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.
A former journalism professor of Dave Leathers once told him journalism is not for him (Dave), he better choose another career for his future. Fifty years later, Dave is a very successful journalist, publisher and CEO of Showcase Publishing, Inc. based in Kansas City. After dropping out of college, Dave started working for his father’s weekly newspaper in 1974 and enjoyed the work in what were “the great days” for weekly newspapers. In 1984, he saw the signs of what was happening in the newspaper world, and being the “drop-out” kid from college, he opted to head into magazines, “niche” magazines to be more specific.
His first magazine Kansas City Homes and Gardens made money from its very first issue. What started as a one title grew into many specialized publications dealing with niche topics from shelter titles to relocating titles to help their audience find their ways in a new location.
Showcase Publishing Inc. now publishes three main titles: Cabo Living, Lake of the Ozarks Second Home Living, and Lake Relo.
In addition to the aforementioned titles the company publishes many other special issues and one shots dealing with shelter and relocation topics.
When I asked Dave about his secret for thriving over the last 40 years, his answer was one word, “Passion.” And this passionate man has proven without any doubt that following your passion, identifying the correct market, and knowing your competition will lead to success. A firm believer in ink on paper, Dave Leathers is a joy to chat with and to learn from.
So without any further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Dave Leathers, CEO and Publisher at Showcase Publishing, Inc., but first for the sound bites:
On his secret for success: “Well, I would say passion.”
More on his secret for success: “I learned hard work and persistence from my father. I did not graduate from college.”
On his publishing team: “I do not have an employee working for me that has not been with me at least 15 years. So we don’t have turnover.”
On how he chooses his publications’ markets: “Just felt that they were a ripe market that was underserved, basically.”
On his advice to someone wanting to start a new magazine: “I would say the first thing would be what market, what are the competitors and what is your background?”
On the role of print in a digital age: “When you pick up a niche magazine… and you’re looking through it, the last thing on your mind is fake news. It’s there in front of you.”
On his 40 years marker: “I still enjoy every day and I enjoy the people I work with.”
On what keeps him up at night: “The environment we’re living in today and the future for our children.”
And now for the lightly edited interview with Dave Leathers, CEO and Publisher at Showcase Publishing, Inc.
Samir Husni: My first question to you, you’ve been at this for 40 years.You never gave up on print and you still publish several magazines on a regular basis in ink on paper. What’s your secret? What’s your affinity to print and how did you survive all those 40 years?
Dave Leathers: Well, I would say passion. I’ll never forget a seminar at Folio in New York City.
It was probably 15 years ago and those were pretty big deals at the time. A New York Times speaker declared that within the next two years, print would be obsolete and gone.
I don’t know where that speaker is today. He’s probably gone. But, so many people declare so many things.
The newspaper business has been drastically affected. And so is the national magazines.
You go to the magazine racks in the airport now, you can barely find a magazine. So there are certain ones that have.
I decided that I’d get into the magazine in 1985. I was working for my father from 1974 to 1984. He had a weekly newspaper and weeklies back then were going very well. I believed in a niche market that continues to stay relevant and I believed a niche magazine will be successful. The fact that, you know, Ryan Dohrn had 370 publishers at The Niche Media Conference in Las Vegas last week really says it all.
The niche magazines here in Kansas City today, there’s probably 12 to 15 magazines just in the Kansas City metro market, which is, 3 to 4 million people. And so are all of them doing well? I’d say they’re all doing good. Some are doing very well.
And a lot of them are ex-employees. I learned hard work and persistence from my father. I did not graduate from college.
Actually, my reporting teacher at Kansas State, my journalism year, told me that I would never make it in journalism and find another career. So, I found a career and continue to believe in it. And the people that I work with, I do not have an employee working for me that has not been with me at least 15 years. So we don’t have turnover.
Samir Husni: So tell me, how do you pick the markets where you publish?
Dave Leathers: Well, when we started, we started a magazine called Kansas City Homes and Gardens in 1985.
I was in a Delta Crown room in Atlanta and I saw Austin Homes and Gardens. And I said, you know what, I think Kansas City could do that as well. So I called the publisher, Hazel Gulley, and she said, come on down and see me.
So my wife and I drove. She loaded my car up with three boxes of her magazines. Spent two days with her and came back to Kansas City and used her magazine as the template for what I said I would do.
And so I did that. We were profitable from day one. First magazine was profitable.
And so we were in Kansas City. We did a relocating magazine, a visitor guide to ancillary publications. And from there, decided that we could do other markets.
And so we did St. Louis. We did Vail, Colorado. We did Las Vegas.
We felt that those markets could use a publication. Most of those were relocation magazines. People that were moving to there, they did not have a magazine that we thought was appropriate.
How did we choose those? Just felt that they were a ripe market that was underserved, basically. Cabo Living Magazine was started because a graduate from Kansas University came to me for a job. She spoke fluent Spanish. I had been to Cabo 96 and she said she thought it would be a good market.
So we started that one in Mexico. That’s a whole other podcast about doing business in Mexico. And so we started that and found a publisher in Los Angeles who’s still with us today.
He just turned 80 years old. And same crew, same people, all from Los Angeles are still working on Cabo Living Magazine.
Samir Husni: So you were doing remote publishing before remote publishing was in vogue?
Dave Leathers: I would say yes.
It’s kind of interesting, Samir. The City & Regional Magazine Association (CRMA), which is a great organization, when we first got into it in the late 80s, we were the ugly stepchild.
They didn’t really think we were real. Philadelphia, Boston Magazine, Washingtonian, they were the kings. So they let us hang around.
And then all of a sudden they discovered in the 90s that everybody wanted a magazine that had to do with shelter. It had to do with the home and the garden. Then they started a subsidiary of CRMA called the Regional Shelter Magazine Association.
Myself and Gina Schreiber from Atlanta and some other people, we were kind of the original people. Norm Tomlinson Jr. from New Jersey. That became a huge part of their business model and still is today.
D Magazine, was another one that had a home and garden magazine. That changed quite a bit. But today it’s still a very, very solid market.
Samir Husni: You’re a great believer in ink on paper for those titles. If somebody comes to you and said, Mr. Leathers, I want to start a new magazine, what would you tell them?
Dave Leathers: Well, I would say the first thing would be what market, what are the competitors and what is your background? Those basically would be the first three things that I would ask them. Does money factor into it? To some degree.
But I would say that’s basically it. It’s kind of interesting. I was in the Scottsdale, Phoenix area a few weeks ago. There are a couple of magazines, and I looked at who the owners were. It was a lady who I met at one of the first CRMA back in the 80s that said they were looking to start a magazine in that area. And so I helped them.
She’s still plowing forward. But what they had back then was an incredible market. They had a great background, and they were certainly passionate about what they were going to do. So, if you don’t have the work ethic, I think you need not apply.
Samir Husni: How do you define the role of print in this digital age?
Dave Leathers: Well, I would say first thing is, print today, especially this year, we’re barraged with fake news.
I think it’s kind of gone full circle. When you pick up a niche magazine, I guess not any magazine, but you pick it up and you’re looking through it, the last thing on your mind is fake news. It’s there in front of you.
The story has been done, written. It’s been edited, probably looked over by several people. And it’s believable.
We’ve always tried to edit to female readership, specifically upscale female readership. And today, whether it’s my daughter at 35 or my wife who’s 65, they loves magazines. They love the quality.
We’ve seen, and you know better than anyone, we’ve seen people try to cut back on the quality of their publication. And many times that is not going to go well. We have never cut back, even through the financial crisis, which was, you know, awful for all of us.
We never cut back or thought about it. And I said, if I have to, it’s not a product I’m proud of. And so it’s that feel of the publication, whether it’s on the coffee table or wherever it is, still today is relevant.
People like to continue to sing the praises of it, it’s inspiring. It really is.
Samir Husni: Is there any question that I should ask you, I did not ask you?
Dave Leathers: Well, no, not really. I would say, you know, as far as our 40 years, it’s gone by quick, actually.
And do I still enjoy it today? Yeah, I do still enjoy it today. Inflation, you know, the cost of production, obviously, has continued to spiral upward. And that has made it harder.
It’s not like we’re Target or Whole Foods or wherever that is. If we get a price increase, we can’t add it on to the cost of goods or, negotiate a tremendous deal. We work with printers and they’ve been a great partner.
But the cost of doing business, it wears on you. But I still enjoy every day and I enjoy the people I work with. And so, as long as my health holds out, I have no interest in, you know, going to Florida and playing golf five days a week and jump aboard the other two days.
So I’m just going to stay here and do my thing.
Samir Husni: So here are my last two typical questions. If I come uninvited to your house one evening, what do I catch Dave doing? Reading a book, watching TV, having a glass of wine? What do you do to unwind at the end of the day?
Dave Leathers: Well, my wife and I would be listening to jazz. I would be drinking tequila, Topo Chico with a lime.
And she would have a glass of wine. That would be our typical end of the day.
Samir Husni: And what keeps Dave up at night these days?
Dave Leathers: I really would prefer not to get political. So just the environment we’re living in today and the future for our children. I think about it a lot. But I’m going to stay positive and hoping for the best, Samir. Hoping for the best.
We’ve been blessed and I’m thankful to have people like you around that support our industry. Because without that, you know, we couldn’t pay the bills.
Michael Simon, of Publishers Press fame, is on a new mission in life: make AI companies pay for the content that their LLMs (large language models) scrape from the digital sphere and breach the copyrights of the original magazine content creators. He refers to those creations as “ink-worthy” content and he hopes to “amalgamate hundreds of magazines, small magazines, in order to address the breach of copyright that the AI companies have done.”
The Magazine Coalition is the name of the new adventure he co-founded with Gavin Gillis, the former CEO of Michael’s earlier adventure, The Magazine Channel. While Michael assumes the role of chairman, Gavin assumes the role of CEO of the new venture. The two of them have assembled a great team devoted to this mission and are more than prepared to launch this new venture.
