English Version | The social unreal

01 Sep 2022
By Diego Armés

Social magazines are profuse in the practice of gossip and it is curious to see that there is an entire industry feeding on rumors, on peeking, on discoveries and secrets.

Social magazines are profuse in the practice of gossip and it is curious to see that there is an entire industry feeding on rumors, on peeking, on discoveries and secrets. Said like that, it sounds like we are talking about a murky business full of hairy secrets. That may be so, but it is best to demystify it a little and try to understand if the rumors are true. We went straight to the source, and talked to a former journalist from a social magazine. She made some surprising revelations. 

The interviewee requested anonymity. Let's call her Mafalda, a name common enough not to denounce her, but with enough character to give her personality. A personality that is shown and that demonstrated throughout a conversation that was as relaxed as frank, as amusing as  serious, and always serene. Mafalda was, once, "a long time ago", as she insists to underline several times and in different moments of the conversation, a journalist for a social magazine - by "social" we mean of moderate voyeurism, of confirmation of light rumors, of revelations of fait-divers, encounters, misencounters, new loves, plastic surgery, and enviable tans. "It was 85% gossip, we're talking, for example, interviews with 'famous people'" [she really does air quotes], she says, adding that the remaining 15% were beauty pages, shopping, what to see and do, that sort of thing. "A long time ago" means somewhere during the first decade of the 21st century, a time with little Internet and even less social media, and which Mafalda considers to be substantially different because of this - today, the digital platforms end up occupying, in a way, the place that was then of these magazines: they show what the private life is, what is the allegedly normal life of people we admire, or recognize, or that matter to us without us knowing them; or they show what these people want to show to a wider audience when - and because - it is convenient for them. Yes, don't think that social and gossip magazines are all about paparazzi riding fast motorcycles or hiding behind strategically planted bushes: "There's often a certain game here," says Mafalda. "Not everyone played it, and maybe 'game' is not the right term - but there is a notion that if I give to you and you give to me, we all win." Let's try to understand it better - all of it.

It all happened at a time when "there was no other platform, other than the physical one, the magazine, to spread that kind of information - Facebook came along around that time". Magazines "sold a lot" and that one was no exception, it "had a considerably large newsroom" compared to the newsrooms we see today. Did such publications feed voyeurism or was it this inherent tendency in the human condition that fostered the existence of such magazines? She says it was a little bit of both, but that those publications fed voyeurism, because even if someone wanted to be indifferent, they couldn't escape the juicy cover photos, "the eye would go there, even if inadvertently." She gives the example of her father, "who doesn't care about it at all, but if he saw a front page or a cover with [President] Marcelo [Rebelo de Sousa] having dinner with an enemy, or naked at the beach, he wouldn't look away." Mafalda talks about what readers were looking for, "they wanted to know what was going on: if person A or B was still married to person C, if someone had cheated on someone, if there was an unexpected pregnancy, or else, through interviews we were able to get to know a little more about celebrities, which is something that creates a lot of curiosity." She compares it to foreign publications: "Abroad, we used to publish subtitled photos with the prices of dresses and shoes of princesses and personalities. People wanted to know how much they cost and where to buy them." Reading these magazines is, according to Mafalda, a "very nice way" to watch real dramas without having to live them. "People vibe with it," she says. "The X Y fought, someone cheated on someone - this is in extremis, I don't think this would be published - anyone who sees this is like seeing several real-life soap operas, without having their life affected by it." "There must be a dopamine spike when you're reading that," she says. The contents with which the magazine where Mafalda worked made news often from rumors, so some of the work consisted of confirming those rumors. "At that time there was a newspaper, the 24 Horas, which had a lot of juicy stuff. Both it and Correio da Manhã were the riskiest when it came to messing with celebrities. This magazine was softer. Nothing that was too serious or that would ruin someone's name was published. People just wanted to know what was going on. Nowadays there is social media, there are the websites.”

It comes with the job

Among the various tasks that the journalist performed, the waits were perhaps the ones that marked her the most, or that, at least, left the most memories. "There was a specific event, we decided that we were going to paparazzo a person who was starring in one of the evening soap operas. She didn't appear much or give interviews - nor did she have to - so it was decided that a journalist and a photographer would go and knock on her door. This is important, because everybody knows where everybody lives - if you don't know, you ask a colleague of yours, from your magazine or another magazine; this weekend I found my address book, we're talking about a time when everything was still on the phone.” It was two days in a row in front of that actress' door, from seven in the morning to seven in the afternoon. Mafalda doesn't understand her role in the middle of the wait: "I wasn't going to write live, in loco, there was no publication on the Inter- net, on social media, nothing." A wait like this involves a number of difficulties, "you want to go to the bathroom, you can't go out, you won't; food, one has to stay in the car, the other goes to buy it, and there wasn't that much choice." In this case ("this was in Restelo") they ate McDonald's. Another difficulty in keeping track is what you do with a person next to you. One easily exhausts the subject of conversation two consecutive 12-hour days with the same person. All this effort to try to get an image that other magazines didn't have, to show things as ordinary as the protagonist of the evening soap opera leaving the house without makeup, for example. "It's extra! extra! If you have children and are caught off guard with them.”

