Spin Sisters : How the Women of the Media Sell Unhappiness --- and Liberalism --- to the Women of America

Rating:
Summary: Nothing Spinster Found in Expose of Sinister Editing
Review: In a clearly biased book, Myrna Blyth's "Spin Sisters" cannot be read as 'spinsters'. Blyth is as erudite and savvy as the women she is verbally savaging. This gives her authority, wisdom, and inside knowledge.

In 2001, Bernard Goldberg's "Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News" was published and was lambasted by his media colleagues. Now, with a similar tone and message, Blyth will be find speaking counter culturally will anger her former peers. Blyth, unaffected, has boldly let in the light into what is to most of us a shuttered world.

Her precise point, that those women buying women's magazines have different, more conservative values than those editing and publishing them, is logical and long known. Where Blyth steps in is to provide anecdotes and examples, having been part of the value divide. She's portrayed as a whistle-blower, but the real story is that she's not a cubical warrior. She ran the show, picked the editors, stories and angles. Her culpability is deeper than the average unknown whistle-blower.

It is as much of a political book as it is a media analysis text, but it reads more like an expose. That Blyth has a conservative tack in her book isn't subtle. The trouble is not her tone, but in her facts. She cites circumstances how alarmism littered the editorial choices, while feminism is peddled to women oppressed in their own ignorance of what feminism is and isn't.

Dividing the hyped up prose from the truth won't be hard for readers. A walk through the checkout counter magazine stand, comparing women's publications as you do, will show that the publishers aren't pushing messages found in family magazines like "Focus on the Family" and "Marriage Partnership."

I fully recommend "Spin Sisters: How the Women of the Media Sell Unhappiness and Liberalism to the Women of America" by Myrna Blyth. Think for yourself. Don't let my review, the publicity behind the book or against the book determine your thinking.

Anthony Trendl

Rating:
Summary: Nothing Spinster Found in Expose of Sinister Editing
Review: In a clearly biased book, Myrna Blyth's "Spin Sisters" cannot be read as 'spinsters'. Blyth is as erudite and savvy as the women she is verbally savaging. This gives her authority, wisdom, and inside knowledge.

In 2001, Bernard Goldberg's "Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News" was published and was lambasted by his media colleagues. Now, with a similar tone and message, Blyth will be find speaking counter culturally will anger her former peers. Blyth, unaffected, has boldly let in the light into what is to most of us a shuttered world.

Her precise point, that those women buying women's magazines have different, more conservative values than those editing and publishing them, is logical and long known. Where Blyth steps in is to provide anecdotes and examples, having been part of the value divide. She's portrayed as a whistle-blower, but the real story is that she's not a cubical warrior. She ran the show, picked the editors, stories and angles. Her culpability is deeper than the average unknown whistle-blower.

It is as much of a political book as it is a media analysis text, but it reads more like an expose. That Blyth has a conservative tack in her book isn't subtle. The trouble is not her tone, but in her facts. She cites circumstances how alarmism littered the editorial choices, while feminism is peddled to women oppressed in their own ignorance of what feminism is and isn't.

Dividing the hyped up prose from the truth won't be hard for readers. A walk through the checkout counter magazine stand, comparing women's publications as you do, will show that the publishers aren't pushing messages found in family magazines like "Focus on the Family" and "Marriage Partnership."

I fully recommend "Spin Sisters: How the Women of the Media Sell Unhappiness and Liberalism to the Women of America" by Myrna Blyth. Think for yourself. Don't let my review, the publicity behind the book or against the book determine your thinking.

Anthony Trendl

Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: It's nice to finally have someone give a voice to women who don't want to be blind followers of the liberal viewpoints they're bombarded with by the media. The inside stories of magazines are really interesting--especially when you find out how magazines get celebrities to appear on their covers.

Rating:
Summary: Very enjoyable and interesting
Review: Let me start by saying that I am very much a liberal Democrat, and the right-wing slant of this book did bother me a bit. (Especially the relentless Hillary-bashing!) And I agree with a lot of the reviewers that Ms. Blyth seems unnecessarily catty and vicious about a lot of her colleagues, as well as about a lot of famous people (e.g., Susan Sarandon). Frankly I'm surprised that she's burning so many bridges! However, I still found it an excellent read. Sure, an educated woman may already know that the women's mags are full of crap, but I'm not sure that teenagers do. I certainly was very influenced by those mags when I was a kid -- in fact, I'm sure that Seventeen had a lot to do with my becoming anorexic and then bulimic. And finally, I was relieved to learn that other women are as fed up with the clownish garbage that passes for "fashion" these days.

Rating:
Summary: Finally - the truth about women's mags!
Review: Loved it! And thanks to Myrna for validating my feelings about women's magazines. After so many years of reading these things, women start to feel as if they never measure up to the celebrities on the cover (whose lives are usually a mess behind the scenes, anyway). These magazines are driven by product advertising, ladies, and the more we remind ourselves of this fact, the less we'll be sucked in by their trends and the not-so-subtle message that we need to be "fixed" and made over! Thank you, thank you for this book!

