Elle Magazine, legal issues

As far as I can see, Elleuk.com has not been involved in any illegal activity and as far as I know has never been taken to court. However, the Elle Magazine franchise has previously been cautioned to be sued.

Coco Rocha threatened Elle Brazil in April 2012 after the magazine photoshopped an image of her that was to appear on the cover, so that it appeared as though the model was showing far more skin than she agreed to. The model submitted the following statement on her tumblr. 

"As a high fashion model I have long had a policy of no nudity or partial nudity in my photo shoots. For my recent Elle Brazil cover shoot I wore a body suit under a sheer dress which I now find was photoshopped out to give the impression of me showing much more skin than I...am comfortable with. This was specifically against my expressed verbal and written direction to the entire team that they not do so. I’m extremely disappointed that my wishes and contract were ignored. I strongly believe every model has a right to set rules for how she is portrayed and for me these rules were clearly circumvented."

Below is the offending cover:

As far as I've researched, Coco Rocha took no further action.

In December 2010, Bollywood Actress, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan threatened to sue Elle after the colour of her skin appeared several shades lighter on her cover of the 14th anniversary issue. 

(Aishwarya's Cover for Elle)

This was not the first time Elle magazine has come under fire over such airbrushing, a similar situation occured with a cover of the U.S. edition earlier that year. Black actress Gabourey Sidibe appeared on the cover of the title with a noticeably paler complexion. On that occasion Elle claimed it had not altered the Precious star’s skin any more than that of the other models ­photographed alongside her.

(Gabourey Sidibe Elle cover)

French Elle also underwent further racism allegations following a feature that suggested that black celebrities were adopting a 'white style' with an ethnic twist. The editor had to issue a formal apology on a live French television show called Canal+.

(The feature that provoked controversy in Elle fr)

Elleonline Data handling

Elle gives people the option to join in debates so the website can collect data and use it in future articles. For example in a recent article called 'Why do we Want to be Thinner?' Elle captioned the end of the article by encouraging readers to 'join the debate' by tweeting in their opinions. This helps Elle to understand their demographic more.

The website is also able to guage the demographic by collecting data through a 'like' count. Each article gives the reader the option to 'like' it via Facebook. This enables Elle to collect data on what is the most popular on their site.

In some of their more scientific articles Elle has to rely on data collected by other sources. In a recent article about sleepwalking they chose to feature facts from a survey collected by Londonsleepcentre.com. This also suggests that their data collecting process applies only to the area local to the company, London.

Of course interviews that are on the site collect their data from the person being interviewed.

Week 7- Fight breaks out during student lecture

Lecture halls aren't best known for their drama. However today during their Journalism Futures lecture, students were awoken from their commotosed states by a rather dramatic interlude.

The University of the West of England students, in their third year of study, saw the end of their lecture come to a eastenders-like conclude when two girls, unknown to the rest of the class, walked in and began to argue.

The first girl had been rumoured to have entered the room ten minutes prior to the second who, as soon as she arrived, began a quarrel with the first. It was unclear what the girls issue was concerning but one was heard saying; 'All I hear is lies from you!' The first girl was heard trying to pursuade her companion that they ought to leave this discussion, but the second was insistant that the issue was resolved then.

It appeared that the lecture would have been lost for good had not one chirpy student, Georgia Legallinne, asking them to 'take it outside.' The girls promptly left but not before pointing directly at Lee Salter, the students' lecturer, and stating 'I knew you would f**king do this.'

On interview Georgia said; 'I'd never seen those girls before but I'm pretty sure one of the girls does Drama.' Other students were quick to question whether the girls fight was a piece of performing arts. Other concerns remain around Lee Salter's involvment with the girls row and what could have possibly sparked such an unruly argument.

Elle Magazine facts and figures

Elle Readership figures ending March 2011

Reach:

It was read by 797,000 adults.

Percentage reach:

It was read by 1.6% of the adult population.