Michael presented The Magazine Coalition to the audience of the Niche Media Conference in Las Vegas (more than 375 magazine publishers and editors) where I was in attendance to deliver a keynote speech about the future of print in a digital age. I was so impressed by the idea, the mission, and the vision of The Magazine Coalition that I added a slide to my presentation to give them an additional plug.
And I was able to sit with Michael for a Mr. Magazine™ interview for the blog. So please sit back, relax and enjoy this wonderful new venture that aims to help magazine publishers enhance and increase their revenues from their “ink-worthy” content.
And now for the lightly edited conversation with Michael Simon, Chairman and Co-Founder of The Magazine Coalition:
But first the soundbites:
On the mission of The Magazine Coalition:“We are going to amalgamate hundreds of magazines, small magazines, in order to address the breach of copyright that the AI companies have done, as well as license content moving into the future.”
On the significance of ink on paper magazines: “The great thing about magazines, especially niche publications and special interest publications, business to business publications, scientific medical publications, is that before you can put ink on paper, because that’s permanent, you can’t backspace that away.”
On the morphing of The Magazine Channel into The Magazine Coalition: “If we had The Magazine Channel today with a thousand magazines underneath that umbrella, the AI companies would be very interested in talking to us about licensing that content to them so that their LLMs, (large language models), could learn from that ink-worthy content that was printable.”
On whether AI is a friend or foe of the publishing industry: “I don’t know if it’s an either or, I do think the AI companies are responsible for copyright breach. And I do think that they owe the publishing industry and the content creators compensation for what they’ve learned.”
On his fears from AI companies: “I don’t have any fears of the AI companies. I think we solve a problem for the AI companies. I don’t think that they like being viewed as thieves.”
On where he sees The Magazine Coalition a year from now: “I think we’ll have a thousand magazines in the coalition by the end of this year. And that represents a significant volume of content that the AI companies will be forced to pay attention to as we represent that thousand titles.”
On what he does to unwind at the end of the day: “I like reading. I like reading books, and I like reading older books.”
On what keeps him up at night: “Michael sleeps very well. I do read at night. My last reading is The Good Book, and in the evening, right before I go to sleep, I’ll get 15 to 20 minutes of the Bible in. I sleep very soundly.”
And now for the lightly edited conversation with Michael Simon, Chairman and Co-Founder of The Magazine Coalition:
Samir Husni: What’s your elevator pitch about The Magazine Coalition?
Michael Simon: We are going to amalgamate hundreds of magazines, small magazines, in order to address the breach of copyright that the AI companies have done, as well as license content moving into the future.
Samir Husni: What gave you the idea?
Michael Simon: So about 15 years ago, I was looking at a workflow on a whiteboard. I just put a spigot on the workflow and said, we want it. We can exhaust all of this content. We were printing a thousand magazines a month.
And I said, what if we exhausted out the digital content besides going to a printing plate to print? What if we just exhausted it into a format which we could put on phones and iPads and computers? And we developed some flip technology. We had text mining. We did a lot of tagging.
We were indexing magazine articles with tags for the purpose of search. And the idea was to have a grand umbrella of special interest publications, very vertical, vertically deep content across a broad spectrum of topics. So that one could perform a search and come up with very specific content that had been written and edited by humans.
And it had been fact checked. We I’ve always discovered that what’s on Google, not everything is factual. It’s not been edited. It’s not been fact checked. The great thing about magazines, especially niche publications and special interest publications, business to business publications, scientific medical publications, is that before you can put ink on paper, because that’s permanent, you can’t backspace that away.
So the benefit to the general population, I thought, would have been to have a subset, really not necessarily a competitor of Google, but to have a separate, The Magazine Channel is what we called it. And it was all edited. It was ink worthy.
It was everything that you searched for and discovered out of The Magazine Channel was ink worthy, meaning it had been edited. It had been fact checked. And there was no question as to whether or not what you were reading was true.
15 years ago, you go on Google and find a lot of things that weren’t true. Hopefully, that maybe less now, but it’s still. I thought it was going to be a nice companion to other search tools was to have The Magazine Channel available to the general population. And then I was going to sell advertising to that and share that revenue back with the publishers.
Samir Husni: And how did the idea of The Magazine Channel morphed into The Magazine Coalition?
Michael Simon: My son, Jackson, was working at The Magazine Channel. I’m a fifth generation printer. Both of my sons were in at Publishers Press when we unfortunately had to sell in 2017.
My older son, Michael, was working much closer to the press room. And Jackson was very interested in the digital side of things. And he went to work for The Magazine Channel.
When I separated that out of Publishers Press, I hired a different CEO. We had it down in Austin. We had a group of programmers in Austin that were developing the programs around The Magazine Channel.
Jackson was down in Austin working with Gavin Gillis, the new CEO of The Magazine Coalition, who is the former CEO of The Magazine Channel. Late last year, my son Jackson started reminding me that if we had The Magazine Channel today with a thousand magazines underneath that umbrella, the AI companies would be very interested in talking to us about licensing that content to them so that their LLMs, (large language models), could learn from that ink-worthy content that was printable. It was not just information that someone puts out with their opinion, but it had gone through an editor.
It’s gone through a thought checker. And it’s finally ink on paper, which is very permanent.
Samir Husni: So do you think AI is a friend or a foe?
Michael Simon: I think I can hold both thoughts in my head at the same time.
It’s very obvious and evident that the magazine publishing industry can and is using artificial intelligence tools to aid and assist them in producing good content. At the same time, artificial intelligence LLMs, maybe because there wasn’t a mechanism by which they could amalgamate magazine publishing into one funnel, which is what we hope to provide, and nobody told them they couldn’t search the web for everything that they’ve done until recently. And people started saying, you’re using my content without attribution, you’re using my content without compensation.
So I look at it as really, I don’t know if it’s an either or, I do think the AI companies are responsible for copyright breach. And I do think that they owe the publishing industry and the content creators compensation for what they’ve learned. And I do think it would be appropriate that we license our content from publishing industry to AI companies for them to continue to learn and learn correctly and to give proper citation and proper attribution and proper remuneration for that content.
Samir Husni: So if I am a magazine publisher, how do I join the magazine coalition?
Michael Simon: Actually, you just go to magazinecoalition.com, you sign up, and we will get you the information. We will enter into a licensing agreement that is non-exclusive, and it’s voidable. It’s exclusive only in terms of my right to use that content . It is only for the purpose of dealing with the AI companies.
So I need the archives in order to do research on what, how much, how often, with what frequency that the LLMs have touched that content. Every time they touched it, there needs to be some compensation afforded that. Also, I want to license that content moving forward with the AI companies.
So if you just visit magazinecoalition.com, all the information is available for you to sign up and for us to get back in touch with you.
Samir Husni: And what’s in it for me as a magazine publisher?
Michael Simon: Oh, as a magazine publisher, it really provides a very nice opportunity to bring in additional revenue, obviously. There’s cases and settlements and deals that have already been created and settled.
Several big companies, large publishing companies have settled with AI companies to the tune of significant money on an annual ongoing basis to license that content. We feel like if we can bring hundreds, maybe a thousand or more magazines to the table, that we can settle on copyright breach for a pretty significant sum. And we can also entice them to pay a reasonable fee moving forward with licensing arrangements.
51% of all the net revenue that comes into The Magazine Coalition will be redistributed back to our licensors. We guarantee the majority of the money will go back to the publishing community.
Samir Husni: Are you going to accept or get into deals with only ink on paper magazines or also the so-called digital publications?
Michael Simon: We would certainly be open arms with publications which are only just in digital format.
We feel like they’re presenting content. Their content has been scrapped. They’ve been touched by the LLMs and they’re still producing good original content moving forward, which could be licensed to the AI companies.
Samir Husni: And Michael, what’s your biggest fear from AI companies?
Michael Simon: I don’t have any fears of the AI companies. I think we solve a problem for the AI companies. I don’t think that they like being viewed as thieves.
We can provide them with a single portal for magazines by which they can legally, and following copyright laws, have access to a wealth of archives and guaranteed fresh content moving forward. Our premise is win-win-win all the way around. We think the AI companies will embrace rather than resist our overtures at settlement and having a deal moving forward.
The AI companies, I think, are anxious to put this. They have the resources by which they can pay for having searched the archives and they have the resources to pay for the licensing moving forward. I personally hope that this will be a collaborative effort.
Although we have hired a substantial, significant law firm, Goodwin Proctor, and we’ve also got a company called Sim IP that has assured us of $10 to $20 million in funds to litigate, if necessary. This case, we hope to have one grand case that we’re going to bring to the AI companies, of which there’s 8 or 10, so we’ll have to sit down with each of them individually and work out an arrangement that’s amenable to our publishers and to the AI companies.
Samir Husni: So you and I are having the same conversation a year from now.What would you tell me The Magazine Coalition accomplished in 2025?
Michael Simon: I think we’ll have a thousand magazines in the coalition by the end of this year. And that represents a significant volume of content that the AI companies will be forced to pay attention to as we represent that thousand titles. I don’t know that we’ll have settlements within 12 months.
I think that could occur over 15, 24, maybe even 36 months. I’m not sure. I’m hoping it’s sooner. I hope it doesn’t take years and years. I hope it doesn’t get to litigation. I’d much rather it not be litigated, but if that’s what it comes to, we’re prepared for that battle.
We have the right attorneys. We have the right funds to move forward aggressively, if need be. But in a year’s time, this time next year, I hope we’ve got some deals already settled with one or two AI companies.
There may be one or two cases of litigation filed by that time as well.
Samir Husni: Before I ask you my typical last two questions, is there anything I should have asked you I did not ask you?
Michael Simon: I’ve got a really good team that I’ve put together. We’ve got the background of asking for licenses for the purpose of data distribution.
It used to be in a consumer-facing product. Now it’s in a data brokerage arrangement with fighting AI companies for copyright breach and licensing. No, I think we’ve covered the waterfront pretty well.
