Reading List, Oct. 17

A weekly roundup of job-hunting tips, career advice and interesting articles relevant to the magazine industry and being an editor.


• "Why Tina Brown, Chris Anderson, David Remnick and Others Are Upbeat Despite Media Tumult" by Matthew Creamer on  AdAge. Finally, people are starting to talk positively and recognize opportunities, instead of whining about the death of print.


• "FOLIO:'s 2011 13 Under 30." For those thinking they'll be 50 before they get to be editor, here are 13 young folks in top positions to inspire you.


• "How to Bounce Back From a Big Mistake" by John Caddell on The 99%. You're going to make mistakes; how you handle them is what matters.

Si Newhouse & Condé Nast

[Si Newhouse] ran [Condé Nast] as if it were a movie studio of the thirties and forties, the era in which Newhouse, a shy child, fell in love with the glamour of Hollywood. “One editor is like Hal Wallis,” Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair, tells me, “another like Busby Berkeley, and there’s a commissary,” the Frank Gehry–designed cafeteria at the Condé Nast Building at 4 Times Square. For Newhouse, it was a wonderful setup. “He created [in Condé Nast] a reality in which he is no longer the bumbling, asocial kid he grew up as,” says one person close to him. In this analogy, Newhouse is in the role of Louis B. Mayer, the notoriously tyrannical MGM head who loved his stars but made them quake. “Si loves being surrounded by divas and egomaniacs,” says one former editor. When one editor called another a “fucking bitch,” Newhouse didn’t mind. “Yes, but she’s our bitch,” he said. He delights in the Darwinian drama that takes place below him. “He believes the best will rise and will not be shivved in the back,” says the former editor.

– From a lengthy article by Steve Fishman published in New York magazine. The piece, about Si Newhouse and his kingdom at Condé Nast, gives a good glimpse into the company and its culture.

2 unrelated interviews: Wintour and Husni

"I like people who represent the best of what they do and if that turns you into a perfectionist than maybe I am." – Anna Wintour in an interview with 60 Minutes

"When the economy is bad, when everybody is shrinking, when the big media companies are at a standstill, that’s the best time to start a new magazine because it’s going to take one to two years for that magazine to evolve and establish itself. Then you hope in two years, the economy will pick up and you’re ready for that marketplace." – Samir Husni in an interview with Industry Intelligence Inc.

staying in vogue

An interesting article in the New York Times posits that Vogue is quickly becoming irrelevant.

Vogue has become stale and predictable, and it has happened in spite of some of the best editors, writers and photographers in the business. And it has happened in spite of a leader [Anna Wintour] who “only cares what readers care about,” according to a long-time staff member.

The article outlines some of the magazine's strengths:

For all the fantasy in Vogue, especially the fairy-tale kind produced by Grace Coddington, the creative director, and Annie Leibovitz, the magazine is actually quite serious. There are things to read, long pieces, from writers with distinct voices: Julia Reed on politics, Jeffrey Steingarten on food, Sarah Mower on the Paris collections.

And unlike many of her rivals, Ms. Wintour, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has largely resisted the pressure to break down content to lists and small bites. Though this faster, drive-thru approach to editorial consumption may be what more people want.

According to a writer at Condé Nast, who requested anonymity because he works at a sister publication, “Anna’s two great talents are that she understands her readers and she speaks with this incredible authority to advertisers.” Indeed, as the writer points out, Condé Nast, having monopolized high-end magazines, has a rather odd relationship with luxury advertisers — which is that these advertisers cannot afford to go somewhere else, bad economy or not. Luxury brands haven’t yet found a formula for success in digital media. Their relationship, then, with Condé Nast creates an “interesting ecology,” as the writer put it. “They keep each other in business.”

Some of Vogue's weaknesses:

Yet, in 2008, Vogue’s ad pages were down 9.6 percent, Mediaweek said, compared with an average 8 percent decline for other fashion magazines. Rivals like Elle and Harper’s Bazaar, which have adopted a pell-mell style that encourages value-for-money nibbling, have fared better. The very qualities that set Vogue apart — consummate fashion judgment, a comfortableness with ideas in the shallow pool of celebrity and weight-loss articles — now seem to be narrowing its view, like an aperture shutting down.

There are too many stories about socialites — or, at any rate, too few such stories that sufficiently demonstrate why we should care about these creatures. What once felt like a jolly skip through Bergdorf now feels like an intravenous feed. To read Vogue in recent years is to wonder about the peculiar fascination for the “villa in Tuscany” story. Ditto staff-member accounts of spa treatments and haircuts.

