Episode 63: Françoise Mouly (Art Editor: The New Yorker)

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I first met Françoise Mouly at The New Yorker’s old Times Square offices. This was way back when artists used to deliver illustrations in person. I had stopped by to turn in a spot drawing and was introduced to Françoise, their newly-minted cover art editor.

I should have been intimidated, but I was fresh off the boat from Canada and deeply ensconced in my own bubble—hockey, baseball, Leonard Cohen—and so not yet aware of her groundbreaking work at Raw magazine.

Much time has passed since that fortuitous day and I’ve thankfully caught up with her ouevre—gonna get as many French words into this as I can—through back issues of Raw and TOON Books. But mostly with The New Yorker, where we have worked together for over 30 years and I’ve been afforded a front-row seat to witness her mode du travail, her nonpareil mélange of visual storytelling skills.

Speaking just from my own experience, I can’t tell you how many times at the end of a harsh deadline I’ve handed in a desperate, incoherent mess of watercolor and ink, only to see the published product a day later magically made whole, readable, and aesthetically pleasing.

Because Françoise prefers her artists to get the credit, I assume she won’t want me mentioning the many times she rescued my images from floundering. I can remember apologetically submitting caricatures with poor likenesses, which she somehow managed to fix with a little manipulation numérique—a hairline move forward here, a nose sharpened there. Or ideas that mostly worked turned on their head—with the artist’s permission, of course—to suddenly drive the point all the way home.

For Françoise, “the point” is always the point. Beautiful pictures are fine, but what does the image say? Françoise maintains a wide circle of devoted contributing artists—from renowned gallery painters to scribbling cartoonists, and all gradations between—from whom she regularly coaxes their best work. I thank my étoiles chanceuses to be part of that group.

And now, an interview with Françoise. Apparently.

—Barry Blitt

Episode 62: David Granger (Editor: Esquire, GQ, more)

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While several interesting themes have surfaced in this podcast, one of the more unexpected threads is this: Nearly all magazine-inclined men dream of one day working at Esquire. Some women, too.

Turns out that’s also true for today’s guest, which is a good thing because that’s exactly what David Granger did.

“But all this time I’d been thinking about Esquire, longing for Esquire. It'd been my first magazine as a man, and I'd kept a very close eye on it.”

Unless you’re old enough to remember the days of Harold Hayes and George Lois, for all intents and purposes, David Granger IS Esquire. And in his nearly 20 years atop the masthead, the magazine won an astounding 17 ASME National Magazine Awards. It’s been a finalist 72 times. And, in 2020, Granger became a card-carrying member of the ASME Editors Hall of Fame.

When he arrived at Hearst, he took over a magazine that was running on the fumes of past glory. But he couldn’t completely ignore history. Here, he pays homage to his fellow Tennessean, who ran Esquire when Granger first discovered it in college.

“What Phillip Moffitt did was this magical thing that very few magazine editors actually succeed at, which is to show their readers how to make their lives better. And while he's doing that, while he is providing tangible benefit, he also coaxes his readers to stay around for just amazing pieces of storytelling—or amazing photo displays or whatever it is—all the stuff that you do because it's ambitious and because it's art.”

Upon taking over at Esquire, Granger’s instinct was to innovate—almost compulsively. Over the years, he’s introduced some of print’s most ambitious (and imitated) packaging conceits: What I’ve Learned, Funny Joke from a Beautiful Woman, The Genius Issue, What It Feels Like, and Drug of the Month, as well as radical innovations like an augmented reality issue, and the first print magazine with a digital cover.

Over and over, those who’ve worked with Granger stress his sense of loyalty. Ask any of his colleagues and you’ll hear a similar response: “David Granger is one of the finest editors America has ever produced. He also happens to be an exceptionally decent human being.”

At his star-studded going-away party after being let go by Hearst in 2016, Granger closed the evening with a toast that said it all: “This job made my life, as much as any job can make anybody’s life. It had almost nothing to do with me. It had everything to do with what you guys did under my watch. I’ve done exactly what I wanted to do—the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do—for the last 19 years. I’m the luckiest man in the world.”

We talked to Granger about retiring some of Esquire‘s aging classics (Dubious Achievements, Sexiest Woman Alive), his surprising and life-changing Martha Stewart Moment, and what really went wrong with the magazine business.

