Please join The Forum on the BBC worldwide service as I and two other colleagues discuss the history of magazines. What follows is what the BBC wrote for the introduction to The Forum. To listen to the podcast please click here.
“When magazines first emerged, they were the preserve of an elite who could afford to pay for them. But as time went on, the cost of paper fell, printing technology became more streamlined, literacy improved and would-be publishers spotted an opportunity to connect with audiences hungry for information and entertainment.
Magazines found a place to appeal to all types of interest, in the same way that the internet does today. In their heyday they attracted some of the best writers such as Charles Dickens and Ernest Hemingway, sometimes acting as a vehicle to establish literary careers. Later magazines were to become the go-to place for quality photography and design.
Falling advertising revenues have largely contributed to the decline of printed magazines, as well as editions moving online. However some titles have found a way of reinventing themselves in the 21st century.
Iszi Lawrence is joined by a panel of guests to discuss the rise and evolution of magazines. Usha Raman is a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Hyderabad in India, who began her career in magazines, writing and editing a variety of publications. She’s also the owner and editor of a specialist magazine for teachers.
Samir Husni is the founder and director of the Magazine Media Centre in the United States. He’s also written many books, including Inside the Great Minds of Magazine Makers.
And Tim Holmes is a former magazine editor, writer and until his retirement, leader for many years of the magazine journalism course at the University of Cardiff in the UK. We’ll also hear from a variety of Forum listeners from around the world, who share their thoughts on magazines.
“Print Only,” says the ad promoting subscriptions to Summit Journal magazine. There is no waste in its business model: “We only print the exact number of copies as our subscribers.” There are no newsstand sales, and every issue is printed with two different covers—one of which is sent randomly to each subscriber. If you want both covers, you’ll need two subscriptions. And for how much? Two subscriptions will cost you a hefty $120. Print-only is expensive, but it is permanent and lasting. It is yours, and you can prove it by holding the oversized magazine in your hands.
The person behind the resurrection of Summit magazine—now Summit Journal—after a 27-year dormancy is Michael Levy, a journalist, photographer, writer, and editor who is both a climber and a lover of ink on paper. I reached out to Michael to ask him about Summit Journal—why a young man would bring a magazine back to print, and not just print, but print only in 2025—and about the role he most enjoys in creating this beautiful publication, in which every issue is a collector’s item for today, tomorrow, and forever.
Michael Levy by Kiran Kallur
Surrounded by framed covers of both the old and new editions, Michael and I had a fascinating conversation about the magazine, print, art, digital, and climbing. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed having it. So, without further ado, here’s my lightly edited conversation with Michael Levy, founder and editor-in-chief of Summit Journal.
But first the soundbites:
On why print only: “With online it’s just like drinking from a fire hose. There’s too much stuff, a lot of good stuff but you get lost in the noise.”
More on why print only: “There’s an audience who really appreciates a boutique well-made and well-designed product and something you can hold in your hands and put on your shelf and come back to.”
Even more on why print only: “I love print. I used to work at a couple other climbing magazines, so my dream was to start a print magazine and that’s how it goes.”
On picture curation: “Then the curated photos, I see so much good photography these days, being able to choose exactly what we want to put in a magazine, there’s a lot of intentionality to it.”
On more reasons why print only: “Big part of that is to protect the value proposition of the printed magazine. If you can read it online it undermines the value of someone subscribing to print.”
On the reason for two covers with each issue: “It’s treating it as a novelty item, it’s closer to a coffee table book than a magazine.”
On his love of climbing: “I have been a climber for 15 years. I’m obsessive rock climber and mountain climber. For people who know climbers we tend to be very obsessive about it.”
On his biggest competitor: “The closest competitor I have is a magazine called Alpinist which is focused on highly technical mountaineering and alpinism and icy snowy peaks.”
On the magazine model: “Mountain Gazette for sure was the model I based it off. Summit, same as, Mountain Gazette is an old property that’s resurrected and just like Mountain Gazette you hold in your hands a beautiful magazine.”
