By Marisa Pjerrou
While I haven't read Ms. Magazine in years, a sense of loyalty
to the historical significance of this publication led me to visit
its website. Founded in the early 70's and considered a prime force
in the creation of the feminist movement, Ms. did groundbreaking
reporting on women's issues long marginalized by the mainstream media.
With all the struggles this magazine has gone through to financially
stay afloat - mainly as a result of refusing to cop out to advertisers'
demands - Ms. Seems to have finally found the stability it
so richly deserves in its sale to Liberty Media for Women, LLC, a
consortium of feminists that includes one of the magazine's original
founders, Gloria Steinem.
How then does this grand dame of feminist journalism sustain
itself in cyberspace while eschewing mainstream advertising? The magazine's
website at www.msmagazine.com
seems to mainly function as a lure to potential Ms. subscribers
by highlighting article excerpts from the most current issue; and
surprisingly the site does have some advertising support in an e-merchant
section called the "Ms.Mall." Regular readers of Ms.
(whom the magazine simply describes as being "women of all ages")
might like visiting the site to participate in the discussion board
that had some good dialogue going with both men and women participants.
And there were some good links to sites Ms. describes as "the
best of the feminist web" (one interesting link was to a body
image web site at www.adiosbarbie.com
that had a strange "Feed the Model" game). Unfortunately,
the archives feature only gives access to past issues up to 1999.
If I were doing some serious academic research related to feminist
studies, I probably wouldn't find too much at www.msmagazine.com.
It is both ironic and amazing to consider that the wealth of research
data now available in journals and academic institutions related to
women's studies is a direct result of the movement Ms. helped
to launch three decades ago, and that the network of that informational
data by far supercedes the magazine's own resources. It will be interesting
to see whether Ms. can make it in an era consumed by niche
marketing and youth as consumers. While the web site could certainly
capitalize on that, and help Ms. reach a much different audience
than that of its regular readers, that doesn't appear to be the main
purpose of the site. Rather, the site seems to convey the message
that you either get what Ms. is about, or you don't - and if
you do get it you can subscribe or participate in the online discussions.
A few recommendations I have about improvements are related to the
graphic layout design: there is far too much blank white headspace
on top which is occupied by an incredibly annoying blinking banner
advertising the National Women's History Project. The NWHP banner
cannot be closed or avoided - it appears on every screen with the
same irritating blinking and the same amount of blank white headspace
on top. I had to devise clever ways to cover up that banner (i.e.,
opening up another window and shrinking it to fit and cover the banner)
if I wanted to read longer articles! Another annoying blinking image
of issues of Ms. magazine advertises subscriptions on the home
page. Doesn't the blinking feature violate some basic rule of aesthetics
in web-design? A still image would be far more effective and less
migraine inducing.