advice - ladies home journal

so i received a request from duke that they want me for a story ladies home journal is doing on weight loss success or whatever. since my last  magazine experience was totally traumatizing, i am skeptical but also torn cause of course the idea of inspiring others is nice.  i have never read this mag before - anyone read it? know if it is good quality or? i feel like part of the trauma last time was them trying to make the story much more dramatic and tabloidy than necessary. like sensationlistic with lots of !!!!!! everywhere.  i have not spoken with LHJ yet, but the message to me was that it would be about a couple different women, not just me, and therefore, i'd assume it wouldn't be a cover shot again (which added a different embarassment factor altogether). thoughts?

Ladies Home Journal is a very respected, non tabloidish, type of mag.  Usually there is a front page photo for weight loss stories...usually shows the after pic on the front page & then a before/after pic with the story.  Why was your previous experience negative?  Which magazine was it? Lisa

i saw LHJ in the grocery store and it looks decent. i think it was dianne keaton and she was the only pic on the cover. it looks like a *real* magazine at least.  the last one was quick and simple - a weekly magazine that had just started out. basically they just sort of twisted lots of the things i said to make it more dramatic, which i felt was dishonest and misleading. and there were weird connotations. like i was talking aout moderation and how you could eat a cupcake on occasion if you planned it and that got changed into "andrea still eats cupcakes!!!" of course everyone else thought it was great and had no idea what things were right or wrong. it was just me that was upset about it.

Andrea...I don't care if they say you used cocaine to lose the weight, you HAVE to do this!  See, this way, I can put the magazine on my coffee table and tell all of my friends...Oh look, that's my friend Andy on the cover.  So, if for nothing else, do it for me.  I promise to tell them that all of your plastics came out Gawgus!!!     Mary

If the whole reason your last magazine gig was so traumatic was that you don't like how they told the story...the sad fact is that it's entirely possible LHJ or ANY other magazine will spin to their heart's content. There are no guarantees. But I am still inclined to say yes because I think you have an amazing story to tell, and you can help a lot of people by telling it. If you get an O.K. feel for the reporter this time around, then go for it.

yes i know you are correct. but i think being older and wiser and being more careful about what exactly i say will help. also they usually require you to sign some form in order to actually publish - for the duke web site, i made them send me a draft of what they were going to write, so that was better. i don't know if a mag would do that, but i'll ask.

Co-sign -- it sounds like a great idea! LHJ and Good Housekeeping have both jumped on the "Half Our Size) (TM People Magazine) and are publishing stories on women who have lost weight.  Personally, I am holding out for People but would go with one of the others if they approached me first. Go for it!

see i definitely wouldn't do people - i think too many people read that (or at least people i know, people my age). it seems like all the mags geared toward women (sadly) usually have something about  weight loss in every issue. in addition to rediculous recipes for decadent food. my sister women's world weekly cover has her sharing the page with the headline "get slim eating cupcakes!" and fried ice cream. see below -

I think you should do it Andy.  The Ladies Home Journal appears to have been around since 1883. Their "Can This Marriage Be Saved" section has been maintained since the beginning. That's a LONG time. I briefly looked at their website and did a little research. It doesn't seem like the type of magazine to fluff things up. In fact it has been known to fight against extravagant advertisement. It seems to be to the point with diet and nutrition and doesn't spin off into fads and how women need to be this or that.  Sure, there's a diet and nutrition section but c'mon, can you blame them?  That's what most women are talking about these days. If they want to capture an audience they have to talk about it. Honestly, this sounds like a good thing and with it being more than 1 girl then I think it'll be even better.  Will they spice it up some? Probably so but I don't think it'll be to the point that it becomes a lie.

Andy, visit the link below at amazon.com and you can see several of the recent LHJ covers. There's diet/nutrition subjects on several of them but nothing like eat cupcakes to lose weight. Looks like they promote the old fashioned way. I'm not sure what's up with Dr. Phil though? They have him splayed out on a few covers like he's man of the year. http://www.amazon.com/Ladies-Home-Journal/dp/B00005NIPI