But Editor-in-Chief, Helen McCabe said Australians would need to ‘vote with their wallets’.
And with Roy Morgan’s Research Issue Readership survey revealing the July issue was the most-read Women’s Weekly issue of the year – reaching over 2.2 million Australians – it cements Turia’s debut on the cover as a game changer for not only The Weekly, but the entire magazine industry.
“This is clearly a cover that stands apart from the norm, and there has been much industry speculation about whether this particular issue would succeed. Our latest issue readership results show that it has,” says Tim Martin, General Manager of Media at Roy Morgan Research.
The biggest gamble in McCabe’s editorship has been backed by the country – and the readers of The Weekly.
It is proof that in an industry where photoshop is used as often as a celebrity graces a cover, Australians have shown they will pick up a magazine for someone who is not your typical cover girl, someone who is real, inspiring, perhaps surprising, and most of all, someone who has a story to tell.
“The next time an editor dares to do something ‘brave’, they need to be able to point to the runaway sales figures of our Turia cover,” said McCabe in July.
“I am confident that I know my readers and that they will embrace this remarkable young woman just as she has embraced life.”
And she was not wrong.