The article continues:

To ask what works in Vogue is in a sense to ask the same of all fashion magazines. Many do not seem to know how to relate to women in their 20s, except to throw celebrity pictures and clothes at them. Although the median age of its readers has hovered around 34 since Ms. Wintour became editor, in 1988, you don’t feel that the magazine has considered how changes like social networks and Web-based subcultures have influenced women’s ideas about themselves. This lack of awareness is reflected in Vogue’s pages.

The piece concludes with a few reasons why it would be hard to replace Wintour (as rumours late last year suggested), including this strength:

Editors of Ms. Wintour’s generation, like the designers they champion and the photographers they protect, have a depth of knowledge not easily reproduced.

gladwell on success

Maybe success has less to do with talent than we think.

Last night I had the opportunity to see superstar author Malcolm Gladwell speak as part of the Rotman Integrative Thinking Experts Speaker Series. (How does one become a Thinking Expert, I wonder?) Gladwell is making the rounds to promote his latest book, Outliers, which explores the idea that things beyond your control, such as your birth date, may greatly influence whether or not you're successful (and we're not talking astrology).

A few ideas that came up during his talk that I thought I'd share:

Some disadvantages are actually advantages. Gladwell named a few of the top-performing NFL players, pointing out that most of them were not the top draft picks. Because the players were lower down on the wanted list, they were more inclined to work harder to prove themselves. Meanwhile, you get first-round picks skipping out on practice. So in the world of magazines, might we say that a smaller budget is a disadvantage that's actually an advantage? If we use awards as a yardstick, the smalls measure up pretty well.

There are two approaches to success: Capitalize on your strengths or compensate for your weaknesses. I say do both. The key here is to know what you're good at and what you're not so good at. Then work like the dickens to improve where you're weak, and don't neglect to market your strengths.

Being conscientious can lead to being successful. "You have to believe the application of effort gets you somewhere," said Gladwell, pointing out that this belief is lacking in Western cultures (many of us learn at a young age that working harder doesn't necessarily mean higher marks). I say, be conscientious and you'll stand out beyond 90 percent of the workforce.

It takes 10,000 hours of doing something to master it. Gladwell cites the concept that the top "geniuses" – artistic, business or otherwise – in the world have one very important thing in common: they've all spent about 10,000 hours practicing their craft. He talked about spending many years at the Washington Post as a reporter and the intense apprenticeship he went through as a writer. Writing nearly an article every day, he had the opportunity to hone his skill. But it wasn't just the time he put in: he also had the benefit of a slew of senior editors pushing him to do better work, teaching him how to become a better writer. And I couldn't help but think, are we missing this apprenticeship relationship in our field? Do we spend enough time teaching the young up-and-comers? Do we demand enough of them?

And finally, bon mots of the day: "Google is eroding the competitive advantage of those of us who are willing to go to the library."

More Malcolm:
• Talking about Fleetwood Mac at Gain: AIGA Business and Design Conference (Oct. 23–25, 2008).
• A feature on Gladwell in New York magazine (Nov. 9, 2008).
• Malcolm Gladwell's blog.

the world of a restaurant critic

Have you ever fantasized about being a restaurant reviewer – you know, because of the food you'd get to eat? On the Ryerson Review of Journalism site is a story by writer Alexandra Gill, which reveals a little of what it's like to eat for a living.

what i learned at MagNet part III: Lewis Lapham on history – his own and the world's

The distinguished and revered Lewis Lapham spoke yesterday at MagNet about his life in journalism, his time at Harper's Magazine and his current project, Lapham's Quarterly. Two nuggets I'd like to share with you:

• The secret to good journalism, according to Lapham's mentor, is "steal."

• The merit of a journalism degree is in the networking opportunities. As far as skill is concerned, the best way to learn is by doing.

Lapham also appeared on The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos last night.

bonnie fuller out at AMI: is the tabloid queen too overtly ambitious?

With news of Bonnie Fuller's departure from American Media Inc., speculation is in full swing as to whether she jumped ship or was booted out. Much vilified, Fuller is often depicted as being overly ambitious. She's "known for getting itchy feet," and switches jobs quite often compared to many others at the top of the industry. She's been at AMI for five years though, and in my books, that constitutes a decent run. If a great opportunity comes along or if someone feels as if they've done all they can and learned all they could, that they can't grow any further where they are, why do we begrudge their choice to move on?