ELLE is the world’s biggest-selling fashion magazine and largest fashion online network. It is THE international authority on STYLE with 43 magazines editions and
28 websites worldwide. Launched in Paris in 1945 ELLE was the first to inspire women to celebrate their personal STYLE and individuality.

Brand Proposition
For Stylish Young Individuals, ELLE is the style guide that decodesthe world of fashion and culture to provide useful inspiration and practical ideas for developing your own style , in every area of your life.

Brand Values
Stylish
Thought-provoking
Inspiring
Useful
In the know

The editors and journalists of Elle

Elleuk.com currently has 9 online editors stretching across different departments including:
-Editor
-Acting Fashion Editor
-News Editor
-Commercial Editor
-Picture Editor
-Acting Picture Editor
-Travel Editors (3)

(Carrie Tyler- Editor of elleuk.com)

It has 7 other online roles which are the following:
-Fashion Features Director
-Beauty Writer
-Fashion Assistant
-Creative Director
-Picture Assistant
-Travel Assistant
-Fashion Intern

Overall there are 16 members of staff who work for elleuk.com

Audience feedback and interaction

Elleuk.com does facillitate audience and feedback interaction. One of the main ways in which they do this is through their twitter feed. The site features a twitter feed which has a live stream of tweets both from ELLE itself and it's readers. Because the stream is live anyone could write anything about ELLE and it would be featured on the site, this gives a feel of audience freedom.

Beneath all of the articles featured on the site, the readers are given the option to tweet, like on Facebook, pin to their Pinterest, google+ or email the article. However unlike it's competitors, elleuk.com does not have the option for readers to comment on articles. This gives the impression that this is more of an elite online publication that does not really allow for citizen journalism or crowdsourcing.

Week 5- seminar, social media, personalisation and distribution

Here is Elle UK's ABC cross platform circulation cirtifcate.

elleuk.com has covered costumes from the new Bond film. On a search of twittermap of 'bond costumes' the following was tweeted:

WTFWatchTimeFly from Nottingham UKBond costumes: 'We made it as naked as possible': Jany Temime designed for Skyfall   http://t.co/rYybA0y8

FemminaForte from US#fashion Bond costumes: 'We
made it as naked as possible' - Jany Temime designed for Skyfall   http://t.co/I4cjGMO3



liz_creep from EnglandBond costumes: 'We made it as naked as possible': Jany Temime designed for Skyfall http://t.co/XNWXvXhX

Two of the tweets featured words used by the magazine, and only one of the tweets was from outside of the UK.

I then did a second search for 'Royal Wedding Style' as reported by the site and there was larger increase in tweets. The majority were in the USA, then one tweet in Britain and another in Denmark.

I looked on google trends for Royal Wedding Style and it displayed the following results:



 Once again most of the interest was generated from the USA.

I used the search tool 'site explorer' to investigate elleuk.com's online presence.

It appears that the site has a quite a big online authority. The majority of the links to the site that were listed were from amateur fashion bloggers.

Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is an act whereby a job that would usually been given to one individual becomes on open market and 'the crowd' can contribute. Wikipedia is a form of crowdsourcing because anyone can contribute. Elleuk uses crowd sourcing in the way that it streams it's audience's tweets on the site providing content for the site, but using the crowd to gain this content.

Readership of Elle online

According to the Hearst magazine UK website the websites brand values are the following:

Stylish

Thought-provoking

Inspiring

Useful

In the know

It claims that the magazine is for 'stylish young individuals' with 'useful inspiration and practical ideas for developing your own style , in every area of your life.' 

The target audience is generally women aged between 16-30 who have an interest in fashion and more of a disposable income which is reflected by the websites advertising. 

Above is a print screen of the website. This advertisement appeared whilst I was waiting for an article to load. As you can see it features the up-market cosmetics brand of MAC makeup. This reflects the target readers interest of current beauty trends but also the target audience's income as MAC is slightly pricier than the average cosmetic. 

