“I am truly, staunchly against telling the same story on all platforms. There’s a reason that a video exists and we should use that platform to the best of its ability. But there is also a reason that print exists, and it should be all about beautiful and sumptuous photos, and it should be about great stories and great storytelling. The one and the other should influence each other, but never copy.” Joanna Saltz…
“With House Beautiful, for me this brand has stayed around for so long because people trust it. They trust it and they believe in it, they know it has great taste, great advice and great service. And what I’d like to do with House Beautiful is show how that can really play out in a video space. Show great detail, show great artisanship, show amazing skill, but also great service. For me, House Beautiful can play beautifully on both platforms. I still care deeply about the print product, because that is the thing that invades people’s homes every month and I want to make sure that we earn that space in people’s houses. But I also feel like House Beautiful, taking that trust and building a brand on the digital side is going to be such an extraordinary adventure.” Joanna Saltz…
At more than 120 years old, House Beautiful magazine is an interior design staple in the world of home design. It is a well-trusted and treasured brand that people have turned to for design tips and inspirational ideas for generations. And it is still a growing and thriving publication that has a strong digital footprint as well, proving that print and digital together can certainly manifest as a force to be reckoned with.
Joanna Saltz is the editor in chief of both the print and digital faces of the brand. Hired originally as the editorial director of the brand’s website, where she oversaw the development and relaunch of the site in June, she is now guiding the vision of all of its platforms and loving every minute of the exciting longevity of the legacy brand.
Joanna’s first print issue will be the January/February 2019 edition, which hits newsstands in early January. I spoke with Joanna recently and we talked about the new “Open House” concept of the brand that she has created and her new editors letter concept, where she had a roundtable with five designers, a talented group of people who spoke openly and honestly about the world of design and its importance. Joanna said her vision for House Beautiful was a warm, welcoming place where all people were invited inside, not just the designer elite. And she added that the January/February issue will speak to how they are trying to create more intimacy within the pages, but also more actionable advice and learning.
It’s exciting times for the legacy brand and exciting times for its editor in chief. And now without further ado, the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Joanna Saltz, editor in chief, House Beautiful.
But first the sound-bites:
On how it feels to be editor in chief of a brand more than 125 years old: I think the best word is overwhelming, but exciting. I feel an extraordinary responsibility to carry this brand forward. For so long House Beautiful has been a beacon of great design. Over the years it has launched great careers; it has reported on amazing trends; it’s really been the touchstone of interior design for so many people. And I would love for my chapter to speak to those real tent poles of this brand.
On whether she thinks digital has the same staying power as some of the print brands, such as House Beautiful, that has been around for generations: For me, it’s less about the medium and more about the relationship that you have with your audience. I have been a print editor for a long time; I was a print editor for 17 years and then I took over Delish. And what I wanted to create for Delish was, I wanted to make it a comforting, fun place for people to learn how to get to know food. I wanted to create recipes that felt engaging; I wanted to invite people in that didn’t fancy themselves chefs.With House Beautiful, for me this brand has stayed around for so long because people trust it. They trust it and they believe in it, they know it has great taste, great advice and great service. And what I’d like to do with House Beautiful is show how that can really play out in a video space. Show great detail, show great artisanship, show amazing skill, but also great service.
On what readers can anticipate from the Jan./Feb. issue, her first editorially led issue of House Beautiful: I want House Beautiful to be a place where great design ideas meet. And what I mean by that is, engaging interior designers in conversation, getting advice from them, making people understand the importance of interior designers in this universe. You will see great, beautiful service. I think that there is a lot to be learned in the home design space right now. We assume a lot of knowledge in our reader, but frankly, I think there is a lot of bad information out there in the universe about what you should be investing in your home. About how furniture is made or what makes a great quality carpet or why you should spend a little bit more on X, Y, and Z. You save a little bit here, but you could spend a little bit more here. So, you’ll see a lot more beautiful service come to life on the pages.
