Abstract
This article contributes to the critical study of media industries by introducing the concept ‘discerned savvy.’ Through interviews with editors of the US men’s lifestyle magazines GQ, Esquire, and Details, I identify an informal process by which workers in media production cultures accrue knowledge about the preferences of their superiors and then accordingly narrow the range of creative ideas that they propose throughout the production process. The identification of this knowledge, which I call discerned savvy, aims to help media scholars theorize how creative workers’ agency may be subtly circumscribed in ways that maintain the hegemony of particular textual forms and ideologies in cultural industries even in the absence of formal policy and directly articulated expectations regarding creativity.
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