Episode 61: Simon Esterson (Designer & Co-owner: Eye)

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Simon Esterson is one of the most influential figures in British magazine design shaping the field for decades with his distinctive approach to editorial work.

Unlike many designers who built their careers within major publishing houses, Esterson chose a different path, gravitating toward independent publishing where his influence could be greater and his contributions more impactful. This decision allowed him to play a key role in fostering a rich culture of design-led publications.

His early work at Blueprint, the legendary British design and architecture magazine, set the stage for a career that would lead him to The Guardian, The Sunday Times of London and the Italian architecture magazine, Domus, before establishing his own London based studio, Esterson Associates.

Today, Esterson’s most visible project is Eye, the internationally-renowned journal of graphic design. As its art director and co-owner, he has been instrumental in maintaining its reputation as one of the most essential platforms for design professionals.

Thanks to his nonstop editorial work, Esterson is widely considered to be a mentor and role model for generations of British designers proving that great editorial design does not require vast resources, but rather a clear vision and an understanding of how design can elevate content.

That’s what great designers do.

Episode 60: Bob Guccione Jr. (Founder & Editor: SPIN)

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Nearly 40 years after its launch, Spin magazine has returned to print—and at the helm, once again, is its founding editor and today’s guest, Bob Guccione Jr. 

Launched in 1985 as a scrappy, rebellious alternative to Rolling Stone, Spin became a defining voice in music journalism, championing emerging artists and underground movements that mainstream media often overlooked. 

Now, as it relaunches its print edition, Spin will attempt to find its place in a media landscape that looks completely different. But Spin’s origin story—and Guccione Jr.’s career—has been shaped by a complicated legacy. His father, Bob Guccione Sr., was the founder of Penthouse magazine, a publishing mogul who built an empire on provocation and controversy. 

Launched in 1965 as a scrappy, rebellious alternative to Playboy, Penthouse was more than just an explicit adult magazine. It was a cultural lightning rod, sparking debates on censorship, free expression, and morality. 

Though Penthouse funded Spin’s launch, the father/son dynamic was soon fraught with conflict over Spin’s editorial direction combined with Penthouse’s declining appeal. That tension led to a deep rift—the two were estranged for years. But Spin survived, thriving under Guccione Jr.’s leadership as it defined a new era of music journalism.

We talked to Guccione upon his return to the magazine he built, and offers a spin-free take on dad, the launch, and the comeback.

Episode 59: Paula Scher (Designer: Pentagram)

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Paula Scher isn’t really a “magazine person.”

But if you ever needed evidence of the value of what we like to call “magazine thinking,” look no further than Pentagram, the world’s most influential design firm. The studio boasts a roster of partners whose work is rooted in magazine design: Colin Forbes, David Hillman, Kit Hinrichs, Luke Hayman, DJ Stout, Abbott Miller, Matt Willey, and, yes, today’s guest.

Paula has been a Pentagram partner since 1991. She’s an Art Director’s Club Hall of Famer—and AIGA Medalist. She has shaped the visual landscape for iconic brands—Coca-Cola, Citibank, Tiffany, and Shake Shack—always with her instinctive understanding of how typography, design, and storytelling come together.

In other words, she plays the same game we do.

In 1993, Paula collaborated with Janet Froelich on a redesign of The New York Times Magazine and built a platform for pioneering editorial innovation that continues to this day. In 1995, she helped me decode Fast Company’s editorial mission, in her own distinctively reductive way: “It’s about the ideas, not the people,” she said. It was a game-changer.

But Paula isn’t just a design legend—she’s also a complete badass.

Starting out at a time when the industry was still predominantly male, Paula carved out space for herself by fighting for it. Her work at CBS and Atlantic Records redefined album cover design. Later, her rebranding for cultural institutions like The Public Theater and the Museum of Modern Art helped cement the importance of an unforgettable identity system for any organization.

And, as a longtime educator at New York’s School of Visual Arts, Paula has molded generations of designers who have gone on to shape the industry in their own ways—including our very own Debra Bishop.

We spoke to Paula upon the launch of her new, 500-plus page monograph, Paula Scher: Works.