On what keeping him up at night: “Basically, how the magazine, which is a climbing magazine, can be a vehicle with an interesting mode to tell human stories, interesting characters, and consider things in the world through different lenses.”
And now for the lightly edited interview with Michael Levy, founder and editor-in-chief, Summit Journal:
Samir Husni: My first question to you is 27 years after Summit magazine folded you decided to bring it back in 2023 as a print only publication. I guess you did not notice all the changes that took place in the digital world since 1996. Why print only?
Michael Levy: There are a few reasons:
One, with online it’s just like drinking from a fire hose. There’s too much stuff, a lot of good stuff but you get lost in the noise.
It’s the curation that is an important thing has gotten lost with the ability to have everything at your fingertips at once. So, in a print magazine you only get so many pages that you can only put so much in it, so, it forces, by design, to curate and let the cream rise to the top unless you want to put out a bad product. So that’s one.
And then another reason I would say like vinyl. There’s an audience who really appreciates a boutique well-made and well-designed product and something you can hold in your hands and put on your shelf and come back to. It’s this kind of an effect, kind of cool, a little bit counter cultural to what you know the general mainstream is doing, same as vinyl.
Number three, the reading experience is just different. When I find myself reading a book or The New Yorker or whatever, you’re forced to sit down, and you don’t have the distractions of online. You can’t go check your social media and you can’t go see what the headlines are on the other site. You’re making an intentional decision to spend time with this piece of writing and print forces you to do that.
I love print. I used to work at a couple other climbing magazines, so my dream was to start a print magazine and that’s how it goes.
Samir Husni: On your website www.summitjournal.com you say the magazine carries crafted stories and curated pictures. Explain.
Michael Levy: Yes, like what we’re just talking about with online, there’s a need, a compulsion to feed the beast. You always got to churn out the next thing, even for longer things when you hit publish these editors and publishers they must fill the quota for the next day. You can only spend so much time. I’ve published two magazines a year, which is not a lot, but I’m looking for the stories that I want to tell or that people send to me, and then we’re really drilling down on them and going through many rounds of edits, many rounds of reporting and research, and completely turning them inside out changing structure. These aren’t spit out onto a page; they’re really labored over, crafted like that.
Then the curated photos, I see so much good photography these days, being able to choose exactly what we want to put in a magazine, there’s a lot of intentionality to it. Some of the pictures are not necessarily the flashiest photos but they’re saying something and they’re in conversation with the other articles and the issue, so yes, just obsessing over it and figuring out what photos will bring the issue alive.
Samir Husni: Why did you decide on print only? No online magazine?
Michael Levy: Big part of that is to protect the value proposition of the printed magazine. If you can read it online it undermines the value of someone subscribing to print. They’re like well, why do I need it. It’s simple; I like print; I wanted to do print and so by not having it online it forces people, if they want to read it, you got to subscribe. It’s simple.
Samir Husni: You publish two covers every issue and if you want to get both covers you must have two subscriptions: instead of paying 60 bucks you must pay 120 bucks.
Michael Levy: Yes, it’s not cheap, but there’s not a lot of people who do that. There are a few. It’s treating it as a novelty item, it’s closer to a coffee table book than a magazine. Unlike magazines with thin paper that’s not perfect bound, the ones you might see on the magazine rack at the airport, there’s lots of great writing and photography, but they’re not as much tactile items that you’ll savor, so you read it, put on the back of the toilet, throw it out, whatever, Summit Journal is meant to be displayed or put on a shelf and really savored. For the collectors they might want both covers. Some people might say why don’t you let people choose which cover they want, the simple answer is it becomes much more complicated logistically and from a forecasting and business perspective. I print the two covers in a50/50 split and the shipping is random, that way one cover is not more or less equally popular.
Samir Husni: You appreciate your covers so much that you sell limited prints of the cover art.