On her role as editor in this digital age: To be honest with you, for House Beautiful, I feel like my job is host, in that I am inviting people of all opinions, of all aesthetics, of all design styles and ideals, to come in and talk about what makes their point of view different, important, engaging, interesting, and adventurous, all of those things. House Beautiful will not, and should not be, Joanna Saltz’s ideas for how you should design your home. This is an open forum for great ideas and influencers.
On her first Letter From the Editor: My editor’s letter, starting with the first issue, will be what I’m calling an Open House, which is a roundtable of me and five designers, designers who frankly have very different points of view, very different client bases, very different aesthetics, to talk about a topic. Our first issue, we talk about change and why it’s so scary, why it’s so loaded, why it’s so overwhelming to some people, but also how do you know it’s time to change. How do you know the change is the right move you made or how do you know you should change some things and not others?For me, hearing the conversation is so fascinating and is something that you don’t normally get to see in interiors magazines. Again, because I truly believe that stories can travel farther than pictures. A story is something that I can share with you over the dinner table.
On how she is going to translate the print stories into digital: What I love about the different platforms is the way they tell the story differently. For me, the digital side comes to life through process or through craftsmanship; it comes to life through seeing spaces with a different sort of perspective. The example that I keep using is this extraordinary wallpaper company, Phillip Jeffries, and how they make this amazing grass cloth. It’s made in Japan and these men hand weave this grass literally into grass cloth. And then they lay it out, they dry it; they just have the whole process. And when you see it come to life on video, no form of print could show what this video can show. That said, print shows these pictures in the most beautiful and exceptional way, so you see this extraordinary video of this stuff coming together on the video and then you see the way it’s applied, the way an amazing interior designer applies it to someone’s bedroom, that to me is the connection of the two.
On her biggest challenge: There are a few different challenges, I’ll be honest. The attention span is something to definitely be aware of. I left print three and a half to four years ago, and frankly, it’s not the same as it was. And that’s a very short while ago. (Laughs) But I feel like the reader has changed dramatically. And so even now, as I’m pulling together the House Beautiful issue, I can tell that display copy can’t be the same, that we have a different tolerance for the way that we need to invite people into the pages.So for me, one challenge is making sure that every page has an entry point and a way to draw people in. That’s something that is super important.
On whether she feels more at ease being over both print and digital or she enjoyed it more when she was just in charge of House Beautiful’s digital space: It’s easier to control a brand’s whole vision when you’re managing both platforms or all of the platforms. So, on the one hand I do feel like I can send a more unified, 360 degree message about the brand this way. I will say that I am building a fully integrated team and teaching the digital people print and teaching the print people digital is a very fun activity. (Laughs) If my boss is listening, it’s a very fun activity. It’s a great exercise in understanding the best of all of the platforms and using the best of both platforms on either side, I have to say.
On whether it was easy or hard to balance both print and digital: No, it was extremely hard. Actually, it’s funny because I used to think it was hard to go from print to digital, and that was the step I took from my former job to Delish. Day one of Delish was like, can someone tell me where the unique view is? Literally, I was walking around with that deer in the headlights look. Going back from digital to print, it’s almost harder, because certainly with print you have a finite amount of space, you need to make every inch of that page count; you have a lot more pressure engaging your audience, because as you said, things are very distracting. And you are in charge of directing the reader around the page; you as the editor are in charge of that.
On whether her brain finds itself splitting thought processes between House Beautiful and Delish: No, because the two are so different. But they’re so not different too. And a lot of people ask me about working on a food brand and how that positioned me to now work on a home design brand. And it’s funny, there was so much that we used with Delish that were tactile experiences, it was cheese pulls and we used fun music to draw people in and fun little sound-bites at the ends and the beginnings of the videos, but it was always about that experience that you have with food. Home design is no different and the tricks that we’ll need to use to draw people in will be different from Delish, but they’re still tricks. They’re still media tricks that we use to engage audience.
On anything she’d like to add: You asked me the most challenging thing; I think that another challenge is the stakes are higher now than they were when I started Delish. And with Delish, we had nothing. We started with nothing, it was like one million uniques. And we had no real brand identification in the universe and we had nothing to lose. With House Beautiful, this is 120 years of history, there are people who have been reading this magazine for 60 years plus. You have an industry that is so passionate and cares so deeply about the brands within it, but also about each other. And so for me, I just want to do right by all of that. I want House Beautiful to not just survive this shift in media, but to grow and thrive and be influenced, but also to influence. And I am super-excited to get my hands in there. And that’s what keeps me up at night to be honest.
