She’s the Lady

Shyness has never been a trait of the Johnson family and magazine editor Rachel Johnson is certainly characteristic of her familial clan.

At a Johnson family event you will find father Stanley, brothers Boris, Jo and Leo and sister Rachel. Between them they have served as Mayor of London, been MP for Orpington, sat in the European Parliment, edited the political magazine The Spectator, sat in the House of Commons for Henley-on-Thames, been a partner at Price Waterhouse Cooper and edited the oldest woman’s weekly publication in the world.

Some people, if their whole family was constantly walking the halls of power, might feel a little overwhelmed. Not Rachel Johnson. Boris’ sister has penned four books, written for pretty much every British newspaper and magazine that matters, earned the 2008 “Bad Sex in Fiction” Prize and now edits The Lady magazine. When questioned over any residual familial jealousy she might have Johnson swipes the question away. “I am really very proud of my brothers. They are great people, some of the nicest in the world.”

Having a quick mind and an even quicker tongue is something that Johnson has had to use to the best of her abilities in the two years since she took over The Lady. The publication had seen better days, to put it mildly. From selling 70,000 weekly copies in the Thatcher era the family publishers (the Budworths) were now finding it a struggle to flog a third of that. Ben Budworth called on Johnson to take up post and rectify the problem.

What Johnson inherited was little more than a journalistic joke. Due to its mediocre front covers that have included photos of owls, cats, flower arrangements and (most perplexingly) a woman painting on the edge of a cliff and its disparate articles, such as half a page on cucumbers, The Lady had simply become an easy target for media mockery. Johnson’s first decision – no more cucumbers! “If they want to know about cucumbers they would just look it up online. Magazines should be about producing unique content and packaging it well.”

Most people with such a challenging job would then attempt to maintain a low profile. It is doubtful as to whether the Johnsons know what “maintain a low profile” means. And if they know what it means they probably think it weird, creepy and anathema.

Instead of keeping quiet the new Editor allowed Channel 4 to film a fly-on-the-wall documentary about hersef, her newly inherited magazine and her attempts to turn the publication around. “The Lady and the Revamp” was sometimes embarrassing, sometimes awe-inspiring, but always entertaining. Does Johnson have any regrets about letting the cameras in? “If people saw it and now know about The Lady because of it, I think it was a good idea.”

But even the jovial Johnson has to concede that the documentary didn’t go entirely to plan, admitting “It may well have looked like a pantomime.” The Lady may have looked like a pantomime, but the treatment of Johnson was even worse. “It didn’t show me being nice and kind. It showed me stropping about the office and rolling my eyes. I like to think I am not like that. I literally watch it through my fingers now.”

Topping off all this was an argument Johnson had with her publishers which ended with her storming to her office and calling The Lady “a piddling little magazine that nobody reads” – hardly the best way to publicise your publication or cement your current readership. This is the only time Johnson sounds unsure of herself when she explains; “I actually said ‘compared to the Sunday Times Magazine we are a piddling little magazine that nobody reads.’ It was all in the context of the argument and I was so cross with my publisher.”

If “The Lady and the Revamp” made the magazine look like a pantomime, a newspaper interview with the co-owner and mother of the publisher was about to make the whole institution look like a complete circus.

Julia Budworth is, in the words of Johnson, “a genuinely quite intimidating British battleaxe.” This is a measured assessment. Zoe Williams (of the Guardian) was not quite so kind when she described the publisher’s mother as a “standard P.G.Wodehouse dragon”, a fitting description considering one of The Lady’s Literary Editors once rejected the great comedic author’s short stories.

While Johnson remains uncharacteristically tight-lipped about her publishing matriach, Budworth has no qualms saying whatever she likes about her Editor. In an interview with The Independent, Julia Budworth stingingly remarked that Johnson “is using The Lady as a vehicle for her own promotion…it’s all about her”, that she is “paid far too much”, and, somewhat perplexingly, “You can’t get her away from a penis…she is basically a boy” as well as labelling her a snob, a social climber and vain.

However, sticking to her editorial namesake Johnson remains ever the lady when faced with these comments. She admits that the remarks were “all quite hurtful”. But instead of focussing on this she moves quickly on to the silver-lining of Julia Budworth’s slightly odd penile input. “Weirdly, it was the best PR I could ever have hoped for. My male Twitter followers doubled overnight. But I have no idea why she made the comment.”
For most people enduring a very public character assasinaion from one of their bosses would mean not just walking out on the job, they would be frantically grabbing their belongings as they called a taxi while sprinting out of the building. But quitting doesn’t seem to be in Johnson’s nature. “At times it did get quite unpleasant. But it was also hysterically funny.”

When asked if she is still en-joying herself she can’t help but gush “I have my incredible boudoir of an office, next to one of the oldest restaurants in London, right by Covent Garden. It couldn’t be a better location. And it couldn’t be better editing a woman’s weekly.” When pressed she concedes that “It is quite hard editing a weekly magazine,” but goes on to describe it as “the best job in the world.”

The only concession Johnson makes is that she still has a challenge ahead of her. “I think we hold a niche position. We can’t compete with celebrity tittle tattle such as Grazia. And we can’t compete with specialist magazines such as The Economist. We are a general interest intelligent woman’s weekly with a unique selling point of classififed adverts.” She also admits that The Lady has not been immune to the realities of the media market, explaining that “the woman’s weekly market is constantly going down.”

But Johnson remains achingly, painfully and radiantly optimistic about the future, “The Lady is offering something independent and different. Most of the media is in a downward projection where they are focussing on markets that are obsessed with celebrity babies and cellulite. I think magazines can occupy higher ground and I think that is where The Lady is. If you build it, people will come.”

By the end of the interview I still know that The Lady has flat-lining circulation in a highly competitive market which sees its profits and readership spiralling in a downwards circle. There is no logical way Johnson can pull this off.

But Johnson defies logic. She accepted the poisioned chalice of print journalism when she became Editor of The Lady. She took on an editorial team that had been in place seemingly longer than time itself. She invited a film crew to document her at her new job. She remodels stinging public criticism from her publisher’s mother into plucky anecdotes and positive asides about Twitter. She even manages to charismatically eclipse the rest of the Johnson family, a mammoth task when you’re related to the walking, talking charisma machine that is Boris Johnson.

If her editorship has demonstrated anything it has shown that Johnson can beat logic…just.

Rachel Johnson’s latest book – “The Diary of the Lady: My First Year as Editor” is available now in paperback.