Rating:
Summary: Gossipy and gloomy
Review: Myrna Blyth claims that women's magazines conspire against women to make them victims. Well, they might, but her book does exactly the same thing: it tells women that they are victims of a conspiracy to make them victims!

I do not accept that women are victims. Women are able to think for themselves. I trust in women's ability to think; the majority of women will not accept (let alone buy!) something that if they are unhappy with it. There is the possibility that there are large numbers of magazines giving women similar messages BECAUSE women want those messages.

'Spin Sisters' is not a good book. Blyth aims to be scholarly, but her arguments are illogical, contradictory and incomplete. She tells some amusing anecdotes, and that is is the main virtue of her book. But it seems rather sad that she can only reinforce the "You are a victim!" message, instead of giving women something positive to consider - wouldn't that be far more valuable?

Rating:
Summary: Did not hold up to expectations.
Review: Myrna Blyth is the former editor of Ladies' Home Journal and former publishing director of More magazine, a publication I can say I've never heard of. When I got into the meat of the book, I found myself a little uninterested. Which is a shame, since I was really hoping to get some insights on how these magazines and tv folks come up with such garbage. But, not really. Blyth spends a lot of time talking about the titled "Spin Sisters" - women like Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer, and Barbara Walters - and how they dine at lavish restaurants in Manhattan, swoon over the people they are supposed to be covering, and "buy" interviews, like with Elizabeth Smart and Jessica Lynch. Her main thesis is that the women of the media form an "all-girls" club, similar to the "old boys" network that everyone seems to hate.

Unfortunately, Blyth doesn't say anything new in this book. She gives a little perspective into what the "Spin Sisters" do in their time off ("time off" she would say, is when they are not paying someone to watch their kids or sending gifts to newsmakers). She talks about how over the top the Lifetime network is (wow, tell me something I and the rest of the male population of the universe didn't know), but she does do a decent job of documenting the absurd movies on a particular night of Lifetime programming. Blyth focuses a few chapters on how news magazine programs, like Dateline or 20/20, sell the notion to women that everything out there can and will harm them if they aren't careful. While I'm sure that Blyth is probably right that some (if not most) of these "threats" are exaggerated, she does not provide enough hard facts to prove her point. Blyth even says that she is sure some people are affected by these "threats" to women, but that the majority of people are not. This is sort of like Blyth saying, "Come on, you know it's ridiculous for all of these things to be blown out of proportion," while giving you a friendly elbow. The problem with this book is, like a lot of partisan books coming out these days, is that it is mainly preaching to the choir. I bought this book because I, for the most part, believe that women are sold a particular viewpoint by the media. But Blyth doesn't present enough facts (even though she says she and her researchers read every issue of some major women's magazines for the past few years) to sustain an argument. What am I supposed to say the next time that I get into a debate with someone about how women's media largely presents a one-sided picture? "Well, Katie Couric and Barbara Walters vie for the best table at Michael's in Manhattan!"

Besides the "sex" topic (which went largely undiscussed throughout the book), I was looking forward to hearing what Blyth had to say about abortion. I remember reading an article in one magazines in 2003 (right around the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade which, by the way, is not the current law that makes abortion legal - it's 1992's Planned Parenthood v. Casey) that was so one-sided in its abortion article I was dumb-founded. The title, to my best recollection, was something called "Are you rights at risk?". Look, I'm not going to argue that most women are against abortion - I'm sure that statistics probably show that more nationwide women support abortion - but seriously, this was way over the top. Blyth, at the beginning of the few pages she writes about abortion, declares herself to be pro-choice. Aha - that's why she is writing so little. It's tough to write to a mostly conservative crowd if your fundamental beliefs are at odds with your audience. But she doesn't come out with any hard hitting analysis about the topic.

Spin Sisters suffers from a lot of the same problems as Bernard Golberg's second book, Arrogance. Blyth seems to be out there to make money (nothing wrong with that) which sort of undermines her credibility if her goals are truely to make some change in the field of women's media. The book seems more like a tell-all ("I used to be a Spin Sister, too!") than a hard-hitting, fact-based argument. Pick it up if you're interested in media bias, or have a week of free time.

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars.

Rating:
Summary: sort of missed the boat
Review: Someday someone will write a real exposé of women's magazines and how they kowtow to advertisers. But that person isn't Myrna Blyth.

Women's magazines, with but one exception, are loaded with articles on painful and/or expensive fashion and makeup. But that's due to advertisers, who use insecurity to sell everything from cosmetic surgery to lipstick. You see the same preying on insecurity with men although it takes a different form (e.g., buy this car or drink this beer or the babes won't love you). So why is this liberalism's fault? In fact, remember that one exception? That's ad-free Ms. magazine. Now that's a magazine that really is liberal. So much so, that it's off Ms. Blyth's radar screen.