Samir Husni: Excellent. If I come uninvited one evening to your house, what do I catch Michael doing? Reading a book, watching TV, having a glass of wine? What do you do to unwind at the end of the day?
Michael Simon: I like reading. I like reading books, and I like reading older books.
I prefer to read first editions from 1800s, early 1900s. Right now I’m reading a first edition T.S. Lawrence, 7 Pillars of Wisdom, and it’s a first edition, leather-bound. I love the beauty of a book, especially a sample that’s 100 years old, that’s been very, very well taken care of.
I like actually reading that, and I like to pass those on to my children.
Samir Husni: What keeps Michael up at night this year?
Michael Simon: Michael sleeps very well. I do read at night.
My last reading is The Good Book, and in the evening, right before I go to sleep, I’ll get 15 to 20 minutes of the Bible in. I sleep very soundly. I have had an extremely, exceedingly blessed life, and so every day I’ll look at it as a blessing, and it’s a bonus.
I’m very, very blessed in so many ways that I try not to have any worries or concerns. To me, life’s too short to have that, so I don’t allow anything. Maybe a little concern for one kid or another at some time or another, but for the most part, even that, that’s life, letting it have its due, and nothing’s perfect, so I sleep very soundly.
Samir Husni: Thank you very much, and I wish you all the best in your new venture.
They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but in the case of Envoy magazine, you easily can. One of the smartest covers that I have seen in a long time, Envoy magazine’s first issue cover tells it all. “What we don’t know is blurry for all of us…” says the major cover line that is accompanied by a blurry picture of a dove. Once you open the cover a stunning and clear picture of the dove welcomes you to the inside of the magazine and the back of the cover declares, “…everything becomes clearer as we learn.”
The brainchild of Razi Canikligil and a group of United Nations based journalists, Envoy magazine was launched in the Spring of 2024. In the first issue Mr. Canikligil writes, “Enovy is more than just a publication; it is a platform for dialogue, engagement, and advocacy. Through our pages, we seek to illuminate the vital work of the United Nations and its agencies, shedding light on the efforts to address climate change, promote peace and security, and advance sustainable development goals.”
Envoy is published by UNEMAG, a non-profit 501 (C) (3) organization and is headquartered in the United Nations in New York City. Razi Canikligil is the founder and president of the organization and is the managing editor of Envoy magazine.
I had the pleasure to interview Mr. Canikligil and to talk about the birth of a new magazine celebrating its first anniversary this Spring. The conversation was as lovely and intriguing as the magazine itself. So without any further ado, please enjoy this lively conversation with Razi Canikligil, managing editor, Envoy magazine:
But first the soundbites…
On why Envoy magazine: “To give opportunity to NGOs to be seen. Give opportunity to UN reports to be published in detail in a magazine. And not just UN, also international affairs, but mostly related to UN issues.”
On the mission of the magazine: “We are creating a new style of current affairs magazine. I might say it’s like a mix of current Foreign Affairs and National Geographic magazines.”
On the magazine’s drive: “We are trying to put the good things happening, positive things, like when we cover the oceans or climate change. We are focusing on the things and process, things that are trying to be done, focus on this, in a positive mode.”
On the current status of the magazine: “We are selling good now. And the ads started to come in. We are happy, very excited.”
On what if Envoy became a huge success: “If we are really doing good, then we will sponsor and support the journalist. We will help, we will give fellowships, we will send reporters to cover all the international issues around the world.”
On what keeps him up at night: “When we start preparing the pages, I’m nervous. I focus on every detail. And sometimes we can’t decide how to cover one issue or what to put on the cover.”
And now for the lightly edited conversation with Razi Canikligil, managing editor, Envoy magazine:
Samir Husni: Why Envoy?
Razi Canikligil: Let me tell you briefly, we are a group of journalists at the United Nations headquarters in New York. And we thought that we should create a non-profit organization and publish a magazine.
The reason behind this is we used to have almost 600 journalists covering the United Nations, UN correspondents. Now they are down to 200. The reason behind this is big media corporations, they can’t support correspondents anymore, they can’t pay in full.
They rather like to work on a freelance basis. CNN just retired its correspondent and CBS did the same. The New York Times shut down its office at the UN.
Voice of America recently shut down its operations. And big newspapers, from the British, The Times, and The Guardian, to Turkey’s Hürriyet newspaper or the French Le Monde, they don’t have full-time reporters at the UN anymore. Most of our colleagues are laid off and they are having trouble finding a job.
They are freelancers now and their income is low. The UN is now mostly one person wire news agencies, most of the time. They can’t cover the UN fully. UN is not just Security Council. UN has a lot of other stuff. There is a lot of stuff happening at the UN. There are many agencies. There are 11,000 NGOs, registered NGOs to the UN. They come and do some events at the UN. But nobody is covering them. They want the coverage. But the few remaining journalists don’t have time.
We don’t have manpower. As individual journalists, most of us, cover the Security Council meetings. But the UN has provided a lot of content. They release reports every day on every agenda.
So we thought, why don’t we create this foundation and publish a magazine and a website so we can create a new platform for the resident journalists. They can have new income, and they can cover the UN in detail.
Most issues we cover only up to 300 words or 500 words, like a short article. We thought that we should go in-depth. We should cover deep interviews, deep analysis of these reports. And NGOs.
So that’s what we do now.
Samir Husni: And is that the reason you decided on an ink on paper magazine? To provide that in-depth coverage? In-depth coverage of the UN…
Razi Canikligil: … And give opportunity to NGOs to be seen. Give opportunity to UN reports to be published in detail in a magazine. And not just UN, also international affairs, but mostly related to UN issues.
From climate change, sustainable development goals, diplomacy, human rights, the oceans, AI, immigration, those things. And we also give a new platform to the young journalists. Because when I go to the bookstores to see the magazines, to check the magazines and Barnes & Noble or Hudson News, I see beautiful interior decoration magazines, beautiful women’s magazines, health or car, the garden magazines.
But when I look at the current affairs section, they are almost the same we’ve seen past 50 years. Same magazines. They are afraid to change their style, their coverage, because they have existing readers.
They don’t want to lose them, so they want to do something new, but they are afraid that they don’t want to lose their current readers. But we said, okay, we are beginning, we are new, so we can start new. But most of our colleagues are well-experienced journalists.
We thought that we should mix it with the young journalists. We give chance to all the young journalists coming in from Columbia University, from journalism schools, or international affairs schools, from around the country and the world, not necessarily from New York city only. They contribute, they write for us, and we will give fellowships to these people.
We’re going to mix the real professional journalists and the young journalists. We are creating a new style of current affairs magazine. I might say it’s like a mix of current Foreign Affairs and National Geographic magazines.
There’s a lot of pictures, data, graphics, and maps, along with long articles. It’s very well done.
Samir Husni: Tell me, you just published Issue 4. Has your journey with Envoy, since you were the founding publisher and the one that came up with this idea, has your journey with Envoy been a trip in a rose garden, or you had quite a few stumbling blocks, and how did you overcome them?
Razi Canikligil: It was difficult. The reason is that: most people were asking, who’s behind this? Who’s paying for this? The permanent missions of countries and the UN agencies, wanted to see what you publish, and see what you do.
At the beginning, they were shy to give us interviews. We told them, look, we are not politicized, we are focused on the positive things, good things happening. We are not looking to expose things.
We are trying to put the good things happening, positive things, like when we cover the oceans or climate change. We are focusing on the things and process, things that are trying to be done, focus on this, in a positive mode. We needed to get, of course, donations from NGOs and foundations, and they were shy at the beginning.
But now, the donations are coming in. Ads are coming in. We didn’t have any database, any profile or a media kit. We created the first issue, and we thought that we should just give it away for free. We gave the first issue of the magazine to the UN missions, the NGOs, and the delegates at the United Nations. We printed 5,000 copies and the people loved the magazine so much.
They said, why don’t you just sell this magazine, try to distribute. And we said, okay, let’s try. Many people turned us down.
But one big national distributor, Disticor, said they loved the magazine, they want to distribute it, and they talked with Barnes & Noble. Barnes & Noble loved the magazine, and they started selling it all across the country, and Canadians loved it. So we started distributing in Chapters and in Nego in Canada.
They loved it. And then the third issue came, and Hudson News started distributing it. Hudson News is a big one, because Hudson News, has the train stations and airports.
They are a big seller, and they love the magazine. They distributed the third and fourth issues of our magazine. They placed it as a hot read among all the other magazines.
We are selling good now. And the ads started to come in. We are happy, very excited.
Last night we celebrated our first anniversary, with the fourth issue release. It was good.
More journalists will contribute to us, not just from the UN. We are open to all the freelance journalists around the world, also young journalists who are passionate about our issues. They give us ideas, they send us some pictures, they think they can write about this, and we talk with them. And we give them a chance.
So far, we are happy with the results.
Samir Husni: Excellent. If you and I are having this conversation a year from now, as you celebrate your second anniversary, what can you tell me you’ve accomplished in 2025?
Razi Canikligil: We started subscription now, we started taking subscriptions.
We want to reach out to a high number of subscribers. It’s a challenge for us because we don’t know how to publish, we don’t know how to market. We are all journalists.
We never published a magazine before, but we are getting a lot of help. We are all investigators, we understand, we talk, we learn.
Another issue is half of our journalists corresponds at UN are TV reporters, broadcasters. We should have a YouTube channel on the web for webcasts, Podcasts, etc. I think we’re going to start this because many of our journalists are having difficulty because they don’t write, they just do TV stuff. More TV, the webcasts will be available, I think, next year when we talk.
Also, next year, the next summer issue will be distributed in Europe.
We have a great distributor in London. They will put us in London, Geneva, Brussels, and Vienna. And then hopefully by fall, we’ll go to other capitals in Europe, Paris, and Istanbul and other places.
Then maybe next year we’ll be in Asia. Envoy is not an American magazine; it’s an international global magazine.