Episode 58: Jake Silverstein (Editor: The New York Times Magazine, more)

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Clang! Clink! Bang! Hear that? It’s the sound of all the hardware that Jake Silverstein’s New York Times Magazine has racked up in his almost eleven years at its helm: Pulitzers and ASMEs are heavy, people!

When we were preparing to speak to Jake, we reached out to a handful of editors who have loyally worked with him for years to find out what makes him tick. They describe an incredible and notably drama-free editor who fosters an amazing vibe and a lover of both literary essay and enterprise reporting who holds both an MA and an MFA. As one New York Times Mag story editor put it, Jake’s superpower is his “vigorous and institutionally-shrewd support of skilled reporters with strong voices pursuing projects that were just a little beyond the paper’s ordinary comfort zone.” 

Here’s a theory we set out to test in this interview—one that we’ve floated in our newsletter, The Spread, for years now: Is The New York Times Magazine the best women’s magazine out there? 

Yes, we’re talking about the stories they produce under Jake, like Susan Dominus’s ASME-winning, game-changing story about menopause and hormone replacement therapy, and Linda Villarosa’s feature shining a light on the Black maternal health crisis. 

But we’re also talking about the woman-loaded top of the Times Mag masthead, on which Gail Bichler, Jessica Lustig, Sasha Weiss, Ilena Silverman, and Adrienne Greene reign supreme—and seriously outnumber their male counterparts. 

And we could spend all day name checking favorite writers, like Dominus and Villarosa, but also Emily Bazelon, Danyel Smith, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Irina Aleksander, Jordan Kisner, Azmat Khan, Pam Colloff, Nikole Hannah-Jones, J Wortham, Wesley Morris. We could go on and on—you get the idea! 

So, did Jake agree with our women’s mag theory? And what is it like to have the deep resources it takes to make these kinds of stories these days? You’ll have to listen to find out.

Episode 57: Gael Towey (Designer: Martha Stewart Living, MSLO, House & Garden, more)

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In 1995, New York magazine declared Martha Stewart the “Definitive American Woman of Our Time.” And, as the saying goes, sort of, behind every Definitive American Woman of Our Time is another Definitive American Woman of Our Time. And that’s today’s guest, designer Gael Towey.

But let’s back up. It’s 1982, and Martha Stewart, then known as the “domestic goddess” — or some other equally dismissive moniker — published her first book, Entertaining. It was a blockbuster success that was soon followed by a torrent of food, decorating, and lifestyle bestsellers.

In 1990, after a few years making books with the likes of Jackie Onassis, Irving Penn, Arthur Miller, and, yes, Martha Stewart, Towey and her Clarkson Potter colleague, Isolde Motley, were lured away by Stewart, who had struck a deal with Time Inc. to conceive and launch a new magazine.

Towey’s modest assignment? Define and create the Martha Stewart brand. Put a face to the name. From scratch. And then distill it across a rapidly-expanding media and retail empire.

In the process, Stewart, Motley, and Towey redefined everything about not only women’s magazines, but the media industry itself — and spawned imitations from Oprah, Rachael, and even Rosie.

By the turn of the millennium, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, as it was rebranded in 1997, included seven magazines, multiple TV projects, a paint collection with Sherwin-Williams, a mail-order catalog, Martha by Mail, multimillion-dollar deals with retailers Kmart, Home Depot, and Macy’s, a line of crafts for Michael’s, a custom furniture brand with Bernhardt, and even more bestselling books. And the responsibility for the visual identity of all of it fell to Towey and her incredibly talented team. It was a massive job.

We talk to Towey about her early years in New Jersey, about being torn between two men (“Pierre” and Stephen), eating frog legs with Condé Nast’s notorious editorial director, Alexander Liberman, and, about how, when all is said and done, life is about making beautiful things with extraordinary people.

Episode 56: Alan Webber & Bill Taylor (Founding Editors: Fast Company)

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In the summer of 1995, I got an offer I couldn’t refuse. It came from my guests today, Alan Webber and Bill Taylor, the founding editors of Fast Company, widely acknowledged as one of the magazine industry’s great success stories. 

Their vision for the magazine was an exercise in thinking different. Nothing we did hewed to the conventional wisdom of magazine-making. Our founders came from politics and activism born in the ivy halls of Harvard. Our HQ was far from the center of the magazine world, in Boston’s North End—“leave the pages, take the cannolis.” And Fast Company was not a part of the five families of magazine publishing. It wouldn’t have worked if it was.  

