It’s a known fact that the average sell-through (number of copies sold from the copies sent to the newsstands) is at best 30% and at its worst less then 20%. That is to say that from every ten magazines sent to the newsstands, only 2 or 3 magazines are sold, and the rest are returned to “the shredder.” You will say, this is a lot of waste in this environmentally conscience world we live in.
However, it is also known that if you reduce the number of copies you place on the newsstands, you will reduce the number of copies you will sell. This dilemma is not new; it dates back as far as magazines were placed on the newsstands.
So how do we solve this problem? One solution comes from the United States government: No returns are accepted. Yes, that was the solution of the issue of returns in 1918, more than a century ago.
In an editorial titled “Roycroft on News Stands” dated September 19, 1918, in the October 1918 issue of Roycroft magazine, the editors wrote, “We have always tried to give ROYCROFT a very thorough distribution on all the News Stands throughout the country, and in doing so, of course, have had to be generous in the matter of returns from the dealers.”
The editorial continues, “The Government now asks all publishers to restrict these returns. This means that practically every News Dealer will order only such quantities of ROYCROFT as he has advance orders for. He cannot take chances on being stuck with a bunch of unsold copies. There should be no unsold copies, anyway, but occasionally there are.”
The editors came up with a solution to this problem by suggesting to “all readers of ROYCROFT who have been purchasing the Magazine on the News Stands, that it will be necessary for them to order the Magazine – NOW—from their dealer, or else they may be unable to get it on the Stand.”
Another option the editors offered the readers of Roycroft magazine, “If, for any reason you would rather not place a definite order with your local News Dealer, send in your subscription to us. This will insure your getting the Magazine every month.”
The editorial ends up with a plug about the magazine, “ROYCROFT will present to its readers a series of articles each month, touching upon vital things and viewed from the unusual standpoint. It will continue to be of vital interest, and we want you with us for all time.”
So, here you have it, a solution from 1918 only preserved in print where history comes alive on every page of the printed magazine. Print preserves history and history needs print to be preserved.
To find out more of the golden olden gems from magazines please visit the Samir Husni Magazine Collection at The University of Missouri-Columbia by clicking here.
Armed with a degree in curiosity from the University of the World, Jacqui Gifford navigates the seas and skies of the globe safely, wisely and brilliantly — offering glimpses of it on a silver platter to the audience of Travel + Leisure multimedia platforms, whether it is the ink on paper or the pixels on a screen.
Jacqui is quick to acknowledge that there is less than 5% duplication between her print audience and her digital audience, but she makes no excuses for that.
The travel market suffered a major blow during the COVID pandemic. Jacqui, who had been editor-in-chief for only two years at the time, had to react and act swiftly to keep the brand afloat. She told me, “Obviously, there’ve been pandemics before. In modern times to completely shut down the world as it was — for the travel business, it was heartbreaking.”
Quick to adapt to the necessary changes, Jacqui — “on the fly,” her words not mine — developed a plan and strategy to continue Travel + Leisure on all fronts. And that strategy worked.
Ever the planner, she recalled, “Coming out of COVID, that formative time, I saw the desire for in person networking and interaction, and discussion was really at an all-time high.” That insight led to the idea with an idea of convening travel business leaders, which culminated in Travel + Leisure’s first World’s Best Summitt in 2024. It was such a success that an encore one is planned for this coming July in NYC.
So, without further ado, here is my interview with Jacqui Gifford, editor-in-chief, Travel + Leisure:
But first the soundbites:
On the influence of being born overseas and moving to many countries due to her father’s job: “I think it really made me a more curious, empathetic person, because my parents really enjoyed learning about other cultures.”
On her strategy during COVID: “The game we could win was giving people inspiration and hope that there was something on the other side. So, we continued to do these beautiful travel stories. We used local reporters.”
On the biggest change in Travel + Leisure since she became editor: “I’d say letting the photography speak for itself.”
On whether they use AI or not in Travel + Leisure: “No, we do not. We have real people producing our content and that’s something that’s fundamental to who we are as a brand. We have people checking into the hotels. We have people flying the planes. We have people visiting, sailing on the cruise ships to create the content that matters to our audiences. So that is not something we’re doing.”
On her biggest competitor: “There’s a lot of great content out there and you’re competing for the eyeballs of all these people and you realize that they’re time poor these days, whether they’re busy at home, at work, they’re bombarded by content all day long.”
On her advice to deal with competition: “I think anybody who’s in this position at any brand must acknowledge that the competition isn’t just the traditional format. It’s, all sorts of things.”
On the value of print in a digital age: “Well, the magazine to me, the magazine is healthy. It’s beautiful. It’s that classic lean back experience that allows you to see our covers in the back. Long form journalism is something we still do at Travel + Leisure. We’re incredibly proud of it.”
On the second World’s Best Summit: “This year, we have a full new round of topics to discuss whether it’s expedition travel, solo travel, all inclusive, like the rise of and reinvention of all inclusive, the loyalty landscape and where that’s shifting and going. So those are just a few of many topics, but I think it’s going to be great.”
On her biggest challenge: “I would say this. I think that the biggest challenge that anybody has today, if you’re a journalist, if you’re an editor in chief, is, is prioritization.”
On how she unwinds at the end of the day: “If I’m going to unwind, I probably take a bath.”
On what keeps her up at night: “The main thing will always be my son. I’m always worried about him. But he’s a great kid.”
On her favorite country: “I’m going to say as of right now, and I’m biased a little bit, because I was born there. Japan…”
And now for the lightly edited interview with Jacqui Gifford, editor-in-chief, Travel + Leisure:
Samir Husni: My first question to you, you have a marvelous background, born in Japan, headed to Saudi Arabia, then Qatar, then Bahrain, and then back to Philadelphia.
Jacqui Gifford: Yeah.
Samir Husni: Does this background help you as an editor-in-chief of Travel + Leisure?
Jacqui Gifford: 100 percent. There’s not even a question. I was so fortunate. My father’s work took us to all the countries you just named.
And when we were living in the Middle East, and when we were living in Japan, my mom and dad prioritized seeing all the countries that were in the region. So, when we lived in Japan, we went to Hong Kong. I did mainland China when I was 13 years old. We went to Malaysia, the Philippines.
When we lived in the Middle East. We did Egypt. We did Dubai.
We were really, I don’t want to say ahead of the curve, but in some ways, I think when I lived in Doha, there were three hotels in the whole destination. And now every single luxury brand is there. The airport is state of the art.
I was just writing about this in my current editor’s letter. We used to deplane on the tarmac. Basically, the old airport, there were six gates. It’s amazing to see the transformation of that part of the world, but also just in general, how much more intrepid travelers are these days.
We would go to places. I think it really made me a more curious, empathetic person, because my parents really enjoyed learning about other cultures.
