will Wright on the cover of Wired is like putting Jon Hamm on the cover of GQ. (can't believe I made this comparison...)

MarinaMartin 16y ago

I read the first paragraph of this article and thought "this article is clearly written by an angry female." Lo and behold, the author's name is Cindy. Go Wired magazine for choosing your covers based on what will sell and not based on the loss of the five readers who might be offended by it. They can read "Bitch" (which is somehow not an offensive name for a magazine if written by feminists?). If Wired doesn't sell magazines, Wired doesn't exist.

crux_ 16y ago
To restate your first sentence: The author of the article (angry woman!) earned your dismissal of any points it had to make? golf clap

dotBen 16y ago

I have wired magazine sent to me for free (I'm actually not sure exactly how that came about) and I'm this close to calling them up and just having them stop the subscription all together - I barely even read the magazine, probably spending less than 5 mins skimming through it before it goes into the trash or the bathroom.

sudonim 16y ago
I somehow got rolling stone sent to me for free. I'd gladly trade... want to make a website to swap free magazine subscriptions?
Tichy 16y ago
Can't you just make them forward it to me instead? It always was too expensive for me - used to be 20€ per issue back in the day, not sure about now. Or donate to your local library.

gkoberger 16y ago

I don't get Wired's strategy. It seems now they're doing anything for readers- you can get a year subscription for $3.99 (if you find a good deal online), and they go with controversial covers like naked women and proclamations that "The Web Is Dead." Why can't they charge a bit more for a subscription ($36/year is still only $3/issue), and publish much higher quality content? I'd rather pay more for quality than read what they currently mail out every month.

aneth 16y ago
Because their money comes from advertisers, not subscribers.
jbarciauskas 16y ago
I don't think the 3.99 price is a signal of any kind of desperation. I read recently, I wish I could remember where, that subscription and newsstand sales make a smaller portion of magazine revenue when compared to ads. Publishers would give them away for free to push up their circulation and thereby their ad rates, except advertisers discount ads placed in free publications. So publishers run all kinds of special promotions to push up circulation without appearing to cheapen their product to their advertisers. That's one possible explanation, or it could be simple price segmentation - offering different prices through different channels to increase overall revenue.
nkurz 16y ago
Presuming this is a real question, it's a matter of economics. Magazines like Wired make most of their money from advertising. They've judged, likely correctly, that if they charge more for subscriptions, they will lose more profit than they gain. Magazines are closing down left and right. Wired is still in business because they have resorted to cheap tricks like "sex sells". While I applaud subscribers deciding they aren't going to put up with this any longer, I think you'd be mistaken if you think they could make more money by doing anything else.

sudonim 16y ago

Open question: Why do many women in technology make their gender the focus of their work? http://cindyroyal.com/ http://cindyroyal.com/

throwaway6857 16y ago
Because they can't code. The ones that can just code don't need to constantly raise the fact that they are women to distract everyone else from incompetence. When ever I hear "But, I'm a <insert victim group here>" I immediately assume they have sour grapes about the lack of achievement in their life. Everyone faces adversity, it's part of life, get on with it. The adversity you faced probably didn't make you a better coder and thus I don't care. I'm not running a welfare shop, if you want to sell you sob story go there. If you want to work, then let me know. Look at the woman who optimizes Facebook's CSS, the article isn't about how she is a woman, it's about how to optimize your CSS. Why? Because she knows a lot about CSS. Guess what? She has no problem getting work or respect!
- araneae 16y ago
  Yup. Cindy here really isn't in technology. I know plenty of women who actually do work in real technology and the few that have public blogs rarely write about women's issues.
  - crux_ 16y ago
    Probably because if they do, they'll be accused of being unable to code.
- dasil003 16y ago
  Well, if we're talking about the way women are treated in tech workplaces, then I think there is a real issue to be discussed there. But I have a hard time working up any sympathy on the magazine cover issue, because it's unclear to what extent Wired actually shapes culture as opposed to simply reflecting it, and are we going to start dredging up statistics on covers to show every possible issue that they aren't on the right side of?

deleted 16y ago

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Female 16y ago

I am a woman, and I subscribe to Wired, and my reaction when I opened my mailbox and found that cover was "Oooh look, honey, boobies!" Quite literally. I guess I should, as a caveat, mention that I'm very sex positive and not entirely straight. But I personally believe that bodies aren't obscene, no matter what context they're in. Even if that context is an attention-getting cover on tissue engineering. Trust me, that's a pretty good use of boobies.

