The Business of Magazines

[Benn98]

Apparently Janice Min is in New York for a series of meetings with CN. The consensus is that she's now the frontrunner to replace Graydon. Sigh!

 

[Benn98]

Poor Cindy, always the bridesmaid. I wonder who the actress was?

How to Quit a Magazine, by Cindi Leive

By KATHERINE ROSMAN
SEPT. 14, 2017

Cindi Leive, the departing editor of Glamour, in her office at Condé Nast. Credit Alex Welsh for The New York Times

Cindi Leive, the editor in chief of Glamour, says that a writer has about three seconds to grab a reader’s attention, so let’s blurt this out: After 16 years, she says, she’s quitting her job.

This departure, one she announced to her staff this morning, makes her the fourth editor of a major magazine to vacate the role in the space of a week. In order of announcement, they are Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair, Roberta Myers of Elle and Nancy Gibbs of Time.

“As in all things magazine related, damn Graydon got there first,” Ms. Leive said.

She laughed and tucked her bare feet under her on the living room sofa in her Brooklyn townhouse. This was the day before she would inform Glamour’s staff, and she was a little nervous about telling her team the news. “I’m sure I will be, in my grandmother’s words, ‘highly verklempt.’ I’m a bit of a crier anyway,” she said.

She refers to her staff as her “Glam fam”: “I just love love love the people I work with,” she said. Her toenails were painted a bluish gray. They looked perfectly nice but still ready for a fresh pedicure. She will stay on at the magazine until the end of the year, but soon she’ll have the time for primping.

As every magazine editor knows, three is a trend. So what to make of four? Ms. Leive’s departure from Glamour would matter in any circumstance. Coming now, it cements a sudden sense that there is an unprecedented change of the guard. Ms. Leive was among a now fairly thin rank of those who were magazine editors before magazines became brands.

“To me, a brand was Kellogg’s,” she said of her early days. “But I have gotten comfortable with the term.”

Like any media executive worth her six-figure Twitter following, Ms. Leive is proud to share today’s measure of magazine success: 11 million monthly unique visitors to Glamour.com, 15 million followers across social media platforms, a robust “Women of the Year” award ceremony and events business, a video that has garnered 147 million views on Facebook. It’s called “Your Period in 2 Minutes.” “Perhaps you saw it?” she asked.

Ms. Leive’s stomach growled beneath her flouncy Tanya Taylor dress, with its cutout shoulders. She drank water. “I’m leaving the brand in great shape,” she said.

The least vague reason she would offer for her decision to quit now related to her mother, a biochemist who died when Ms. Leive was 19. “Not to get too emo, but my mom died when she was 49 and last year I turned 49,” she said, and here, her voice got wobbly. “I felt like I have been given this gift of so much more life and I wanted to do something with it.”

She wouldn’t comment on what her next gig will be other than to say what it won’t be: “I’m not going to another big media job or to a similar position at another company.” She gave the impression that she has plans. “I adore my kids, but I’m not leaving to spend more time with my kids,” she said.

Ms. Leive and her husband, Howard Bernstein, a film producer, have two children, Lucy, 14, and Ike, 12. They needed some reassurance that their mother leaving her job is a good idea. “When I told this to my son, his main concern was, ‘Oh my God, are you not going to be verified on Instagram anymore?’” she said.

She too was captivated by a certain idea of status when she was younger. While a college student, Ms. Leive was an intern at The Paris Review, working out of its old basement offices. She saw herself studying for a Ph.D. and getting a job that would be, as she put it, “Important with a capital I.”

After graduating from Swarthmore College when she was 21, she allowed herself a one-year frivolity, a job at a fashion magazine.

But then something unexpected happened. She found that she loved being an editorial assistant at Glamour, loved the mix of fashion and politics, civics and silliness. She stayed for 11 years. “The type of things they were writing and editing,” she said of Glamour’s more senior staff, “were the things me and my friends were talking about.” She loved working for Ruth Whitney, Glamour’s editor of 31 years.

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She even loved working for Bonnie Fuller, the less refined, more sex- and celebrity-focused replacement to Ms. Whitney. (She says the “three second” attention rule is a Bonnieism.) After working for Ms. Fuller for less than a year, she became the editor of Self, also published by Condé Nast.

When Ms. Fuller was asked to resign in 2001, Ms. Leive returned to Glamour, as its editor in chief.

Even though she had been at Glamour for years before, and also had two years as editor of Self under her belt, there was a steep learning curve. Early in her tenure, she promised a celebrity that she could have approval over her appearance on the cover. “It was someone I greatly admired,” Ms. Leive said.

Ms. Leive selected the photograph that she knew was the right one for the magazine’s demographic and newsstand appeal. The actress hated it. Ms. Leive tried to persuade her that it was a flattering picture, but the actress wouldn’t budge and Ms. Leive worried about making the celebrity unhappy. She didn’t want Glamour to get a bad reputation with Hollywood publicists. But she was positive that she had selected the right photo.

“At a certain point in the interaction, I had to let go of this desire to make this person like me and remind myself that my allegiance was with Glamour and with what I thought was the right cover,” she said. “So I just went for it and said, ‘I’m sorry but this is the cover we’re going to run.’” Ms. Leive said the actress took it in stride and that she never again offered anyone cover approval.

Figuring out how to leverage the internet wasn’t easy, either. “I had what I thought was the most brilliant idea,” she said of a notion that occurred to her around 2010. Glamour could use its famous “Dos and Don’ts” rubric to encourage readers to submit photographs of people wearing the good or the ugly. Visitors to the website would be encouraged to weigh in.

There was a huge influx of traffic, Ms. Leive said, but not just that. “I actually opened Pandora’s box for a troll convention to take place on Glamour.com,” she said. She and her staff decided to hit delete.

She also learned that not every story she thought was splashy would actually make a splash. For the July 2015 issue, Kim Kardashian West appeared on the cover of Glamour, addressing publicly her feelings about the gender transition of her family member Caitlyn Jenner. Ms. Leive and her staff planned a full press rollout.

“Literally an hour before we were putting it out, Vanity Fair’s Caitlyn Jenner cover comes out,” Ms. Leive said. “So my scoop didn’t look that great, and all of a sudden I was getting angry letters from people wanting to know why I was referring to Caitlyn Jenner as Bruce in the magazine.” She laughed, sounding amused and still a little exasperated.

There is much from her long tenure that makes Ms. Leive proud, she said. There is the “Women of the Year” awards, which have honored people including Malala Yousafzai and Gabby Giffords. Ms. Leive oversaw the launch of the Girl Project, which provides resources to support education for girls in more than 100 countries. She published an essay last summer by Barack Obama, called “This Is What a Feminist Looks Like.”

She also made Hillary Clinton the first presidential candidate to be endorsed by Glamour. Ms. Leive says Anna Wintour, Condé Nast’s artistic director and Ms. Leive’s boss, deserves much of the credit for that. When Ms. Leive broached the idea with her, she said that Ms. Wintour said, “If you think this is what is right for your audience and for women, then you should do it.”

All this is why Ms. Leive bristles at the suggestion that her decision to leave magazines, amid something that is approaching a brain drain of longtime magazine honchos, signals that glossies are losing their sheen.