Samir Husni: So, can we say you have a degree in curiosity?
Jacqui Gifford: I love that.
I got my BA, not at Princeton, but a BA in global curiosity from University of the World. Yes, you’re right.
Samir Husni: You started working at Travel + Leisure in 2013, but you became editor-in-chief in 2018.Then two years later, the world changed. How did you cope?
Jacqui Gifford: That was one, without a doubt, the most difficult thing I’ve ever lived through as on a human level, just personally, and then certainly in business, it was unprecedented for the travel industry. The travel industry has been through ups and downs. We had 9-11 impact global travel, also in New York where I moved here right after that. And people were hesitant to travel, for sure.
There’s always been sort of dips after the financial crisis, people pulled back a little bit, but COVID-19 was unprecedented. Obviously, there’ve been pandemics before. In modern times to completely shut down the world as it was, for the travel business, it was heartbreaking.
I saw people must let go of employees. They didn’t know which way their business was going to go. And at Travel + Leisure, what we did, we moved to work remotely, and we still produce the magazine.
We never stopped, never stopped producing content for the website or social media. We adjusted our tone, and we were looking and monitoring the news. But I think the strategy that I developed, and in all honesty, I developed it on the fly because, again, no one had ever lived through this before.
I knew that people would travel again. And we were never going to fully, as journalists, travel journalists, understand the nature of the disease and how fast and where it was going to go. That was a game we weren’t going to win.
The game we could win was giving people inspiration and hope that there was something on the other side. So, we continued to do these beautiful travel stories. We used local reporters.
We got people out in the field safely. There were plenty of stories when we would be sending a photographer and then wait, nope, we couldn’t do it. There were stops and starts, but most of the time, we kept things running.
I think that was the right approach because now we’ve seen it play out that travel is now so ingrained and fundamental in people’s lives. They just don’t want to give it up.
Samir Husni: If you are to pinpoint one major change that you did with the magazine since you became editor-in-chief, what will that change be?
Jacqui Gifford: I would say the biggest change is, I know that, here I have our latest issue. I can hold it up for you. It’s a beautiful picture. I’d say letting the photography speak for itself.
You know, a lot of the old magazine-making covers, cover lines were designed for a newsstand where people would go and physically walk past a newsstand and this line would catch their eye, right? And so, if you look at magazines, even from like five or six years ago, a lot of them were still doing that and having, the line at the top. There’s an art to it. I appreciate that art, but that art is frankly dying as newsstands die.
They’re still important, but it’s not as big of a part of our business. Travel + Leisure never was really a newsstand brand anyway. I think one of the biggest changes is just not feeling like so tied to old ways of doing things.
I was like we’re going to let the imagery speak for itself. We don’t need to clutter it up and make it into something that a person at an airport is going to just like grab their attention, let them be grabbed by the picture and less about the words.
Samir Husni: And talking about pictures, we must mention AI.
Do you use AI in any of your photography or content?
Jacqui Gifford: No, we do not. We have real people producing our content and that’s something that’s fundamental to who we are as a brand. We have people checking into the hotels.
We have people flying the planes. We have people visiting, sailing on the cruise ships to create the content that matters to our audiences. So that is not something we’re doing.
Samir Husni: Excellent. There are quite a few new travel magazines that were born in the last two or three years, Travel. They are very specialized with high cover prices and low frequencies. Do you consider this competition?
Jacqui Gifford: Sure. I consider them competition, but you must remember Travel +Leisure isthe world’s largest travel media brand, across print, digital, social. But in this period of media and history, if we were to look back, the media ecosystem, there’s a lot of great content out there and you’re competing for the eyeballs of all these people and you realize that they’re time poor these days, whether they’re busy at home, at work, they’re bombarded by content all day long.
Their friends’ content on Instagram, obviously we’re on Instagram bombarding them with content too, in a good way. So, I consider, I don’t consider just niche magazines, travel magazines, competitors. They are so many other things, like Netflix is a competitor of ours to a certain degree because people want to watch travel shows and food shows and that’s something that we cover.
So, I think anybody who’s in this position at any brand must acknowledge that the competition isn’t just the traditional format. It’s, all sorts of things. That’s the hardest part of this job and any, job in media is that there’s just more and more stuff to consume and you need to cut; you must be good at what you do to cut through the clutter. Everybody’s time poor.
We cannot add another hour to our day, and even we did add that extra hour, there’s other stuff that people want to do.
I have a young son, sitting in and reading books at home to him or other things. There was a way of life that I remember very, quite distinctly when, before the internet, before this, the way that the pace of life was, it was a little bit slower. You grew up watching TV, you had in Philadelphia, where I lived for a little bit, you had three, six, and 10, the major channels and networks and Fox eventually came in there, but that was your options. Now, I don’t even know how many options there are. I think people are paralyzed by choice sometimes.
Samir Husni: As you investigate your experience as a travel writer, as an editor, what do you enjoy most, the service journalism aspect or the aspirational aspects? The do something writing or the sit back relax and enjoy writing?
Jacqui Gifford: That’s a great question. I love it all.
That’s part of my problem is that I probably try to do too much, but I’ll give you two good examples. So I’m on TikTok, I just posted of something yesterday about traveling with my parents who are older, and what you can do to help, to navigate that process when you’re traveling with someone who’s older, check your bags, don’t do carry on, research where your gate is, research where the bathroom is, the restaurants, all sorts of stuff, because as they’ve gotten older, and they were professional travelers back in the day, it’s gotten more challenging. That’s service journalism, me talking right to my fans and followers.
I love doing stuff like that. The flip side, I also like checking into a hotel and writing a little bit of a longer piece about something that’s not quite so straightforward. I did a story for us that won an award which was exciting about a cruise that we did to the way it sparked curiosity, to your point earlier about nature and wildlife in my then seven-year-old son.
That just took more time to produce. There’s value in both things.
Samir Husni: Before we talk about the World’s Best Summit that is coming up in July, let me ask you if your journey at Travel + Leisure has been a walk in a rose garden?
Jacqui Gifford: No, no, it’s never a walk in a rose garden. I mean, well, COVID being a big challenge for travel, and you know, and this is true, science proves me right. You are trained to forget trauma. Your brain wants you to forget something that’s traumatic.
COVID was incredibly traumatic for the globe. I purposely tried to remind the travel industry how dark that period was, because I don’t want us to forget. And I don’t want to forget how hard it was for me as a manager, but I did it.
Some of my most creative work came out of that time. But again, nobody wants to talk about it because our brains, it’s too hard to think about. But, no, it’s not been a walk in a rose garden.
But look it’s like any job. There are some days when you feel like things are going your way. And then there are some days that, no matter what you do, you just feel like you can’t get the right foot forward.