Ms. Blyth is far enough to the right that centrist magazines seem liberal. If women's magazines really were liberal, we'd be reading about single-payer health care, fully funding special education and ending homelessness in Elle, Jane and Ms. Blyth's own Ladies Home Journal. Instead, you read about $1,500 blouses in Vogue, $400 dresses in Elle and clothes that would cost my daughter a year's allowance in Seventeen. Is that due to liberal bias? If it were, Ann Coulter wouldn't be a walking advertisement for couture.

When you examine Ms. Blyth's evidence, it just doesn't hold up. Once again, it's the Fox News of the world, where the center is seen as bolshevism and liberals are blamed for anything someone sees as undesirable. I can't wait to read the tome on how liberals are causing all these hurricanes.

Rating:
Summary: A Book Explaining the Obvious
Review: Spin Sisters : How the Women of the Media Sell Unhappiness - and Liberalism - to the Women of America by Myrna Blyth is a book explaining the obvious. Anyone vaguely familiar with women's magazines can identify the ungraceful manipulation of their text.

As a girl of ten sitting in my parents' hair salon, I recall flipping through an array of women's magazines noting the negative connotations and psychological manipulations.

If you have trouble reading between the lines, then I suppose this book will be helpful to you, but keep in mind that this book was written by a magazine editor.

Rating:
Summary: This Captivating Book Will Grab and Hold Your Attention
Review: SPIN SISTERS is a book women and men, magazine writers and readers should read and will most definitely want to discuss. It will grab and hold your attention if not purely to satisfy your curiosity about a glitzy industry that touches many lives. As you might expect from its title, SPIN SISTERS is about several women media moguls who --- according to author Myrna Blyth --- mold and shape the minds of unsuspecting American magazine readers and television viewers.

These industry "sisters" --- namely Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric and Barbara Walters --- spin news to convince women that they are over-stressed, overworked and underappreciated, according to Blyth. Whether it's soft-pedaling questions to like-minded liberals or ignoring news that might not fit into their tilted field of vision, media queens are selling ideas, she says.

"...Nowadays the 'political information' you get, girlfriend to girlfriend, often has a definite 'one-perspective' liberal tilt. Believe me, I know the formula: disease and diets, sob stories and social issues, and stress, stress, stress. And I know the impact such a formula can have on one's ideas and emotions."

In essence, Blyth says, female media moguls have scared or convinced American women --- who enjoy more freedoms professionally and personally than ever before --- that they should feel sorry for themselves. And readers gobble it up.

"They are the media's Nay Nay Sisterhood who feel sorry for you because they feel so darn sorry for themselves," writes Blyth.

The meat of this story will come as no surprise to readers, but the author's candor might. Blyth, a tenured magazine editor and journalist, is at times downright caustic as she unveils the not-so-pretty side of her colleagues (in crime). And while she admits to employing some of their techniques to grab readers and hold a magazine's market share, she dishes up tasty morsels of gossip to which most viewers and/or readers are never privy: groveling for the "get" or acquisition of a celebrity interview, the backbiting among media queens who American women have learned to love --- even worse --- to trust. And there's more, much more.

Keep a pad and pencil handy as you read through these chapters. You'll need it. The book is thought provoking, but I truly hope that readers will keep a perspective on the magazine industry and its audience. That, in fact, is the author's stated goal, though it's buried at the very end of the book's 309 pages.

Blyth, unlike the spin sisters she writes about, is a conservative thinker. And her fear, she says, is that women have somehow bought into the prettily packaged stress, sex and simple recipes formula that sells today's women's magazines. After reading the book cover-to-cover, gasping at times at the details that I'd always suspected but never known to be true, two questions remain: Why after 20-some-odd years did Blyth decide to spill the beans? And are women really this gullible?

As a writer who contributes to women's magazines, I read this book with great interest. I not only write for women's magazines, I'm a reader as well, a magazine junkie. I agreed with some of her observations about ambitious women today who lament their daily lives instead of appreciating the opportunities afforded them. I did pause to question why there aren't more conservative viewpoints shared or addressed in the pages of mainstream women's magazines. And I found myself nodding while reading about the nauseating number of references to diets and sex on the covers of magazines.

In between her jabs and barbs at the spin sisters with whom she worked, Blyth touches on real issues for women across the world who struggle with having it all and never quite understanding what it is that they really want.

"How did we go from having no choices about our lives to having so many choices that it has made some of us a little crazy --- and so very self-involved? When did independence turn into narcissism and self-indulgence?"

At times I wonder how much media reflects society, or vice versa. It's a discussion I have with friends of my own --- women who work in the media as writers and editors, not as producers or anchorwomen. I've already promised to lend them this book and look forward to discussing it afterward.

--- Reviewed by Heather Grimshaw