Not that she’s complaining about being in the company of Ms. Myers, Ms. Gibbs and Mr. Carter. “That’s a pretty nice outgoing class to be in, I’ll take it,” she said. “We can all hang out in the corner booth somewhere.”

Only if a former editor in chief can still snag the corner booth, she is reminded.

“What if I can’t get a corner booth anymore, good point!” she said, and cracked up. “We’ll have to meet on my back deck, fending off the dog.”

Source: NYtimes.com

 

[Benn98]

Why the days of the ‘celebrity editor’ are now over

By Keith J. Kelly
September 14, 2017 | 10:02pm

With dizzying speed, four long-serving magazine editors of some of the most prestigious glossies in America — Vanity Fair, Glamour, Elle and Time — said they were packing it in.

In a week, names that were the foundation of the magazine biz for years — Graydon Carter, Cindi Leive, Robbie Myers and Nancy Gibbs, a total of 62 years as top editors — were history.

“The days of the celebrity editor are over,” said Reed Phillips, an investment banker at Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips, surveying the incredible fallout.

“I can’t recall this ever happening before,” said Peter Kreisky, an industry consultant. “It’s amazing and quite troubling to see four crème de la crème editors exit while still clearly at the top of their games. It sends a startling message about the industry’s future.” Carter, Vanity Fair’s editor-in-chief, kicked off the rush to the exits on Sept. 7, when he told staffers that he was going to be exiting his job at the Condé Nast title by year end. He angered top brass by giving his exit interview to the New York Times a day before he told them he was announcing his retirement.

On Thursday, Leive at Glamour told her staffers she was exiting her job at the glossy, also by Dec. 31, after a 16-year run.

In between, Myers, 17 years atop Elle, told her shocked staffers on Sept. 11 that she was leaving almost immediately. She is out Friday.

Myers’ replacement, former Marie Claire creative director Nina Garcia starts Monday — leaving Myers, what, a weekend to clear out a decade and a half of memories.

Gibbs’ departure was even swifter. As rumors began to circulate, she made the announcement on Tuesday night — shortly after hosting a panel discussion in the Time Inc. auditorium — that she was exiting Time after 32 years, including four in the editor-in-chief slot.

Ed Felsenthal, the company’s top digital editor, was named as her replacement on Thursday. Gibbs will stick around as editorial director of the Time News Group to help in the transition. So what’s going on?

Well, for one, it is planning time for all the big publishers and, with big budgets cuts said to be looming at nearly every company, heads are likely to roll. For some editors, the face in the mirror had a bull’s-eye on it.

Said one former top executive, “It’s hunting season — but that’s not good if you’re an endangered species.”

The celebrity editor — the ones with Town Cars, big salaries and wonderful perks — have actually slowly been disappearing for years.Three top editors at Time Inc. — Rich Stengel (Time), Martha Nelson (editor-in-chief of Time Inc.) and Terry McDonell (former head of the Sports Illustrated Group) all packed up and exited in recent years for one reason or another.

Even Tina Brown, a top Condé Nast editor and founder of The Daily Beast, stepped away from publishing in 2013.

“The trend is, the business has become no fun for anyone with options,” Brown told Media Ink in an e-mail.

“Facebook and Google have taken away so much of the ad revennue, editors-in-chief find most of their job today is firing colleagues they love and respect and doing three times as much with a third of the resources,” Brown added.

Faced with that pressure and the likelihood that it will continue, the 63-year old magazine veteran noted, editors quit.

Indeed. The speed at which the celebrity editors are heading to the exits is unprecedented. And the industry’s underlying problems are clearly having an impact, as the top brass try to cut costs.

“It seems to me that the folks leaving just don’t want to go through the pain of more corporate restructuring which always means less money for staff and projects while demands increase to do more,” said one magazine veteran, who counts many of the exiting editors among his friends. “My guess is that everyone has looked at the projections for 2018 and blanched.”

Hearst has not had major corporate layoffs but has been quietly pruning and consolidating at its titles.Condé Nast went through a big restructuring in January and, according to Women’s Wear Daily, a new round is in store for the near future.

Publicly traded Time Inc. has hired McKinsey & Co., the much-dreaded management consulting firm, to help it prune $400 million in costs over the next 18 months.

Why the blood-letting?

Print revenue — from both circulation and advertising — is forecast to continue to slump over the next several years. Cuts to lower-level staff were not enough.

‘All these top cats will be replaced by top kittens, less expensive than they are.’

“Print titles will continue to lose market share as their readers continue to move to online versions of the print brands or other forms of information and entertainment entirely,” said the latest global market report from Zenith Media, which predicts magazine print ad revenues will shrink at the rate of 6 percent a year through 2019.

The report does not add magazine’s digital revenue into the mix, so it’s slightly skewed, but does show an industry under intense pressure.But gaining a slice of the digital market is not easy — even with fairly strong digital audiences: Time Inc. has 127.3 million unique monthly visitors, Hearst nabs 104.3 million and Condé Nast digital gets 93.1 million, according to the June figures from comScore.

That’s nicely ahead of digital rivals such as Vice (72.3 million), BuzzFeed (75.1 million) and Vox (70.9 million).

But it is far behind the two digital ad behemoths: Google, with 241.4 million uniques and Facebook, with 203.9 million.

Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research, wrote that in 2016 the two grabbed 77 percent of the gross spending on the internet — leaving the rest of the media world to battle for the remaining 23 percent.

“The future will not continue to value the skills and talents with which they have become masters of magazine media,” said Kreisky. “The game is changing faster than ever and a new generation of digital natives is taking over. Plus they face enormous pressure to cut costs to compete effectively against digital players.”

With publishing’s rising digital revenue not yet offsetting print, publishers are trying to cut costs across the board.

“All these top cats will be replaced by top kittens, less expensive than they are,” said a magazine veteran.

And it’s easy to see why.Carter was said to have a package of about $2 million a year, and Leive was estimated to be in the $1.25 million range.

They may be better protected than most as they exit because, sources said, they landed their Condé Nast jobs when there were still good long-term retirement benefits. The two could collect in retirement up to 50 percent of their salaries, sources said.
Younger editors were not accorded that perk.

Gibbs was estimated to be earning somewhat less than the $700,000 base and $289,000 bonus that predecessor Rick Stengel disclosed as his compensation for his last year on the job in 2012 — before heading to the State Department under President Obama.

But Gibbs was still estimated to be pulling in a high six-figure salary in the range of $850,000 — and if Time’s stock ever revives, she could cash in stock options.

Hearst was always known to pay somewhat less than Condé. Sources estimate that Myers’ bonus and base on the Hearst title has her in the $1 million range.

But hard reality will likely leads to more cuts. And none may be more vulnerable than the seven-figure salary of top editors.

“Magazines are no longer the profit centers they once were with margins of 20 to 30 percent,” said Phillips. “There is certainly a risk in removing proven editors, but media owners have decided the economics of their businesses cannot survive in the long term without trimming costs.

Phillips predicts more top editors are likely to exit in the coming months. “This is a trend that will continue.”

Source: NYPost.com

 

[MissMagAddict]

At Italian Vogue, a New Beginning

By VANESSA FRIEDMAN SEPT. 19, 2017


Emanuele Farneti, editor of Italian Vogue, is about as different from his predecessor as possible: in gender and generation, and from a different professional background. Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times
In January, not long after returning from his winter holiday, Emanuele Farneti, the 42-year-old editor of Italian GQ, was chatting with a media friend when the subject of Italian Vogue, the powerful fashion magazine whose revered longtime editor Franca Sozzani had died at age 66 the month before, came up.

