The Devil owns the magazines now

It’s been 20 long years since we’ve caught up with Andy, Emily, Miranda and Nigel – our beloved friends from Runway Magazine.

The Devil Wears Prada 2, released in cinemas on 30 April, takes us back into the world of fashion media where Runway is still being published, only now it’s within an entirely new media ecology.

The first iPhone was yet to be released when the first film came out.

Since then, journalism and media industries have transformed amid a technological backdrop of smartphones, algorithms, and social media’s voracious appetite for digital content, which has precipitated a historic plummet in journalism’s advertising revenue.

This challenging media environment has paved the way for private equity and venture capital investment in print and digital journalism, something that The Devil Wears Prada 2 explores in great, if sometimes unsatisfying, ways.

The last 20 years have seen a transformation in the ownership and governance of media companies – newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, television stations – shifting from privately owned and operated to assets controlled by billionaires and private equity firms.

So, just how close to reality does this long-awaited sequel get?

Spoiler alerts

The film opens with Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) winning a prestigious award for serious investigative journalism just after her and all her colleagues are fired via text from the esteemed publication, The Vanguard.

At the same time, Runway and Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) are embroiled in scandal for publishing a glowing article about a fast-fashion brand that turns out to use sweatshop labour.

Andy is hired back to Runway by Irv Ravitz (Tibor Feldman), the owner of Runway’s parent company Elias-Clarke, to bring back more rigorous reporting to the magazine after her impassioned acceptance-turned-protest speech where she proclaims that “journalism still f*cking matters” goes viral.

We spend the first half of the movie following Andy as she contends with the shift to digital media – now focusing on what works well on the app, handling the pressures of live content and the push for interactive stories, reflecting recent trends in digital content.

Meanwhile, Miranda and her longtime compatriot Nigel Kipling (Stanley Tucci) lament the reduced page count and budget over the years.

Print’s not dead yet

While the shift from print to digital has been dramatic, all of this isn’t to say that print media is dead just yet.

Over 14.5 million Australians aged 14 and up (approximately 63 per cent of the population) still read magazines in print.

Vogue US, on which Runway is loosely based, reports that 64.1 per cent of its circulation still comes from its print magazine and 35.9 per cent from its digital issue.

In the book industry too, while the market for digital formats like ebooks and, particularly, audiobooks is growing, print books hold the largest market share in Australia and Oceania and remain the preferred format among readers.

The most significant threat to Runway, it turns out, is who owns the company.

The hero(ine) and the villain

Faced with being sold off by Elias-Clarke, the dramatic tension lies in finding a new owner for the magazine. Luckily (or unluckily), there are a few billionaire characters keenly interested.

Private equity, it seems, is both the villain and hero(ine) of the movie.

Since we last saw Andy and the gang in 2006, the role of private equity ownership in journalism has increased rapidly.

The financial fragility of legacy media brands in the twenty-first century makes them prime targets for takeover. Megan Greenwell, former editor of Deadspin and author of Bad Company, explains this all too well:

“The reasons private equity came into media had nothing to do with wanting to strengthen the business models… They came in because there was still some juice to be wrung from the orange. They lined their pockets and then just discarded these media companies.”

The film highlights the dangers of private equity ownership, blending elements of familiar real-world billionaires into some of its characters. 

Particularly in the US, the acquisition strategies of private equity firms – trimming anything labelled inefficient, injecting their own board members into management positions, and rapidly increasing perceived value – are well documented.

In short, it’s all about selling it off quickly for as much profit as possible.

As Andy and Emily race through Milan in search of a billionaire to save the magazine, the rallying cry of the film’s opening scene has long been forgotten.

What Andy, Emily (and eventually) Miranda fail to consider in their quest to save Runway is the decades of private equity media ownership that we’ve now had the misfortune to observe.

From Jeff Bezos’ purchase and restructuring of The Washington Post to the acquisition and subsequent closure of feminist publication Jezabel by G/O Media, the cautionary tales are easy to come by.

The film does touch on these – it highlights the dangers of private equity ownership through the buffoonery of Benji Barnes (Justin Theroux), who appears as a billionaire pastiche of Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

His Bezos-esque elements – specifically his interest in the fashion world driven by his partner – are especially relevant right now (hello, Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos as co-chairs of the Met Gala this year).

Ultimately, Benji’s plans are foiled by Andy and Miranda when they convince Benji’s reclusive billionaire ex-wife, Sasha Barnes (Lucy Liu) – an apparent composite of Mackenzie Bezos and Laurene Powell Jobs – to buy Elias-Clarke.

Hardly a happy ending

This uncritical apex fails to acknowledge that one private equity owner has simply been replaced by another.

Private equity ownership means less local and regional news for the 14.5 million Australians who read print magazines. 

The concentration of ownership propelled by private equity means a reduction in the diversity of voices heard and content produced.

It means less local and regional news and staffing cuts in the push for higher profit margins, economic efficiencies, and information control.

So, it seems that despite the inspiring framing and, yes, the incredibly flashy fashion, the future of Runway does not look particularly bright.

This article was written by Alexandra Dane and Claire Parnell of the  University of Melbourne and published by Pursuit.