I feel very confident in team we have at Travel + Leisure, which is why we launched the summit, and which we’re very proud of and going into year two, it’s going to be fantastic.
Samir Husni: Before I ask you about the summit, what do you believe in 2025, is the role of the printed Travel + Leisure in this digital age?
Jacqui Gifford: Well, the magazine to me, the magazine is healthy. It’s beautiful.
It’s that classic lean back experience that allows you to see our covers in the back. Long form journalism is something we still do at Travel + Leisure. We’re incredibly proud of it.
We invest in sending photographers and writers out into the field to tell the more immersive stories that people want to pick it up a magazine and sit back and have some time to themselves. I do that with other magazines when I’m at home. I also think there’s something aspirational if you have a beautiful magazine in your house to have it on your coffee table.
There’s a timeless quality to it. I’ve noticed this with some of our magazines; you could pick up last year’s July issue of Travel + Leisure and find plenty of articles. Most of them, no, you know what I’m going to say, all of them are still relevant because they’re there, the writing is sharp, the execution is good.
You’re not being fed that content by an algorithm. Right? It’s there’s a sense of discovery. And I find that when I read anything in print, usually I find something that I wasn’t, I didn’t know I was looking for.
And that’s the beauty of why people still read magazines is that they can get a great idea. And they’re not just typing and searching; the intent isn’t there yet. And then they, they find something, and they go, oh, I never thought about that.
Maybe I’ll take that trip in another, in another year, and six months, whatever. So that’s the value of print. And you must have across all the different channels; you have to have a strategy that speaks to that audience.
There’s a 5% duplication rate between the digital audience of Travel + Leisure and the print audience. We’re talking to two different people. And that’s okay. Maybe we don’t need to worry so much about how you grow the pie; you don’t have to hit people at every single medium; it’s okay, if someone who’s on TikTok and loves Travel +Leisure isn’t reading the magazine, I’d love for them to, and maybe they will someday. But if they’re not doing it right the second, that’s fine.
Samir Husni: Through the grapevine, I heard that you have a favorite cover of Travel + Leisure, can you tell me which one and why?
Jacqui Gifford: You heard from the grapevine, my favorite cover? Oh, wow. I don’t know. I don’t want to give you wrong answer. From this year? Or was it just in general?
Samir Husni: In general.
Jacqui Gifford: Favorite cover? I don’t know. I don’t know what to say. I mean, this year, I loved the cover we did of Gabon, of two gorillas.
It was a mother gorilla holding a baby gorilla. I thought that was breathtaking. Because the gorillas faces and the way she was looking at the baby and the baby was looking at her and holding its arm around her.
I know our readers like wildlife, and I enjoy that. It’s one of the things that moves me when I travel. And when I saw that picture, I was like, oh, my gosh, this is evolution.
Samir Husni: Thank you. Moving to the Second World’s Best Summit that you intend to host in NYC this coming July, what can you tell me about it?
Jacqui Gifford: The summit is interesting. I will say it’s mostly B2B.
It’s not necessarily, we do have reader interaction, which I’ll get to at the Food and Wine Classic in Charleston, which Travel +Leisure is a part of. I know because I interacted with our readers there, because they would see the advertisements in the magazine, on social media, and they bought tickets. And I hosted a crabbing tour, which was awesome.
The World’s Best Summit is something I’ve thought about doing for some time. But we finally pulled the trigger as it were to do it last year, because I think coming out of COVID, that formative time, I saw the desire for in person networking and interaction, and discussion was really at an all-time high. Travel + Leisure participates in so many conferences, so many events.
I’ve been to enough of them to know what’s a good one. I felt like we could do a really good job of showing our expertise, our authority, our trust with our own in-house editors, moderating and curating discussion. It’s not huge, it’s 350 people, which is but we want. the right 350 people, we want people to come and to really participate and learn.
We launched it last year. And it was a lot of work, but it was fun. I have a very healthy respect for people who do events.
It’s very time consuming, but it was a runaway success, people really enjoyed it. And so, we have our World’s Best Awards around the time of the summit. It’s kind of just a big celebratory moment for Travel + Leisure in general.
I think what’s great about it is that there’s a lot of conferences out there that do a great job of talking about the industry, but I think from an editorial lens and sort of weaving consumer trends with business knowledge, thinking about it from the readers perspective. That’s where we’re coming from. And nobody really was doing that.
They’re doing it perhaps with other topics and other brands. But that’s what we did. And it’s great.
Samir Husni: How is this year’s Summit going to be different?
Jacqui Gifford: This year, we have a full new round of topics to discuss whether it’s expedition travel, solo travel, all inclusive, like the rise of and reinvention of all inclusive, the loyalty landscape and where that’s shifting and going. So those are just a few of many topics, but I think it’s going to be great. We’re very excited.
Samir Husni: Are you adding to your title Event in Chief.
Jacqui Gifford: Yeah, exactly.
But you know what, the thing about an in-person event, it’s draining, it’s that adrenaline rush that gets you through but once you’re done, and you look back at what we accomplished and all the people we met and talked with; I think it was inspiring. I see for the future of Travel + Leisure, whether it’s the Summit, or the Classic in Charleston, or as yet unnamed event, I think going and meeting people where they are is important.
Samir Husni: And do you think this is to help solidify the brand?
Jacqui Gifford: For sure.
There’s no question. If you’re not talking about yourself and all that you’re doing, and this is something our CEO Neil Vogel is so great about, and really, you must be getting out there and telling your brand story if you’re not doing it. You have to be relentless about explaining the mission, talking to the audience, and you can repeat yourself, that’s fine.
This is what I was talking about earlier with the fracturing of people’s time and attention. There are people that don’t know yet that we’re doing this Summit. And that’s okay, but we’ve got to keep telling people about it. We’ve got to continue to message how important it is and why people need to be there.
Samir Husni: Before I ask you my two final typical questions, is there any question I failed to ask you I should ask you?
Jacqui Gifford: Oh, my gosh. I don’t think so.
You know what, I would say this. I think that the biggest challenge that anybody has today, if you’re a journalist, if you’re an editor in chief, is, is prioritization. You know, that’s to me is the hardest part of this job, you kind of asked about it a little bit earlier.
I’ve sort of always lived by the mantra that more is more is more. And that sort of mentality is what keeps Travel + Leisure going.
The people who work here, they’re just naturally curious people. But still, we need to be focused on the right things all the time. And if something’s not working, it’s okay to say goodbye to that thing if it’s not working.
Sami Husni: And if I come to visit you one evening unannounced, what do I catch Jacqui doing to unwind?
Jacqui Gifford: Well, I’m an intense person. So, it’s very hard for me to unwind. But you’re going to like this answer.
I am militant about taking a bath. I take baths all the time. I don’t really like showers.
