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.

 

Episode 43: Gail Bichler (Designer: The New York Times Magazine)

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Imagine this: You’re a 42-year-old designer who’s only worked at one magazine. Ever. Then one day, unexpectedly, you’re tasked to lead the design of that magazine. Now imagine that the magazine is universally lauded as a design masterpiece. Add to that, your immediate predecessors have both been enshrined into every hall of fame across the design and media universe.

Heard enough? Well now throw into this mix that your job is only an interim post. 

Why? Because just as your boss was leaving, his boss was out the door, too. That’s right, now you’ve got to navigate all of … this … while the company is searching for your new boss. And whatever you did that got you a shot at this opportunity the first time? You’re gonna have to do it all again. And likely for an editor who’s been tasked with coming in and shaking things up a bit.

“I’m fucked,” you might think. But you’re not Gail Bichler.

As you already know, Bichler survived the turmoil that started her tenure at The New York Times Magazine. And the astonishing thing—well, astonishing until you know more—is that Bichler has not only maintained the exalted design standards, she has pushed even further.

“Her magazine looks different from Rem [Duplessis]’s, as Rem’s did from mine. She’s pushed the envelope in dramatically new directions,” says her legendary predecessor—and the woman who discovered Bichler—Janet Froelich. Why? Because Bichler is an artist. And, as Froelich states, “she chooses to work with people who work the way artists work. She’s firmly committed to ideas and, most importantly, to journalism.”

“What elevates her as a leader is the discipline, structure, and consistency she brings,” says Arem Duplessis, whose departure for Apple created the opportunity for Bichler to move up. “Gail has always been so reverential to the Times’ legacy—and she fiercely protects that.”

 

Episode 42: Willa Bennett (Editor: Highsnobiety, GQ, Seventeen, more)

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In early April, what’s left of the magazine industry gathered at Terminal 5 to see who would win this year’s National Magazine Awards—the ASMEs. Throughout the evening, the usual suspects stepped up to accept their Alexander Calder brass elephants—the ‘Ellies’—on behalf of their teams at The Atlantic, New York Mag, the New York Times Magazine. 

Then came the award for General Excellence, Service and Lifestyle—a category that covers every food, fashion, and fitness magazine in the business. And the Ellie went to… content juggernaut Highsnobiety—a sneaker blog turned cool kid media amalgam that encompasses a twice-annual $20-per-issue print magazine, plus a flood of social media, a website that is also an e-commerce platform, and a creative agency that does 360-degree marketing and storytelling for brands.

Before the crowd could start scratching their graying heads, a Billie Eilish lookalike in a gray Thom Brown skirt-and-pant suit took the dais. There were plenty of people in that room who had never given Highsnobiety much, if any, thought. 

But in that moment, this woman, Willa Bennett, Highsnobiety’s thirty-year-old editor-in-chief, had officially become a force to be reckoned with. Not only that, but HighSnobiety’s business model, which bends rules that had long been sacrosanct in magazine journalism, suddenly appeared to have won the seal of approval from the oldest of the old guard.  

The post at Highsnobiety was a major leap for Willa. Just two years ago, she was the social media manager at GQ. Our friends who worked with her there tell us they thought of her as “the industry’s little sister”—hungry, passionate, and looking to translate the magic of magazines to a new generation. 

They said that even though she’s disrupting the magazine as we once knew it, at heart Bennet is a “a magazine junkie who really venerates [revels in? rellishes?] the old ways.” 

And now the surprise win has put her in the spotlight of the establishment media, with the New York Times Styles running a portrait of Bennett in her signature suit and tie look on its cover. 

The win inspired a segment on the Slate Culture Gabfest in which the hosts pondered, “What Is a Magazine Now?” Over in Spreadlandia, we thought, why not turn that question directly to Willa Bennett herself? 

In the end, this conversation left us feeling more optimistic than usual about the future of media. It also made us feel old as shit. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

 

Episode 41: Janice Min (Editor: The Hollywood Reporter, Us Weekly, Ankler Media, more)

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A good editor can, theoretically, edit any magazine, regardless of genre. But in some cases, you need an outsider to make things right. To see the forest for the trees. 

To that end, Janice Min has planted entire forests—one tree at a time—on both coasts, where the Colorado-born editor considers herself an outsider.