On what she thinks is the biggest misconception people have about her: Well, assuming that people think about me, I think people relate my personal tastes to what my editorial output is. Certainly with Delish, I think everyone thought that I went home and ate cheese and took Jell-O shots all night. (Laughs) Not that there is anything wrong with that, I’m not judging. My editorial strengths lie in communication and service, and helping make difficult concepts easier. And so a lot of what I do here is curate, but also position the content for the audience, and to sometimes try to throw in a couple of things that might surprise and delight, but also try to teach them things, which is a lot of what I’ve been talking about. I think people would be surprised to learn that I care deeply about really healthy food and I don’t actually eat a lot of junk. I love ice cream and drink a lot of Diet Coke, those are my two vices.
On what she would have tattooed upon her brain that would be there forever and no one could ever forget about her: I think I want people to think of me as – what’s that phrase: don’t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness. That’s my mantra. And I think that Troy Young would agree with that statement. So much of what has made me successful, particularly in the Delish space, is just taking a chance, trying something new, trying to be as enterprising as possible, not really having any misconceptions or assumptions about how things are going to work out, be okay with failure, and thankfully I haven’t had to ask for forgiveness that much. (Laughs)
On what someone would find her doing if they showed up unexpectedly one evening at her home: If you’re not catching me yelling at one of my kids, which my daughter brought a bottle of Slime into the living room recently and got it all over the couch, so if you’re not catching me yelling at one of my children, I have three, I love to make things. And it used to manifest itself in baking, I was really into baking for a long time, and I still am a baker, but of late I’ve been changing light fixtures in my bathroom (Laughs), and I made a side table for my living room the other day, and I turned this old pot that my grandmother left me into a planter. I like to get my hands dirty.
On what keeps her up at night: Honestly, I’m a born and bred and deeply rooted people-pleaser. I don’t like to let people down. And with my job here, I don’t want to let the people down who have signed on to join my mission, and I don’t want to let the audience down either. So, that keeps me up at night. Just making sure that I’m doing everything that I possibly can to not let all of the invested parties in this new adventure down.
And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Joanna Saltz, editor in chief, House Beautiful.
Samir Husni: How does it feel to be editor in chief of a brand that’s more than 120 years old?
Joanna Saltz: (Laughs) I think the best word is overwhelming, but exciting. I feel an extraordinary responsibility to carry this brand forward. For so long House Beautiful has been a beacon of great design. Over the years it has launched great careers; it has reported on amazing trends; it’s really been the touchstone of interior design for so many people. And I would love for my chapter to speak to those real tent poles of this brand. The pressure that I feel when I say it often is, “This is my chapter and I’m going to hold it for a little while and then, God willing, someday I’ll pass it along to someone else who will make it their own chapter.” But this brand has always really truly reflected what design is in the United States at that very moment. And I want to continue that tradition.
Samir Husni: And with your background mix of both digital and print, do you envision any digital brand ever being with us 125 years? Do you think digital has the same staying power as some of those print publications?
Joanna Saltz: For me, it’s less about the medium and more about the relationship that you have with your audience. I have been a print editor for a long time; I was a print editor for 17 years and then I took over Delish. And what I wanted to create for Delish was, I wanted to make it a comforting, fun place for people to learn how to get to know food. I wanted to create recipes that felt engaging; I wanted to invite people in that didn’t fancy themselves chefs.
And what I think I’ve done is create a brand that people feel connected to. They feel like they know who we are, they know what our mission is, they understand our perspective on food. And they want to visit us on all of the different platforms. They want to come to our site, they want to go to the Instagram and they want to see our stuff on YouTube.
With House Beautiful, for me this brand has stayed around for so long because people trust it. They trust it and they believe in it, they know it has great taste, great advice and great service. And what I’d like to do with House Beautiful is show how that can really play out in a video space. Show great detail, show great artisanship, show amazing skill, but also great service.