Watches are not all the same. "Doing Algarve was different." Doing Algarve is a seasonal task that occurs "in any social magazine": "Starting in June, the newsroom begins to be divided and the journalists begin to be assigned, one by one, to take turns going to spend a week with a photographer in Algarve." Why? Because "that's where all the famous people go and you have to go there to 'hit the beaches', as they used to say, and walk around to see what you can find." Therefore, journalist and photographer go from beach to beach during the course of a week, often following the suggestions and tips shared by other journalists from the competition - "there was a restaurant where all the journalists got together; (...) Doing Algarve is an example of what mutual help could be in this segment of journalism" - to try to discover anything that was or could happen. This means "things as simple as a television host swimming in the sea, or getting out of the water and returning to her chair, or some singer being with his family. These are pages and pages of people on the beach, 'look how fit she is', or 'look how out of shape she is', 'look at her son', 'look at her new boyfriend', 'look how cute they are coming from the sea', or 'they were on the beach, but they were a little bit distant'. From a simple trip to the beach you can build stories. In most cases, they were very simple things, people were on the beach and very innocuous things happened." Then they added a little creativity, especially if it was cover work - and the cover line didn't always correspond to the content that came inside, much to the disappointment of readers, eager for intrigue, who ended up with the everyday banality of people just having normal lives. "Summer issues are usually around someone on the beach or someone's vacation. If someone agrees to give an interview while on vacation, that's even better, because it's official, because it makes the interview more relevant and legitimate.”

The most wanted celebrities

Mafalda's magazine looked "mainly for soap opera celebrities". "Where I worked, no, but there were, and today they use it a lot, people who look for former contestants from Big Brother and other reality shows. And soccer players during vacations, especially those going to the National Soccer Team." She remembers an episode with one of those players, a well-known member of the National Team. "We were in his hometown, he had gone to play abroad recently. There were journalists and photographers from three or four different media outlets, and the invitation included entry to a party where the player would be. Before the party, which would be New Year's Eve, the journalists had no trouble locating the star. They found him having lunch with friends and family, waited until the lunch was over and two of the journalists came up to approach him, leaving the photographers on hold. "It was terrible. He was really rude, said we wouldn't leave him alone and that it was a disgrace, that he was there with friends and family. We apologized and left, even though I think it was actually a nice intrusion, we asked if it was possible, photographers weren't even taking pictures of his lunch." At the party, it was no better: "We left at the same time as him and he completely freaked out, started ordering the photographers to leave, threatened to call security.”

Not all celebrities react the same way. "Some understand the work of journalists.” And how many of those who have been rude sometimes take advantage of this kind of journalism? "Several people said they didn't want to appear, they didn't want to be photographed, they didn't want anything, but suddenly, if they were interested for some reason - or because they had a new project, or because they had a new boyfriend, or because they were thin - they would call to let us know where they were going to be so they could be photographed without knowing they were being photographed. Someone would call the newsroom, it could be the celebrities themselves, it could be the agent." Oh, yeah? So, for example, when we see in various magazines a situation, let's say, "I don't know who took Tristão to tennis?" "Yes, it could have been Tristão’s father or Tristão’s mother telling she was going to take Tristão to tennis, often that's just what happens." And what catchy title would you take from this everyday situation? "A title I would choose for this might be ‘Tristão's father has time to take his son to tennis'. So on top of what he does that makes him famous, he still has time to go put his son to tennis, 'look what a good father he is'." Right. So, what if it was the mother taking Tristão? "Then it gets harder. Mom always has to have time, it's kind of sad, but it's true. In that case, I'd probably opt for the place where he plays tennis. ‘Tristão's mother, doing her 15th task of the day, went to tennis’."

Conflicts and understandings 

During her time at the magazine, Mafalda learned good things: "I learned how to manage, to have initiative. I learned to wait. I left because it wasn't something I liked and I wasn't good at it." She says she has fond memories, but she doesn't miss it and would never work in this kind of publication again. She also keeps a moral medal: "Once they threatened me and the magazine with a lawsuit. In this industry, a lawsuit is a medal, a public recognition. However, that magazine did not look for the most scandalous topics. She says that the best stories she keeps - "and I only worked there for two years" - are the ones she can't tell because she never published them. But let's imagine, for example, that Tristão’s father and Beatriz’s mother… “Tristão's father and Beatriz’s mother, I don't know if they were doing anything.... That was something that could even be published, but it had to be analyzed at on a case-by-case basis. There was a whole set of non-publishable things. There might even be a photographic record, but it was buried. There was a common understanding that certain things would not be published. For example, someone caught doing drugs. The photo of Kate Moss snorting cocaine, here, would never be published." So there is a lot of gossip going on behind the scenes of these magazines. "If many of the journalists who worked for many years in these kinds of magazines, all of them, after their careers were over, told their stories, it would make good entertainment." 

Translated from the original on The Gossip Issue of Vogue Portugal.Full credits and stories on the print issue.

Diego Armés By Diego Armés

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