I cared about almost none of this. I don’t care about celebrities or reality stars. It was my job to just think about how to interpret what they were saying and turn that passion into stories. I don’t think that the editors always have to be their audience, but I also think, as an editor I was able to be removed from it and glean like, “That pops. That’s the most important story.”

From Us Weekly, where her instincts led to a massive increase in readership that saved a floundering publication—and likely all of Wenner Media—to The Hollywood Reporter, which was in a death spiral but is now, once again, a widely-respected and well-read industry bible, Min has played a major role in creating what we now call the celebrity-industrial complex, as well as the rise of what became social media and the influencer economy. That’s all.

Now, as cofounder of Ankler Media, Min is once again rethinking publishing—and celebrity. The company is centered around its newsletter, The Ankler, which bills itself as “the newsletter Hollywood loves to hate—and hates to love” and is currently one of the top three business publications on Substack.

 

Episode 40: Scott Dadich (Designer & Editor: Wired, Texas Monthly, more)

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In his mid-20s, Scott Dadich told his editor at Texas Monthly, Evan Smith, that he wanted his job.

A move like that is a combination of arrogance, youth, and frankly, balls. But you should also know that Dadich is an engineer. And what do engineers do? Well, according to one definition in Merriam-Webster, they “skillfully or artfully arrange for an event or situation to occur.”

Of course, you probably know Dadich as an art director and editor, but beyond the titles, he’s the kind of guy who builds things, re-engineers them, re-configures them or, more importantly, thinks differently about them. 

To date, his life’s work has been building magazines—marrying words and pictures and combining his love of math and engineering with an eye towards new, unforeseen outcomes in a long career that includes stints at the aforementioned Texas Monthly, and also Wired, Condé Nast Digital—yes, we’ll talk iPads—Wired (again) and then on to his own agency, Godfrey Dadich Partners, where he is trying to engineer a new approach to advertising.

As a rare creative who has helmed a magazine as an editor-in-chief and art director, Dadich has ideas about how to better create everything, from where digital and print sit in the ecosystem, to the makeup of an actual magazine, and even how teams should fit on the masthead. He has put these ideas to practice on the page, on the web, and also on the streams, in his award-winning Netflix series about the creative process Abstract: The Art of Design, which premiered in 2017.

 

Episode 39: Linda Wells (Editor: Allure, Air Mail Look, more)

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Picture it: It’s 1991. You’re sitting at your desk at The New York Times, when you get a call from the office of Condé Nast’s Alexander Liberman. Alex wants to meet you for lunch at La Grenouille to discuss an opportunity: Si Newhouse has decided to launch the first-ever beauty magazine, and he thinks you’re just the woman to make it happen. You’re 31 years old. The canvas is blank. The budget is endless.

What’s your move, Linda Wells? 

For the women’s magazine editors of today, struggling to keep the lights on by juggling Instagram, TikTok, marketing events, digital content, and whatever remains of their print product, this is a tale so far-fetched it feels like the stuff of an early aughts rom-com. But millennial editors’ wildest ideas about the “Town Car Era” of magazine-making were just another day at the office for Linda Wells. 

Linda led Allure for 25 years, becoming a front-row fixture at Fashion Week—while also pioneering the cottage industry of backstage beauty coverage—and enlisting writers like Arthur Miller, Isabel Allende, Betty Friedan, and John Updike to write about … beauty. 

In 2018, she pivoted, restyling herself as a beauty entrepreneur, launching with Revlon a makeup range she called Flesh. Now she’s back in the land of editorial, having a bunch of fun at the helm of the beauty vertical of Graydon Carter’s Air Mail, commissioning articles on everything from psychedelics to orgasm coaches. 

We knew Linda Wells would be delightful, and yet she exceeded our expectations. We know you’ll love her too.

 

Episode 38: Edel Rodriguez (Illustrator: Time, Mother Jones, Der Spiegel, more)

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The images are iconic. And you know who they depict. They may be the most unforgettable magazine covers to emerge from the chaos of the late 2010s. Why are they so effective? Because of the implicit understanding of what’s being said between artist and audience—without a word being spoken. Using just three basic colors, today’s guest has created the brand identity of resistance.

Edel Rodriguez was born in Cuba, and though he left that island nation when he was quite young, arriving in the US during the Mariel boatlift, one can’t help sensing an aesthetic that might be especially Cuban, or can be called, perhaps, “authoritarian-adjacent.” Because when the US flirted with—as it will again this year—a presidential candidate rotten with autocratic tendencies, Rodriguez’s imagery is the perfect match for the moment.