For me, House Beautiful can play beautifully on both platforms. I still care deeply about the print product, because that is the thing that invades people’s homes every month and I want to make sure that we earn that space in people’s houses. But I also feel like House Beautiful, taking that trust and building a brand on the digital side is going to be such an extraordinary adventure.
Samir Husni: If I’m reading page one of chapter one of your House Beautiful, what can I expect to see? The Jan./Feb is your first issue; what can we anticipate?
Joanna Saltz: I want House Beautiful to be a place where great design ideas meet. And what I mean by that is, engaging interior designers in conversation, getting advice from them, making people understand the importance of interior designers in this universe. You will see great, beautiful service. I think that there is a lot to be learned in the home design space right now. We assume a lot of knowledge in our reader, but frankly, I think there is a lot of bad information out there in the universe about what you should be investing in your home. About how furniture is made or what makes a great quality carpet or why you should spend a little bit more on X, Y, and Z. You save a little bit here, but you could spend a little bit more here. So, you’ll see a lot more beautiful service come to life on the pages.
But frankly, the thing that I’m most anxious and excited about is bringing intimacy to the pages. I love looking at interiors, but more than looking at interiors, I love hearing the stories behind those interiors. A lot of these interiors start from a place that a lot of us have connections to, they start with a change of a family life, they start with a move or it starts with a problem they need to solve. I have more kids now, I need to have more space. And that’s something that we can all relate to. So, I want to hear what those backstories are.
It’s funny, someone said to me that your relationship with your interior designer is one step below a therapist. And every time I say that story back to a designer, every designer is convinced they’re closer than a therapist. (Laughs) They believe they’re closer to being marriage counselors, so they’re extremely dialed in with their clients and they’re really working around their lives. And that’s something that me, as someone who just wants a beautiful home, that’s something that I can learn from. So, I want to hear those stories.
I heard two stories recently. One was an extraordinary story from a designer, who was creating a space for a woman who had 17 percent lung capacity. And the details that he was giving me about the kinds of work he was having to do around her life experience was so moving and that connection that he has to his client was so beautiful that whether or not you like that interior, that interior connects with every one of us on a thousand levels. And frankly, whether you can walk away from that story with an actual piece of information, you’ll walk away with a story that you want to tell.
I heard another one too; I was meeting with an extraordinary company recently and they were telling me about how they just built a closet for a blind woman and how it was all about the tactile experience of building the closet.
Now, this is not to say that every single story is going to pull on the heartstrings in that way, but when you hear the detailed information that goes into these design decisions, suddenly this offers an entry point for everyone to get in. I want House Beautiful’s doors to be wide open and I want people of all different walks of life to find solace on these pages, because I really do feel that design right now is at such a peak moment. Design is now what food was three or four years ago, we all want to talk about design.
And whether or not I approve of your taste or your design decisions, if you’re willing to talk to me about design, we’ll be good. We can have this conversation, we have an entry point in and now maybe we can teach you a few things or show you a few things that will surprise you or include you.
Samir Husni: How do you see yourself, as a storyteller, a creator, a curator; what’s your job as an editor in this digital age?
Joanna Saltz: To be honest with you, for House Beautiful, I feel like my job is host, in that I am inviting people of all opinions, of all aesthetics, of all design styles and ideals, to come in and talk about what makes their point of view different, important, engaging, interesting, and adventurous, all of those things. House Beautiful will not, and should not be, Joanna Saltz’s ideas for how you should design your home. This is an open forum for great ideas and influencers.
It’s important for me for this brand to include people, because to me design is not just for the creative elite; design is for everyone. And I feel extremely lucky to be able to show people, and give people access to things that maybe they wouldn’t have necessarily have had access to before.
Samir Husni: I heard that you’re doing something with your Letter From the Editor, that you’re putting your words into action. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Joanna Saltz: My editor’s letter, starting with the first issue, will be what I’m calling an Open House, which is a roundtable of me and five designers, designers who frankly have very different points of view, very different client bases, very different aesthetics, to talk about a topic. Our first issue, we talk about change and why it’s so scary, why it’s so loaded, why it’s so overwhelming to some people, but also how do you know it’s time to change. How do you know the change is the right move you made or how do you know you should change some things and not others?