If I’m going to unwind, I probably take a bath.
Samir Husni: And what keeps you up at night these days?
Jacqui Gifford: There are lots of things that keep me up at night.
But the main thing will always be my son. I’m always worried about him. But he’s a great kid.
It’s not one specific thing. It’s just, when you’re a mom, you want the best for your kid. And that’s it.
The other thing too, I like to if I’m up, which I am, sometimes 2 am to 4 am, you can always text me. I use that time to read. And I know it’s not necessarily the best thing.
But I find I’ll often just go into my living room and sit and look out at the skyline and read. And that’s another form of my meditation on living in New York City. Gosh, like, isn’t this cool? I don’t want to fight being awake sometimes.
I just look out at the skyline and appreciate it.
Samir Husni: And one final question, best country or city you’ve been to?
Jacqui Gifford: Okay. This is a very difficult question.
I’m sure I get a version of this all the time. I’m going to say as of right now, and I’m biased a little bit, because I was born there. But Japan, having just been and come back from Tokyo, I grew up there, I think it’s, it’s got to be up there for all the reasons that, you know, culture, food, art, fashion.
I love Tokyo Disneyland. There’re so many great things about it. And I feel similar vibes when I’m up in Tokyo, because usually I’m jet lagged.
I like to just look out at the skyscrapers and the lights, and I leave my blinds up just because I don’t like feeling sort of entombed in a soulless hotel room somewhere. I think Tokyo is really a great place.
Nothing brings more joy to the heart of Mr. Magazine™ than seeing three young people publishing a print magazine. When I heard about Craftwerk magazine, I thought it is, yet another magazine aimed at old folks who enjoy arts and crafts at their later years. And wrong I was. Craftwerk is not for old folks and nor it is published by old folks. It is the brainchild of two young graduates from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago assisted with a third graduate from the same school. Even combining all their ages will not give you one old person’s age.
Smart, driven and determined those three young people are adamant on making a difference in the art and crafts word. In their issue one, that they labeled “The Manifesto,” they write: “We believe that there is a new American craft movement in hyper-contemporary art.”
The manifesto continues, “The distinction between what has occurred previously versus now is the combination of late-stage capitalism, abundant internet usage, complete globalization, and digital archive accessibility. Culturally, there is an emphasis on individuality in conflicting tandem with mass-production and the search for “one of a kind” objects while impersonal plasticity rules over the maker. We are divided from our things while being collectors of masses.”
It was my pleasure to sit down for a zoom interview with all three of them and we talked about Craftwerk, print in this digital age, and whether they are out of their minds doing this.
What follows is the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Chloe Harthan, Eli Clayton, and Ayla Hayes, founders and creators of Craftwerk. But first the soundbites:
Chloe Harthan, Eli Clayton, and Ayla Hayes
On starting a new print magazine: Yeah, probably so. We, since we’re all artists, do a lot of things that are difficult to start, and we see it through anyways. I think that’s kind of in all our natures.
On why Craftwerk with an E and not an A: “In switching the E instead of an O, it’s pop-cultural and very in tune with queer culture to change “work” to being that. It’s also the German ending to change to “werk.”
On trying to create a new manifesto on crafts: “It would be cool if people read it and identified with it. But it isn’t really a specific agenda, I would say, for future generations. I think it’s responding to the people that we’re around and the community that we’re in in Chicago.”
On why Chicago and why crafts magazine: “We talked about Chicago in the manifesto being in the center geographically. And then craft is also in a center of an arts practice. There’s craft as in little, tiny projects like knitting, or there’s craft on the total other end, like Renaissance craft. So contemporary craft is in the middle.”
On the Craftwerk team: “Eli and I are the creators; Ayla is the editor. And so, Eli and I first had the idea for a project with jeans, and that was our passion. But before doing that, we wanted to decide what we were doing entirely. That’s why we did the manifesto.”
On Craftwerk audience: “A lot of artists, creatives, people in our network or in people we know network. Since it is such a small starting project, it’s really all about connecting and getting people to learn about it through other people.”
And now for the lightly edited interview with Chloe Harthan, Eli Clayton, and Ayla Hayes, founders and creators of Craftwerk.
Samir Husni: For a group of young folks like you, are you out of your mind starting a new print magazine?
Chloe: Yeah, probably so. We, since we’re all artists, do a lot of things that are difficult to start, and we see it through anyways. I think that’s kind of in all our natures.
But it’s been a learning process, and we’re continually learning as we’re doing it. It’s been very fun thus far.
Samir Husni: Why did you decide on craft and Craftwerk spelled with an E instead of an O?
Chloe: All of us being in art school, we saw a trend happening of people returning to craft and the importance of craft in their work. A lot of different things, like fibers work or really anything that is displayed in the manifesto, we saw becoming more popular. And so, we wanted to investigate that and highlight younger artists that were also investigating it.
In switching the E instead of an O, it’s pop-cultural and very in tune with queer culture to change “work” to being that. It’s also the German ending to change to “werk.” But it’s not just about changing the word but contextualizing where we’re thinking of. So, if we changed it and it was just Kraftwerk as in the German spelling, that wouldn’t be accurate to what we’re doing.
“Craft” and then “werk” puts in all the different parts of coming from queer culture, coming from an internet culture, being younger. That’s why we changed that.
Samir Husni: As you look at the first two issues, you had the manifesto in the first issue, then you had the jeans issue. What’s behind the theme? Are you like trying to put a new manifesto on crafts for the future generation?
Eli: It would be cool if people read it and identified with it. But it isn’t really a specific agenda, I would say, for future generations. I think it’s responding to the people that we’re around and the community that we’re in in Chicago. I think being in Chicago is a unique place.
Chloe: We talked about Chicago in the manifesto being in the center geographically. And then craft is also in a center of an arts practice. There’s craft as in little, tiny projects like knitting, or there’s craft on the total other end, like Renaissance craft. So contemporary craft is in the middle.
In the manifesto, we were really trying to get our bearings. In the first one, we were working hard to figure out what we wanted to do. It’s more of a guideline for us, because we started with jeans. Eli and I are the creators, Ayla is the editor. And so, Eli and I first had the idea for a project with jeans, and that was our passion. But before doing that, we wanted to decide what we were doing entirely. That’s why we did the manifesto.
Samir Husni: And why print in this digital age? Why ink on paper?
Ayla: I’ve always been really drawn to analog ways of making.
I like analog in terms of music, and when I’m looking for reading. And there’s such a power to being able to print things yourself. There’s a whole culture of zines, and magazines, and artists making that.
It’s a very countercultural medium, to be able to do it as an individual, to take on something that seems so daunting, like making a magazine. Yeah, I think that’s why we print. And there’s something so great about having a physical object, too.