His red, yellow, and orange covers for Time, Mother Jones, and Der Spiegel—25 in all—were minimalist, dangerous, and dead-on-balls accurate. And he joins us today fresh off the premiere of his stunning graphic memoir, Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey. 

Of his notorious subject, Rodriguez saw the famously orange skin tone as a “warning sign,” he told Fast Company, and the simple style he employed resonated because it broke through the noise in the most effective way imaginable. Coming from Cuba, Rodriguez feels a duty to express, through his art, the potential outcomes of the choices we have made—and might make yet again. As he told The Guardian, “I don’t think most Americans realize what a coup is.” 

Of course, Rodriguez is more than just this one subject. But he’d be the first one to admit that he is political, and he makes no pretense of hiding his politics. As for his fans, they tell the artist that his work helps them crystallize their own thoughts and animates their feelings in ways they struggle to express on their own. A picture is worth a thousand words, indeed.

 

Episode 37: John Huey (Editor: Fortune, Time Inc., more)

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It might be difficult to remember, at least for our younger listeners, how vast the Time-Life empire was. At its height, during the John Huey dynasty of the late 1990s/early 2000s, the company published over 100 magazines.

Quite a rise from its humble beginning in 1922, when Henry Luce launched Time as the country’s first newsweekly. It was followed shortly by Fortune in 1930, Life in 1936, Sports Illustrated in 1954, and, finally, People in 1974. It was the largest and most prestigious magazine publisher in the world—and those five titles were the bedrock.

In 2006, Huey became the sixth editor-in-chief of Time Inc., overseeing more than 3,000 journalists. 

In an interview with New York magazine, Huey described Time Inc. as having a “public trust” and perhaps “an importance beyond profitability.” But not even a giant as powerful as Time Inc. was immune to the financial havoc brought about by the new digital age.

Huey retired in 2012, the last emperor of a vastly downsized and damaged empire. “Google sort of sucked all the honey out of our business,” he lamented then. In 2017, after Time was sold to its bitter rival Meredith Corporation, Huey tweeted “RIP, Time Inc. The 95-year run is over.”

Our George Gendron talked to Huey about Fortune’s battles with Forbes—and their pet names for each other, about giving Graydon Carter and Kurt Andersen at Spy a taste of their own medicine, about not hiring Tina Brown, and about what his mother really thought he should’ve done with his life.

 

Episode 36: John Korpics (Designer: Esquire, ESPN, GQ, EW, more)

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When you’re born in a town called Media, your career path is pretty much preordained. It has to be, right?

And when you end up leading the design teams at blue-chip magazine brands at Condé Nast, Hearst, and Time Inc., the prophecy is then fully realized. (Yes, I just watched Dune). But the journey in between is not as cushy as you might imagine. 

Since the age of 10, with his mother’s admonition—“you need to have a job”—ringing in his ears, designer John Korpics has found work doing all of the following: he’s bent sheetwork into duct metal, cleaned windows at factories, he was a fitness instructor, he had a paper route. He worked his way through college in food service—cleaning chicken, wiping counters, serving meals.

When you hear the title creative director, you’d be forgiven if your mind painted a picture. You know the type—the thoroughbred who studied at Parsons or SVA, apprenticed under Tibor Kalman or Roger Black, who gets included on some “30 Under 30” list. That’s not John Korpics. He’s worked hard to get where he’s gotten. Korpics will tell you that. He told me that:

“I always felt like I was the Pete Rose of magazine designers. I hustle, I work hard, I crank stuff out. Occasionally I get one and I hit one out of the park, but there are people in this industry that I think are truly giants. And I’ve never quite thought of the work I did in that league, but I am always inspired by them.”

And then, one day, he was 24 and hired to art direct his first magazine. And then another. And another. And like many of us, some of his jobs haven’t worked out. And when that happens, what does Korpics do? He gets himself another job. Like the time he became a Manhattan bike messenger after one particularly messy ending.

“I delivered mops to the 79th Street Boat Basin. I delivered products to Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. I delivered clothes from a studio to Vogue. I delivered a lot of lunches. And I actually really enjoyed it. Although I will say it’s not possible to make a living doing that. On my best day ever, I think I made about $90.” 