For me, hearing the conversation is so fascinating and is something that you don’t normally get to see in interiors magazines. Again, because I truly believe that stories can travel farther than pictures. A story is something that I can share with you over the dinner table. A photo, if I have it on my phone or if I have to describe it to you…but a story can engage people on every platform. So, if I can invite people in and get those stories out of them, then I feel like I will have done my job.
Samir Husni: And how are you going to translate those stories outside of print, on the digital scale?
Joanna Saltz: What I love about the different platforms is the way they tell the story differently. For me, the digital side comes to life through process or through craftsmanship; it comes to life through seeing spaces with a different sort of perspective. The example that I keep using is this extraordinary wallpaper company, Phillip Jeffries, and how they make this amazing grass cloth. It’s made in Japan and these men hand weave this grass literally into grass cloth. And then they lay it out, they dry it; they just have the whole process. And when you see it come to life on video, no form of print could show what this video can show.
That said, print shows these pictures in the most beautiful and exceptional way, so you see this extraordinary video of this stuff coming together on the video and then you see the way it’s applied, the way an amazing interior designer applies it to someone’s bedroom, that to me is the connection of the two. This is the storytelling here, you see the beautiful process. And the storytelling in the magazine is, and here’s how you put it into practice. That to me is how you tell the story.
I am truly, staunchly against telling the same story on all platforms. There’s a reason that a video exists and we should use that platform to the best of its ability. But there is also a reason that print exists, and it should be all about beautiful and sumptuous photos, and it should be about great stories and great storytelling. The one and the other should influence each other, but never copy.
Samir Husni: What do you think is your biggest challenge today? Is it your readers’ attention span, or is all just a walk in a rose garden for you?
Joanna Saltz: No, not at all. There are a few different challenges, I’ll be honest. The attention span is something to definitely be aware of. I left print three and a half to four years ago, and frankly, it’s not the same as it was. And that’s a very short while ago. (Laughs) But I feel like the reader has changed dramatically. And so even now, as I’m pulling together the House Beautiful issue, I can tell that display copy can’t be the same, that we have a different tolerance for the way that we need to invite people into the pages. So for me, one challenge is making sure that every page has an entry point and a way to draw people in. That’s something that is super important.
From a House Beautiful perspective, this brand has done an extraordinary job of speaking to designers and design files, people who are really knowledgeable and get a lot of inspiration from these pages. My challenge will be to continue to engage them with ideas and concepts and visuals that a design file would be surprised by. But also on the other side, engage a new audience of people who maybe didn’t feel super-comfortable dancing in House Beautiful before.
Opening those doors up, as I said before, to people who maybe have a little bit of an active interest in design, and maybe they come in here and see some things that make them feel comfortable and maybe see some things that make them feel overwhelmed, but all in the name of learning about what a good design is.
So, my challenge will really be to balance those two sides of the scale, and hopefully I think we can all learn something from design. I am always skeptical of people who don’t think they have something to learn. Knowledge to me is currency. And it’s the way I’ve driven myself through my career. I’ve taken lateral moves because I feel like the new job that I wanted to take on was teaching me something new and experiential. And I just believe that House Beautiful can be such a place of educating the consumer on a lot of levels, surprising people who have a lot of experience, but also just make it a warm, welcoming place for people who love design.
Samir Husni: Mentally speaking, do you feel more at ease being the editor in chief over both digital and print, or your fun days were when you were the digital person only and now you have the responsibility of both?
Joanna Saltz: It’s easier to control a brand’s whole vision when you’re managing both platforms or all of the platforms. So, on the one hand I do feel like I can send a more unified, 360 degree message about the brand this way. I will say that I am building a fully integrated team and teaching the digital people print and teaching the print people digital is a very fun activity. (Laughs) If my boss is listening, it’s a very fun activity. It’s a great exercise in understanding the best of all of the platforms and using the best of both platforms on either side, I have to say.