Michael Levy: I do. One of the great things about the old Summit magazine, which was started in 1955 by two women Jean Crenshaw and Helen Kilness, is that they had incredible aesthetic artistic sensibility, so, there’s avant-garde art deco bright colored covers that mix illustration and photos and people climbing and beautiful mountains. With the new covers we’re both trying to capture a bunch of that spirit and honor the original magazine from the 50s 60s 70s. We are also pushing into new territory, so the covers are minimal and the goal with each cover to be iconic. We want people to look at the covers and go whoa I haven’t seen that before, as a climber or as a not a climber, and so with that in mind the covers make great cover they make great wall art as you can see; I have a few of them behind me the old ones in the middle and these are two of the new ones and they’re very graphic and very geometric.
Samir Husni: You are a writer, photographer, climber and now publisher and editor. Are you putting all your eggs in one basket Summit Journal?
Micheal Levy: I have been a climber for 15 years. I’m obsessive rock climber and mountain climber. For people who know climbers we tend to be very obsessive about it. It’s one of those things it gets in your blood, and you can’t stop thinking about it and what are you going to climb next. It’s a wonderful lifestyle sport.
Then about 10 years ago, I started writing about climbing. I worked for two other climbing magazines Rock and Ice magazine and Climbing magazine, which were the two largest print climbing magazines in America, probably the world. Neither of which is in print any longer which is sad. They were great magazines.
So, as I’ve gotten older, I still love climbing, but it’s not quite enough to sustain me as my creative outlet. The storytelling has given me a new connection to the sport and arguably more important to me than actual climbing right. I was an English major in college and I’m a big fan of novels and narrative non-fiction. I tear up The New Yorker every time I get it. With that in mind, and the media landscape for other climbing publications is shrinking and trying to think about what I wanted to do with my time, energy and effort I decided it seemed like there was an appetite for this kind of magazine or I hoped that there was. I might as well take a crack at it and this, in in my perfect world, is how I was going to be spending my time and luckily, it’s working out enough that I can do it.
Samir Husni: Who is your main competitor today?
Michael Levy: The closest competitor I have is a magazine called Alpinist which is focused on highly technical mountaineering and alpinism and icy snowy peaks. They do some great stuff, but Summit Journal has a bit of a wider mandate. I cover all kinds of climbing from bouldering which is climbing on small rocks, to climbing on El Capitan, to climbing the snowy mountains. We’re just doing things a little bit differently.
Beyond that the magazine I used to work for Climbing magazine no longer exists in print, but it exists online so they’re technically a competitor. They have a much bigger audience, but they are doing more of what I was talking about before, news coverage and quicker things, which is all great and useful. There’s nothing wrong with that but what we’re offering is carefully crafted stories and long form journalism. This takes more time and is a different beast. So, even though we’re all kind of competing with Climbing, Alpinist, and Summit Journal I think there’s room for all of us.
Samir Husni: I know you wrote for Mountain Gazette. Did it give you the inspiration to be that unique in terms of print only?
Michael Levy: I’m not sure if you’ve ever talked with Mike Rogge at Mountain Gazette. Mike Rogge is certainly a mentor to me for sure. I met him when I wrote something for Mountain Gazette and then when I was thinking about relaunching Summit as Summit Journal, I sent him an email. I was like I would love to pick your brain, and he was very kind with his time. I think he has too many people reaching out to him these days asking about that. But Mountain Gazette for sure was the model I based it off. Summit, same as, Mountain Gazette is an old property that’s resurrected and just like Mountain Gazette you hold in your hands a beautiful magazine. I was like this is what I want to do.
Samir Husni: Tell me what makes Michael tick and click every morning? What makes you get out of bed?
Michael Levy: I get excited when I come up with a cool story idea that I want to have someone write that I know will make a great story, but I don’t know exactly where it’s going to go. I know that I don’t want to write it myself because it’s going to be too stressful. I much prefer finding those writers who I think are brilliant and good at what they do and letting them loose on this idea. Trying to come up with these ideas that are going to be great is both a painful process, because I only have so many ideas, but then hitting on them and getting really excited about them and having a writer and photographer go and execute it. Seeing the finished product come back is exciting. I would say I’m a better editor than I am businessman. I overspend my budgets for the issues because I have so much fun putting them together.