I was one of the first people Alan and Bill hired, and as the magazine’s founding art director, I could tell Fast Company was going to be big. And it was big. Huge, in fact. Shortly after its launch, a typical issue of the magazine routinely topped out at almost 400 pages. We had to get up to speed, and fast.

Its mission was big, too. Bill and Alan’s plan sounded simple: to offer rules for radicals that would be inspiring and instructive; to encourage their audience to think bigger about what they might achieve for their companies and themselves, and to provide tools to help us all succeed in work … and in life. Their mantra: Work is personal. 

The effect, however, was even bigger. The magazine was a blockbuster hit, winning ASME awards for General Excellence and Design. It was Ad Age’s 1995 Launch of the Year. Bill and Alan were named Adweek’s editors of the year in 1999. It even spawned its own reader-generated social network, the Company of Friends, that counted over 40,000 members worldwide. And it brought together an extraordinary team of creatives who, to this day, carry on the mission in their own way—including the founders. 

Nearly thirty years after the launch of the magazine, Alan is currently serving his second term as the mayor of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Bill is the best-selling author of Mavericks at Work, among other books, and continues to lead the conversation on transforming business. 

We often said that Fast Company was the one that would ruin us for all future jobs. It was a moment in time that I and my colleagues will treasure forever. I am thrilled to be able to share that story with you today.

Episode 55: Jody Quon (Photo Editor: New York, The New York Times Magazine, more)

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Jody Quon’s desk is immaculate. There’s a lot there, but she knows exactly where everything is. It’s like an image out of Things Organized Neatly.

She rarely swears. Or loses her temper. In fact she’s one of the most temperate people in the office. Maybe the most. She’s often been referred to as a “rock.”

She remembers every shoot and how much it cost to produce. She knows who needs work and who owes her favors.

She’s got the magazine schedule memorized and expects you to as well. She’s probably got your schedule memorized, too. She’s stylish, graceful, and charming. And she doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.

She’s usually one of the first in the office and last to leave. In fact, on the day she was scheduled to give birth to her first child, she came to work and put in a full day. When her water broke at around 6pm, she called her husband to say, “It’s time.”

I don’t know if any of this is true. Except the baby thing. That is true. Kathy Ryan told me so.

I had a teacher in high school, Ms. Trice. She was tough. I didn’t much like her. She would often call me out for this or that. Forty years later, she’s the only one I remember, and I remember her very fondly. In my career, I’ve often thought that the best managing editors, production directors, and photography directors were just like Ms. Trice. These positions, more than any others, are what make magazines work. They’re hard on you because they expect you to be as professional as you can be. They make you better. (I see you, Claire, Jenn, Nate, Carol, and Sally.)

I suspect that a slew of Jody Quon’s coworkers and collaborators feel that same way about her. Actually, I don’t suspect. I know. I’ve heard it from all corners of the magazine business. I heard it again yesterday from her mentor and good friend, Kathy Ryan.

“She just has that work ethic,” Ryan says. “It’s just incredible when you think about it. The ambition of some of the things that they’ve done. And that has been happening right from the beginning. Ambition in the best sense. Thinking big. And she’s cool, always cool under pressure. We had a grand time working together. I still miss her.”

Jody Quon is one of those people who makes everybody around her better. That’s what I believe. And after this conversation, you probably will, too.

Episode 54: Samira Nasr (Editor: Harper’s Bazaar)

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It’s a cliché because it’s true: in the fashion world, you’ve got your show ponies and you’ve got your workhorses. We mean it as a compliment when we say that Samira Nasr truly earned her place at the helm of the 156-year-old institution, Harper’s Bazaar.

Don’t get us wrong. Samira is seriously glamorous—she’s the kind of woman who phrases like “effortless chic” were invented to describe. But she did not cruise to her current perch on connections and camera-readiness alone. Rather, she worked her way up, attending J-school at NYU, then making her way through the fashion closets of Vogue, Mirabella, Vanity Fair, InStyle, and Elle—where we met in the trenches, and got to see firsthand how she mixes old-school, roll-up-your-sleeves work ethic and her own fresh vision.