I do think that digital people generally know how to write headlines that engage audiences, print people are extraordinarily good at creating content with such depth and precision and beauty. And I think that both sides have a lot to learn from each other. And that is the one thing that we’re all coming together around. It’s creating amazing content and using the best of all of the platforms to create that content.
Samir Husni: Judging by your experience, was it an easy thing to do, balancing those two, or was it difficult?
Joanna Saltz: No, it was extremely hard. Actually, it’s funny because I used to think it was hard to go from print to digital, and that was the step I took from my former job to Delish. Day one of Delish was like, can someone tell me where the unique view is? Literally, I was walking around with that deer in the headlights look. Going back from digital to print, it’s almost harder, because certainly with print you have a finite amount of space, you need to make every inch of that page count; you have a lot more pressure engaging your audience, because as you said, things are very distracting. And you are in charge of directing the reader around the page; you as the editor are in charge of that.
On a phone or a computer screen, there’s one direction to go, it’s up and down and that’s it. On a page, there’s a million directions, a million ways that we can go, so teaching a digital editor to understand the real estate of a print page, the way your audience enters and exits a page, it’s a much more nuanced lesson. And frankly, I am kind of having to reteach myself in a lot of ways.
My experience at Seventeen taught me a lot about that, because in a lot of ways teenaged girls who were reading the magazine were reading a magazine for the first time, they were young. So, you were really sort of creating pages and stories where you were almost giving them a roadmap. Every story had to be a roadmap and you had to very clearly mark where to enter and then direct them where to go next. I think that experience has really helped me with this, because I think that digital editors are fantastic and digital editors at Hearst, they have special talents here. But crafting storytelling and crafting storytelling for the page is a challenge.
Samir Husni: Do you find yourself thinking about House Beautiful and then another part of your brain is thinking about Delish?
Joanna Saltz: No, because the two are so different. But they’re so not different too. And a lot of people ask me about working on a food brand and how that positioned me to now work on a home design brand. And it’s funny, there was so much that we used with Delish that were tactile experiences, it was cheese pulls and we used fun music to draw people in and fun little sound-bites at the ends and the beginnings of the videos, but it was always about that experience that you have with food. Home design is no different and the tricks that we’ll need to use to draw people in will be different from Delish, but they’re still tricks. They’re still media tricks that we use to engage audience.
And whether that’s through a gorgeous blanket or a rug or wallpaper or something, or through an amazingly funny and charming interior designer who has great responses, or through a beautiful story that touches your heart, we’re going to use all of those same touchstones through all of our different platforms, they’re just manifesting themselves differently. So, the brain is the same, it’s the execution and the output that’s really the difference. It just comes down to how you communicate with your audience.
Samir Husni: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Joanna Saltz: You asked me the most challenging thing; I think that another challenge is the stakes are higher now than they were when I started Delish. And with Delish, we had nothing. We started with nothing, it was like one million uniques. And we had no real brand identification in the universe and we had nothing to lose. With House Beautiful, this is 120 years of history, there are people who have been reading this magazine for 60 years plus. You have an industry that is so passionate and cares so deeply about the brands within it, but also about each other. And so for me, I just want to do right by all of that. I want House Beautiful to not just survive this shift in media, but to grow and thrive and be influenced, but also to influence. And I am super-excited to get my hands in there. And that’s what keeps me up at night to be honest.
Samir Husni: What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about you?
Joanna Saltz: Well, assuming that people think about me, I think people relate my personal tastes to what my editorial output is. Certainly with Delish, I think everyone thought that I went home and ate cheese and took Jell-O shots all night. (Laughs) Not that there is anything wrong with that, I’m not judging. My editorial strengths lie in communication and service, and helping make difficult concepts easier. And so a lot of what I do here is curate, but also position the content for the audience, and to sometimes try to throw in a couple of things that might surprise and delight, but also try to teach them things, which is a lot of what I’ve been talking about.
I think people would be surprised to learn that I care deeply about really healthy food and I don’t actually eat a lot of junk. I love ice cream and drink a lot of Diet Coke, those are my two vices. But I don’t tend to eat all of the things you see on Delish all of the time. And certainly on the design side, I care deeply about quality in the home and spending money where I need to spend money there. So, I would say that the tastes they see on all of my different platforms directly correlate to my own personal tastes at home. I’m just a storyteller.
