Mag girls on the web

Recently I’ve noticed a lot of magazine girls moving from print on to the world of weblogging. Obviously there is some allure to the web – need I mention the lack of a 3 month delay due to the little thing called a print cycle? Info can be published practically as it lands in your pretty little hands (or on your new Mac Book Air like yours truly). While I know of a few print-to-blogging chicks, there had to be more, after a bit of searching, here’s what I’ve found out so far:

Please note this list does not count blogs run on a magazine’s official website. They don’t count in my friend Mia’s* eyes, thus nor do they count in mine.

• Former Cosmopolitan (now Bazaar’s) Beauty Director, Zoe Foster tried her hand at blogging with the launch of Fruity Beauty a year or so ago and she seems to be loving the world of the web that she is reportedly moving to do it full time (as you may have read right here). I wonder if her blog wasn’t mentioned in a slew of ACP women’s mags, if it would get a decent amount of traffic. Somehow Foster manages to mix beauty news/tips with an air of fun and don’t-take-me-too-seriously-I’m-just-like-you.
• Beauty chicka and former Shop Til You Drop Deputy Editor and Beauty Director, Katrina Lawrence, came back from her year-long freelancing stint in New York and landed a gig back at ACP with MadisonMag.com as well as launching her own site BeautyEditor.com.au. It’s a cute site full of beauty tips and commentary but it’s very pink and fluffy. I wonder what her traffic is like.
• Girlfriend’s former Deputy Editor, Erica Bartle, has now gone freelance but finds the time to blog about, what else, magazines, at Girl with a Satchel. I love her magazine reviews. Honest and insightful, I find it amazing that she somehow finds the time to flick through ALL the magazines every month when I barely have time to flick through the one I’m working for.
• Australian fashion journalist (and WWD Australasia correspondent), Patty Huntington, joined the blogging community by blogging for Australian news outlets with her fashion blog first on Fairfax’s SMH.com.au before moving over to News.com.au with Fully Chic mid last year. Her posts are rather long for blog posts, but they do offer great insight into the international fashion world and she always gives you her honest thoughts and opinions and how they relate.
• A web/mag girl, who seems to be blogging the longest (at least according to the archives and a piece in the SMH), is Helen Lee, formally a Notebook lackey, with her fashion and beauty news blog, SassyBella.com. She’s much quicker on the keyboard with fashion news and gossip than most fashion news sources – strange she hasn’t been snapped up by another mainstream media outlet looking to move online.
  
• Former EIC of Cosmo, Cleo and Dolly before becoming a TV girl for Channel 9 for a little while, Mia Freedman runs her own social commentary blog MamaMia.com.au. The media maven runs a rather cool social commentary/musings blog, I’m glad to see she’s still “around” and within easy access of my RSS reader for days when I just don’t pick up the Sunday paper to read her column. It’s strange to see her not in mags anymore, since she was such a big part of the mags I read when I was growing up.
• The only person who is not blogging is Shop Til You Drop’s Web Editor (also New Woman’s ex Web Ed), Kate McKibbin, is running DropDeadGorgeousDaily.com. A daily email newsletter thing about the most drop dead gorgeous things around. Should be interesting as this niche is popularized by the likes of America’s Daily Candy, Melbourne’s own MichiGirl.com.au, and the newly launched and much prettier, DailyAddict.com.au.

Since we’re talking non-blogging mag girls, there is Emily Barclay, Cleo’s Photo editor moving to the position of Web editor after being with Cleo for over 3 years. She took over the position from Joanna Barry who is now the mag’s Lifestyle editor after moving up from being editor of street rag, Fashion Journal, to the web.

Does Marguerite Kramer, former Managing Editor of US Bazaar who helped launch the Aus Bazaar site (as well as Madison’s and Shops’) count as a web girl? No sign of a site run personally by the American, but she is a web wiz from all reports (she even did time in Silcone Valley, well San Francisco during the dot-com boom). And there is Fiona Milne, who now writes the weekly email, the Fifi report.

Did I miss anyone?