gaoshan 16y ago
It bugs me that, as a man, I feel like I can't say this (though I think it). Thank you for doing it!
boha 16y ago
It's not a matter of obscenity. That is not the author's contention. She is pointing out the disparity between covers featuring men and covers featuring women: Men are presented as people--pioneers, leaders, innovators--but women are presented as objects--sex symbols, characters, models. Using an anonymous woman's chest makes the objectification even more egregious. Women in tech fight an uphill battle to be recognized for their accomplishments and not just their gender identity. For the author to say that a media mainstay (Wired) in the tech arena should be trying to fight that imbalance instead of aggravating it is justifiable and welcome.
- jamaicahest 16y ago
  Would it have been equally offensive, had they used an anonymous penis? Or does equality only apply to women?
- sp4rki 16y ago
  Men make probably more then 90% of the middle to higher up positions in tech. Women founders of startups make around 4% of the total founder pool. What are people supposed to do? Invent important women in the tech industry out of thin air? The important women make a name for themselves, and I'd argue that the good ones have it better since it's easier to be acknowledge as an important contributor as a woman, since there are so little of them. I'm sure a great developer probably has a harder time getting some exposure, than a women at the same level (a great woman developer, a woman that's just like 90% of them won't get noticed, and neither will the men) and with the same opportunities. In my experience, great female developers are always a big deal. Everybody loves them, and they get more exposure than their peers at the same level. The one's that complain are the one's in the trenches complaining on why they have to share a bathroom.

nkassis 16y ago

I'm got to admit that for the first time I had to make extra effort to hide the cover of my magazine while reading it in the subway. I don't personally care about it one way or another but they sure can't say it wasn't meant to be provocative.

mcantelon 16y ago

People still care about Wired Magazine?

aneth 16y ago

I don't have much sympathy for the shameless use of breasts argument, as that's just American prudery. Having featured only a few women for actual accomplishments could be a real problem - except that it can probably be at least somewhat explained with a few observations: How many women did you see at Startup School this year? I'd guess the number was under 5%. What percentage of successful tech entrepreneurs you know are women? How many women are in YC? Based on these number, women may be over-represented for their digital accomplishments on Wired covers. I do hope that changes, I'm always happy to see women entrepreneurs, and Startup School attendance is by no means a valid scientific study, but it does give us some indication as to why so few women are featured.

brudgers 16y ago
>"How many women did you see at Startup School this year? I'd guess the number was under 5%" [Assuming the author is accurate] If you go back to 1996 for Sherry Turkle you're at ~0.5% of Wired covers...i.e. about an order of magnitude less than the startup school representation if all covers were technology (which of course they are not). Quick & dirty survey of Ted Talks tagged with "Technology" = 38/294 talks by women (~13%). http://www.ted.com/talks?tagid=1 http://www.ted.com/talks?tagid=1
- sil3ntmac 16y ago
  To be fair not all covers of Wired feature a person. I did a google image search to check though, and ran into this: http://mrmagazine.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/wired.jpg http://mrmagazine.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/wired.jpg ...which seemed a bit more of a stretch than putting up breasts for the tissue article (albeit this is a back cover).
  - brudgers 16y ago
    I more or less admitted that in my post. I was curious if the representation of women in Ted talks tagged with "technology" was skewed, so I searched the Ted talks tagged as "business." 25/156 are women by women. Again about 15%.
16y ago

OneWhoFrogs 16y ago

Keep in mind those of us still in high school. My mom is the one who collects the mail and the latest cover led to an awkward conversation. It is wholly unnecessary for a technology publication to have that cover. At the very least, they should have limited it the newsstands.

protomyth 16y ago
My sympathy on that conversation, but I think calling Wired a technology magazine might not be terribly true anymore. It is more a pop culture magazine that happens to show tech.
count 16y ago
Why was it awkward?

mrduncan 16y ago

Wired's cover browser goes back to 1993: http://www.wired.com/wired/coverbrowser/ http://www.wired.com/wired/coverbrowser/

petercooper 16y ago

As Dan Savage said, I'm glad to be a man because we seem less complicated (though he was commenting on genitalia). If Wired had a picture of some guy's schlong on the cover, I wouldn't, as a man, find it "unfriendly." I can't even imagine how it feels to be so intimidated by pictures of other people. Stick goatse on a magazine and it probably wouldn't stop me buying it. But any decision to stop reading Wired seems wise to me - it has its moments but the odd issues I buy when traveling are packed with gimmicks and populist dross. Pick up magazines like Communications of the ACM instead (sadly not at airport stores) - no gimmicky covers or chesticles in sight there!

jamesaguilar 16y ago
I'm sure you would feel differently if the average appreciation of your gender was for its usefulness as a sex object, baby producer, and/or domestic slave. You would not feel intimidated by your representation in this way because there is such a constellation of social roles for men that are portrayed regularly in the media and other venues. Things are certainly not as bad as they once were for women, but a quick glance at sites like http://bechdeltest.com/ http://bechdeltest.com/ will make it clear that all is not well in the world either. Pardon me if my tone is a bit harsh, but honestly your comment comes off like you think it's pejoratively "complicated" for this woman to recognize and decry the objectification of her gender and its under-representation in a widely circulated magazine. By contrast you seem to feel that men are approbatively "simple" for not worrying about such things. The reality of course is that there is simply less on this front for men to worry about and this has nothing to do with one gender being complicated and the other simple. Perhaps that was not your intent, although I have to tell you that if it was I find it pretty offensive.
- stevenbedrick 16y ago
  This. This, this this. That is all.
- ja30278 16y ago
  I've never understood how it's possible to be offended on someone else's behalf, particularly on a perpetual basis, as your tone leads me to believe you must be. Your pejorative reading of "complicated" is far out of proportion to the original comment. Like it or not, gender differences extend beyond just having different sex organs. Men and women differ in lots of ways, including in typical emotional response. It's entirely reasonable to point out that women may respond differently to visual depictions of nudity in the same way that it's reasonable to point out that they tend to be less hairy.