Samir Husni: So, Razi, tell me, is there any question I should ask you I did not ask you?
Razi Canikligil: Well, what happens if this magazine becomes big and you guys make enough money?
If we are really doing good, then we will sponsor and support the journalist. We will help, we will give fellowships, we will send reporters to cover all the international issues around the world. We will have a powerful group to support journalists around the world to have really excellent coverage. Expert journalists, experts diplomats, and UN people.
We don’t go into the country’s political issues. We are just going into how it affects all the other countries.
If something is happening in America or other countries, how it affects, side effects.
Samir Husni: My typical last two questions that I ask always in my interviews. If I come to your home unannounced one evening, what do I catch Razi doing to unwind from a busy day? Reading a book, watching TV?
Razi Canikligil: Trying to sleep. I go to bed early and get up like 5 a.m. in the morning because the time difference. I don’t have much of an evening. I go to bed 9 p.m. and get up like 5 or 4:30 a.m. in the morning. Do a lot of reading about publishing, marketing, it’s a new field for us. We are learning about AI. How can we use AI to help us or how can we teach AI to our colleagues? Because everything is expensive in the publishing. And we are trying to find out ways. This magazine really doesn’t cost that much.
Samir Husni: And what keeps you up at night these days?
Razi Canikligil: When we start preparing the pages, I’m nervous. I focus on every detail. And sometimes we can’t decide how to cover one issue or what to put on the cover.
Of the magazine, I get stressed out. They prepare a lot of graphics for us, a lot of alternatives. It’s hard. And I think the cover, it’s hard to choose the cover. We have a lot of ideas, and we get conflict among us which cover should be best for the magazine. At the end, I make the final decision.
That’s very difficult for me. But I think this fourth cover, this new cover, I think we all like it. We were on the same page with this cover.
We had confusion with other covers in the past. But this cover, everybody loved it. Nobody had any other idea, had other options, everyone loved this cover.
So that’s a first. Because the cover tells the reader who we are.
We are a new magazine.
It’s important, especially in the first couple of years. It was a little bit political cover also. It gave us some stress, but so far everybody loved it.
Samir Husni: Thank you very much and congratulations on your first anniversary.
Culturs magazine, and yes it is not a typo, Culturs (intentionally without the e) is the print component of Culturs Global Media that is the brain child of Elleyne (Doni) Aldine.
Aldine is on a mission and so is her team, company, and all the media and products they produce. Her audience is a reflection of herself. In her new ad campaign, she defines her intend for Culturs’ audience. She writes, “My intent for my audience is that they don’t feel defined by what the world says that they should be, that they understand who they are, and they fully embrace and immerse themselves in that, and defy what society tells them they should be, and just be themselves.”
Transformation is the word that defines her current world today. Everything is in the state of transformation, personally, as well as all the media and products related to the Culturs Global Media: from the magazine, to the podcasts, video, website, and last but not least the immersive experience she is providing her audience, now her members.
So, join me on this Culturs journey as I revisit Ms. Aldine and discover all the progress that she was able to achieve since she started Culturs eight years ago.
So without any further ado, here is the lightly edited conversation with Elleyne Aldine, founder, publisher, and CEO of Culturs Global Media:
But first the soundbites:
On 2025 for her and Culturs: “It is the year of transformation for me personally and for the magazine.”
On the meaning of transformation: “The transformation is the way we do things, which ironically, is the way we’ve always wanted to do things. And so many publishers are starting to do it the way that we’ve envisioned since the beginning.”
On exploring all the media and products for her VIP members: “Of course, we have the magazine that has the destination, the history, the story of the place. In addition, we have the podcast and the videos, and then a playlist for that destination. So fully immersive sensory experience.”
On why print?: “To me, print had its place. It is your luxury experience. It is being grounded.”
More on why print: “It is sitting and spending time for self-care with yourself with a cup of tea or in the tub or out in nature or laying on the couch, really experiencing what you’re doing instead of rushing through a million pieces of content on your phone.”
On the misspelling of Culturs: “It’s so funny, actually, now that you say that. People haven’t done that recently. In the beginning, they would always try to add the E, or even when I would spell it, I wouldn’t say the name. I’d spell it first, and I’d say, no E, Culturs with no E.”
On Culturs audience: “The world may try to define you. But, you know better. Culturs is the place where culturally fluid people who crew up meaningfully experiencing different countries or cultures can feel seen, heard and understood.”
On her intend for her audience: “My intent for my audience is that they don’t feel defined by what the world says that they should be, that they understand who they are, and they fully embrace and immerse themselves in that, and defy what society tells them they should be, and just be themselves.”
On why she changed her name: “I received a certification in Kabalarian philosophy, I knew the philosophy of names are important, it depends on when you’re born, and the energy of the name, and how it affects you.”
On what keeps her up at night: “Doing right by my team and my community.”
And now for the lightly edited conversation with Elleyne Aldine, founder, publisher, and CEO of Culturs Global Media:
Samir Husni: As you start your eighth year with Culturs, a lot has changed in the magazine, in your life, and in the digital. You said this is the year of transformation. Tell me about it.
Elleyne Aldine: It is the year of transformation for me personally and for the magazine. I definitely don’t want to do things the way we’ve done it in the past. It’s time. As organizations and as people grow, you should do things differently, right? If you want to continue growing, you can’t do it the same as you have.
One of the biggest lessons I learned in having this magazine, at each stage, I had to let go of people who weren’t going to work for the next stage. And I remember that was the one of the hardest things for me when I started. Because when I started and we were a philanthropic organization.
We didn’t really turn into a company until a couple of years ago. It was really about getting this message out to the people, and I funded it myself. We had a lot of supporters, but everybody worked for free. You can imagine the guilt when we were getting to the next stage, and I was going to have to let go of some of those people.
Because my pitch to them was, imagine being able to do this into the future and be part of this. And then, not even two years later, I’m like, I don’t think this is working. I don’t think I said it to them like that.
But in my head, that’s what it felt like. So I had to get over that. And of course, I’ve done that two or three times since then. As we get to the next level, certain people aren’t going to be appropriate for the next level you’re going to, and so on and so on.
My team right now is amazing. And I am changing how we work as a team. If the team cannot work that way, they won’t be able to go to the next stage with me.
Samir Husni: What are the practical steps you are doing with this transformation?
Elleyne Aldine: I was considering going back into stores. So we were in stores until two years ago. Two years ago, we had a lot of things go wrong.
We had a severe bot attack on our website. It ate up our email list, which had half a million people on it. In the end, we had to scrap the whole site, everything we did, every cyber company we worked with, the site never got clean.
So we had to just trash it all and start over. And we’ve never quite recovered from that. But it’s taken a long time.
We’re just now launching the new version of the site. And at that same time, we stopped being on newsstands. We’d pay to be at the front of the newsstand. We’d pay to be in a premium position. And I would get all these calls and emails from people, we can’t find the magazine.
I went to this store and this store and this store, because we had a list on our website. And it wasn’t there, or they said it was sold out, or they didn’t know what I was talking about. So I thought I’m tired of wasting all this money. We pulled out of stores.
I was told that the newsstands are not the gold standard, but I think the reason I was thinking of it, you know, we had, as you saw, the writer producer of Captain America Malcolm Spellman, CEO Emil Pinnock, and Jimmy Chris on this last cover, and they expected us to be in stores. And I’m like we’re in some stores, but we’re not widely distributed in stores. I think the public still expects that’s what’s profitable, or that’s what’s means you’ve made it.
The transformation is the way we do things, which ironically, is the way we’ve always wanted to do things. And so many publishers are starting to do it the way that we’ve envisioned since the beginning.
Which is, we have a membership with three packages. They’re all we call them our Insider, Platinum, and VIP packages.
The Insider package is all media.
Members have access to our new podcast, our beautiful video channel, our digital experience, our print magazine, and our web experience. So this year, part of that transformation is every single one of those experiences is different.
You go to read the same story, but you have a different experience on every platform. The photos might tell the story on one platform. And the story angle may be different on the web. On digital, it might be an immersive experience. But each one of those for the same story is very different. So we have our Insider package.
Our second package is our Platinum package, which is media and products. Every quarter our members get a physical package to their door to immerse their senses in global culture.
So every single issue, we have a destination that we focus on. The next one is Jordan. And I’m super excited about that. In that package, we have an award winning dinner party kit. In every location, we work with professional chefs, we just had Michelin star chefs out here in Colorado in December for one of our experiences. We work with the chefs and create a dinner party kit that gives you the invitations, thank you notes, the menus, the recipes, everything to throw a dinner party for five people, except for the food.
Then we create a sense of global bath and body that emulates the location that we went to. So it’s reminiscent, if I were there, this is what it would smell like. And we do a set of greeting cards for that location.
Of course, we have the magazine that has the destination, the history, the story of the place. In addition, we have the podcast and the videos, and then a playlist for that destination. So fully immersive sensory experience.
That’s the media and the products. That’s the Platinum membership.
When you get to our VIP plus experience, which is the third package, it actually pays for itself. It’s our most expensive memberships, the packages go from around $350 to almost $1,000 a year.
The VIP plus members get the media, get the products, and they get our experiences. So for each quarter, we go to a new destination that will be featured in the next year magazines. We invite up to 10 of our audience to come with us.
And in the VIP plus package, you get a 10% discount off of those experiences. So one trip could pay for it for your entire subscription. So now all through the year, you get to experience every single destination.
You might just go to one or to multiple experiences. This year will be in Fiji, Morocco, and South Africa. We’re doing three this year.
So yes, those are part of the transformation. It’s how we deliver what we do. It’s how we talk about what we do.
And then internally, it’s how the team views what we do. You know, I just had a team meeting yesterday. And I said to them, you do social to bring more people into our community. You do design to bring more people into our community. You do editing and storytelling to make sure people feel one in our community.
