Kylie Triggell interviews Amelia Grevis-James from The Peach magazine. At MWSG magazine we love celebrating the success of women, and when I discovered this new magazine and read about Amelia’s integrity behind her editorial and the payment of writers, I felt compelled to let you know about her amazing work launching this fabulous new magazine. At MWSG magazine, I also put the payment of my editorial team before myself and am passionate about providing women with quality content, which means we also don’t publish celebrity gossip or diets. – Ed.

// How would you describe The Peach?

The Peach is a new Australian website for women featuring personal narratives and opinion pieces written by a diverse group of women prepared to share intensely personal life stories.

We are independent and determined to provide a point of difference for Australian women looking for online lifestyle-influenced content.

// It’s pretty unusual to find a magazine that bans stock photography and celebrity gossip without being too heavy and serious. What was your inspiration behind creating The Peach?

That is such a hard question to answer in just a short time! Basically I have been sitting with the idea since the end of 2009 but I really decided to make it a reality after I left the traditional media industry.

I have always been a voracious consumer of lifestyle media and have been really inspired by the increasingly confessional nature of online writing by women who aren’t afraid to cover subjects traditionally considered taboo- drug use, sex, mental illnesss and those kinds of things.

I really wanted to work in online women’s media but to be honest there are so few jobs in the area in Australia, so I basically saw an opportunity to create an Australian site that would feature women’s stories and opinions and in the process create the job I dreamed of having.

The motivation behind not using stock photography is that I want to show women as they are without photoshop or lighting or anything like that. And although reading celebrity gossip is a guilty pleasure of mine I felt that I wanted to create a space free of it, although we do sometimes discuss the social implications of celebrity-related topics- for example Chris Brown and Rihanna’s relationship.

// Tell me about yourself, how did you get started in writing?

I have always been a writer, although that sounds a little clichéd. I did my first work experience stint when I was 15 at a country newspaper and loved it. But that was 12 years ago now and the industry and media landscape in general have changed immensely in that time.

I had a real lightbulb moment in 2009 when I met my friend Phoebe Montague who runs the fashion blog Lady Melbourne- I was really inspired by blogging and online writing and I knew it was where I wanted to go. I spend a lot more time editing and running the business side of things than I do writing now, but I prefer that. I love it.

// What is a typical day like for you at The Peach?

I love the flexibility that comes with running my own business and, being a night owl, I don’t work 9-5 hours.

Typically I am up at 6.30am or so to schedule the day’s content and reply to emails. I would love to say, “then I go to the gym and do yoga and organise my to-do list”, but that would be a total lie. I am naturally quite a chaotic worker so I don’t like routine. I spend an enormous amount of time online reading content from all over the place ­‑ way too much time probably, but it never feels like enough.

I’m always replying to emails and trying to keep them under control. On any given day I could also have a meeting with the web team, meeting with my staff writers, having Skype meetings or watching Keeping Up With the Kardashians eating ice cream. Oh, I didn’t say that. I mean, doing important business tasks like filing invoices! I also work another job because currently The Peach does not generate enough revenue to cover our operational costs {our staff writers are paid, however}. So typically I work around 15 hours per day, depending on what is going on.

// Your writers tackle unusual, topical and occasionally confronting subjects in their columns. How important is this for The Peach?

It is important to have a mix. As an editor, I would be lying if I said you don’t sometimes think about being deliberately controversial in order to drive traffic. But I am not about that. I want to build the site from the ground up on a solid foundation of good content that is published for its merit.

When pieces come in, I ask myself ‘is it well-written? Is it non-judgemental and non-snarky? Is it going to provoke interesting debate? Is this something women will relate to?’

So much traditional media is about making women feel bad or inadequate in some way, so I basically ask myself if a piece is the opposite of that. Every day I try to have a mix of writers and topics, light and shade. One criticism I received recently was that in some pieces there was nothing to agree or disagree with. But such is the nature of personal essays- they are an account of someone’s experience, and sometimes that provokes debate but sometimes stories alone are enough.

// How many writers do you have contributing to The Peach?

We have a team of five staff writers who are paid for their pieces and we have a team of around 20 casual contributors who are amazing and I love them all!

I have made a commitment to creating a business model that will eventually enable me to pay all contributors to the site as I strongly disagree with existing online models that rely on unpaid writers continually providing content.

I wrote about my stance on The Peach and the piece provoked an amazing reaction and also opened up a lot of interesting opportunities for me. I think the industry needs people who are willing to take some risks and try doing things differently, because ultimately I don’t believe free content is sustainable in the long term- maybe it is for individual publications but not for the industry as a whole.

// What has the feedback been like for The Peach?

The past six months have been like a crazy dream, although a really tiring one. I have had great feedback and not so great feedback, which is natural. But ultimately the less good feedback {which is far outweighed by the positive feedback I get about the site} motivates me to keep going and to do and be better.

If I can make women feel good about themselves, give them a platform for their stories and turn the site into a commercial venture that enables me to pay my writers, I will have achieved the things I set out to do.

// Who, if it’s possible to define, are your ‘typical’ readers?

The Peach’s readers are women who are looking for something a little different to traditional media narratives about what women want or should be. They are making their own rules and living life in a way that makes sense to them. They don’t want to be told what they want or what they should be or what they should aspire to. They are figuring out careers and relationships and parenthood and womanhood and living complex, multi-dimensional lives in which they want something deeper than the external things that we are constantly told are so important and so fundamental to happiness.

// What’s next for you and The Peach?

Basically more of everything I am doing now.

I am really focused on achieving some traffic-related goals which will hopefully result in a little more advertising revenue. I’m also focused on building my relationship with Say Media, the amazing company that hosts our advertising; producing and publishing great, thought-provoking content; increasing the amount of content published each day and redesigning some aspects of the site to make it a little more polished; and building my relationships with the amazing women who write for the site. And basically, getting up every day and doing what I love and not losing sight of my goals.

:: The Peach magazine
:: The Peach on Facebook
:: The Peach on Twitter

// CONTRIBUTOR

Kylie Triggell :: Features Writer

Kylie is a Brisbane-based writer and journalist who could very possibly one day build a house out of the books she owns. A lover of travel, while studying at university she dreamed of finding a career which would lead her around the world. In the years since then she has lived in Paris and let her curiosity lead her across most of Europe and into South-East Asia. But Kylie still hasn’t shaken the travel bug and regularly finds herself mentally re-editing her ‘must see’ travel list.Since re-settling back in beautiful Brisbane you will most likely see Kylie enjoying a cup of tea, nose deep in a good book after a long run, or else enjoying a hearty laugh with her friends, wine glass in hand. She loves to ramble too, and you can read more of these at www.redrobinblue.blogspot.com.