“They’ll just have to close it,” the friend said to Mr. Farneti. “No one is going to be able to follow her. There’s nobody.” Mr. Farneti made some noncommittal noises. Then he changed the subject. Because what his friend did not know was that he had already been offered — and accepted — the job.

“I understood why she said it,” Mr. Farneti said dryly a few months later in the lobby of the Hôtel Costes in Paris, drinking a Coke. He was in the city for the couture shows and was wearing a Prada suit, Church’s shoes (Prada owns Church’s) — and a Swatch.

“I wouldn’t have thought of me necessarily either,” he said.

Yet on Friday, after seven months of staying relatively under the radar, Mr. Farneti will be the host of the biggest party of Milan Fashion Week, a 1,000-guest bash in the industrial space once used for Gucci’s shows. The former Givenchy designer Riccardo Tisci is creative director of the event, called “The New Beginning” in celebration of, well, Mr. Farneti’s beginning, with Dante’s “The Divine Comedy” as the theme and performances by Sky Ferreira and Primal Scream, among others. It will be as close to an official coronation as fashion can have.

At a moment when a formative generation of glossy-magazine editors is moving on — Elle, Glamour and British Vogue have experienced turnover at the top this year — Mr. Farneti represents the beginning of the next wave. It’s possible the stakes around him are even higher, because his predecessor did not retire or get fired, she died. Most of the industry hadn’t even realized she was sick, and the news was a shock.

Little wonder certain questions have been accessorizing the story ever since: Who is this guy anyway? And what’s he going to do with that job?

For a start, Mr. Farneti said: “I am not Franca.”

Well, duh — except he is referring not just to the blindingly obvious, but also the fact that he is about as different from Ms. Sozzani as possible: He is a different gender, from a different generation and a different professional background and has a different mien. His experience is journalistic and legal, as opposed to visual or fashionable. The woman he is succeeding, practically a brand in herself, was described as a cross between a figure from Botticelli and one from Stendhal by the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy.

Mr. Farneti is most often described by those who know him or work with him as low-key, and occasionally as bourgeois.

With his wings of brown hair and square jaw, his fondness for leather loafers without socks, Mr. Farneti looks like nothing so much as a G-rated Hollywood version of an Italian. He tends to blend into the woodwork. At the couture shows, he sat quietly in the front row. No one really came to pay homage, as they did with other Vogue editors such as Anna Wintour and Emmanuelle Alt. Paparazzi did not take his picture with celebrities. In his room at the Costes, he had one bouquet of somewhat sere-looking flowers from Dior.

None of this bothers Mr. Farneti, who has two children ages 8 and 6; a wife who works for a digital marketing agency; an apartment near the Alberta Ferretti headquarters in Milan; and two getaways: a house in the Alps and one on the Italian coast near Portofino. Also, a 15-year-old black Suzuki he rides to work.

He does not mind being underestimated. That should not be confused with being insecure.

“I think there are lots of different ways to be an editor,” he said. “It can be useful to embody a magazine,” as Ms. Sozzani did, “but it’s not the only possible way.” Besides, it is his very un-Franca-ness that probably made him the best candidate for the job. As Jonathan Newhouse, the chief executive of Condé Nast International, said, “I don’t think it was possible to replace Franca with an exact duplicate, and we didn’t try to do so.”

Besides, it is clear that if there is one thing Mr. Farneti understands, it is engineering magazines. According to Mr. Newhouse, “He is a magazine ‘maker,’ which is someone who cannot only edit a publication but can conceive and create a title from scratch, which he has done in the past.”

Though he comes from a long line of respected Italian jurists and investigative reporters, and studied law at Milan University, Mr. Farneti started his career in television. He quickly moved into print as part of the team that founded Italian GQ, and from there went into sports journalism, covering soccer (his favorite team is Juventus) before becoming editor of the local version of Men’s Health. That led to a job with Panorama magazine, where he was in charge of supplements, including Flair, a woman’s style magazine.

In 2014 Condé Nast poached him to run the Italian edition of Architectural Digest, which he did for a year before returning to GQ, which he also did for a year. Vogue is the third magazine he has remade in as many years.

Still, when Condé Nast called on Jan. 2 to ask if he would be interested in the fashion publication, he said he never considered turning it down.

“For me, not having grown up in the fashion system makes it interesting,” Mr. Farneti said. “I have to take advantage of the fact I am not 24/7 in the fashion conversation.” Besides, he knows fashion people; he is close to Pierpaolo Piccioli of Valentino, has what he calls a “decent” relationship with Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, and has known Diego Della Valle, chief executive of Tod’s, since interning for him in San Diego in 1995.

But reinventing Vogue is a difficult task, even without the former editor lingering in most people’s memories. Glossy publications are in free-fall. Over the summer Italian Condé Nast announced that by the end of the year it was closing all the peripheral Vogues that Ms. Sozzani had run: L’Uomo Vogue (men’s), Vogue Bambini (children’s), Vogue Sposa (bridal) and Vogue Gioiello (jewelry). It was spun as a decision to focus on the core property, but widely interpreted as a sign that the business needed meaningful belt-tightening in the age of digital.

Mr. Farneti, however, said, “I believe in print.” One of his first decisions was to adopt a larger format page. Otherwise, he has moved slowly.“You don’t have to delete everything that came before,” he said. “That’s super arrogant.”

His relaunch cover for the July issue was a gesture of continuity: Shot by Steven Meisel, a photographer championed by Ms. Sozzani (he did all her covers until 2014), it had a vintage air.

When Ms. Sozzani took over Vogue in 1988, she inherited a decidedly parochial magazine with no real profile outside the country; her genius lay in understanding that to make Italian Vogue matter to anyone who was not Italian, she would have to communicate largely through photographs. She did so, and then added a dollop of activism on top, commissioning shoots that dealt with domestic abuse, plastic surgery and the BP Oil Spill. They were impossible to ignore, and her magazine soon became known as the most visually powerful of all Vogues. Though the magazine has a circulation of only 100,000, tiny compared to American Vogue’s approximately 1.2 million, Italian Vogue has an outsize influence: It is the kind of magazine that other magazine people buy.

Mr. Farneti understands this, but he has his own agenda. “The Apple people all say the worst thing they could have done over the last five years is try to think, ‘What would Steve have done?’ ” Mr. Farneti said, by way of explanation. His goal now is to make the magazine function as a platform to introduce Italian talent to the world.

“I want to put more Italian soul into the magazine, have it define this attitude toward life and beauty,” he said (despite this, one of his early moves was to name Luke Leitch, who is English, as an editor at large; he is not oblivious to the power of the accessible word). “I understand how hard it is for young talent in Italy to have a global impact.” Hence the September issue, which comes with a sticker on the front announcing “It’s All About Italy.”

“It’s a good idea,” said Stefano Tonchi, the Italian who is editor of W. “At this moment of globalization, if you want to make a dent you have to something unique and in a way local to offer the larger world.”

So far only two senior staff members have left the magazine, though Mr. Farneti’s management style has been an adjustment. “People were used to having Franca pick up the phone and solve their problems for them,” he said. He’s more into direct accountability.

