As you likely know, host Sarah Murdoch announced Sydney girl Kelsey Martinovich as the winner, when in fact is was Gold Coast girl Amanda Wear (seen on the cover, right). Murdoch – by all accounts, a gorgeous, eloquent and compassionate woman – was beside herself.
"I don't know what to say right now. I'm feeling a bit sick about this," said Murdoch, a look of good-grief disbelief on her face. "I'm so sorry, oh my God, I don't know what to say. This is a complete accident, I'm so sorry... It was fed to me wrong. This is what happens when you have live TV folks, this is insane, insane, insane."
I truly feel for her. And I'm so happy Harper's BAZAAR is planning to run two November covers (out in 10 days' time).
McCann, also calm and gracious under pressure, said: "It is a monumental screw up... We had a cover ready to go to print last night, we've had to swap our printing presses so another magazine prints before us, complicated issues; we were abused all night... I think essentially what happened is the network [Foxtel] did want Amanda to win; they were keen for Amanda to win. They kept the voting lines open for a long time, I think, in the hope that she would get over the line. I'm told it came down to three votes... And they're audited. So they called it for Kelsey....
"We had a cover girl. I would have left it as it was... We've decided we're going to split the cover because immediately we were pretty much abused online for perhaps not printing the Kelsey cover... From a sales perspective, as a fashion person, Amanda is taller and she can do runway but Kelsey is the better cover girl... I've got to explain it to production people, to the printers, to my managing editor and to my readers... what am I going to do with the inside of the magazine? It's meant to be an eight-page story. I can't print that twice!"
No one could envy McCann's position, which provides a moral and editorial dilemma of very public proportions, but it does give her magazine the opportunity to position itself as a do-gooder for girls, an egalitarian, bi-partisan voice in a world that too quickly shuns women for the most superficial of reasons.
Yours truly,
Girl With a Satchel
1 comments:
Dear Erica,
Really great post as always. I love that you shared that experience with us, and some very good lessons in there for me!
Eve
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