I think as makers, it really lends to craft, using physical medium. If it was digital, I just don’t think it would feel as tangible as us as artists and makers.
Samir Husni: And how easy has it been? Is it a walk in the rose garden, or have there been some obstacles?
Chloe: Not easy at all.
We’re getting better. Eli and I started with the Manifesto, and Ayla informally edited that one by just looking for grammatical errors and small formatting errors. The second one, we brought Ayla on fully to do editing for the whole process. And we figured out, being such a tiny team, how long it takes us to do it, what our goals are visually and physically. Of course, you can see we changed our binding, going from the first one to the second one.
We changed where we got them printed at. We might even change where we get them printed again. Being able to go from one to the other and have the physical version has really been helpful for making it better. And if we didn’t print it, going back to your previous question, I don’t even know how our formatting would look because it’s so different. But it’s a challenge.
Even though it’s more work, there is so much fun stuff to get to change with printing. Even just what type of paper you use is another aspect of it to have fun with. It lends to the theme.
Samir Husni: And who’s the audience?
Ayla: Going back to it not being a walk in the rose garden, we’re all so busy with other things. This is for all of us a side project that is more out of a passion and less from a business or financial standpoint.
It’s a break-even project. That both puts pressure on it but also relieves some pressure in a sense.
But it was a lot of learning, and it was not easy. Still isn’t easy. Still a lot like learning a lot, but for me, it’s worth it at least.
Samir Husni: And who’s your audience?
Eli: I don’t know. I’ll be frank. Anyone that sees it and is interested in picking it up. Mainly right now it’s Chicago based.
A lot of artists, creatives, people in our network or in people we know network. Since it is such a small starting project, it’s really all about connecting and getting people to learn about it through other people.
Chloe: I don’t think it’s a specific group of people. Part of why we’re able to have flexibility within our audience is because we get all the artwork through an open call. We release it online and ask artists to respond to the theme.
For the denim theme, it was much more specific, but through open calls we get lots of eyes on it. People have a free ability to participate in something that will be printed, which is something that many artists are interested in. And then it blooms from that because each person has people that they want to share it with.
That also changes the way that it looks. It’s unpredictable when we put out the open call, but it makes all the work accessible. Everything is different in the denim issue even though it’s based on one thing. All of the pieces have something unique about them that caters to people’s individual interests. So, if you enjoy looking at art, you know, there’s something for everybody, which I like.
Samir Husni: Looking forward, what will be the theme of issue three?
Chloe: We haven’t decided. We have some ideas that we’ve kind of thrown around. We haven’t landed on one specifically.
We all have such different tastes. So, it makes it hard to pick a theme too. But that tension between the things that we all like, whenever it coalesces into something, it’s something that’s able to be responded to by many people, which is great.
Samir Husni: So, you and I are having this conversation a year from now. What would you tell me you’ve accomplished in 2025? Do you want to do another edition by the end of this year?
Chloe: By a year from now, we’ll have another edition, I think.
Eli: Since the second one was put out in 2025, the third might not be put out by the end of 2025. No, it’ll be 2026.
I think it’d be cool to investigate local printing, and being able to be more involved in that process would be cool.
Chloe: Doing something with inserts, just a little texture in the magazine would be something I’m interested in. We’ve talked about having takeaways on the inside, things that are practical, like instructions to make something. We were talking about having instructions on how to mend jeans but didn’t end up having time to do that in this one. Having something that you can use instead of just going through it and reading, something that can impact day-to-day life would be interesting. We’d like to be selling it at local shops and magazine stands, or even non-local places.
Ayla: I’d like to do something that’s more involved and less of us-specific but revolving around the theme instead of just releasing the magazine. That could be much more involved within the community as well.
Samir Husni: So, tell me, how far are you in school?
Chloe: Ayla and I graduated. We both recently graduated this past fall.
Eli: I have two weeks left, and then I’m also graduating from The School of the Art Institute.
Samir Husni: My typical last two questions are, one, what do you do to unwind at the end of the day?
Chloe: That’s a good question. I don’t know if I do unwind. Right now, I can’t afford to unwind.
While we were working on the magazine, I was doing a lot of the editing in very, very late hours of the night because that was when I had the time to work. When I was unwinding at that time, I was shutting my laptop computer when I was done, opening my window because it was the winter, so super cold air would come in.
Things that weren’t screens was good for me, like doing my laundry. Random things that weren’t related to looking at or typing on something. I recently have done lots of gardening on my patio, and that has been nice. Yeah, I think when working on digital projects like this, once you’re doing such small changes, you must just change environment.
Ayla: I tend to just go outside or read.
But reading is hard because your kind of reading when you’re doing this. So, it’s like, what reading is fun reading and what reading is like, working. Painting helps. I’m a painter.
Chloe: I am also a painter.
With that, I can shut my brain off in a different way and activate different parts. So, I think the painting really helps me too. While I was working on this, I wasn’t painting much. And then I was able to dive back into that, which was like an explosion of reward at the end to just be able to paint again.
Eli: I would say for me, that would be sewing. I do a lot of hand sewing and machine sewing.
And it can be such a tedious, monotonous task that I’m able to just kind of let go. I unwind by doing something physical, which I think kind of circles back to the importance of craft that we were exploring.
Ayla: I listen to music a lot at home. My roommate and I have a turntable. We like to sit and do that a lot.
Samir Husni: My last question is what keeps you up at night?
Chloe: Well, here we’re in an art space. Ayla and I run this space. It’s a small art gallery and we do a handful of events also. This place keeps me up at night and is another huge thing that we’ve bitten off together. But planning for shows and thinking about the future, thinking about our space and where we want to go and what our goals are. That keeps the gears turning for sure.
Eli: The future. The unknown of the future.
Samir Husni: Well, is there any question that I should have asked you? I didn’t ask you…
Samir Husni: What are your magazine inspirations?
Ayla: Recently, over the past summer, I took a class on artist books. And taking that was really, really inspiring to get involved in making books in some way. The school has a great resource, a library of artist books. They bend and twist the medium of a book so much.
It’s so inspiring. That made me want to get into it. And I’ve always liked magazines – like fashion and skateboarding magazines, all that kind of stuff. I think they are so fun.
Eli: Also took that artist books class. And so that was interesting to me. It is the main reason why I have an interest in print and publishing. Books, magazines, stuff like that. My grandma was a librarian, so I would always learn from the things that she got from being a librarian. I feel that also made me interested in print and publishing.
Chloe: I’m very unfamiliar with print media, so I learn from these two all the time. Especially in digital design, I learn from Ayla. She spits out so many examples of magazines to look at because she’s so in touch with it.