For now, however, he has other pressing questions on his mind. Like what to wear to his party. “It’s a political decision,” he acknowledged, given the whole fashion world will be there, watching.

The solution: “a Zegna tuxedo.” Chosen because Ermenegildo Zegna is purely a men’s wear brand, which makes it neutral territory in the women’s wear (or sometimes women’s-plus-men’s wear) season. Plus, it’s classic Italian, of course.

source | nytimes

 

[Benn98]

Thanks for the article, MissMagAddict!

Even though the magazine seems to be doing well, I still cannot warm to him personally. His style or direction. Whatever it is, I'm don't really 'get' it. But time will tell.

 

[MissMagAddict]

Choire Sicha on His Plans for NYT Styles, His Gawker Days, and More

Five years ago, The New York Times boardroom seemed an unlikely place for a tête-à-tête with former Gawker star Choire Sicha. As he takes the helm at The Grey Lady’s Styles section, we should continue to expect the unexpected.

How have you been passing time between gigs?
I’ve been reading The New York Times deeply and historically. The real answer is, I’ve been going to a lot of physical therapy. It’s not cute at all. And I’ve been making a lot of lists.

What kind of lists?
I have a list of stories on one of my many lists called “Why don’t we have this!” It’s a thought exercise.

So how did you end up at The Times?
I saw the opening and I thought, “Wow, what a cool job!” It’s a group of people and an institution that was too fantastic to not want to be near. They wouldn’t like me saying this, but no one knows what Styles is or is supposed to be. That was really attractive to me.

What was your reaction when you got the job?
When Dean [Baquet, executive editor] called me, I said, “Okay, get ready for the hate mail,” and he said, “Haha, I already get the hate mail.” I thought, “Great, we’ll get along perfectly.”

There was a lot of buzz about who was up for the spot. Why do you think you beat out the competition?
I’m not sure I did. It was a nice old-fashioned round of media gossip—it felt very 10 years ago, which was refreshing. I think people are strongly and deeply attached to Styles as an entity. Whether they love it because they care passionately about fashion or society or capitalism, or they hate it for all those reasons, it’s a part of people’s lives. I appreciate all those emotions.

Vanity Fair spawned rumors that it was an actual bake-off.
God bless Joe Pompeo and his devotion to reporting on The New York Times. I love media reporters. It’s such a funny beat. And reporters want to spill. They’re actually the dishiest people in the world. [Laughs] People in this industry need gossip because they need to know what’s going on in their field. It’s less tabloid gossip than servants’ quarters kind of gossip, which is what gossip historically is—normal people talking about rich people. We won’t go down that road.

You’ve contributed to The Times, but was it ever a goal to be here full-time?
It was never a goal—I’m actually not much for career goals. I’ve been a bit haphazard and have had really amazing, fun adventures because of that. I loved being at Vox Media. I had one of the first jobs in the world that was totally about dealing with Facebook and Twitter. I would never have had that job if I did things on purpose. I’m not a schemer, and I definitely didn’t mean to accidentally work here.

What exactly was your role at Vox?
My main goal was to help us exploit opportunities with other publishing partners, mainly Google, Facebook, Snapchat, Apple, and help them work internally across product, revenue, marketing, and editorial to build things together and make smart choices. A classic example is Facebook getting into articles two years ago. That’s the short story.

Do you think people were surprised when you joined The New York Times?
This place is pretty rollicking right now. The New York Times has been through a lot of change in the past year—from the outside, not having been here, more rapidly than a lot of much younger institutions. It surprised me, I can say that.

Will you work from home or is this a big boy job?
I’ll be in the offices—I actually love offices! However, I am more of an 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. person. Morning rush hour in New York City has been devastated [by the MTA]. It’s good to remind myself how real it is out there. I like a nice reverse commute, but you can’t always engineer that. I’ve worked in a lot of remote-friendly cultures, but there’s a sort of a magic hour in media between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. when you’re tired and you start talking about dumb ideas, and then your dumb ideas become real. That’s hard to replicate in remote culture.

How do you plan to succeed editor Stuart Emmrich?
I worked for him a little bit, but I don’t know him well. The nice thing about Styles is it doesn’t have a super storied history—it’s not that old compared to the institution here. I don’t think we have to worry too much about what Trip Gabriel or Stuart Emmrich have done. They’ve done hilarious things and adventurous things, and each has caused trouble in their own amazing way. We can build on that and create our own kind of trouble.

So what’s your first order of business?
My first order will be something boring like an org chart, which sounds unexciting coming from me, but I’m a total process queen. I’m asking people what they’ve done and how it works. In the first half hour with someone you find out the things you’d expect; in the second half hour, you find out the weird infrastructure stuff that’s been plaguing them for years. I’m listening and accumulating a picture.

Your writing has become recognizable, whether at The Awl, Gawker, and even as a contributor for The Times. What will the voice of Styles be?
When I first started writing here in Arts & Leisure, I told my editor that I was worried about sounding like The Times. She said, writers do that to themselves. The paper—which they would call it back then, but would never now—does not do that to them. I thought about that a lot. I want us to be a place for young writers to learn, but also be themselves and sound like themselves. The Times has a lot of room for voice and for experimentation. Sometimes voice means visual voice—brilliant photographers, people who work in video and imagery—and I really want to celebrate those voices too.

Can we expect any Gawker undertones?
We’re definitely not bringing back Gawker Stalker—the bane of my existence! Honestly, a lot of Gawker’s DNA was stealing from places like Styles and The Observer. I don’t think we have to steal back. We can go to our roots here, and the roots of the places that people who work on the section have been. Can you expect Gawkerisms? You can expect some good old-fashioned sauce when warranted, but that harkens back to things you’ve seen at The Times in the past 60 years. I’ll say this—Gawker didn’t invent much. [Laughs]

Will your fondness for the word “like” survive?
I do have a passion for the word “like”! I grew up in Southern California in a particular era when “like” was pioneered, and I have never recovered. [Laughs] I have to be proud of my heritage.

Coming from digital media, how will you split your attention between digital and print?
The really boring answer is that we publish digitally first, but the paper has to also be fabulous and exciting and cool and smart and cheeky. We have to nail both. It’s a little bit like running the MTA. [Laughs] I think of it as an express and a local, which is a ridiculous metaphor. To devote a lot of energy and attention to things that live on phones doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a fabulous front page.

What kind of stories will you be orchestrating?
A Styles story is often about innovation, whether that’s the pricing of clothing or technology or social rules. The evolving states of marriage and family and workplaces, the way we confront the legacy of how we live with the actuality of how we live—all that stuff is Styles. So, specific stories? There’s a million I’ve seen in the past few weeks that I wish I had a whole team of crack journalists and editors to have done. I’m jealous of a lot of stuff. There’s a lot of top-notch publishing out there. Everyone talks about media being in turmoil, but we did democratize media and voices a bit. We’ve come a long way with letting people write from a point of view and report on topics that they would not have been able to cover in decades past. The competition is great.

Do you think that Styles has had its finger on the pulse in the past?
No, but I’m not sure that it’s always supposed to. This kind of goes deep into what Styles is. Ask me again in six months if it does, or should.

What’s your relationship with fashion director Vanessa Friedman like?
Oh, we don’t know each other at all—it’s going to be great! September 5 is the wackiest start date in the history of jobs in this world. We have five seconds to be like, “Hi!”