Samir Husni: You mentioned pain, has your journey with three issues under your belt, and the fourth issue comes out next week, has it been a walk in a rose garden or you had some challenges that you had to overcome?
Michael Levy: No, it’s not. I’m an editor by training, the idea of launching a magazine a print magazine two years ago in 2023 and learning how to be a publisher, was a steep learning curve for me. There are all sorts of things I didn’t know. Basically, at every turn I had to figure out distribution, profits and losses, and how to print it. That was a process for me, and are things are going well? It’s a viable business and I have so much fun working on it. It’s not like I’m getting rich. No one who wants to get rich starts a print magazine in 2025. It’s just figuring out ways to keep the business healthy enough so that I can keep making the magazine. That’s not it’s a super existential crisis at every moment, but it takes a little bit of elbow grease to make things and find new ways to keep people subscribing and other revenue streams and stuff that kind of thing.
Samir Husni: Before I ask you my final two personal questions, is there any question I need to ask you I did not ask?
Michael Levy: Why I resurrected a title versus starting a new one? I knew I wanted to start a magazine and Summit magazine had been on my radar for a good while. I had read some things about it in the past and seen some of these cool covers and like Mountain Gazette I started thinking about the benefits of potentially resurrecting an old property versus starting a new one. I bought the rights to the magazine for very little money because it wasn’t worth much. It hasn’t been printed since 1996. The hardest part was tracking down the guy who owned it.
I bought the name and the old covers. I didn’t the subscriber list or whatever. At the same time being able to tap into that history, the legacy of, and have the imagery of this old magazine that Gene and Helen built. Basically, this magazine that for 35 years told the story of North American climbing seemed invaluable to me. You can lean on that history and use it as you want while building a new brand. Not everyone is going to be able to resurrect new an old type of title. There are only so many you could probably buy. In the case of Summit, it did not feel cheating, but rather a head-start which is cool.
Samir Husni: My typical last questions, if I come to visit you one evening unannounced what do I catch Michael doing to rewind? Cooking, having a glass of wine, watching tv, or reading a book?
Michael Levy: I’m having a beer and hanging out in the backyard with my 11-month-old son. My wife is the cook. I’m not a great cook and then he goes to bed we might watch a tv show. Then I go and read whatever book I’m reading and try to avoid the doom scrolling of the state of the US. During the day, if I can sneak away, I go for a climb.
Samir Husni: So, you do still go climbing?
Michael Levy: Oh yes, every week.
Samir Husni: What keeps Michael up at night these days?
Michael Levy: The state of the world. The rise of fascism in the US and the genocide in Gaza and all this stuff.
Climbing is a nice escape. Basically, how the magazine, which is a climbing magazine, can be a vehicle with an interesting mode to tell human stories, interesting characters, and consider things in the world through different lenses.
You can almost reach out and grab a bite from the pages of Food & Wine—the photography is so superb, it feels as if the food is leaping off the printed page. After feasting your eyes, you’re treated to storytelling that nourishes the mind. There aren’t many magazines that can truly offer a wholesome meal for both the eyes and the brain, but Food & Wine does exactly that.
Hunter Lewis photo by Cameron Wilder
Hunter Lewis, Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of Food & Wine magazine, describes the experience this way: “It’s like being at a dinner party, sitting around a table with a delicious glass of wine and a beautiful meal. You drop the needle on a record and hear that warm, rich tone—that slight scratchy sound before the first song begins. Whether you can articulate that experience or not, you feel it in your mind, body, and soul. That’s what it’s like to consume a magazine in this day and age.”
My interview with Hunter felt just like sitting at the Food & Wine dinner table—an engaging conversation about the role of print in a digital age, the impact of AI on magazine publishing, surviving and thriving through two acquisitions, and the essential value of teamwork. We also discussed the Food & Wine Classic events held in Aspen and Charleston, South Carolina.