And then Eli, he is a printmaker. Eli knows how to do the different types of binding. When we were physically making the first edition, we were going over the most cost-effective options. We were looking at paperweights. We were looking at the finishes. Eli knows so much more about that than I do. So, I think my answer is them because I’m less familiar.
Samir Husni: Thank you and best of luck on your venture.
Sam Jacobs in a lengthy informative and educational conversation on AI, Print, Social Media, and the TIME 100 franchises.
Imagine stepping into a time machine — intentionally or not — and landing in 1923, the year Henry Luce and Briton Hadden founded TIME magazine. That’s exactly how I felt when my Zoom screen lit up for an interview with Sam Jacobs, the youngest editor-in-chief of TIME magazine since Luce himself.
The first book I read as a journalism student in the United States was The Intimate History of Time Inc. The story of TIME’s founding captivated me — two ambitious Yale graduates, bursting with vision and drive, determined to create a magazine that would explain the world to busy people. That same energy and curiosity I once read about in Luce and Hadden felt alive in Sam Jacobs. This conversation felt like a full-circle moment.
Sam Jacobs, Editor-in-Chief, TIME.
Sam isn’t just passionate about TIME’s legacy — he’s actively shaping its future. He is leading TIME in a direction that would make Luce and Hadden proud, balancing the challenge of engaging younger audiences while remaining loyal to long-time readers. Under his leadership, the legacy brand is not only surviving in 2025 but thriving — arguably more dynamic and relevant than ever.
We talked about AI, and Sam’s approach was refreshing: use it where it adds value, but don’t let it replace the human editorial judgment that has defined TIME for a century plus. Print still matters, he reminded me.
Of course, we couldn’t speak without discussing TIME’s iconic Person of the Year. Sam walked me through the editorial thinking behind naming Taylor Swift as the 2024 honoree. And yes the cover of TIME remains one of the most coveted spaces in journalism.
So please, without any further ado, join me in this informational, educational, and entertaining interview with Sam Jacobs, Editor-in-Chief, TIME.
But first the soundbites…
On how TIME uses AI: “We think about it in several different ways, first and foremost as an area of coverage. We’ve focused on AI two or three years ago; we launched the TIME 100 AI list and community.”
More on how TIME uses AI: “We’re really trying to focus on the people behind this technological transformation that’s always been TIME’s strength is to focus on people.”
On how TIME journalists use AI: “It’s certainly our journalists use tools that are powered by AI to make themselves more efficient.”
More on how TIME journalists use AI: “We also use ChatGPT or something like Claude as a thought partner, as someone who has spent years staring at magazines that have no words on them and trying to figure out what words to put on them. It’s very useful to have someone to talk to, which isn’t to say that they’re writing the lines, but it’s saying, OK, well, what are some expressions that involve this word?”
On the role of TIME in the age of AI: “The strong brands figure out a way to hold on to their value, hold on to their heritage, find new audiences, use new distribution mechanisms. I’m really excited about the potential for TIME’s trusted journalism to provide guidance to readers and users all around the world instantaneously in multiple languages and multiple formats. I think all of that is powerful.”
On whether AI is a thief or a curator: “The answer is very likely both. I wouldn’t say any company. Certainly, we can track and see which bots are crawling Time.com. I can see every day how many different companies are coming through and scraping TIME.”
On the role of the cover of the printed TIME: “The important thing is that there’s no more valuable real estate in media than the TIME cover, that people continue to covet it, that the connection to the print magazine gives a huge amount of credibility and authority.”
On the role TIME 100 franchises play: “It’s a big driver of our live events business, our journalism, our live journalism business. And that is a big thing that we’re leaning into. We’ve moved from about three or four live events a year to now maybe close to 35.”
On having 45% of his audience below 35: “The people creating the journalism are in touch with the people in their lives and are creating journalism for people that appeals to people in their lives. Of course, TIME’s audience is intergenerational, and I hope it always is. We’re always trying to go from the kid in the classroom all the way to the grandparent who wants to talk about the world with that grandchild.”
On what he tells someone wanting to start a new magazine: “I think it’s a terrible thing to work in a profession and tell people that they shouldn’t be doing your profession. It’s something that I think it’s important to get people enthusiastic about what we do. There are tons of interesting models right now.”
On any think he likes to add: “I feel so lucky to be at this place. This month is my twelfth year at TIME, and I’ve been editor now for more than two years. And I think we all just feel lucky to work at a place that means so much to so many people.”
On what he does to unwind at the end of the day: “I do a lot of reading. I am an atypical magazine subscriber. I probably get 12 or 15 different magazines, watching Netflix and trying to catch up on TV shows. Love to go running in my neighborhood here in Brooklyn.”
On what keeps him up at night: “Everything. You know, the world is a complicated one to cover.”
And now for the lightly edited interview with Sam Jacobs, editor-in-chief, TIME.
Samir Husni: My first question to you, your CEO Jessica Sibley in a press release last week embraced AI on so many different fronts at TIME but mentioned at the end of the release that the content of TIME will continue to be produced by the editors, reporters and writers at TIME.
Can you tell me, is there any role AI plays in the creation of the magazine, the website, the digital, the newsletters?
Sam Jacobs: Samir, this could be like an hour-long conversation just about AI, but I appreciate it. We think about it in several different ways, first and foremost as an area of coverage. We’ve focused on AI two or three years ago; we launched the TIME 100 AI list and community.
We’re really trying to focus on the people behind this technological transformation that’s always been TIME’s strength is to focus on people. Obviously, for the first three decades of the magazine, you had a person on the cover every week and we have these big franchises like TIME 100 and Person of the Year. We’re trying to use those storytelling strengths to focus on the people behind artificial intelligence.
So that’s first and foremost as an area of coverage. And I think that there’s an opportunity for TIME to be one of the most successful, if not the most successful communicator to large audiences about what AI means for people’s lives and to be a bridge between the decision makers in this field and the general public. I look at every economic transformation tends to have a publication that captures that moment.
You could go back to The Economist in the 19th century, Fortune in the 20th century, our former sister title. You can look at something like Wired when you have this information technology transformation. And so certainly our aspiration is for TIME to be considered the publication that really gets this moment from a coverage perspective.
Obviously, then there’s a question of how does TIME as a company use AI and how does the newsroom use AI? It’s certainly our journalists use tools that are powered by AI to make themselves more efficient. I occasionally, if I were really good at math, I wouldn’t gotten into this job, I do find that when I have to do things like budgets and planning, using AI as a check on, well, am I forecasting this right? Am I seeing it right? That is super helpful.
I interviewed Lisa Su last year, the CEO of AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) at our Yearend TIME event, and I was trying to figure out basically if you invested a thousand dollars in Lisa Su’s company before she became CEO, what would that be worth today? If you type that in as a Google search, the results are terrible. If you type that into Claude, the results are quite wonderful. And so as a tool to augment my ability to do my work, it’s helpful.
