Tag: beauty journalist

My column about beauty journalists is something for insiders. For my female colleagues, because there are only a handful of men in our industry who have experienced the same thing as me. The rest of the readers will smile at my experiences. The more sardonic among them will say they always knew that journalists are a spoiled bunch who get everything shoved in front and behind them just so they can write a positive (lie) story. It serves them right that the wind has changed after Corona, they will say. We beauty journalists – I have to admit -have actually been a very pampered people (by the beauty industry) over the many fat years. After all, a good placement in the respective magazine with positive coverage paid off for the companies in hard cash. Even back then, it was questionable whether it was justifiable for a handful of journalists to be flown to the desert for an afternoon just to attend the unveiling of a new perfume. Simply decadent. And not just in terms of the CO2 footprint, which nobody was talking about at the time. Beauty Journalists jet to Paris for a single lipstick I also remember a press trip to Paris with one laughing and one crying eye. The whole thing took place – in an illustrious setting, of course – to launch a single new lipstick. A colleague from a national German daily newspaper wrote a very smug story about how stupid it was to fly to Paris just for a lipstick. I had a great time reading her article, because it really was as far-fetched as she described.tte. But the colleague was also privileged in one way: she could afford it because, although she accepted the invitation, (a) her publisher paid the expenses and (b) the inviting party did not place any advertisements in her newspaper. The rest of us were only allowed to write nice things because the organizer was, after all, an advertising customer of all our magazines. One bad word and each of us would have had our notice on the table the same day. These two outstanding episodes happened more than 15 years ago. But even in the 2010s, there were still plenty of paid trips near and far for journalists to attend product launches. One more thing needs to be said: If the cosmetics manufacturers were already doing it badly, the car companies topped it off with their excessive events and guest gifts.… weiterlesen