Elle Online local dimensions

Elleuk.com, as it's URL suggests is a UK based site. It does appear to have a leaning toward a UK audience, featuring mainly British celebrities and of course advertisements for British brands.

Elle magazine has magazine franchises all over the world. It is of French origin but since it's launch in 1945 issues have been printed in over 60 countries world wide. Out of these 60 counties the ELLE franchise has 27 online websites. They collectively attract over 26 million page views per month. 

Below is a print screen of Elle's South Africa online site, www.elle.co.za. Although it doesn't have a dissimilar layout to elleuk.com it does cater to it's audience, heavily featuring black models (which is a rarity in western magazines) but also borrowing content from back issues of Elle UK and Elle USA. It further acknowledges the location by referring to the season of Summer which in Africa runs from October to February differentiating the content that will be provided in Elle South Africa to Elle UK.

Search for online news

Here are what the following search engines provided when searching the term 'news'.

Ask Jeeves
Provides the URL, uk.ask.com which ackowleges the location of the searcher. Gives the searcher the option to search the whole web or 'UK only.' Lists the BBC News site as the top result followed by UK newspapers once again catering to the searchers location. On the right hand side of the page there is a scetion entitled 'Other people asked' with suggested questions related to news. On the left hand side there is the option to narrow the search by selecting images, video etc. Underneath the top result is a section called 'Related to your search: news.' All of the results provided are UK based despite the fact that I had not selected the 'UK only' search option. Does not list the amount of search results.

Yahoo
Has provided the UK and Ireland search engine. Gives it's own news site of Yahoo News as the top result displaying a list of headlines to read. The advertisement provided is related to the search conducted with The Huffington Post being advertised, though interestingly this is not based on my location. The BBC is listed twice on the page. Yahoo has also provided more specialist news searches such as MTV which would consist of mainly music and celebrity news and the same with NME. Related searches are listed which include 'Welsh News' which gives a nod to local results.

Google
Google has provided the most results so far with 11,830,000,000 results. Very locally orientated with lost of Bristolian results being listed. It gives my location and gives me the option to change my location which suggests that this would differ my results. Related searches list a lot of American news coorperations such as CNN and Fox news. BBC is once again listed twice, one for the general news and one for BBC Bristol.

Bing
BBC listed twice again. Half of the adverts listed are related to my search whilst the other half are completely unrelated with the adverts being for weight loss sites. Guardian is listed higher up than any other site and is listed above the related search section. It also gives me the option to search within the BBC imediately.

Ownership of Elle online

elleuk.com is owned by Hearst Magazines UK which is the trading name of the National Magazine Company. Hearst Magazines is the largest digital publisher in the UK and reaches 1 in 4 UK women and 1 in 6 UK adults.

Hearst Magazines owns the following publications, all of which have on and offline platforms:

Birth of Elle online

The current web address for Elle magazine UK is elleuk.com. The web address was formally owned by a news network called World News Network which existed from August 2003 until February 2005. Elle magazine took ownership of the web address on 13th February 2007.

The Elle UK website formally existed under a differen't URL, ellemagazine.co.uk which existed from September 2001 until, people who used the URL would be redirected to elleuk.com from February 18th 2007. ellemagazine.co.uk would later be owned by a french search engine called 'Indom' in May 2008.

Below shows the earliest available screen shot of elleuk.com

And here is a screen shot of the website today.

Although there are not very many images available on the early screen shot it is clear to see a visable difference between the two sites. The advertisements on the current site include moving image and the site is far more interactive with the option to follow Elle on Facebook and Twitter. There are more options available as the orginal site seems to have a limited range of stories to choose from. The newer site also offers differnt platforms of the magazine including Elle TV. The most interactive part of the orginal site is the option to register your email address where as the modern site allows the reader to comment on posts and articles.