We also use ChatGPT or something like Claude as a thought partner, as someone who has spent years staring at magazines that have no words on them and trying to figure out what words to put on them. It’s very useful to have someone to talk to, which isn’t to say that they’re writing the lines, but it’s saying, OK, well, what are some expressions that involve this word? There are ways in which as a as a pattern recognizing language generator that AI can be super helpful. And then obviously it moves up and down our business.
Our legal team uses it for certain things. Our technology team, etc. I think the power for AI at TIME, and I would say for all of the media right now, is really as a distribution mechanism and as a discovery mechanism.
For our business, we’ve entered into a number of partnerships with different AI companies, more than a dozen now, but pretty much every major player in this space, TIME is either in conversation with or has come to an agreement with some kind of partnership. If you are using Perplexity, if you’re using ChatGPT, if you’re using Amazon’s Alexa, you’ll be able to find TIME’s journalism there. I think that’s important for TIME to be at the forefront of where users are finding information.
Obviously, TIME has navigated several different transformations when it comes to distribution of our journalism. Think back to delivery of the magazine, entrance of the website, the arrival of social media, the arrival of the iPad. We can go through all these different ways.
And Samir, you’ve covered this across your career where people are consuming magazine media. I look at our forbearers and I hope that each time they had an opportunity to say, I want TIME to be excellent in this new format, that they seized that opportunity. And I think AI presents a similar opportunity for us at this moment.
I also think about the power of AI for discovery. There are huge limitations to the ways in which any organization can present original information. If you look at the tool we built for Person of the Year last year, I think it’s a good example of where we want to go.
I Think where the industry is going to go. So that was a tool that allowed you to ask questions about Person of the Year articles, allowed you to have conversations with it in different languages. And when I think about the potential for discovery where we can publish a great original story, let’s say, I was lucky to go to the White House to interview Donald Trump a few months ago.
We published the transcript. We published a feature story. We’ve got a fact check of that conversation.
That is immediately limiting who that story is accessible to. It’s only in one language. It’s only at a certain length. That’s only in one format. And for me to think, what would be possible for that to be translated into multiple languages? For you to be able to have a conversation with TIME’s Archive about we’ve written thousands of articles about Donald Trump, but they’re not all there in that screen on that phone. For you to be able to interrogate TIME and say, well, what did he mean when he said this? And we could say, well, immediately you can create a response that is grounded and based on our journalism, that is sourced in our factual, trusted journalism.
We’ve always been moving TIME through different form factors, through different audiences. And I feel like AI is this amazing tool potentially to accelerate that transformation. I think about, TIME for Kids, right? This is taking time journalism and presenting it at a different grade level to a different audience in a different format.
That’s not an extension, an amplification of TIME’s journalism. And I think AI as a delivery mechanism is powerful for us. I recognize that media’s biggest challenge and magazines have always been that we don’t ever own our distribution.
We’ve talked about digital as something that disrupts print, right? Well, in print, you own the distribution. Of course you don’t. There’s a printing press. There’s a postal service. There’s the newsstand. There are all these economic forces like this year we were looking at the possibility of tariffs against Canadian paper, which is what most magazines print on.
There are all these disruptive forces when it comes even to reaching that dedicated audience or people think something like email. Well, email is great. It’s a direct way to reach the consumer.
Well, you and I know, of course, it’s not that if Gmail or Apple or Microsoft make a certain decision about how they’re going to present information, you completely lose touch with that. And there are all these different partners and players in every ecosystem. For me, AI is just another example of how can smart, successful media companies figure out how to navigate this new transformation? It’s complicated.
It’s new. But you’ve watched this over your career. I’ve watched it over mine.
The strong brands figure out a way to hold on to their value, hold on to their heritage, find new audiences, use new distribution mechanisms. I’m really excited about the potential for TIME’s trusted journalism to provide guidance to readers and users all around the world instantaneously in multiple languages and multiple formats. I think all of that is powerful.
And I think it’s also consistent with our history. If you go back to the original issue of TIME that came out at a moment when there’s so much information in the world. Four hundred newspapers across New York City and a couple of 20-year-olds said, well, what if we just put that all into a smart package that you consume it as you want to consume it? I see AI as just a sort of another step in that transformation.
Samir Husni: Do you think that what you and your editors are creating is being stolen by AI? Is AI a thief or a curator?
Sam Jacobs: The answer is very likely both. I wouldn’t say any company. Certainly, we can track and see which bots are crawling Time.com. I can see every day how many different companies are coming through and scraping TIME.
We know which ones are licensed partnerships and which are not. And I would encourage, as an editor, all companies that work in this information space to properly pay, properly cite, properly support an information ecosystem. I think we often look to the music industry as an example of one where there was this massive technological transformation that really harmed the content creators.
And that industry was able to find a way back to now in a world where we have lots of successful musicians who are compensated through their work. Is it the same as it was 20 or 30 years ago before Napster and Spotify, etc.? No, but there is now a thriving ecosystem. And I hope there’s a future for journalism where we are paid fairly.
It’s hard to imagine what type of content you’re going to be getting from an AI interface if it’s not dependent upon a constantly refreshing source of information created by newsrooms like ours. And I think we should be fairly compensated for that work.
Samir Husni: You create now more than one cover on your digital website. Last week there was three covers, one on the Democrats, one on Are You Human, one on a Broadway actress. How do you select which one of those covers make it to the print edition?
Sam Jacobs: There are very few covers, Samir, that are not printed. Occasionally we produce a cover that is digital only because of a news cycle reason.
We’re printing 10 days from now. The news is happening now. It’s going to take another 10 days potentially for that to reach you in your home.
It doesn’t make sense for you to be getting that cover at home 20 days later. We’ll produce it online. But most of our covers are printed and then they’re distributed through newsstand, through direct mail.
You can buy it through a seller online or across the world. I would say, 5% at most of our covers right now are truly digital only. Everything else is printed in different geographies.
And this has been true for the entire time I’ve been at TIME and certainly the entire history of TIME. We’ve thought about distributing the cover by geography. Now I think about it more as topic and vertical and be able to tell more stories.
The important thing is that there’s no more valuable real estate in media than the TIME cover, that people continue to covet it, that the connection to the print magazine gives a huge amount of credibility and authority. And frankly, the fact that it’s a limited resource. There are only going to be so many TIME covers produced every year.
I think that gives it a lot of power. I can tell you lots of stories about what it means to be on the cover of TIME. But right now, we’re producing, frankly, fewer covers than we did when I started.
So it’s actually a more select, more exclusive piece of real estate than it was 10 or 15 years ago.
Samir Husni: You’re creating more franchise issues. You started with the Person of the Year in 1927, then the TIME 100, and then TIME Health and TIME Business. How are those verticals working with the mothership?