Samir Husni: If you could have one thing tattooed upon your brain that no one would ever forget about you, what would it be?
Joanna Saltz: I think I want people to think of me as – what’s that phrase: don’t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness. That’s my mantra. And I think that Troy Young would agree with that statement. So much of what has made me successful, particularly in the Delish space, is just taking a chance, trying something new, trying to be as enterprising as possible, not really having any misconceptions or assumptions about how things are going to work out, be okay with failure, and thankfully I haven’t had to ask for forgiveness that much. (Laughs)
Thankfully I work in an environment where that kind of entrepreneurship is extremely valued. I’ve always said this about Troy Young, that a lot of bosses say they want innovation, but are too afraid to take chances. And I would say that Troy is someone who appreciates people who are thinking outside of the box. He cultivates a culture of that here. He doesn’t want to know why something didn’t work out, he wants to know what your thought process was behind trying it in the first place. And I love that about working for him.
Samir Husni: If I showed up unexpectedly at your home one evening after work, what would I find you doing? Having a glass of wine; reading a magazine; cooking; watching TV; or something else? How do you unwind?
Joanna Saltz: If you’re not catching me yelling at one of my kids, which my daughter brought a bottle of Slime into the living room recently and got it all over the couch, so if you’re not catching me yelling at one of my children, I have three, I love to make things. And it used to manifest itself in baking, I was really into baking for a long time, and I still am a baker, but of late I’ve been changing light fixtures in my bathroom (Laughs), and I made a side table for my living room the other day, and I turned this old pot that my grandmother left me into a planter. I like to get my hands dirty. I’m not a DIY’er, I would not say that about myself. I can see things in my head much clearer than anything ever turns out, but I like to tinker. So, if I’m not cooking, I’m making something.
Samir Husni: So, can we say through osmosis the pages of House Beautiful and Delish are coming alive through you? (Laughs)
Joanna Saltz: They’re coming through my hands. (Laughs too) And that is basically what’s happening. I have access to so much incredible stuff in this position, so many amazing design ideas, but even suddenly in that conversation that I had with the interior designers, one of them had said something amazing about how everybody’s rugs were too small, stop using small rugs. So, now I’m on this crazy hunt for bigger rugs. (Laughs) You’ll catch me running around the house making and doing and my husband rolling his eyes as though saying please stop turning the house upside down. And the designer is completely accurate, every rug in my house is too small.
Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?
Joanna Saltz: Honestly, I’m a born and bred and deeply rooted people-pleaser. I don’t like to let people down. And with my job here, I don’t want to let the people down who have signed on to join my mission, and I don’t want to let the audience down either. So, that keeps me up at night. Just making sure that I’m doing everything that I possibly can to not let all of the invested parties in this new adventure down.
I don’t sleep that well, and there have been quite a few nights where I’ve been thinking a lot of things through. It’s humbling to see the people who have taken a leap of faith to join me on both brands. It’s humbling to see the leap of faith that the executives of this company have taken with me. And I want the audience to believe in me. And that’s something that I don’t stop thinking about truthfully.
Samir Husni: Thank you.
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It’s a brand new year and Mr. Magazine™ for one is excited and focused on all of the good things 2019 can and will bring to magazines and magazine media. And for anyone who may not know or remember where Mr. Magazine™ stands when it comes to the ONLY definition of a magazine: if it isn’t ink on paper, it’s not a magazine, but the magazine is only one platform of the brand that the magazine is named after. Can I get an amen? And if we’re all being honest and looking beyond the PC-ness of today’s thought processes, we know it’s true that relying on digital-only to bring in the bucks in today’s media environment would not only be dangerous, but very presumptuous as well. In today’s world, it is Mr. Magazine’s™ staunch opinion that unless you have a valid footprint in both realms of publishing, the success rate of any publication is slim indeed. It would occupy this entire space if I were to list the publications that said they were quitting their print business and were no longer in business, or became just a figment of what used to be both, in terms of audience reach and revenue.
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