sabat 16y ago

For me, the silly covers are only part of the problem. The rest: (editor) Chris Anderson's hyperbole. The web is dead! Everything will be free!

aresant 16y ago

I think this is more a case of mistaken identity. Where did Wired get all the journalistic cred that Cindy seems to be lamenting the loss of? I've been a reader for years, and it's essentially Maxim for geeks. Add to that Wired readers are overwhelming male - 75% according to their latest media kit: http://www.condenastmediakit.com/wir/circulation.cfm http://www.condenastmediakit.com/wir/circulation.cfm Conde Naste is in the business of making money with Wired, not journalism. Or is that too cynical?

wooster 16y ago
You might want to read the history of Wired magazine on Wikipedia. Early Wired was a much different beast than the Wired magazine of today.
- aresant 16y ago
  Fair point - wow, that makes my impression of the brand even more depressing.
- lhnn 16y ago
  Glanced through the wiki; I didn't see much about its amazing journalistic past that sets it apart from today. Wired is a geeky magazine with sensationalist headlines that nevertheless can be interesting most months. Once again, a woman is complaining because a magazine accurately targets its readers (though, even I was put off by the almost desperate obvious baiting with this month's cover). When I saw the 'boob' cover on TFA, before seeing the blog title, I knew it was going to be a feminist complaining about how misogynist and mean geeks and the geek ecosystem are. P.S.: Misogyny is the hatred of women. Most geeks love women! Their lack of presence in the IT world is what makes us surprised to find a competent female in our field... there are so few competent IT people anyway, so the cross-section of two minorities is rare.
  - ahi 16y ago
    Horny for women and loving women are two very different things.

Legion 16y ago

A lot of comments to this article are about the declining quality of Wired magazine. So, that leads to the question: is there any other technology-centric print media worth subscribing to instead?

pchew 16y ago
MIT's Technology Review: http://www.technologyreview.com/ http://www.technologyreview.com/
daten 16y ago
Communications of the ACM http://cacm.acm.org/ http://cacm.acm.org/ Linux Journal http://www.linuxjournal.com/ http://www.linuxjournal.com/
- Legion 16y ago
  Is Linux Journal the stand-out Linux publication? I have never gotten around to assessing them all, and if there's one that is head-and-shoulders above the rest, I would love to subscribe to it. But I am an experienced Linux user and don't want "how to install Ubuntu on your PC alongside Windows" tutorials all the time. (Beginner articles are OK, just as long as it's a part of the magazine and not the front-page focus).

joeycfan 16y ago

Wired went downhill after it stopped being bi-monthly. I still read every issue, though.

jlees 16y ago

Oh god. I hated this cover when I got it at work. Wired just didn't consider its female readership at all with this cover.

Tichy 16y ago

If there were more women on the cover, she would probably complain that there are too many women on the cover. I looked at the cover browser and my superficial impression is that they don't put people that often on the cover anyway, and even if they are male, they also tend to be actors or jokes. Thank you for the reading recommendation of "The Memoirs of a Token: An Aging Berkeley Feminist Examines Wired." That sounds exactly like the thing I always wanted to read.

alexophile 16y ago

As a point of curiosity, I figured I'd go to Wired's website and search the obvious choice: Marissa Mayer. She was the first female employee at Google and is now their VP of Search Product and UX - easy on the eyes too. As a fan of the magazine, I was pretty disappointed in the results: 3 articles - none of which were in print (or meaningful.) Of those three, one[1] was pretty procedural, but the other two[2][3] seemed downright dismissive of someone who was the youngest person ever to make Fortune's list of "50 Most Powerful Women in the World" [1]http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2007/06/googles_marissa/ http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2007/06/googles_marissa/ [2]http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2008/04/marissa-mayer-t/ http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2008/04/marissa-mayer-t/ [3]http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2008/02/marissa-mayer-r/ http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2008/02/marissa-mayer-r/

anamax 16y ago

Magazine uses pretty women to try to attract some men - oh the horror. (However, men as success objects is just fine, but I diagress....) Look - wired doesn't "represent" anyone. It's a vehicle for attracting eyeballs to advertisements. It isn't obligated to appeal to "you" for any value of you.

brc 16y ago

Ironi ally this edition was the first inane bought in years not because it had boobs on the cover but despite that. I bought it for departure gAte reading and had old ladies were staring at me like I was reading porn.