It takes a special person to survive in the magazine business. Forty years in, Korpics is still at it. He’s focused on the big picture now—brands, systems, pixels—at Harvard Business Review, the 102-year-old publishing wing of the 116-year-old Harvard Business School.

Yes, mom, he’s still got a job. Let’s meet John.

 

Episode 35: Rochelle Udell (Designer & Editor: Self, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, more)

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Rochelle Udell is many things. 

She is all of these things: teacher, ad woman, vice president, founder, wife, creative director, mentor, chair woman, student, marketer, graduate, design director, editor-in-chief, mother, chief talent officer, executive vice president, collector, president, meditator, internet strategist, partner, art director, volunteer, deputy editorial director, artist, retiree, and baker's daughter. 

As Walt Whitman would say, “She contains multitudes.”

“As for the titles attached to my name,” Udell says, “I consider them important only in as much as they help the outside world understand who I am and what I do. My fear is that they often do more to confine rather than define one’s creative possibilities.”

The daughter of Polish and Ukrainian immigrants, Udell began her career as a teacher at Sheepshead Bay High School in Brooklyn, when a chance encounter with Milton Glaser launched her into the thick of New York magazine’s newsroom in the early 1970s where she and a group of women (including our Episode 25 guest, Gloria Steinem) created and launched the legendary Ms. magazine. 

After that, Udell, an Art Directors Club Hall of Famer, put her talents, her hyphens, and her multitudes to work at the world’s preeminent magazines: Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, GQ, House & Garden, Esquire, Self, The New Yorker, and fashion brands, FIT, Chico’s, Revlon, and Calvin Klein.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, she was a pioneer of early-days digital media as the founder of Condé Nast Digital and its beloved, OG food blog, Epicurious.

Our editor-at-large, Anne Quito, spoke with Udell about all of it.

 

Episode 34: Mark Seliger (Photographer: Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, more)

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“I finally went up to Graydon and I said, ‘Hey, you know, I know you like me. I know you wanted me to be here, but I can also do covers.’”

• • •

That’s today’s guest, Mark Seliger. He’s the same Mark Seliger who, at the moment of this exchange with Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, had already shot over 180 covers for Rolling Stone, where he was the chief photographer from 1992-2002.

Seliger had been heavily recruited by GQ and Vanity Fair to move to Condé Nast. But, as he learned, the days of being Fred Woodward’s go-to image maker were over. Once again, he was the new guy. And he saw an opportunity to reinvent himself.

Fortunately, reinvention is Seliger’s middle name. (Well, it’s really Alan, but you get what we mean). For example:

  • Seliger grew up in rural Texas, but decides to go big and moves to New York City to get into the magazine business. Reinvention #1.

  • He gets early work at business magazines like Manhattan, Inc. In short time his portraiture lands him a few plum assignments at Rolling Stone. Reinvention #2.

  • Unforgettable shoots and an immediate connection with Woodward lands him the title of chief photographer, and he picks right up where the legendary Annie Leibovitz leaves off. Reinvention #3.

  • His exposure at Rolling Stone leads Seliger (along with his pal Woodward) to directing music videos for A-listers like Lenny Kravitz and Courtney Love, and Gap commercials with LL Cool J and Missy Elliott. Reinvention #4.

  • When Covid hits, and publishing effectively shuts down, he pivots to documentary photography and produces an epic portfolio of an empty and still New York City that becomes the book, The City That Finally Sleeps. Reinvention #5.

  • And somewhere in the middle of all of this, Reinvention #6: Seliger starts writing songs in his free time, and then forms the band Rusty Truck. And at the moment Seliger is reminding Graydon Carter that he knows his way around a cover shoot, Rusty Truck releases its first album, Luck’s Changing Lanes, which is produced by Lenny Kravitz, Gillian Welch, Willie Nelson, Dave Rawlings, Sheryl Crow, T-Bone Burnett, and Bob Dylan.

That’s a lot. A whole lot. But for Seliger, it’s all of a piece. Photography, music, work, life. He says it’s all about following your curiosity. Observing. Not just looking but seeing. “For me,” he explains, “it’s all about storytelling—the storytelling in photography translated well into the storytelling of songwriting. And that exploration leads you to do something that you’d never done before.”

That’s the story of his life.