Instead of focusing on the tasks that people do daily, it’s really about the key performance indicators (KPIs) and what are they delivering? Because if we don’t deliver for our community, and if we don’t make sure our community stays vibrant, and continue to bring in members, then we won’t be able to design or do social or video or writing. So that’s part those are all parts of the transformation.
Samir Husni: Excellent.So tell me, let me go back eight years ago, when everybody was falling in love with digital, you decided to produce an ink on paper magazine. Why?
Elleyne Aldine: For the same reason as what people are seeing now. I got to tell you, it’s been very, very satisfying to see that what I was trying to say to people then, they’re starting to realize now? It’s the same as these packages I’m telling you about.
This has been the vision from the beginning. The only thing that’s added is the podcast. I didn’t think of podcasts back then. We’ve always been about the products. We’ve always been about the places. Same with print.
To me, print had its place. It is your luxury experience. It is being grounded.
It is sitting and spending time for self-care with yourself with a cup of tea or in the tub or out in nature or laying on the couch, really experiencing what you’re doing instead of rushing through a million pieces of content on your phone. People are starting to realize that. As you know, at the time I was teaching at university, and I’m sure you saw as well, Gen Z and now Gen Alpha, they were embracing print.
It was funny. I thought, okay, I’ll go to digital. We’ll do all the syllabi and everything in digital. Every semester the students will say, are you going to give us a copy? Give me a copy, please. Or we went to a digital book, and they went to the store to buy the print, right?
I had firsthand experience, my own lived experience in this is a tactile sensory grounding experience that you can’t get with digital. Digital will overload your nervous system. It will give you more content than your brain really can consume, add to anxiety instead of remove it. Print was a no brainer for me. I love paper.
To this day, we just had our launch in Beverly Hills for the last issue, and there was a printer there. We launched the magazine, and we only had a few copies of the magazine that we gave out to specific people. This gentleman walked up and he said, may I feel your magazine? I said, you must be a paper person.
He said, I’m a printer. I said, well, I’ll warn you, everyone says this is glorious when they put it in their hands. He put it in his hands, and he felt it, and he said, is this coated? I said, yes, it is.
He said, is this UV coating? I said, yes, it is. He really enjoyed it, but what’s interesting is he’s a connoisseur, but the everyday public has the same experience. They may not know the terms.
They may not know how we did the printing, but they have the same reaction he had, and that’s why I did print back in the day.
Samir Husni: So how important is the quality of printing and paper?
Elleyne Aldine: I won’t say the name of the magazine. It’s something that I enjoyed when I was a child, and I was disappointed at the quality of the paper, the quality of the design. Of course, the writing is still excellent, but there’s some magazines I subscribe to, that I still love, but how they squish the editorial into these little spaces, and so there’s really not that experience for the beautiful design and the airy feel that actually helps your brain be more open and relaxed, right? So, and it’s a big name, I was disappointed to see that that’s how it is now.
Samir Husni: You’re transforming, and a year from now, you and I are having this conversation. How would you tell me this transformation have gone?
Elleyne Aldine: Ayear from now, I will tell you. Okay, so our goal is to add 100,000 new print subscribers this year.
I will say that we have surpassed that goal, and I will say that we have more people thriving in our community than ever, meeting up in person, going on these experiences. I had mentioned experiences. It’s not only the travel, but it’s the launch that we had in Beverly Hills where 200 people came to a theater and listened to a fireside chat with the cover stars, where we had our celebrity global ambassador, Yara Shahidi, where we introduced her to the public, where we announced the Alchemist Awards, which will be the cross-cultural awards.
There’s nothing else like it, and we gave our first three awards to launch the awards, which will actually happen in November in Colorado. I will tell you that because of experiences like that in our cooking experiences and our travel experiences, that people are coming together more than ever, that they are understanding other people more than ever. It’s a good thing.
I was reading a recent article in The New York Times about five fashion magazines that are indies and thriving. Three out of the five have similar content to Culturs. They’re talking about fashion, which is a piece of what we do, but one of them had an African bent to it, and another one had an international bent, and I said, well, look at this. So, in a year, I’ll say that even more people understand the value of why what we do is so important.
Samir Husni: Did anybody ever tell you misspelled Culturs?
Elleyne Aldine: It’s so funny, actually, now that you say that. People haven’t done that recently. In the beginning, they would always try to add the E, or even when I would spell it, I wouldn’t say the name.
I’d spell it first, and I’d say, no E, Culturs with no E, and their brains couldn’t, it was like, what? And even as they typed it, and I’d say, no, it doesn’t have an E, and they’d say, I didn’t put one, and then I’d look and say, oh, okay, and they’d take it back out. So, in the beginning, yes, but no, I haven’t had anyone say that recently.
Samir Husni: With this new transformation, with this new membership opportunities that are out there, whom are you trying to reach?
Elleyne Aldine: As we continue in the process of transformation, we have a new ad campaign that focuses on our intended audience. As you can read on the back cover of the magazine and in the inside front cover, we define our audience as, “The world may try to define you.
But, you know better. Culturs is the place where culturally fluid people who crew up meaningfully experiencing different countries or cultures can feel seen, heard and understood.” That in short is our audience. Those are our people, that’s who we’re trying to reach.
Samir Husni: Is there any question I should ask you, I didn’t ask you, you would like me to ask?
Elleyne Aldine: What’s your intent for your audience with my story?
Samir Husni: Okay, what’s your intent for your audience with your story?
Elleyne Aldine: My intent for my audience is that they don’t feel defined by what the world says that they should be, that they understand who they are, and they fully embrace and immerse themselves in that, and defy what society tells them they should be, and just be themselves.
Samir Husni: So tell me, being yourself, you changed your name. Why?
Elleyne Aldine: There’s a couple of practical reasons, one being that another person with a similar name doesn’t have great credit, and I got tired of getting intertwined with them. But also in 2000 I discovered the Kabalarian philosophy, and it talks about the energy of names.
When I got married, which was that time, that’s why I discovered it, I changed my name two years later, and instantly felt the effect of it, and didn’t like the effect that I felt. And then I remembered back when I was young, my name changed when my mom, after my parents were divorced, and I had a similar experience where my life changed overnight. In that time, it changed for the better.
In my married time, it changed for the worse. Once I received a certification in Kabalarian philosophy, I knew the philosophy of names are important, it depends on when you’re born, and the energy of the name, and how it affects you. But it took me until now to really lean in and say, I’m tired of… Actually, it’s similar to what I’m saying about Culturs.
I don’t want to be defined anymore by what society says. I got tired of people mispronouncing my real name, messing up my old name, telling me what my name should be, because people would shorten my name all the time. I absolutely loved my birth name, but everyone would shorten it.
So eventually, I went by Doni, because I thought, okay, they’re going to shorten it to D-O-N-N-Y. I will shorten it to something that’s a little more exotic that I love. So I went with D-O-N-I.
But I’ve never liked that name. I can’t stand that name. So I decided I would have a name that I love, and if anyone didn’t like it, they could kick rocks.
Samir Husni: My typical last two questions are, one, if I come to visit you unannounced, what do I catch you doing to unwind at the end of the day?
Elleyne Aldine: To unwind at the end of the day? You catch me studying Spanish.
You catch me leafing through a magazine. You catch me meditating or sitting on the bed or on the couch and staring at the fire or staring at the wall.
Samir Husni: And my last question is, what keeps you up at night these days?
Elleyne Aldine: You know, nothing ever keeps me up.
No problem sleeping. That’s what happens when you run really fast. What keeps me up? Actually, doing right by my team and my community.
I really wanted to fill a space for people who didn’t have anyone paying attention to them. So I want to make sure that we keep our promises.
Samir Husni: Well, you’re doing a great job and you are keeping your promises. Thank you.
If you would have told Andrea Barbalich, editorial director of The Week Junior, when the magazine was launched in 2020, that the magazine will become the fastest growing magazine in the United States, she probably would have responded, “you are out of your mind.”
Launched on the outset of a pandemic that shut down the country and most of the world, followed by social unrest, worldwide demonstrations, two very contentious general elections, a war in Ukraine, and a war in the Middle East, most observers will have given the magazine no chance of surviving. Under normal circumstances the average survival rate for new magazines is less than 20% after four years of publishing.
What are the odds of swimming against the trends, celebrating five years of publishing, and being named the fastest growing magazine in the United States. Notice how I did not say fastest growing children’s magazine, I said, fastest growing magazine followed by The Atlantic and New York magazines in the second and third places respectively.
So, what is the secret for the success of The Week Junior and why is it one of two newsweeklies (the other being The Week) still published weekly year-round? To answer this question and others about the secret sauce used to make The Week Junior successful, I reached out to Andrea Barbalich, the editorial director of The Week Junior, looking for answers.
The enthusiast and passionate editorial director answered my questions and more cheerfully. Without any further ado, here is the lightly edited conversation with Andrea Barbalich, editorial director of The Week Junior magazine.
But first the soundbites:
On The Week Junior’s success: “The quality is outstanding in terms of the editorial and the visuals and its appeal to children and the trust it’s generated among adults.”
On what makes the magazine special: “To have a news magazine coming into the home every week that is timely and topical and based on the news that happened that week, engaging and age-appropriate and fun, is something special.”
On the children as her audience: “So they’re really a dream audience and they really respond to the fact that it’s print.”
On the content of the magazine: “The most important thing of all is that we create something that’s interesting and it’s exciting to read.”
More on the content of the magazine: “The kids want to read it and there’s a really special editorial mix and really magical quality to this magazine that kids respond to.”
On the importance of the trust factor: “We’ve worked very hard over the years to build that trust with parents and show them that we can be a non-partisan, unbiased resource for their kids that helps break stories down into a format that children can understand and that helps them form their own opinion about it.”
On why they survived as a new weekly where others didn’t: “It’s because of the way we present the news and the fact that our business model is based on subscriptions.”
On why the magazine resonates with its audience: “The Week Junior is created in such a careful, thoughtful, exciting, and fun way that really is engaging.”