When Samira got the big job at Bazaar in 2020, she became the title’s first-ever Black editor-in-chief. The Bazaar she has rebuilt is as close as a mainstream fashion magazine gets to a glossy art mag, but it is far from chilly. As she has long put it, “I just want to bring more people with me to the party.” Which, when you think about it, is a brilliant mantra for a rapidly-shifting era in media and culture. How to keep a legacy fashion magazine going circa 2025? Drop the velvet rope.

The timing for this mantra could not have been better. After her first year in the role, Bazaar took home its first-ever National Magazine Award for General Excellence.

In our interview, Samira talked about remaking one of fashion’s most legendary magazines—plus, jeans, budgets, and even the odd parenting tip. We had fun, and we hope you do too.

Episode 53: Barbara deWilde (Designer: NYT Cooking, Martha Stewart Living, more)

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I was a publication designer for 20 years, making book covers at Knopf with Sonny Mehta, Carol Carson, and Chip Kidd. Later, in the early aughts, I made stories and books—and other things—at Martha Stewart Living. Then I took a brief adventure to graduate school—to learn a new trade. And finally I moved to The New York Times, where I helped create several of its legendary digital products, like NYT Cooking.

In December 2020, I bought a building on the Delaware River—and opened the Frenchtown Bookshop.

My name is Barbara deWilde—and this is The Next Page.

There’s a lot of talk these days about the new arc of a career replacing the long-standing one—at least in our business—of “work until you drop.” And given our focus here at Magazeum, we’re painfully aware that, for many, sudden change comes earlier than expected.

But magazine people are built different. And these days, with an industry in turmoil, more of us are resetting intentionally—creating a “second act” that’s often more purposeful than our prior work, doing something we’re good at with people we trust and admire. Over and over, we’re meeting more and more experienced magazine makers who tell us they want that for themselves.

We believe that creative magazine work—call it “magazine thinking” and its related skillset—can be a powerful driver of individual professional change.

The Next Page is our new podcast series featuring conversations with magazine creators who’ve left high-profile positions to see what comes next. We’re glad you're here.

Episode 52: David Haskell (Editor & Distiller: New York, Kings County Distillery)

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Like many of you, I was stunned by what happened on November 5th. It’s going to take me some time to reckon with what this all says about the values of a large portion of this country. As part of that reckoning—and for some much-needed relief—I’ve opted to spend less time with media in general for a bit. 

But on the morning after I couldn’t ignore an email I got from today’s guest, New York magazine editor-in-chief David Haskell. [You can find it on our website].

What struck me most about his note—which was sent to the magazine’s million-and-a-half subscribers—was what it didn’t say. There were no recriminations. Nothing about how Kamala Harris had failed to “read the room.”  Not a word about Joe Biden’s unwillingness to step aside when he should have. No calls to “resist.” In fact, the hometown president-elect’s name went unspoken (as it is here).

What Haskell did say that left a mark on me was this:

“I consider our jobs as magazine journalists a privilege at times like this.” 

I was an editor at Clay Felker’s New York magazine, the editor-in-chief of Boston magazine, and I led the creative team at Inc. magazine. And it was there, at Inc., that I had a similar experience. It was 9/11.

I wrote my monthly column in the haze that immediately followed the attacks, though it wouldn’t appear in print until the December issue. It was titled, “Think Small. No, Smaller.” In it, I urged our community of company builders to focus their attention on the things we can control. This is how it ended:

What we can say for certain is that the arena over which any of us has control has, for now, grown smaller. In these smaller arenas, the challenge is to build, or rebuild, in ourselves and our organizations the quiet confidence that we still have the ability to get the right things done.

For all the attention that gets paid to EICs, most of the work you do is done through the members of your team: writers, and editors, and designers, and so many others.

My friend, Dan Okrent, the former Life magazine editor and Print Is Dead guest, once said, “Magazines bring us together into real communities.”

Moments like this demand something different—something direct and personal from an editor to that community. Something that offers a challenge, but also an opportunity, to answer the question in a clear and credible way: So what do we do now?

Episode 51: Steve Brodner (Illustrator: The Nation, The New Yorker, Esquire, more)

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When your boss tells you to track down an amusing Steve Brodner factoid to open the podcast with, and one of the first things you find is a, uh, a “dick army,” welp, that’s what you’re going to go with. 

