Where Are All The Male Lifestyle Journalists?

WALKING into some events as a journalist who specialises in wellbeing is always slightly terrifying. For someone like me who likes fitness, I rock up in my tracksuit and holdall check in with the PR and head to the changing room.

A recent event I went to was at FLYLDN, an amazing boutique studio run by Charlotte Cox who came onto my podcast What Matters with Alex Reads last year to discuss her transition from corporate lawyer to fitness entrepreneur.

The class was a CHILLYOGA class. All positions were to be held for 3 to 5 minutes and it was primarily laying down and seated. A very relaxing session. Intense, but deeply satisfying nonetheless.

One thing I did notice as I walked in to the class was that I was the only man. It was a press night so I assumed most were journalists, if not, bloggers - but all of them were women, and all of them were white.

This isn't the first time I have thought this. Running to cover classes such as F45 and SWEAT IT! I always found it bizarre that there weren't any male lifestyle journalists to join me in covering some of these events. Undoubtedly there are male lifestyle journalists, many of which work for GQ, Men's Health and Esquire to name but a few, but when it came down to mainstream media, I was at a loss.

An editor of mine who, when I asked if we could possibly cover something for International Men's Day, quite quickly shut me down and said that the section was for 'women and women only.' Another editor said: 'We'd love to do a supplement for men, but we just don't have the budget for it.'

Unsurprising that this was an answer.

What I have learned is that in this industry, is that people only have the budgets for what they deem as important, but while I wilted in my chair I sat and thought: No.

Men's health is important. Men's wellbeing is important. And there should be more men writing about it.

With the drastic rate of men dying by suicide, and more and more discussions being had about young men and their experiences in the UK. Take SAFE, the collection of essays I contributed to, which came out in March. It houses writing from Black male writers across the country, yet when we look at the media reflected - where are we?

Most of the lifestyle pieces we see in the media are for women, which is not a bad thing, it is just an observation. Barring the very popular Telegraph Men's supplement which I think does well in providing a voice and view for older white men's lives in the United Kingdom. (You won't go far within Telegraph Men before you see Uri Geller staring up at you, or a man from TV you recognise but not sure from where. Oh, and Prince Charles is always a great person to have featured.)

It became apparent to me that there weren't many men, let alone Black men, who were in these spaces. For papers such as the Telegraph, writing positions probably go to more esteemed writers, the journalists who have been writing for years in news before being moved over to the Men's section because, frankly, why the hell not?

In mainstream media outlets like the Guardian and the Metro, it seems as if it's a commonly held belief that men do not need such segments. It is quite funny to me that it can be assumed and accepted that men don't care about their appearance, health or wellbeing enough to warrant a spread or a segment in more than one paper.

The Guardian extends some of its prowess to speaking on the hot topics of masculinity and male contraception, but it is a stark contrast to the Women's segment, which chiefly has more writers, more resources and more time put into it.

The Daily Mail has FeMail, which largely dwells on women's interest stories, and with sixty per cent of its readership being women, this makes sense but most of the other papers in the country have more male readers. The Times has its younger, edgier supplement Times2 but there doesn't seem to be much more than that.

I would like to believe that we have passed this time of where men predominantly write news and sport and women predominantly write features. I would also like to believe that more and more Black people are pitching stories to editors, that are commissionable.

In addition, why not have a women's sport section? Why not have someone who is dedicated to reporting the steady rise of women's sport?

If we are going to consistently push this narrative that the media is a place that reflects society, then we need the people behind the words to portray it by producing the content and making up the numbers in these newsrooms.

I would also like to think there shouldn't be much need for people like me to write articles like this, since I am a journalist it makes more sense for me to contribute something like this to a paper or outlet that would value it. The very reason I am writing this, on a site like LinkedIn is telling.

But the question still remains: where are all of the male lifestyle journalists, and what are we doing about it next?

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