So, without further ado, please join me at the Food & Wine dinner table for a conversation with a chef, an editor, and a storyteller: Hunter Lewis. But first—the soundbites:
On the status of Food journalism: “I think food journalism in this day and age is very fractured. There are only a small handful of power players that are still healthy and thriving, and I would include Food & Wine in that mix.”
On the reason Food & Wine is thriving: “I’m very, very thankful that Food & Wine is among the top brands and continuing to thrive in this era. It shows that when you are a part of a company that is healthy, and you’re a part of a company that is investing in its brands and its people, and investing in great storytelling, investing in events, investing in digital growth, and you’re empowering brand leaders to do what they know is best for the audience, then you can grow.”
On thematic issues: “Any magazine worth its salt has done themed issues in the past.”
On Food & Wine thematic issues: “Really is a rallying cry and putting a stake in the ground and creating a tent pole for our readers to rally around and for advertisers to get excited about.”
On the role of the print edition: “The magazine is the heart and soul of the brand. It’s a physical evocation of the brand…. The magazine continues to anchor this brand.”
On whether his job is harder or easier today: “If you’re open to change and you’re open to evolving, it’s not as hard.”
On his role during the two acquisitions of Food & Wine: “My role during those two acquisitions and when I took over at Food & Wine was to make sure that I’m creating a brand that is super healthy, making sure that I’m creating a brand that is growing on all platforms.”
On whether AI is a creator, curator, or a thief of content: “All of the above. But I’m not scared of AI. Anybody that is creating in this world today, you should at least be playing with Chat GPT and trying to better understand how AI works. I’ll be very clear; we do not use AI to create content for Food & Wine.”
On what keeps him up at night: “Thinking about my kids and this world today, and what kind of world it’s going to be for them when I’m gone.”
And now for the lightly edited conversation with Hunter Lewis, vice president and editor in chief Food & Wine:
Samir Husni: You have been at Food & Wine now for eight years, and you’ve been editor-in-chief before that at Cooking Light, and you worked almost with every food magazine. How would you describe the status of food journalism in this day and age?
Hunter Lewis: I think food journalism in this day and age is very fractured. There are only a small handful of power players that are still healthy and thriving, and I would include Food & Wine in that mix.
I think that for many reasons, including the state of the industry, social media, the rise and cult of the personality of singular people who operate as brands has made it a very interesting playing field right now in terms of what brands are on the rise, what brands are on the wane, and I’m very, very thankful that Food & Wine is among the top brands and continuing to thrive in this era. It shows that when you are a part of a company that is healthy, and you’re a part of a company that is investing in its brands and its people, and investing in great storytelling, investing in events, investing in digital growth, and you’re empowering brand leaders to do what they know is best for the audience, then you can grow.
I’ve been a part of brands that aren’t growing, and I’ve seen what that means in terms of diverting those funds elsewhere or squeezing brands too tightly to return dividends to shareholders, so I’ve been on the other end of this, and right now is a very exciting time to be at Food & Wine because we’re a brand that is being prioritized and a brand that is growing.
Samir Husni: Is that the reason you’re going with thematic issues like the innovator issue, the travel issue, the summer recipes issue? Is that part of this dominance in the marketplace?
Hunter Lewis: I think any magazine worth its salt has done themed issues in the past.
This is not a new thing. What that does for us is it really is a rallying cry and putting a stake in the ground and creating a tent pole for our readers to rally around and for advertisers to get excited about. The purpose of the travel issue in May, which has become one of our bigger issues of the year, is really to get behind global tastemakers.
It’s something we started a few years ago. It is our big travel tent pole, and it made sense to make the May travel issue and the timing of that digital launch in early to mid-April, and then also the print extension of it, all align. And so that was the timing for May.
For the innovators issue in July, the intention with that issue that comes out when we’re at the top of the mountain at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen.
That event is full of innovators across every part of the food and beverage and hospitality industry. And so, it made sense to create a magazine issue, during that timing, that reflected and celebrated the people that were participating in the event on our behalf, and then also a celebration of innovation in the culinary world. What is cool now is that we are using our events to bring our stories from the pages of the magazine to life on stage, or to create special dinners around the feature stories we’re telling.