Lest you judge me, I can explain. Brodner’s drawing of this army was inspired by a guy who was actually named Dick Armey (A-R-M-E-Y)! He was Newt Gingrich’s wingman back in the nineties. I thought to myself, The people need to know this. 

However, with the election now a few days behind us, maybe the time for talking about men and their junk is over? 

What you really want to learn about is this Society of Illustrators Hall of Famer’s career. Brodner’s work, which has been called “unflinching, driven by a strong moral compass, and imbued with a powerful sense of compassion,” has been featured in Rolling Stone, The Washington Post Magazine, Esquire, The New Yorker, and many others.

In this episode, Brodner talks about how the death of print has led to the current misinformation crisis. As it gets harder and harder to tell what’s true, the future becomes increasingly uncertain. Even his most biting drawings are rooted in truth. 

“Satire doesn't work if you are irresponsibly unreasonably inventive. If satire doesn't have truth in it, it's not funny.”

A production note: This episode was recorded exactly one week before the election. As our conversation began, we took turns telling stories about memorable election night parties, and our plans for November 5th. Here’s Steve, talking about his plans…

 

Episode 50: E. Jean Carroll (Writer: Elle, Playboy, Esquire, Outside, more)

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Everybody knows that in May 2023, a jury found Donald Trump liable for defaming and abusing E. Jean Carroll, and awarded her $5 million. And everybody also knows that in January 2024, another jury found Trump liable for defamation against her to the tune of $83.3 million. P.S., with interest, his payout will now total over $100 million. 

But not everybody remembers—because we were guppies, and because, ahem, Print is Dead, y’all—that E. Jean is a goddamn swashbucking magazine-world legend: a writer of such style, wit, and sheer ballsy joie de vivre that she carved out a name for herself in the boys club of New Journalism, writing juicy and iconic stories in the seventies and eighties for Outside, Esquire, Playboy, and more—and then finally leapt over to women’s magazines, where she held down the role of advice columnist at Elle for, wait for it, 27 years. Elle is where we intersected with E. Jean and where we first saw up close her boundless enthusiasm and generosity for womankind. 

We’ll also never forget sitting at one of the magazine’s annual fancypants dinners honoring Women in Hollywood—these are real star-studded affairs, folks—when Jennifer Aniston stood up to receive her award and started her speech with a shoutout to her beloved “Auntie E.,” whose advice she and millions of other American women had devoured, and lived by, for decades. 

Here’s the truth: The woman that most of the world came to know through the most harrowing circumstances imaginable really is and has always been that fearless, that unsinkable. It’s not a persona—it’s the genuine article. And when you hear her stories about how hard she slogged away for decades to finally get her big break in publishing, listeners, you will have a whole new respect for her. 

As E. Jean tells us herself in this interview, she does very, very little press. So we couldn’t be more honored that our friend and idol and the Spread’s most enthusiastic hype woman sat down after hours with us for this interview. We just hope we did her justice!

 

Episode 49: Richard Baker (Designer: Us, Life, Premiere, Inc., more)

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Just about every magazine Richard Baker worked for has died. Even one called Life.

Also dead: The Washington Post Magazine, Vibe, Premiere, and Parade. Another, Saveur, also died, but has recently been resurrected. And Us Magazine? A mere shadow of its former self.

Sadly, Baker’s career narrative is not that uncommon. (That’s why you’re listening to a podcast called Print Is Dead). 

But Richard Baker is a survivor. He’s survived immigrating from Jamaica as a kid. He’s survived the sudden and premature loss of three influential and beloved mentors. And he’s survived a near-fatal medical emergency in the New York subway.

Yet, in the face of all that carnage, Richard Baker just keeps on going. To this day, he’s living the magazine dream—“classic edition”—as a designer at a sturdy newsstand publication (Inc. magazine), in a brick-and-mortar office (7 World Trade Center), working with real people, and making something beautiful with ink and paper.

 

Episode 48: Will Welch (Editor: GQ, GQ Style, The Fader, more)

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In the past few weeks, Will Welch has taken a bit of flack for letting Beyoncé promote her new whiskey label on the cover of GQ’s October issue, with an interview that one X user described as “an intimate email exchange between GQ and several layers of Beyonce’s comms team.”