On being the number one fastest growing magazine in the U.S.A.: “The number two and number three magazines in terms of growth are The Atlantic and New York. So we’re delighted to be in such excellent company.”
On the usage of AI: “We have not used AI very much at all. We don’t use it at all in our editing or our writing or even our research. It’s all done by the talented staff that we have.”
On the creation of the weekly magazine: “It’s created by human beings who really care to create the best quality product that they can every single week. And it’s read by an audience of children who really care. So it’s an absolutely wonderful proposition.”
On being a community: “Because in addition to publishing a magazine, we really see ourselves as building a community. We’ve built something very powerful with this brand that I hope will continue to evolve.
On children spending more time on the screen and less on magazines: “Maybe we’ve proven that theory wrong. Children who read this magazine really do feel that they’re part of a community of like-minded children. We went into this launch believing in the power of Generation Alpha and believing that this was a really incredible generation of kids who care about the world and are curious and knowledgeable and want to make a difference and want to have their voices heard.
On her hope for the future: “It’s vital for children to have this sense of hope and strength and I hope the Week Junior can continue to help with that.”
And now for the lightly edited conversation with Andrea Barbalich, editorial director of The Week Junior magazine.
Samir Husni: Congratulations on surviving five years. Less than 20 percent of new magazines survive four years, let alone five. Tell me, what’s your secret?
Andrea Barbalich: Well, first I’d like to say thank you for inviting me to talk to you.
I looked back on our interview from four years ago and remembered that great conversation that we had. So you’re checking in with us really at an exciting moment for The Week Junior. As you said, we just passed our fifth anniversary. We’re also currently the fastest growing magazine in America.
We have a devoted readership of amazing children across the country who absolutely love this magazine. We’ve launched some very successful brand franchises and had some amazing PR successes since we last spoke. I think we’ve really changed the whole concept of creating news for children in this country.
So we’re really thrilled with where we are. As to our secret, I think there are so many reasons why this magazine is resonating. One is that the quality is outstanding in terms of the editorial and the visuals and its appeal to children and the trust it’s generated among adults.
In our business model, the core product really comes first always above everything else. It’s a business model primarily based on subscriptions. We charge a decent price and the purchasers repeatedly tell us in surveys that we’ve conducted, that they feel it’s a fair price and a good value.
So the magazine has to deliver on this value proposition every single week and it does. Our renewal rates are very high and our mailbox is overflowing with letters from kids and parents telling us how much they love it. Another factor is the magazine is doing something no one has ever done in the United States and parents and children have recognized how positive that is not only for the children reading it but for the whole family.
To have a news magazine coming into the home every week that is timely and topical and based on the news that happened that week, engaging and age-appropriate and fun, is something special. Children are truly engaged in reading it and what parent doesn’t want that? They don’t just read it, they love reading it, they can’t wait to read it. Then it sparks conversations around the dinner table and in the car and so it’s a benefit for the whole family.
My team is so brilliant and they make my job a joy. But also to have the opportunity of a lifetime to speak to this incredible generation of children every week.
Also to have the opportunity of a lifetime to speak to this incredible generation of children every week. They love The Week Junior, it helps them feel informed and confident and happy. It’s incredibly rewarding work for me and they are such amazing people and they give me hope for the future.
Samir Husni: So when people tell you that the screen agers, i.e. the children, spend eight or nine hours on an average on a screen while they spend few minutes on a magazine. Why are you the exception?
Andrea Barbalich: Before we launched the magazine (in 2020) we were told exactly what you just said, that children are not interested in the news for one thing and also that children only care about screens and they don’t want to read on paper. We believe that that was wrong and it turned out that we were right. When we launched this magazine, if you think back to that time and our launch date was in March 17, 2020, precisely when the world was shutting down from the pandemic, children’s entire world was on a screen.
They were going to school on a screen, they were meeting with their friends and their family on a screen and so the magazine came in as a nice alternative to that and that’s still the case. There is really something special about having a product that you can hold in your hand that comes into the home, it has the child’s name on it, it feels special, it feels like a gift, it’s not homework.
Kids read it, they take it into their treehouse, they read it upside down on the monkey bars, they read it to their pet chicken and their baby brother and they take it on vacation. They have their favorite covers and they save their copies and refer back to them. So they’re really a dream audience and they really respond to the fact that it’s print.
We do have a subscription option where people can purchase both a print and a digital edition as a bundle and some people do take advantage of that, mainly the digital subscription is read by someone outside the home, such as a grandparent who wants to read along with the child, but overwhelmingly the subscriptions are print and I think that the medium is important for the reasons I just cited, that the children love having it. I also think that the most important thing of all is that we create something that’s interesting and it’s exciting to read. The kids want to read it and there’s a really special editorial mix and really magical quality to this magazine that kids respond to.
Samir Husni: You launched back in March of 2020, the world shut down that month, so my question to you, after that major obstacle, has your journey been a walk in a rose garden in those five years or you had other major obstacles and how did you overcome them?
Andrea Barbalich: Well, as you said, there really were some obstacles in the beginning.
We couldn’t have some of the in-person events that we wanted and we had to completely rethink our school strategy because school wasn’t taking place. But as of the year after that, kids were back in school and we could resume some of those plans. Producing a news magazine every week is its own challenge.
It’s a demanding schedule and a demanding pace and the news itself poses a challenge every week. The news environment itself is both a great challenge as well as a great opportunity. It’s very challenging for all of us right now, including adults, and it has been that way since our launch in 2020.
So much of the news is worrisome, frightening, it changes at a rapid pace. The biggest news story in the first thing in the morning is not always the biggest news story at the end of the day. Many parents are struggling to address current events with their kids.
Children are seeing the news, they’re hearing about the news, they’re exposed to it in school and from their friends and from social media. The Week Junior provides a real service in explaining the news in a calm, factual way that kids can understand and is age-appropriate. We’ve worked very hard over the years to build that trust with parents and show them that we can be a non-partisan, unbiased resource for their kids that helps break stories down into a format that children can understand and that helps them form their own opinion about it.
And in terms of the greatest challenges, I would say some of the biggest challenges have been some of the actual news stories themselves. If you think back on the past five years, we’ve had a pandemic. We had the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, two months after we launched, and worldwide demonstrations after that, two very contentious general elections, a war in Ukraine, a war in the Middle East.
Those are difficult events to explain and to understand. But it actually turns out for us that they wind up being our greatest opportunities because we’re able to, because of the way that we address the news, gain the trust of children and their parents. And we really become an incredible resource.
And we’ve also established our authority within the media beyond The Week Junior as an authority on this generation of children. And we’ve been interviewed many times on the topics of how to explain difficult news events to children. That has also helped with our growth.
Samir Husni: The Week Junior and The Week are the only two news magazines published weekly in the United States on a year round basis? All the other news weeklies have become 17 times a year, 20 times a year, but nothing left as a news weekly. Why do you think that’s the case?
Andrea Barbalich: It’s because of the way we present the news and the fact that our business model is based on subscriptions.
We do, of course, accept advertising and we’re grateful for our advertisers, but the business model is based on creating a quality product and delivering on the promise. We found with The Week Junior, and the same with The Week before us, people want to read what we’re publishing. The Week Junior is created in such a careful, thoughtful, exciting, and fun way that really is engaging.
And that resonates. We’re very fortunate with The Week Junior that it’s a gift title. So it’s always a gift because it’s not the child who’s paying for it, so it’s either a gift from the parent or from someone outside the home, a grandparent or an aunt or an uncle or a friend.
We found that as time has gone on, The Week Junior has become a very in-demand gift. We see sometimes that a grandparent will subscribe for all of their grandchildren or an aunt or uncle will subscribe for all of their nieces and nephews or the parent will give The Week Junior subscription as a gift for all of the birthday parties that the child attends during that year. That’s another way that we’ve grown and that the magazine has been able to develop quite a strong word of mouth following.
Samir Husni: Can you give me a percentage why you said The Week, Junior is the fastest growing magazine in America?
Andrea Barbalich: We had a 23% increase in circulation for the second half of 2024, as measured by the Alliance for Audited Media. But then if you measure the growth year over year, instead of just for that six-month period, the percentage is even higher. We just had our highest ever subscription month just this past January, just a few months ago.
The number two and number three magazines in terms of growth are The Atlantic and New York. So we’re delighted to be in such excellent company.
Samir Husni: Everybody is talking these days about AI. Is AI a friend or a foe to The Week Junior?
Andrea Barbalich: We have not used AI very much at all. We don’t use it at all in our editing or our writing or even our research. It’s all done by the talented staff that we have.
We have used it in a limited way in our art department. There are some capabilities in terms of Photoshop, for example, that have enhanced their work. But for right now, we’re being very cautious and judicious and we’re taking a wait-and-see approach.
Samir Husni: So in an age of AI and digital, print has no backspace, has no delete. It’s permanent. Right?
Andrea Barbalich: And it’s created by human beings who really care to create the best quality product that they can every single week. And it’s read by an audience of children who really care. So it’s an absolutely wonderful proposition.
Samir Husni: In the midst of all this digital land, if you and I are having the same conversation a year from now, what would you tell me The Week Junior accomplished in 2025?
Andrea Barbalich: I would hope is that our ambition, our editorial excellence, our subscriptions, and revenue growth have continued to climb. I want as many children as possible to have the opportunity to read this magazine and be part of our community. We have some creative ideas for growth that I hope we can make happen.
And they really center on finding new ways to connect with our audience and having them connect with one another. Because in addition to publishing a magazine, we really see ourselves as building a community. We’ve built something very powerful with this brand that I hope will continue to evolve.
Samir Husni: Why do you think we’ve allowed digital to steal the word community from magazines? You said The Week Junior is building a community. We don’t hear that much in the magazine world anymore. It’s like all the communities are on the digital sphere?
Andrea Barbalich: Maybe we’ve proven that theory wrong. Children who read this magazine really do feel that they’re part of a community of like-minded children. We went into this launch believing in the power of Generation Alpha and believing that this was a really incredible generation of kids who care about the world and are curious and knowledgeable and want to make a difference and want to have their voices heard.