And your relationship with Gawker founder Nick Denton?
It’s good but fraught, which I think is the relationship everyone has with Nick. He’s a tough character, but a fascinating man. I think he has a really weird, exciting chapter after his rather explosive most recent chapter. I’m looking forward to what he does next.

Is the word “blog” still relevant today?
No, and it probably never was. It was a weird thing we had to use to make sense of things. I mean, that was the Gawker joke, that The New York Times was a fancy blog, because it was publishing rapidly and iteratively. We were all blogging—some of us were just paid less.

Why do you think you’ve been able to survive the fickle world of media?
I actually haven’t survived the fickle world of media that well. I’ve moved out of apartments in the middle of the night, I’ve owed massive amounts of money to the IRS, I’ve searched for gas and cigarette money in the couch cushions. I’ve done all these things as a grown adult man, not as a 19-year-old, and it was not cute. I think everyone makes it look easy when they have a good job or are wearing nice shoes, but anyone who wants to work in journalism has downs and ups, and we don’t want to talk about the downs as much as we should. Especially in New York and other big cities, it’s easy to look around and think everyone is so pretty and well-dressed, and doing so amazing, and they have a deal at HBO, and they’re selling a show to Netflix, and what do I have? And they’re probably home crying, being cheated on, or getting fired. You know what I mean? This stuff is all an illusion.

THE STORY ON CHOIRE!

Favorite American designers?
I’m not going to answer that—I don’t want to make endorsements! That’s Vanessa [Friedman]’s joy and pain.

Do you speak multiple languages?
No, and I’ve tried. My husband is bilingual, and I’m very jealous. We’ve tried a tiny bit of a home immersion, and I’m like, “I can’t watch this telenovela.”

Any plans for another book after your first [Very Recent History: An Entirely Factual Account of a Year (c. AD 2009) in a Large City]?
I was half-heartedly writing one for a year. It was about a young blogger who gets to murder a lot of men and winds up at The New Yorker as the happy ending. It’s very timely. I think people will love this book.

You have more than 1K Twitter followers and less than 20 tweets—what’s the deal?
I set up this thing a couple of years ago to delete all my tweets older than seven days, and I’m not really sure how to turn it off. But I’m sort of okay with it. I felt burdened by them. Twitter is disposable for me.

How are the cats?
The cats are well. It’s very embarrassing, having three cats. I had two and then one appeared on the street. Their names are William James, Peregrine—Perry, really—and Linden, named after the tree not the president. We found him under a Linden tree. It’s bad! But they’re incredibly well-trained. They sleep at the foot of the bed like dogs; they have feeding times. What really helped me is automatic dry food feeders. I could talk about this much more, because Page 2 of Styles will be devoted entirely to cats!

source: fashionweekdaily

 

[MissMagAddict]

The Not-So-Glossy Future of Magazines

By SYDNEY EMBER and MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
SEPT. 23, 2017

One evening in mid-September, a gaggle of writers and bon vivant editors gathered by the outdoor fireplace and ivy-covered trellis of a West Village tavern. Steak was served, and the toasts lasted late into the night, the revelry trickling out to the nearby sidewalk.

It could have been a scene from the Jazz Age heyday of the Manhattan magazine set — or even the 1990s, when glossy monthlies still soaked up millions of dollars in advertising revenue, and editors in chauffeured town cars told the nation what to wear, what to watch and who to read.

This night, however, had an elegiac tinge. The staff of Vanity Fair was saluting the magazine’s longtime editor, Graydon Carter, who had announced that he was departing after a 25-year run. In the back garden of Mr. Carter’s restaurant, the Waverly Inn, star writers like James Wolcott and Marie Brenner spoke of their gratitude and grief.

Mr. Carter has always had a knack for trends. Within two weeks, three other prominent editors — from Time, Elle, and Glamour — announced that they, too, would be stepping down. Another titan of the industry, Jann S. Wenner, said he planned to sell his controlling stake in Rolling Stone after a half-century.

Suddenly, it seemed, longstanding predictions about the collapse of magazines had come to pass.

Magazines have sputtered for years, their monopoly on readers and advertising erased by Facebook, Google and more nimble online competitors. But editors and executives said the abrupt churn in the senior leadership ranks signaled that the romance of the business was now yielding to financial realities.

As publishers grasp for new revenue streams, a ‘‘try-anything’’ approach has taken hold. Time Inc. has a new streaming TV show, “Paws & Claws,” that features viral videos of animals. Hearst started a magazine with the online rental service Airbnb. Increasingly, the longtime core of the business — the print product — is an afterthought, overshadowed by investments in live events, podcasts, video, and partnerships with outside brands.

The changes represent one of the most fundamental shifts in decades for a business that long relied on a simple formula: glossy volumes thick with high-priced ads.

“Sentimentality is probably the biggest enemy for the magazine business,” David Carey, the president of Hearst Magazines, said in an interview. “You have to embrace the future.”

At a time of belt-tightening, celebrity editors, with their big salaries and expensive tastes, are increasingly passé. Budget-minded executives at publishers like Hearst and Condé Nast are looking more critically at requests for six-figure photo shoots and $5-a-word writers.

“The timing doesn’t really surprise me,” said Tom Harty, president and chief operating officer at Meredith, which publishes Better Homes & Gardens and Family Circle. Magazines, Mr. Harty said, often circulate upcoming budget numbers in September.

“When you start thinking about the revenue stream for the following year,” he said in an interview, “it must lead to some cost discussion.”

In some ways, the spate of departures was a coincidence. Mr. Carter, 68, said he would have left earlier this year if not for the election of President Trump, whom he enjoys covering. Mr. Wenner, 71, has been deferring to his son, Gus, 27, who this year was named president of Wenner Media. Nancy Gibbs of Time had worked at the company for 32 years. And Cindi Leive of Glamour and Robbie Myers of Elle both served for nearly two decades.

Quietly, optimists in the business say that it may be healthy for a younger generation of editors to take the reins. Older editors are less accustomed to the rhythms and forms of web journalism; Jann Wenner, for instance, famously resisted posting Rolling Stone stories online. Many of the industry’s rising stars are finding ways to raise revenue and gain readers on the digital side.

“If you want to do the same thing year in and year out, you shouldn’t do these jobs,” Mr. Carey said.

Kurt Andersen, a former editor of New York and, with Mr. Carter, a founder of Spy magazine, said that print magazines were still breathing, but that the recent upheaval was a sign that the denouement might not be far off.

“The 1920s to the 2020s was kind of the century of the magazine,” he said, noting that The New Yorker and Time were founded in the decade before the Great Depression. Today, he added, the industry was in “more of a dusk, a slow dusk, and we’re closer to sunset.”

In his spacious aerie in Hearst’s Midtown Manhattan tower, Mr. Carey displays trinkets of an earlier, more glamorous magazine age.

Behind his desk is a framed quote from Malcolm Forbes, the exuberant late chairman of Forbes magazine, and a yellowing memo about Tina Brown from Mr. Carey’s days as publisher of The New Yorker. His 43rd floor office overlooks the Hudson River and Central Park.

But as the executive leading Hearst’s magazine business into an uncertain future, Mr. Carey said that he was focused on identifying new ways to increase revenue and trim expenses.