Whether that kind of thing rankles you or not—and yes, we asked him about it—in the five years since Welch took over, GQ seems to be doing as well or better than everybody else in the industry. Why? Ask around. He’s got a direct line to celebrities, who consider him a personal friend. He’s got real credibility with The Fashion People. And because of both of these things, advertisers love him.

Perhaps most importantly, his boss Anna Wintour loves him. 

The Atlanta-born Welch started his career at the alternative music and culture mag the Fader in the early aughts, and jumped to GQ in 2007. For a decade under EIC Jim Nelson, he operated as the magazine’s fashion-and-culture svengali, eventually becoming the creative director of the magazine and the editor of the brand’s fashion spinoff, GQ Style.

In 2019, Wintour tapped him for the big job: Editor-in-Chief of GQ—a title that in 2020 was recast in the current Condé Nast survival-mode as Global Editorial Director of GQ, overseeing 19 editions around the world.

After speaking with Welch only a few hours after the Beyonce cover dropped, we get what all the fuss is about. He is a great sport with good hair and just enough of a Southern accent who is confident-yet-never-cocky about his mission at GQ.

Let other people bemoan the “death of print.” Will Welch is having a blast at the Last Supper.

 

Episode 47: Dominique Browning (Editor: House & Garden, more)

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Dominique Browning jokes that after the interview for this episode, she might end up having PTSD. After more than 30 years writing and editing at some of the top magazines in the world, Browning has blocked a lot of it out.  

And after listening today, you’ll understand why.

At Esquire, where she worked early in her career, Browning says she cried nearly every day. There were men yelling and people quitting. Apartment keys being dropped off with mistresses. A flash, even, of a loaded gun in a desk drawer. 

At House & Garden, where she ended her magazine career in 2007 after 12 years as the editor-in-chief, the chaos was less Mad Men and more Devil Wears Prada. It was glitzy Manhattan lunches mixed with fierce competition and coworkers who complained that her wardrobe wasn’t “designer” enough. The day she took the job, she says she felt like she had walked into Grimm’s Fairy Tales. (Her friends had warned her that it was going to be a snake pit.) 

When the magazine unexpectedly folded on a Monday, she and her staff were told they had until Friday to clear out their offices. “Without warning,” she says, “our world collapsed.” 

In this episode, Browning talks with Lory Hough, editor of Harvard Ed. magazine, about those chaotic years, which, she admits, could also be fun. (Spoiler: The fun had nothing to do with the loaded gun.) You’ll also hear why in her editor’s columns she often wrote about her kids, why she still thinks of herself as an editor, and why a certain bit of advice from a golfer friend helped her during the stressful parts of her life when she worried too much about what others were thinking: Keep your eye on the ball and just swing through.

 

Episode 46: Fabien Baron (Designer: Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue France, Interview, more)

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There are many reasons for you to hate Fabien Baron (especially if you’re the jealous type). Here are 7 of them:

  • He’s French, which means, among other things, his accent is way sexier than yours.

  • He’s spent more than his fair share of time in the company of supermodels like Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, and Kate Moss.

  • He gets all of his Calvin Klein undies for free.

  • Ditto any swag from his other clients: Dior, Louis Vuitton, Burberry, or Armani.

  • When he tired of just designing magazines, magazines went and made him their editor-in-chief.

  • He was intimately involved in the making of Madonna’s notorious book, Sex. How intimately? We were afraid to ask.

  • Also? Vanity Fair called him “the most sought-after creative director in the world.”


With our pity party concluded, we admit “hate” was probably the wrong word, because after spending time talking to him, it’s easy to see why Baron has been able to live the kind of life many magazine creatives dream of—and why he’s been so incredibly successful.

His enthusiasm is contagious. It’s actually his super power. And it’s a lesson for all of us. When you get next-level excited, as Baron does when he can see the possibilities in a project, his passion infects everybody in the room. 

And then, when you learn that Baron believes he’s doing what he was put on this earth to do, and claims that he would do it all for free. You’ve kind of got to believe him.

I never, ever worried about money. I never took a job because of the money. Because I think integrity is very important. I think, like believing that you have a path and that you’re going to follow that path and you’re going to stay on that path and that you’re going to stick to that. And that’s what I’m trying to do.