We believe in those kids. Those kids believe in themselves, and we believe in them. That’s what creates the community.
We have also created a brand extension called Junior Council, which is 12 children who are chosen every year to be part of the council. They spend four months with us learning from our editors and guest speakers that we bring in. Then they choose a cause that they’re interested in, and they research and write stories that are then published in the magazine.
When they graduate from Junior Council, they become what we call junior journalists. They have opportunities to cover stories for us and have their work published. They’ve done everything from attending red carpet premieres to interviewing prominent people such as Michelle Obama and the head of the FDA.
They’ve been featured on NBC Nightly News Kids Edition with Lester Holt. They’ve done all that, but then they’ve also done things in their own individual schools and communities. That spark was ignited in them during their time on the Junior Council.
We’ve heard from so many children and parents about how this program has changed their life. I think there’s a sense of that community and strength and hope and optimism running through the whole magazine every week, not on Junior Council, but also on the magazine itself.
Samir Husni: Before I ask you my typical last two questions, is there any question I should have asked you and I did not, or anything you would like to add?
Andrea Barbalich: I would be remiss if I didn’t mention some of the amazing PR successes that we’ve had over the past five years.
Just in the past 12 months, we’ve had significant partnerships with the Today Show and the Drew Barrymore Show and NBC Nightly News Kids Edition with Lester Holt that have really helped raise awareness of the brand and elevate our authority and our excellence. So that’s a big part of our growth also, that’s a significant part of our growth.
In terms of anything else I’d like to add, really just how grateful I feel to be leading this magazine at this moment in time.
First, to have such an incredible team working beside me at a company that values our work. Every person who ever dreams of becoming an editor-in-chief has a dream team list in the back of their head of who they would want to assemble if they ever got the chance, and I was lucky enough to have that opportunity. There’s something very special about launching a magazine as opposed to relaunching or refreshing or reinventing.
When you go through that experience together, it’s very powerful for everyone. My team is so brilliant and they make my job a joy.
Also to have the opportunity of a lifetime to speak to this incredible generation of children every week. They love The Week Junior, it helps them feel informed and confident and happy. It’s incredibly rewarding work for me and they are such amazing people and they give me hope for the future.
Samir Husni: Excellent. So if I come to visit you one evening unannounced, what do I catch you reading a book, having a glass of wine, watching TV?
Andrea Barbalich: First of all, Samir, you’re welcome to stop by anytime. I love to cook and I would certainly make something special for you. I also have a wonderful family and a close-knit group of friends and so maybe you would walk in on an interesting conversation or some healthy and respectful debate and a lot of laughter.
Samir Husni: And what’s keeping Andrea up at night these days?
Andrea Barbalich: Many things actually. But at the top of the list for me would be that our nation is extremely divided right now and amid all the challenges that we face, I want children to be able to hold on to their optimism and their hope, to maintain their desire to be engaged with the world no matter what happens, to learn to be critical thinkers and form their own opinion, to continue to care as they do very much right now, to realize their view and their voice matters.
It’s very easy for all of this to get drowned out, but it’s vital for children to have this sense of hope and strength and I hope the Week Junior can continue to help with that.
Teneshia Carr was not born with a silver spoon in her mouth. A daughter of a father who owned and operated two delis and a mother who was a roving nurse. Her parents were her inspiration to be an entrepreneur and not seek a job with a paycheck at the end of the month. She wanted to own the space she occupies. Ms. Carr learned that, “there is nothing else but working for yourself.”
And work for herself she did. She launched Blanc magazine in 2011. Born from a sense of frustration when she started, “it was the typical angry story, just out of frustration.” Blanc, which means white in the French language, was in her words, “The irony of a black woman from Philadelphia owning a magazine called Blanc is on purpose.”
To say that Teneshia has succeeded with Blanc as the magazine that, “is a creative platform that presents a diverse and underrepresented perspective of the fashion, art and music world,” will be a major understatement.
A talented editor, photographer and now co-founder of a content agency, Teneshia still have time to rewind at home journaling “mindless writings.” The passionate magazine founder and I had a very pleasant, fun, and educational conversation via Zoom.
So without any further ado, here is mythe lightly edited interview with Teneshia Carr, owner and editor in chief of Blanc magazine:
But first the soundbites:
On the reason she named the magazine Blanc: “I thought if I could figure out how to make a Trojan horse for people who look like me to sneak into the side door of fashion that just wasn’t letting us in, was something that I wanted to do.”
On the secret of a good publishing model: “You need to figure out how to do something that’s relevant, do something that matters to your readers and to advertisers to allow them to keep supporting you.”
On why Blanc survived and thrived where others failed: “I think Blanc has stuck around because we work with a wide array of creatives, and those creatives go on to work with some of the biggest stars, the biggest talents, and the biggest magazines in the world.”
On sticking to print: “They say, do that digital, girl, but they are adamant at the legacy that comes with the advertising that they create lasting forever in a print publication.”
On Surviving as an independent magazine: “In order to survive as an independent or a niche magazine, you have to understand that circulation isn’t going to save you. Nothing is going to save you. You need to figure out how to do something that’s relevant, do something that matters to your readers and to advertisers to allow them to keep supporting you.”
Screenshot
On the creation of BabyRobot agency: “There’s other ways that while for the past 15 years, I’ve built this community, I have to really figure out how to create experiences that, connect to them as individuals and connect to them as my audience. So that’s how you rule the world, diversifying. But leave your lighthouse untouched.”
On Blanc and its influence: “It’s not built to be necessarily the influence. It is the lighthouse to shine on the influencers themselves.”
On being an entrepreneur: “I grew up with the entire idea of being an entrepreneur… I was taught that there is nothing else but working for yourself.”
On her journey those past 15 years: “The entire journey for me has been Rose Garden because it’s full of the beauty and full of the thorns.”
On Artificial Intelligence and its role: “It’s amazing. You didn’t think about a tool as something to fear. You thought about it as a tool to enhance the thing that you’re doing.”
On the impact of AI and other digital platforms: “We’re heading to the land of the falseness. That’s going to make Blanc and other niche magazines who are doing really cool things still interesting.”
On how she rewinds at the end of her day: “I do a lot of journaling, just mindless writing in the evening. And that really helps me relax from the day.”
And now for the lightly edited interview with Teneshia Carr, owner and editor in chief of Blanc magazine:
Samir Husni: My first question to you is, 15 years ago, you embarked on a mission that manifested itself with Blanc magazine. Can you tell me what that mission is, and why did you choose an ink on paper magazine to manifest that mission?
Teneshia Carr: First of all, the irony of a black woman from Philadelphia owning a magazine called Blanc is on purpose. I thought if I could figure out how to make a Trojan horse for people who look like me to sneak into the side door of fashion that just wasn’t letting us in, was something that I wanted to do.
I wanted to figure out how to tell stories with people that look like me, with creatives from around the world to share that one perspective, to share their different perspectives on what luxury is, what beauty is, what fashion is, what culture is. So, when I started, it was the typical angry story, just out of frustration. I wanted to be the next Anna Wintour.
I wanted to be the next, not just fashion editor, but the next great fashion storyteller. And I knew from the constant rejections that it just wasn’t going to happen until I figured out how to build my own space. And that’s what I did.
Samir Husni: And then 2020 happened.
Teneshia Carr: And then 2020 happened. There were quite a few Black-owned magazines that were popping up around that time.
They didn’t really have a luxury advertising, but they still had a really strong point of view. There was Fashion Fair, Crown Magazine, and New Knew was another one. It was just like a renaissance that was happening around publications, Black editors, Black designers, and Black magazine owners.
It started bubbling up around 2018, 2019, when all these little cool magazines started popping up. When I first started Blanc (2011), years before, there weren’t any Black-owned, Black female-owned, the advertisers just didn’t publish with us. Essence didn’t have luxury, fashion advertising.
When 2020 happened, the whole thing stopped a little. You would think that because of what was happening with the streets and the social revolution and all the Black calls on Instagram, that all of this money would start pouring our way, and that just wasn’t the case.
I think Blanc has stuck around because we work with a wide array of creatives, and those creatives go on to work with some of the biggest stars, the biggest talents, and the biggest magazines in the world.
We are, quite frankly, to pat my own back, just consistently good. We are consistently telling really good stories. So, 2020, to imagine, I couldn’t get my issue from London.
I print in the UK. I couldn’t get my issue anywhere. So, I lost the print run. I couldn’t distribute it, and I had to fulfill my obligations to the advertisers. I had to fulfill what I needed to do for my advertisers. But everything just stopped.
The world stopped. It was really hard to pivot to something else, because we’re so old-school print. Digital’s fine and digital’s cool, but I don’t really care about that. No advertisers, I care about it. But, like, print is the thing. It’s the thing.
It’s smelling the copy and and knowing the difference between a digital print and a real print and, feeling the paper and the weight and all of that. It still means something, and it still meant something, but I couldn’t, it was impossible for six months or eight months to do anything. I think the only reason why I survived is because of my advertising partners.
I don’t have very many, but the ones I have are really dedicated to the way I tell stories. They really are wanting to see us grow, but it’s hard because there are only so many partners that are willing, unfortunately, to support in a real way.
The pandemic stopped things, but then it restarted. We got a boost, and that boost quickly died out. We got a boost of advertising, and that quickly died out and we went back to our regular partners. I think we’ll keep going because every time I meet a client, they go on and on about how valuable what I do is, how valuable the magazine is still for them and their business, how important it is.
They always get on me about getting more digital now. They say, do that digital, girl, but they are adamant at the legacy that comes with the advertising that they create lasting forever in a print publication.
Samir Husni: Back in 2011 everybody was into digital and social media. Did somebody say, Ms. Carr, are you out of your mind? You’re doing an ink on paper magazine?
Teneshia Carr: Well, people still say that, and they keep saying it to me.