“We know that we have to constantly force ourselves to shake things up,” said Mr. Carey, dressed meticulously in navy pinstripe. “All media companies are going through a period of change, and we’re not immune from that.”

Hearst, like Condé Nast, is privately held, so the details of its financial performance are unclear. But recent earnings reports from Hearst’s publicly traded competitors provide a glimpse into the magazine industry’s falling fortunes.

Revenue at Time Inc. has declined every year since 2011; the company, which recently took itself off the market after speculation about a potential sale, is now aiming to cut $400 million in costs over the next 18 months. Although the print business still accounts for roughly two-thirds of Time Inc.’s $3 billion in annual revenue, the company is shifting resources to video and television.

Meredith, whose headquarters in Des Moines has test kitchens, craft studios and a wood shop, is doing comparatively better than its more glamorous rivals based in New York. Its magazines, which focus largely on perennial topics like decorating and recipes, remain popular with the company’s mostly female readers. Still, Meredith reported a slight drop in revenue for its magazine business in its most recent fiscal year, which ended in June.

A flurry of recent sales also suggest that smaller publishers are having trouble surviving on their own.

Before Mr. Wenner put Rolling Stone up for sale, Wenner Media sold Us Weekly and Men’s Journal to American Media Inc., the owner of The National Enquirer. Johnson Publishing, which is based in Chicago, sold the magazines Ebony and Jet last summer to a private equity firm. Rodale, whose titles include Bicycling, Runner’s World and Men’s and Women’s Health, recently said it, too, was for sale; a deal is expected to be announced in the coming weeks.

“There have never been brand names like that that have been sold in such a concentrated period,” said Reed Phillips, a managing partner at the investment bank Oaklins DeSilva & Phillips. “That alone indicates something is going on.”

The financial outlook remains bleak. Analysts and executives expect double-digit annual declines in print advertising to continue. The ad buying firm Magna projects print magazine ad sales to fall 13 percent this year, with a similar rate of decline in 2018, according to a report released last week.

Mr. Phillips said it was only a matter of time until these trends were felt at the industry’s highest levels. “In the past, magazines could support celebrity editors, but it’s becoming harder and harder with the revenue declines to do that,” he said. “This is really not about making the numbers in 2017, but making the numbers in 2018.”

One day after the fete for Mr. Carter at the Waverly Inn, Time Inc. rolled out a major initiative: PeopleTV.

A new iteration of a streaming video network that the company introduced last year, PeopleTV will feature pop culture programming in conjunction with Entertainment Weekly, another Time Inc. title. Among the shows on offer: “Paws & Claws,” which, according to a news release, will feature “all of the adorable, viral and buzzworthy animal stories of the week.”

Pet videos are a favorite on social media, so it is easy to see why Time Inc. wants to jump on the fluffy bandwagon. But that material is a far cry from the award-winning journalism that filled once-thick issues of Fortune, Sports Illustrated and Time, where Mr. Carter got his start in New York journalism.

These experiments are part of an industrywide race to find some way — any way — to make up for the hemorrhaging of revenue.

Hearst recently introduced The Pioneer Woman Magazine, a partnership with the Food Network host Ree Drummond that was initially sold only at Walmart. Its new travel publication, Airbnbmag, is geared toward customers of the do-it-yourself online rental site, with distribution at newsstands, airports and supermarkets. Meredith has started a magazine called The Magnolia Journal with the HGTV stars Chip and Joanna Gaines.

Even Condé Nast, the glitzy purveyor of luxury titles, has recognized the advantages of outside partnerships. In recent weeks, the company debuted a quarterly print title for Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle brand, with a cover featuring a topless Ms. Paltrow submerged in mud from France.

At Vanity Fair, Mr. Carter resisted efforts by Condé Nast executives to shift his design, photo, research and copy teams out of the magazine’s purview, a move required of nearly every other title as part of a companywide cost-cutting effort, according to two people who spoke anonymously to describe private discussions. Mr. Carter was reluctant to make additional cuts that may be forced upon his magazine in the future, the people said.

Some veteran editors rue the trend toward corporate metrics in the industry.

Terry McDonell, a former top editor at Sports Illustrated and Rolling Stone, said that celebrity editors of the past embodied and defined the magazines they ran. “Now that is being replaced by people who believe that you can, in fact, engineer creativity and quality journalism,” he said.

Mr. Andersen, who now writes books and hosts a public radio show, said that magazines might eventually gain a cult following akin to the interest around other obsolete media, like vinyl records.

“Eventually, they’ll become like sailboats,” he said. “They don’t need to exist anymore. But people will still love them, and make them and buy them.”

source | nytimes

 

[caioherrero]

Glenda said in her instagram that the November issue is the Special Anniversary for Bazaar.

 

[Deleted member 45369]

Glenda said in her instagram that the November issue is the Special Anniversary for Bazaar.

I'm just hoping it's her swan song. Is there any other editor The Fashion Spot has wanted axed as much as Glenda?!

 

[ThickGlossies]

What am I supposed to do when they stop printing glossies?

 

[tigerrouge]

Sit over the ones you have like Smaug the dragon lording over his gold... while coveting all the vintage issues you don't yet have in your collection. Look backwards, not forwards, it's the only way.

 

[MissMagAddict]

Graydon Carter Remembers S.I. Newhouse, Jr., the Magazine Visionary Who Modernized Condé Nast

Graydon CarterOctober 1, 2017 9:53 am

S.I. Newhouse, Jr., the Chairman Emeritus of Condé Nast, died today in New York, the city he was born in and the one that gave foundation to the empire he built. With his passing, at the age of 89, so goes the last of the great visionaries of the magazine business. Indeed, in a career that spanned more than six decades, he placed the Newhouse family name firmly in the pantheon of American publishing, alongside those of Luce, Sulzberger, Graham, and Hearst.

The Condé Nast company was once a distant, white-gloved competitor to Henry Luce’s muscular dominion of Time, Life, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, and People. But with the revival of Vanity Fair, in 1983, and the purchase of The New Yorker, in 1985, Si transformed his company into a powerhouse of style and substance. He inherited a carriage-trade house encompassing Vogue, Glamour, House & Garden, and Mademoiselle, and built from there, launching or adding not only Vanity Fair and The New Yorker but Self, GQ, Wired, Details, W, Architectural Digest, Gourmet, and Bon Appétit, among other titles. In 1980, he built out the book side of the family business by purchasing Random House, including Alfred A. Knopf.

Decade in and decade out, his publications helped report and set the style for much of the civilized world. And much as Si appreciated their outsize influence, he wasn’t one to shimmer around the smart drawing rooms where his magazines wound up. It just wasn’t his thing. What he really loved were the magazines themselves. As objects. And as businesses. He loved them the way his younger brother, Donald loved the family newspapers. Although modest in aspect, Si ran his fiefdom the way I imagine Louis B. Mayer ran Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in its heyday. If Si wanted certain writers or photographers (or editors, for that matter), he went after them. And more often than not, he got them. Once, in a negotiation I was involved in with a photographer, it came down to a $250,000 difference between what the photographer’s agent wanted and what we were willing to pay. “Oh give it,” he told me, finally. “I don’t want to nickel-and-dime them.”

