(2017-02-25) Inside Teen Vogue Our Readers Consider Themselves

Inside Teen Vogue: 'Our readers consider themselves activists'

29-year-old Teen Vogue editor (not editor-in-chief) Elaine Welteroth

Launched in 2004 as a little sister to US Vogue

But beginning with the August 2015 issue, the team, including then beauty editor Welteroth, engineered a shift. That issue featured three unknown black models on the cover

The daily 11am editorial meeting is about to begin, led by 25-year-old digital director Phillip Picardi.

This morning’s stories (the team publishes between 50 and 70 a day) present a typically mixed bag of fashion, entertainment and current affairs

It is the website that runs Teen Vogue’s most overt political coverage

At first, “that stuff was a very small dent in our traffic. We had to make the case that our audience would respond.” Sure enough, they did. And then some. “A year and a half later, give or take, traffic (to the site overall) is up over 200%.

Welteroth, who was made editor of the monthly print edition in May 2016, and is only the second African American editor of any Conde Nast title in its 108-year history, is widely credited as the driving force behind the magazine’s shift.

What issues are most important to their young readers? “Identity is big. We want to help make them feel better about themselves, whether that’s giving beauty tips, or empowering them with political information to have smarter conversations and feel they can stand up for themselves.” Career advice “is an evergreen topic”; above all, “young people are craving something real, craving authenticity”.

There were several years when Teen Vogue was seen to embody the most bland type of media aimed at young girls; commercial, safe, focused on shopping and body image. As part of a backlash of sorts, the writer and editor Tavi Gevinson set up Rookie magazine in 2011, when she was 15, a website that was explicitly feminist and complex.