Sam Jacobs: They work well. Person of the Year and TIME 100 are two of the strongest franchises in media. Person of the Year is going to turn 100 years old in a couple of years from now.
TIME 100 is now 21 years old. They truly have become the gold standard when it comes to influence on the news and recognition for ability for people to move the headlines. We’re now taking that framework, that way of thinking, and moving it to different communities, to different verticals that we think are going to shape the future.
It’s a big driver of our live events business, our journalism, our live journalism business. And that is a big thing that we’re leaning into. We’ve moved from about three or four live events a year to now maybe close to 35.
People want to get together. Coming out of COVID, people want to be together. And I think people crave TIME’s curation.
You talk about something that AI can’t do. It can’t do the type of work we can say, well, these are the 100 people who are the most influential people in health. That requires a huge amount of historical knowledge, relationships, conversations.
And I don’t think yet the technology can recreate that with our editorial spin, with our focus. We’ve been successful at building these different communities. I think for a long time, the magazine was the central relationship between the reader and a publication like TIME.
And now, as magazines understandably have fallen out of some people’s weekly lives, certainly not yours and not mine. But we need to create new ways for people to connect to brands and new ways for people to connect to titles like TIME. And my hope is that for lots of people out there seeing TIME 100 AI as an entry point to understanding what’s happening in that field and all the other ones we’ve created, that this is a useful new way to understand the world.
Samir Husni: Were you surprised, or it was on purpose that almost 45 percent of your audience now are under the age of 35?
Sam Jacobs: I’m not surprised. It is on purpose. You always need to reach new audiences.
I think about that not just in terms of age, but in terms of interest and geography and lots of different ways we can think about that. We’re very successful on social media. We have 60 million followers across our different channels.
There are people on some of those channels, they skew lower in age than others. There’s a big audience there that is a younger audience that is receiving TIME’s journalism all the time. And a huge part of our organization is in that age group.
The people creating the journalism are in touch with the people in their lives and are creating journalism for people that appeals to people in their lives. Of course, TIME’s audience is intergenerational, and I hope it always is. We’re always trying to go from the kid in the classroom all the way to the grandparent who wants to talk about the world with that grandchild.
It’s important for brands to find these new audiences. It’s exciting that a brand, as old and revered as ours means something to this new readership. I saw that perhaps most startlingly or most visibly when we named Taylor Swift Person of the Year.
I heard back from my sister-in-law that our niece, who was nine at the time, was passing around a copy of TIME magazine with her friends and they were reading it on a sleepover. That is the power of print media. That is also showing that when we cover the right stories, they can appeal to audiences of all ages.
We’re constantly looking at new ways. We’ll launch a new franchise in July that’s thinking about a younger audience as well. We’re always looking to appeal to these different groups.
Samir Husni: I remember telling the New York Times that from a marketing point of view, it was a genius move. It sold over 200,000 on the newsstands compared with the usual 50,000 or 60,000 copies. Sam Jacobs: It was very successful. Obviously, she’s a cultural juggernaut.
I also would point out a couple of things. She gives very few interviews, and she gave the first interview in four or five years to TIME. What I thought was very interesting about that moment, Samir, is when I went on TV to talk about, this is the Person of the Year and went around media giving interviews about it, everyone said, oh, well, you had to pick her.
I have to tell you that when we got together in the summer and said, well, wouldn’t it be interesting if we see if we could make Taylor Swift Person of the Year? Well, we can’t do that. It doesn’t make any sense.
She’s an entertainer. You know, Person of the Year should be president. It should be Elon Musk.
It did not fit inside of our typical understanding of the framework for who belongs in that designation. But by the end of the year, it became obvious to everyone. And that kind of journey is a very satisfying one to go on.
Samir Husni: The question that I must ask is, did President Trump Person of the Year sell as much as Taylor Swift?
Sam Jacobs: I would have to come back to you on that. Of course, we’ve done a lot of covers on President Trump and some have sold very well. But for us, the metric on the newsstand is just one, right? The newsstand now is a small piece of our business.
It’s much more about how much coverage are we getting? Are we driving the conversation? Are we getting picked up in other media? Is it helping increase our impact and credibility? There’s a whole mosaic of metrics that I would use to judge the success of something.
Samir Husni: If somebody comes to you and said, Sam, I want to start a new magazine. I just graduated from college, and I have this magazine idea. Help me.What do you tell them? Are you out of your mind or go away?
Sam Jacobs: No, I think a print magazine is an expensive proposition, right? And it’s a hard thing to move into. But I think you and I have both seen stories of new magazines that have started in the last few years that have been incredibly successful. I would encourage them.
I think it’s a terrible thing to work in a profession and tell people that they shouldn’t be doing your profession. It’s something that I think it’s important to get people enthusiastic about what we do. There are tons of interesting models right now.
What’s interesting is to see some of the new media players who have started up in reaction to traditional media and legacy media over the course of time, their modes of delivery, their models, their presentation starts to resemble the thing that they were rejecting in the first place. You know, there’s something wonderful about what a magazine does by bundling together different voices, by providing news or information across multiple cadences. All of that can be very hard to recreate in a Substack.
But what we’ve seen over at Substack, which is great, is that they’re trying to recreate the emotions that we have in magazines. Let’s have multiple columnists and conversation together.
Let’s do video. If you like this person, maybe you like that person. I mean, that’s what a great magazine does is introduce you to new ideas, new people, new forms of storytelling.
To me, there’s lots to be excited about.
Samir Husni: Well, I know I must respect your time, but before I ask you my typical last two questions, is there any question I should ask you that I did not?
Sam Jacobs: You tell me. No, I think I couldn’t be more excited about where TIME is today.
I feel so lucky to be at this place. This month is my twelfth year at TIME, and I’ve been editor now for more than two years. And I think we all just feel lucky to work at a place that means so much to so many people.
Sam Jacobs, Editor-in-Chief, TIME
Samir Husni: If I come to visit you one day in your home unannounced one evening, what do I catch Sam doing to unwind from the day’s work?
Sam Jacobs: Oh, God. I do a lot of reading. I am an atypical magazine subscriber. I probably get 12 or 15 different magazines, watching Netflix and trying to catch up on TV shows. Love to go running in my neighborhood here in Brooklyn.
I feel very lucky to work in a job that reflects my interests, I’m curious, I want to know more about the world, I want to hear different perspectives, and so that’s often how I’m spending my time.
Samir Husni: And what keeps you up at night these days?
Sam Jacobs: Everything. You know, the world is a complicated one to cover.
Our industry has always been challenged, but it’s challenged today. Trying to figure out a way to create journalism that has impact, that supports a sustainable business is something that would keep anyone up at night.
Mr. Magazine 