He was an early riser, getting to work before sunrise—and before the day’s traffic could clog the streets. He ate lunch at noon. I don’t mean noon-ish—I mean 12 sharp. He ate simply and quickly. Bernie Leser, a veteran hand from the British and Australian wing of the empire, told me that, in the days when Si smoked, he often puffed between bites. He generally left the office around 3:30. He worked out, read for an hour or two, and then, with his wife, Victoria, went out to a film or an opera, or had an early dinner and then turned in. He was religious about his fitness routine. I was once having a drink with Warren Beatty at the bar of the Bel-Air hotel, in Los Angeles. When Si came in with Victoria and Donald and Donald’s wife, Sue, Warren went over to their table and said that he and Si had been doing circuit training in the same gym in New York a few weeks back, and that he could never have kept up with Si’s exertions. It was one of the many times I saw Si beam.

His work uniform was simple but comfortable: navy polo shirt, cotton chinos, brown Car Shoe loafers, and an old New Yorker sweatshirt. Because he was fit, he looked good in this rig. If he had to, Si could brush up. Back in the days when the Newhouses still owned Random House, he and Donald, Donald’s son Steve, Knopf editor Sonny Mehta, and Random House C.E.O. Alberto Vitale would assemble in the first booth along the wall of the Grill Room of the Four Seasons. The restaurant was one of the last holdouts of the jacket-required rule for men, and Si went along with this. I once saw a blue suit with a powder-blue shirt and dark-blue knit tie on a hanger in his office. When duty called, he was ready—like a smaller, older Superman.

Long before I came to know Si properly, I had asked to see him in order to get some advice about a twice-a-week newspaper I wanted to start in New York. He invited me to come by at seven a.m. I got there a half-hour early and waited out on the sidewalk. At 6:55 I made my way up to his office. It was large and spare, done up in blond wood and lush, white, wall-to-wall carpeting. On the walls were original panels of the old Krazy Kat cartoon strip. His assistant brought us tall, thin glasses filled with iced milk coffee. Si and I talked for about 15 minutes. The upshot was that he thought there was a dip in the economy around the corner, and he advised me not to start the paper.

As I stood up and began to put on my overcoat, the tail of it hit my glass of coffee. And in what I can only describe as the closest thing to real-life slow motion I have ever experienced, I watched in horror as the contents of the glass tumbled out onto the beautiful white carpeting. I apologized profusely and tried to mop things up with my handkerchief. He put his hand on my shoulder and said words that I will forever be grateful for: “Don’t worry about it,” he said with a laugh. “I do it all the time.”

I didn’t start that paper. But I did take over The New York Observer. It was then a sleepy, provincial weekly with a charmingly antiquated broadsheet design and was printed on pink paper, like the Financial Times. I went in with a plan that mapped out a series of changes over a 3-month, 6-month, and 12-month period. At the half-year mark, I was pleased enough with our progress to begin sending the paper out every week to friends in the U.S. and Europe—many of them editors.

The only reason I mention all of this is that a few months later, Si took one of his regular tours of Condé Nast’s European properties. And damned if he didn’t find a copy of the Oberver in everybody’s in-basket. Si left the Continent thinking that everyone in his circle over there was getting the paper—overlooking the fact that the copies were going out unsolicited, and for free, and that they were in people’s in-baskets and therefore not read yet. When he returned to New York he asked me over to his apartment for a drink and offered me a job.

That was the thing about Si. He was a gambler—especially when it came to backing the things or people he cherished or saw promise in. He scooped up The New Yorker and hung in there for decades, despite its losses, until it found its new footing—and, in this century, its profitability. Following his relaunch of Vanity Fair, he saw losses mount to close to $100 million before he was in the clear and the magazine began turning a profit. Si spent what needed to be spent. But he kept a close eye on what was coming in. Magazines are expensive propositions, and they survive and thrive on the advertising pages their publishers sell. Every month, Si would lay out the new issues of all his magazines on his desk and count the advertising pages by hand with one of those nubby rubber fingers that bank tellers once used to count bills.

I had lunch with him every couple of weeks. Like others before me, I learned to prep for the meetings, because he rarely wanted to talk about business. He was much more interested in art and film, and gossip from Washington, Europe, and the West Coast. To have lunch with Si was to be peppered with a lot of questions. When there was a problem to be faced, he used his own, occasionally awkward Socratic method to find a way toward a solution. He took his time when speaking. If you asked him a question, he would formulate his answer slowly, waiting for the right thought and the right words to form in his mind. Newcomers to a conversation with Si would rush into the void as he fermented his replies. Veterans knew to wait. The result was that all of his responses and opinions were measured and well considered. I don’t recall him, in the hundreds of lunches and dinners we shared, ever saying anything rash or ill-informed.

He juggled publishers constantly, but he was stalwart with his editors. I was a pretty wobbly steward of Vanity Fair during my early years at the magazine. But if he had doubts about my abilities during those days—and he had ample reason to worry—he never showed it. He instinctively knew that there is no guidebook to being an editor; success comes only from confidence and a vision that forms over time. Most important, for an editor to thrive, he or she has to be blessed with a comforting and nurturing proprietor. In this respect, Si had no equal.

Most years, during Si and Victoria’s stay in Los Angeles for the Vanity Fair Oscar party, David Geffen would host a dinner in their honor. The other guests generally included Donald and Sue, Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg, Sue Mengers, Fran Lebowitz, and me and my wife, Anna. One year, Geffen was showing Si around the Beverly Hills house he had bought from the Jack Warner estate. They paused in front of a rectangular Jackson Pollock that hung vertically in the breakfast nook off the kitchen. Si looked at it for a good while and asked where he had gotten it. Geffen turned to him and said, “I bought it from you, Si!” Si looked at it again and then realized that, when he owned it, he had hung the painting horizontally.

For all his wealth and comforts, Si lived life simply and without much in the way of luxury trappings. When the Condé Nast offices were at 350 Madison (between Paul Stuart and Brooks Brothers) we generally had lunch at Brian McNally’s restaurant 44, in the lobby of the Royalton hotel, about three blocks from the office. One day, as we were leaving the restaurant, it started to rain in buckets. I had my best suit on and a new pair of shoes and was resigned to the fact that we would get drenched. Like in a movie, a cab pulled up, discharged its passengers, and lit the on-duty sign. Si and I made a run for it. Just going from the door to the cab, we did indeed get soaked. I told the driver that we were just going a few blocks, but that I would give him $15. He said fine. I suddenly realized I didn’t have any money. Lunch had been on the restaurant’s Condé Nast account. I quietly asked Si if he had any money and he whispered no. So here we were—me and one of the wealthiest men in the country. And not a penny in change between us. When we pulled up in front of the office, I told the driver that if he waited there, I would rush in and get him $15 plus a $5 tip. He thought for a few seconds, then turned around to us and said, “Fine. But the little guy has to stay in the car!”

source | vanityfair

 

[dodencebt]

This puts Graydon's resignation in perspective for me. He must have known that S.I. was near the end of his life and didn't see himself at Vanity Fair without his support. Gosh, 2017 is really the end of a magazine era.

 

[Benn98]

Well, she can't have it both ways, can she? As far as I know Nicki actually demands her own make-up and hair stylist to accompany and style her shoots, and now she's saying the magazine shouldn't demand something different?

Here's why Nicki Minaj is angry with fashion magazines

Nicki Minaj revealed that certain magazine covers have requested she change her hair style, and later let women of different races sport the same look.