A good example of that, this year at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, we had the July innovators issue cover blown up huge in the Grand Tasting tent, and we popped up a new activation for the brand called The Wine Bar by F&W and Friends. And we brought the family behind Red Boat Fish Sauce, and the owner of Red Boat is also making a new Cabernet in Napa. We brought Kuang Pham and his family to Aspen.
They served the cover recipe at The Wine Bar. They poured his Cab at The Wine Bar. And we made micheladas with his fish sauce, too.
So that was our way of bringing the brand to life and literally bringing the cover to life so our consumers could taste it at our marquee event. That’s one example. Another example is, last year was the 30th anniversary of Gramercy Tavern in New York City.
The idea for this restaurant was born in Aspen at our event many years ago with Tom Colicchio and Danny Meyer, two well-known New York City restaurateurs. We wanted to celebrate that legacy and that DNA within Food & Wine with a big feature story honoring Gramercy Tavern last year. And then we hosted a beautiful dinner in Aspen to bring it to life, too.
We’re really beginning to figure out how to use our events as a new extension of journalism and a new extension of telling stories and to bring these stories to life in real life where you can taste the food and meet the people behind the stories.
Samir Husni: And how do you define the role of the print, the magazine itself in this event age? I mean, what role does the ink on paper play?
Hunter Lewis: The magazine is the heart and soul of the brand. It’s a physical evocation of the brand.
A point of strength. It’s a beautiful product that people use every day in their lives. The magazine and the people that make the magazine and that work on our website and social and video and events are the beating heart of the brand.
The magazine continues to anchor this brand.
Samir Husni: Is your life today as editor-in-chief easier or harder than it was before COVID?
Hunter Lewis: I don’t think it’s about easier or harder. I think the pace of change is so much faster now than it’s ever been in my lifetime.
As long as you’re okay with change and managing and leading change, then it’s not hard. It’s always hard. Every job in the country is hard in one way or another, but we’re not scared of the hard.
What we’re asking our team to do and everybody that works for this brand to do is to understand that to remain relevant, we’re going to need to continue to embrace change. And so, if you don’t embrace change, it gets hard. If you’re open to change and you’re open to evolving, it’s not as hard.
Samir Husni: As you are open to change and evolving, what has been the biggest challenge you faced since you became editor-in-chief of Food & Wine?
Hunter Lewis: I think the biggest challenge is keeping Food & Wine healthy through multiple acquisitions. When I started at Food & Wine, I was running both Cooking Light and Food & Wine, and that was during the Time Inc. days. And then Meredith acquired Food & Wine as a part of that Time Inc. acquisition.
The priorities changed within the company. The executive team at the top of the masthead changed, and we had to navigate that change while we’re also navigating how to run a brand through COVID. And then we were acquired by Dotdash and the company became Dotdash Meredith, and we navigated that change too.
So my role during those two acquisitions and when I took over at Food & Wine was to make sure that I’m creating a brand that is super healthy, making sure that I’m creating a brand that is growing on all platforms, making sure that I’m growing a brand that has more value and is earning more revenue and has a larger audience now than when I started, and that I’m stewarding a brand that will be stronger when I leave it than when I found it.
Samir Husni: Did you accomplish all these goals?
Hunter Lewis: I’m very, very excited. I’m very happy about the work we’ve done.
I’m very excited about us growing in the way that we have, but our work’s not done. I’m riding a wave on this glorious surfboard, and I want to keep riding it. So, my goals are not complete.
This brand still has a long way to go and more growth ahead. I want to keep riding this wave with my colleagues and see how far it’s going to take us.
Samir Husni: What’s the secret sauce for this wave that keeps Food & Wine healthy, like 130 pages in print and, you know, with all the events and all?
Hunter Lewis: There’s no secret sauce. It’s the executive team at Dotdash Meredith investing in Food & Wine, believing in us, understanding that what we are creating is hyper-relevant in today’s times, empowering us, and then for us to go and do the job every day and show up and bring great energy.
