Vanity Fair’s “Bono” Issue Demos High-End User Gen
Important Details: For its July issue, Vanity Fair turned to Bono, leader of U2 and acclaimed AIDS and anti-poverty activist, as “guest editor.” The result is a stunning issue, focused on a continent little covered than for the occasional violence, Africa. The issue tells readers much of what they don’t know about the continent and its people, its youth, its music, and its small, successful attempts at economic development. What stands out about the issue — and what is worth studying by news and magazine publishers and editors of all kinds — is how Bono turned beyond the usual suspects to do much of the interviewing, reporting, and writing. No, it’s not an internet-driven user-gen project, but it is a fresh addition of new talent to the mix.
The issue solicited work from a diverse group including former Viacom CEO Tom Freston (writing about a Mali music adventure), artist Damien Hurst (writing about a Congolese artist) and novelist Binyavanga Wainaina (writing about her Kenyan generation’s downs and ups), among numerous others.
“When an article about Bono guest-editing this issue appeared in The New York Times, an unprecedented torrent of story ideas — sometimes dozens in a single day — poured in from photographers, writers, and non-governmental organizations,” wrote Vanity Fair Editor Graydon Carter in an editor’s note. “Most of them were substantive and interesting.”
Implications: All publishers and editors can apply some lessons from this modest experiment. The experiment need not involve the high-end Vanity Fair or the celebrated Bono. Every community has its own “Africa,” an area little covered, and it has many local Bonos, people with wide name recognition and strong networks of relationships. The local “Africas ” may be communities poorly covered, from barrios to the working poor to immigrant groups to local education issues of many kinds. Such experiments don’t mean relinquishing editorial authority; they mean reaching out to new contributors and in the process many new potential readers, in print and online. One of the distinctive attributes of the Vanity Fair special issue is an online resource bank, referred to repeatedly in print, and well-done with what online does better than print. Another is an interactive map, which can spur many ideas for local application.
Overall, the issue points to a wider truth of our publishing age. New voices — professional, amateur, global, local — can be found everywhere, and many are eager to offer work for next to nothing. For traditional publishers, the art here is learning how and where to find and use them, alongside traditional journalistic content.