BY: Rachel Desantis
Thursday, September 28, 2017, 1:17 PM

Nicki Minaj is hitting back at her hairdo haters.

The "Anaconda" singer called out the fashion magazine industry for forcing her to switch up her hair style on covers, while letting women of different races sport the same look.

"For years, fashion mags would change my hair for their covers but allow women of a diff race to wear the exact style on the cover," she tweeted Thursday.

Minaj did not identify any specific magazines, but she's a familiar face on the cover circuit, and has graced the front of countless glossies, including Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Vogue and Elle.

When a fan suggested that her massive star status should be enough to prevent magazines from switching up her look now, Minaj revealed that the racist practice hasn't been left in the past.

"Actually, they're still doing it babe," she wrote.

The 34-year-old rapper is known for her ever-changing hairstyles spanning every color of the rainbow.

"I get tired of things quickly. I love change when it comes to my look … I need a new fix. It's like a high to me — every time I change my hair it's a high," she told People in 2012.

Minaj is not the first to criticize the magazine industry for appearing to cater to white women.

In 2015, InStyle was accused of lightening cover girl Kerry Washington's skin— though they later attributed the change in color to lighting. Similar claims were made against a 2014 Vanity Fair cover featuring Lupita Nyong'o

Source: NYDailynews.com

 

[MON]

She hasnt even covered Vogue yet.

Teen Vogue, yes. The mother, no. And why speak now...when she’s not even on the cover of any major fashion magazine? There’s no actual controversy here. I get the negative impact during Kerry’s and Lupita’s — because theyw ere the aftual coverstars. But Nikki, her last one was like a Marie Claire cover last year — with black hair! It’s so out of nowhere. To randomly talk aboit an industry that hasn’t even bothered featuring you is so misplaced imo. I completely wouldnt gotten this if she were on a magazine cover as of date and there’s a backlash. But until then, this is weird.

 

[Benn98]

She hasnt even covered Vogue yet.

Teen Vogue, yes. The mother, no.

I think she's being snarky towards Marie Claire. Marie Claire allowed Scarlett to steamroll their shoot with her own stylist team and photographer. Incidentally they are also only ones to give Nicki repeat covers, so this is a classic case of 'biting the hand that feeds you'.

 

[Benn98]

Btw, Justine Picardie liked Alexandra's Insta post.....

Ex-Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman thrusts stiletto into successor

In scathing online column, Shulman appears to cast aspersions on celebrity obsession of Edward Enninful

Graham Ruddick
Wednesday 4 October 2017 21.34 BST
Last modified on Thursday 5 October 2017 11.25 BST

Former British Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman has hit out at what she described as a new guard of editors who she said were no longer magazine journalists but instead “celebrities or fashion personalities with substantial social media followings”. Her remarks appear to be a thinly veiled swipe at her successor, Edward Enninful, who frequently shares pictures of himself with Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss and other leading fashion models across a string of websites.

Writing for the Business of Fashion website, Shulman asked the question “what makes a great magazine editor?” She concluded that editing was “certainly not a job for someone who doesn’t wish to put in the hours and thinks that the main part of their job is being photographed in a series of designer clothes with a roster of famous friends”.
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Shulman did not mention anybody by name but her comments emerged amid signs of a growing rift between her and her successor at the influential magazine, which she edited for more than 25 years.

In August Enninful’s friend, Campbell, criticised the lack of diversity at the publication under Shulman’s tenure by posting a photo of Vogue’s staff under her leadership. It showed there were no black employees in a workforce of around 50 and thanked Enninful for appointing her as a contributing editor to the magazine.

However, in her article, Shulman questioned the value of appointing high-profile “contributing editors” asking again whether they were prepared to work hard enough to justify their status.

Shulman wrote: “It has been interesting and educative to see over the years which of the more dilettante or famous contributors really put some effort into their contributions and which liked the idea of an association to the magazine without the tedious business of actually doing any work.”

Enninful, the first male editor to be appointed to British Vogue in its 101-year history, started the job in August, replacing the privately educated Shulman, who had run the title since 1992. An outspoken advocate for more diversity in fashion, Enninful, who was born in Ghana and raised in London, was previously a style director at titles including W and i-D magazines, where he befriended Campbell and Moss.

Since Shulman’s departure, several senior editors have left the Condé Nast-owned title in what appeared to be a clear-out orchestrated by her successor. Lucinda Chambers, the outgoing fashion director, gave an angry interview in which she said she had been fired and that the clothes in the magazine had become “irrelevant”.

But the former editor complained that the printed magazine was being starved of resources while its publisher was switching its focus towards digital content. She warned that British Vogue was in danger of losing some of its identity because “a massive investment” was being made in “a digital hub to service titles internationally with an element of one-size-fits-all content”.

Shulman said that while “the digital curveball thrown at print is powerful” that “doesn’t mean that magazine brands don’t require editors who actually edit … who sweat the small stuff”. She said that Vogue and titles like it would otherwise be at risk of “chasing clickbait that is mirrored in a zillion websites and cravenly following a small pool of short-term celebrity names”.

Shulman dedicates much of her article to defending the importance and value of print magazines over digital, describing them as “not only information and entertainment but also image-defining accessories, endowing the buyer with membership of a certain tribe when carried or even placed on a coffee table or kitchen counter”.

Condé Nast declined to comment on Shulman’s article. However, a source with knowledge of British Vogue also claimed that staff were concerned about their jobs under the Enninful regime, which they said was overly focused on celebrity figures.

The insider said that staff were “all so excited about this new chapter – and the reality is like working on the set of Zoolander. Hardworking staff … are being culled to free up cash for lavish shoots and celebrity appointments. Alexandra Shulman’s column is sadly spot on. In terms of positives, they’re very glad to see a genuine diversity of models and talent being represented in the upcoming issue.”

Others, though, have taken Enninful’s side. A blogger writing for the Spectator under the pseudonym Pea Priestly has been highly critical of Shulman’s editorship, claiming it will be “defined by mediocrity, idiocy and flip-flops”, that Vogue was “borderline racist” during her reign – because it had only two covers featuring solo black models since 2002 – and that Enninful’s first act should be “to get rid of the whole anaemic team – every last Sloaney sloth”.

Source: TheGuardian.com

 

[MON]

These kinds of comments make one wonder if she really left on her own regard.

Having said that, I too, am highly disappointed with the appointees of Edward. But as said, it’s hightime to give him a chance to edit without losing the right to be critical if his work is subpar.

And the previous team talk as if they gave out the best Vogue franchise ever. Come on.

 

[Deleted member 45369]

It's funny how they can spin an article into anything... I read the full article on BOF and thought it was a well written piece by a woman who knows what she is talking about. I'd recommend everyone read that and instead of the one above.

 

[Benn98]

I actually read the article before going to The Guardian and while her hints were extremely subtle and not exclusively directed at Edward, one cannot deny that it was definitely aimed at his ilk. It's just like the article she recently wrote about how Anna, Karl and Alber's uniformed dressing can be regarded as an armour. She's a wordsmith by nature. If she wants to take a stab at someone she won't be doing it in a blatant way. Anyway, it would be considered very classless and bitter to take blatant jabs at successors. In the UK we leave that sort of thing for Piers Morgan.