 

Episode 33: Tina Brown (Editor: Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, more)

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As George Bernard Shaw once said, “England and America are two countries separated by the same language.” Turns out it may be more than just the language.

Early in my career it became clear the British were coming. The first wave arrived when I was an editor at New York magazine: Jon Bradshaw, Anthony Hayden-Guest, Julian Allen, Nik Cohn—all colorful characters who brought with them, as author Kurt Andersen said in Episode 2, “an ability to kick people in the shins that was lacking in the United States.”

And kick they did. 

A decade later, the British trickle became a surge that appeared everywhere on the mastheads of premiere American magazines. There was Anna Wintour. And Liz Tilberis. And Harry Evans. Joanna Coles. Glenda Bailey. Andrew Sullivan. Anthea Disney. James Truman. And, of course, today’s guest, Tina Brown. 

And the invasion continues today, with the Brits taking over our newsrooms and boardrooms. Emma Tucker at The Wall Street Journal. Will Lewis at The Washington Post. Mark Thompson at CNN. Colin Myler at the New York Daily News.

But none of them made it bigger faster than Tina Brown. Si Newhouse never knew what hit him. Brown, having just turned 30, grabbed the wheel of Condé Nast’s flailing 1983 relaunch of Vanity Fair and proceeded to dominate the cultural conversation for the next decade. 

And then? Another massive turnaround at The New Yorker. The first multimedia partnership at Talk. Nailing digital early with The Daily Beast. Then Newsweek. And, more recently, the books, the events, and the podcast. 

So Tina, what exactly is it with you Brits that makes your work so extraordinary?
 

“Well, I think that the plurality of the British press means that there’s a lot more experimentation and less, sort of, stuffed-shirtery going on. The English press is far more eclectic in its attitude and its high/low aesthetic, essentially. There’s much less of a pompous attitude to journalism. They see it as a job. They don’t see it as a sacred calling. And I think there’s something to be said for that, you know? Because it’s a little bit more scrappy, I think, than it is here. And I think that’s served us well, actually.”
 


So it’s no surprise then to learn that there were early signs of future-Tina. Here we call it “good trouble.” Tina’s got another name for it. As the story goes, teenage-Tina, blessed with a “tremendous skepticism of authority,” somehow managed to get herself kicked out of not one, not two, but three—THREE!—boarding schools. Her offenses? Nothing serious. Just what the ASME Hall-of-Famer refers to as her “crimes of attitude.”

And you know, when you think about it, what is any great magazine but a crime of attitude?

—George Gendron

 

Episode 32: Neville Brody (Designer: The Face, Arena, Arena Homme +, more)

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“Once you have broken down the rules, literally anything is possible.’”

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In the business of magazine design, few names resonate as profoundly as Neville Brody. And, to this day, he lives by those words. 

Renowned for his groundbreaking work and commitment to pushing design boundaries at magazines like The Face, Arena, Per Lui, and others, Brody is a true auteur in the world of design. We talked to him at the launch of his spectacular new monograph, The Graphic Language of Neville Brody 3.

Nurtured on 1970s British punk music, which rejected anything that appeared self-indulgent or overwrought, Brody found the perfect launch pad at The Face, the London-based music, fashion, and culture monthly, created by editor Nick Logan in 1980.

The Face inspired an array of fellow magazine rule-breakers, including the late Tibor Kalman, David Carson, and Fabien Baron, who calls Brody’s work “powerful, aggressive, and simple.”

Since then, Brody's journey in graphic design has been marked by a relentless, almost unforgiving pursuit of innovation. His magazine design challenged conventional norms and redefined visual storytelling. Brody’s design approach is characterized by a rejection of conventional grid systems and editorial hierarchies, and a willingness to break free from established design rules.

And he thinks magazines today are missing a giant opportunity:

“That’s the beauty of print, that you can’t achieve in the same way digitally. Digital is so commoditized. We’re not expressing content anymore. We’re just delivering it.


Neville Brody's legacy in magazine design lies in his fearless approach to challenging the status quo and his ability to capture the zeitgeist of his time. By pushing the boundaries of traditional graphic design, he not only influenced the look and feel of magazines but also inspired a generation of designers to embrace innovation, experimentation, and a spirit of creative rebellion. Brody's work continues to be celebrated for its enduring impact on the evolution of graphic design and its role in shaping the visual language of contemporary media.