In a move that AdAge calls a “bid to attract [a] younger audience,” the 128-year-old Ladies Home Journal will begin using reader-generated content. It will gather much of that content from DivineCaroline.com, “Life In Your Words,” which like LHJ is also a Meredith property. There, users upload their own stories in the categories of Beauty, Body & Soul, Relationships and Money, among others. Article titles run the gamut from “Becoming the Big Sister I Never Got to Be” to “How Were You Proposed To?”
LHJ claims a total paid circulation of 4.17 million, and a low cover price of $2.49. But, AdAge reports, the median age of its readers is 56.1 (Gfk MRI statistics), versus the median age of the U.S. population at 45.8. By printing reader-generated content, LHJ is attempting to be "relevant to the next generation without annoying some of the core readers," George Janson of Group M told AdAge. Ad pages plummeted 13.6% at LHJ in 2011, versus 2.6% in monthlies as a whole.
What LHJ does pledge to do is pay for that content—something that, for example, CNN does not do for its user-generated content from “iReporters.” It will also fact-check and vet the stories, something else that CNN does not do.