People were saying it, but the thing is because I don’t know how many other people could have started the thing that I did in a way that I did it without any investment, without having any contacts or any connections. I focused on having the creative network first, and then I figured out everything else. Like, I knew that I wanted to make a magazine.
I had no idea how the business of magazine was run. I don’t need to know that stuff. That stuff is fine.
I just need to know how to make a magazine. So, imagine me focusing on creating the work and then figuring out how to build a magazine business. I had to do those two things.
I could not figure out then how to build the concept of Blanc digitally. That just wasn’t my focus. I just wanted something eternal.
I wanted to create a perfect coffee table magazine that you can put on your coffee table, and whether it’s from 10 years ago or four years ago or from last season, it’s still relevant and still feels relevant. And that’s what I wanted to make. I didn’t want to make a beautiful website that no one cares about.
I wanted to make something that was forever.
Samir Husni: Excellent. So, tell me, as you are climbing every mountain, so to say, do you really want to rule the world as your issue 28?
Teneshia Carr: Yes.
Yes. So, my theme of the Rule The World issue, and the other issue themes are based on song titles.
“Rule The World” is a nod to Beyonce or “Pieces Of You,” which is one of my favorite issues. That’s a Jewel song. So the themes are always rooted in music, mainly sad British music.
In order to survive as an independent or a niche magazine, you have to understand that circulation isn’t going to save you. Nothing is going to save you. You need to figure out how to do something that’s relevant, do something that matters to your readers and to advertisers to allow them to keep supporting you.
And you have to diversify. I can’t just print Blanc because that’s just not enough space for the stories I want to tell and the things that I want to make. I had to do what everybody else is doing.
That is the reason why I felt like I had to build an agency. I built an agency called BabyRobot Studios, with my partner, Scott Omelianuk (former editor in chief of Inc. and This Old House magazines). I built it because that’s only one piece of a touchpoint to the community. How else can I connect? How else can I engage? How else can I, with my partners, with my advertising partners, how can we engage and connect authentically in other ways? But the magazine, that’s the lighthouse, baby.
You don’t touch that. It’s perfect.
But there’s other ways that while for the past 15 years, I’ve built this community, I have to really figure out how to create experiences that, connect to them as individuals and connect to them as my audience. So that’s how you rule the world, diversifying. But leave your lighthouse untouched.
Leave it pure, leave it beautiful. It’s going to last forever and the advertisers will love you. But figure out other ways to build a brand, touch your community, and engage in your community.
And that can be digital for you. I’m working on it. I’m going to build it. It’s going to be amazing. It could be social, but for me, it’s going to be real life experiences when I partner with my advertisers and connect with my audience. So that’s how I’m going to rule the world.
Samir Husni: It has been said magazines were the original influencers. What has been the influence of Blanc?
Teneshia Carr: I think we’re influenced by the idea of finding the people who are creating culture genuinely.
Magazines were the original influencers. That’s absolutely correct. And then fashion designers and fashion editors were the other first influencers.
But for us, it’s the community. It’s the people who we research and find, those next big artists, and those next big musicians. Like, Blanc is the other part of it, which is, it’s a clean slate.
It has nothing to do with the editors. It has nothing to do with my team. It’s about the contributors page, which changes every single issue.
We work with hundreds of new teams, every single issue on purpose, because that is who matters, the contributors, not necessarily the masthead. It’s about figuring out how to find those people who are on the precipice of becoming, and allowing their light to shine as influencers of culture. That’s what Blanc is built on.
It’s not built to be necessarily the influence. It is the lighthouse to shine on the influencers themselves.
Samir Husni: You’re so passionate about the magazine.Does this mean that your last 15 years have been a trip in a rose garden?
Teneshia Carr: I grew up with the entire idea of being an entrepreneur. My mother was a nurse, and she was essentially a freelance nurse who went around, she had certain clients, and she moved from client to client.
My father, without a high school diploma, he started two cheesesteak stores in Philadelphia. One was called Carr’s Deli, and one was called Sandwich Masters. The point is that I was taught that there is nothing else but working for yourself.
There is no such thing as going to some job and getting some paycheck, and living life. That was never a part of my DNA. Whatever I was going to do in this world, I was going to sit inside whatever that thing is.
I was going to own the thing that I sit inside. There have been years of struggle and years of drinking champagne, and that’s the journey of being an entrepreneur. Every successful entrepreneur can tell you a dozen moments that they have been unsuccessful and they have failed.
For me, the entire journey has been worth it because I can’t do anything else. Now, at this point, can I maybe go and work for someone else? Maybe, but I could never do that before. It just wasn’t even in my DNA to think that way.
The entire journey for me has been Rose Garden because it’s full of the beauty and full of the thorns.
Samir Husni: Dealing with all the creative world, from music, to art, to fashion, do you have any fear from AI?
Teneshia Carr: No. I think I’m aging myself, I remember when Photoshop didn’t exist and you didn’t fear Photoshop. You were like, oh my God, I can get rid of all these pimples off this girl’s face.
It’s amazing. You didn’t think about a tool as something to fear. You thought about it as a tool to enhance the thing that you’re doing.
Now, if you aren’t talented and you use this tool in this way, I think that’s no different than people who used to over-process their photos in the eighties and nineties. And you used to say, oh my God, look that’s so heavily Photoshopped.
In Blanc, most of our photos are shot in film still, by the way.
Most people don’t know that, but we encourage so many of our photographers to shoot on film. They don’t charge us the same rates. We tell them this is the theme, go explore.
It’s like testing ground to be experimental, to be different. And most of them say oh wow, a lot of people don’t let us use film. And I’m like, dude, go use film, go do it.
It’s a bit more expensive, but the print quality like this is (holding in her hands issue 28 of Blanc), this is shot in film. The difference you can tell in the whole story, you could tell them the stories that we shoot on film.
So I understand that people are afraid, but there are a lot of AI artists doing a lot of really cool things, there are a lot of photographers, a lot of creatives that don’t use anything that are doing some real cool things too. I mean, it’s okay.
All of it’s okay.
Samir Husni: I’m seeing so much like fake art, fake pictures…
Teneshia Carr: When they pass it as a real art, that’s the thing that’s scary, but I just think there isn’t anything we can do about that.
Like the moment that we started accepting images that were, literally wastes were reduced by seven inches, that people look completely different from retouching. When we were starting to accept that in advertising and in print as facts, we were already coming here anyway. We were already coming to the land of the fakeness anyway.
As if it just got here and now everybody’s scared, but we’ve been moving here. If you look at some images again from the nineties and the early two thousands that were so over processed that the people were unrecognizable. That’s where we were heading.
We’re heading to the land of the falseness. That’s going to make Blanc and other niche magazines who are doing really cool things still interesting. It’s going to make us interesting in a couple of years because people get exhausted with not knowing if something that they’re seeing is real or not.
And they know that when they pick up Blanc, they see the film edges. They know that that was shot on film and that was just printed and that’s it. There’s nothing else.
So I think it’s going to be more important to have those kind of bastions of purity, like print, like people who still shoot film, people who still accept film for print, because I know how rare that is.
It’s going to be all the more important to keep figuring out how to publish this stuff, these creatives, they need this platform, they need publications that are still going to be accepting this kind of work.
Samir Husni: If somebody comes to you and says, Ms. Carr, I want to publish a magazine today, ink on paper magazine, do you tell them you’re out of your mind or you give them a different advice?
Teneshia Carr: I would say you are 50 years too late. If you’re still hearing that and crazy enough to keep going, then you just might have the juice to come out with a couple issues.
I would say it takes a certain type of person to look down the barrel in the face of this impossible thing and say, yeah, I still want to do that. That person can’t be persuaded to do anything else because I’m one of those people. You couldn’t tell me 15 years ago to not do a magazine.
You couldn’t tell me today to not do a magazine. I would do it.
Samir Husni: Before I ask you my personal question, is there anything you would like to add, a question you would like me to ask I didn’t ask you?
Teneshia Carr: No, I think that was pretty good. I think it was pretty fun.
Samir Husni: So my first personal question, I could not but notice the spider tattoo on your hand. What’s the significance of the spider tattoo?
Teneshia Carr: So this is Anansi, Anansi the spider. He’s a trickster spider.
He has seven sons. My husband has a deep affinity for spiders. And so instead of a wedding band, I got this Anansi.
And this is me, who is Djibouti the turtle. Also a trickster turtle. This is the trickster turtle and this trickster spider.
They’re based on folklore. This is the African folklore.
They’re little tricksters who trick the other animals in the forest into doing what they want.
Samir Husni: If I come to visit you one evening unannounced, what do I catch Teneshia doing to rewind from day reading a book, watching TV, cooking?
Teneshia Carr: I do a lot of journaling in the evening. For a long time, I didn’t unwind at all. I didn’t know how to relax, or I was always thinking about work or always checking emails, the worst thing in the world that has happened to us is the fact that we have constant access to our phones and people have constant access to us.
I turn off all the notifications on my phone so it doesn’t even light up because I would be checking it all the time. I do a lot of journaling, just mindless writing in the evening. And that really helps me relax from the day.
Samir Husni: and my typical last question, what keeps you up at night these days?
Teneshia Carr: I think trying to juggle between two businesses, building the agency, BabyRobot Studios and the magazine together. They’re separate, right? They’re sisters, but they have their separate purposes. They’re totally different: one is an agency and one is media.
It keeps me up at night. Realizing that I have to put a lot of all the things that I’ve learned over the past 15 years into my business. I’m having to learn all over again about a new business that I didn’t anticipate. So it just means that I have to get in a frame of mind. It’s a new challenge that I didn’t expect to run.
It’s just content, right? I make this content for print. I can make this content for white label and give it to the same client and charge an agency rate. It’s this totally different business, totally different self. It’s a totally different set of clients.
It’s totally different. And you just don’t anticipate it until you actually are going to set up an agency. It’s going to be totally fine.
Mr. Magazine 