Welcome to Season 5 of Print Is Dead (Long Live Print!).

 

Episode 45: Tom Bodkin (Chief Creative Officer: The New York Times)

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For over 44 years Tom Bodkin has been the heart and soul of design at The New York Times. His job titles have included: art director, designer, design director, creative director, chief creative officer, associate managing editor, and deputy managing editor. Tom is only the second art department head to have ever been listed on the prestigious Times masthead. Tom served under more executive editors than I can count … a feat in itself.

There’s not enough podcast to detail the significance of his contribution to the Times—and to the newspaper business at large. Print and digital.

Building on the foundation of news design initiated by his predecessor, Lou Silverstein, Tom pushed major initiatives—from the change of typography and type style, to the introduction of color, to the addition of feature and news sections. He shepherded the transitions from print-only to digital-first platforms. He also took active roles in the transformative redesigns of the Travel, Arts & Leisure, and Sports Daily sections, among others. 

His influence extended to overseeing the makeup desk in the newsroom, enlarging the information graphics group and he created some of the most memorable A1 pages ever, including the arrival of a new millennium in 2000, the 9/11 attacks, Barack Obama elected as our first black president, and the ongoing coverage of the COVID pandemic. 

He’s also overseen a huge expansion of the paper’s design footprint from around 50 when he started to over 300 people now in all parts of the news and business departments.

These are milestones in the Times’ legacy—and in the global practice of design. 

But for me, Tom Bodkin is more than the sum of his accomplishments. He was my boss and is my friend. He made working, as I did for 33 years, at the Times fun. I was a senior art director (in fact, the only one for a while), one of my roles was as “consigliere”—although Tom didn’t need much counseling. He was prepared for anything, open to everything, and the most humane manager in a company where other senior-level chiefs could be, sometimes, difficult to work with.

When I left the paper, Tom put me on contract for another few years to ease my anxiety about leaving. It was hard to leave home after 33 years. It was hard to leave Tom, who was my eyes and ears at my beloved Times.

Now it is his turn to pass the baton. But before he does, we present you with this special episode of Print Is Dead (Long Live Print!) devoted to Tom Bodkin and his legacy.

But before we get to Tom, here’s Dean Baquet, former executive editor of the Times with a few thoughts about working with him. —Steven Heller

 

Episode 44: David Remnick (Editor: The New Yorker)

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I want you to stop what you’re doing for just a moment and imagine we’re back in 1998. (Those of you born since then will have to use your imagination). We’re on an ASME panel exploring the future of magazines in the digital age. 

The moderator, eager to get the discussion off to a lively start, turns to you and asks, “What magazine that we all cherish today is least likely to adapt and survive what’s coming?” 

Without hesitation you blurt out “The New Yorker!” 

The audience murmurs in agreement. 

“The Atlantic!” someone shouts from the crowd. 

More murmuring.

I’m not surprised. Neither is anybody else in the room. It’s almost three decades ago, and yet we’ve already headed into a new world of “nugget” media—and the total loss of our collective attention spans. Hell, magazines that feature 25,000-word polemics on topics like the squirrels of Central Park are already dinosaurs, even here in 1998.

It’s a bleak outlook for an institution—I’m talking about The New Yorker—that claims the following heritage:

  • It has survived two world wars and the Great Depression, 

  • it’s been led by only five editors, ever, in its 71-year history,

  • it didn’t use color—or photography!—until its 67th year when a young, supremely talented, and controversial Brit took over in 1992,

  • and it’s now run by a former newsman who had never edited anything except his high school newspaper. 

But here’s the thing: It’s 2024 and we’re looking at a decimated magazine business. Mighty brands and hot-shit startups alike are dead and gone—or running on fumes. The big publishers are divesting from print right and left.

And yet, there is a shining light.

Today The New Yorker is busy preparing for its 100th anniversary, with that same newsman at the top of the masthead who has brought video, events, podcasts, print (a magazine!)—and even some branded pajamas—together with the most legacy of legacy brands to create a 21st-century media juggernaut.

Programming note: This is our Season 4 finale. On behalf of myself and our entire team, thank you for listening—and your passion for print.

Now, let’s meet David Remnick.