The energy that we’re putting out at Food & Wine across all platforms, in the magazine, online, on social, on video, and at our events, is absolutely about the team and the energy they’re putting forward individually and collectively in our team culture. There’s not one answer to that in terms of the secret sauce, but it’s all about the energy that we’re putting in, the focus that we have, and it’s a blessing that we have all these different platforms and different revenue streams because it’s not one, we’re not a one-sided brand. We’re not just earning revenue and growing audience on the website.
We’re doing that in multiple ways, and that’s why Food & Wine is thriving.
Samir Husni: You have an event coming up in Charleston, South Carolina, The Food & Wine Classic. Tell me about that event.
Hunter Lewis: The Food & Wine Classic in Charleston is a collaboration with Travel & Leisure and Southern Living, two of our sister brands. I’m very close with Jacqui (Gifford) and with Sid (Evans), and it’s our way to bring the DNA and the legacy and the beauty of gathering at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, which we’ve now done for 42 years, and taking that magic and bringing it to the low country region of Charleston. We have deep, deep relationships in Charleston. It’s an incredible culinary scene.
There’s no other city in the country like it that has such rich history and architecture and culture and food ways, and so our job in hosting the Classic in Charleston for the second year is to bring all that local talent to the stage and spotlight the culture that is there, and then bring some of our partners and chefs and drink professionals and hospitality pros from the national stage to the city and blend that talent together to create a special event that these three brands host in Charleston.
Samir Husni: And if somebody approached you at that event and said, Mr. Lewis, I have an idea for a new food magazine, what do you tell them?
Hunter Lewis: A new food magazine? I think that there’s always a place for print in this environment. I just went to Casa Magazines the other night to grab a couple journals and other magazines for research, and I’m either the most naive guy on the planet, or the strongest, deepest gut reaction I’ve ever felt in my career is what I feel right now, that in the age of artificial intelligence, the brands and the magazines that are coming from a point of strength, the brands and the magazines that are differentiating themselves from the competition by putting out a beautiful product with great imagery and crackerjack writing are going to continue to differentiate themselves from the competition, and they’re going to differentiate themselves from what is not real, and they’re going to differentiate themselves from AI slop.
I strongly believe that artificial intelligence is going to make food and wine more valuable in some ways. Now it’s going to threaten pieces of our business, and we’re not going to be immune to some of those challenges like Google Zero, and the issues with Google not sending sessions back to brands like Food & Wine like they’ve done for the past 20 plus years. We’re not immune to that like any other brand in the digital space, but I fully believe that whether consumers can articulate it or not, they want real experiences.
They want to gather at our events. They want to read and engage with a magazine, whether they’re leaning back in their armchair, or they’re leaning forward and they’re cooking from Food & Wine at the stove. They’re going to continue to want this physical object in their hands that is beautiful and usable.
And I equate it a lot to being at a dinner party when you’re sitting around a table with a delicious glass of wine and a beautiful meal, and you put a needle on a record, and you play that record, and you hear that warm, rich tone and that slight scratchy noise that happens before the first song plays. Whether you can articulate that experience or not, you feel it in your mind, body, and soul. And that’s what it’s like to consume a magazine in this day and age.
I think that is going to become an even more valuable experience as the world becomes less real and more artificially manufactured.
Samir Husni: So, do you think AI will be more of a curator, creator, or a thief when it comes to content?
Hunter Lewis: All of the above. But I’m not scared of AI. Anybody that is creating in this world today, you should at least be playing with Chat GPT and trying to better understand how AI works. I’ll be very clear; we do not use AI to create content for Food & Wine.
We are investing in video, we’re investing in photography, we’re investing in award-winning writing. You know, we just won our first National Magazine Award this year for a story called The City That Rice Built, also won a James Beard award. So, we’re not using AI for shortcuts.
But as creators, we’re using AI to better understand how it works and what we’re up against. I think it’s already transforming creative spaces. It’s already transforming how people are searching online in the ways that they used to type in a search question in a Google browser.
It’s absolutely happening overnight, and it’s happening rapidly. I mean, this feels like the fastest change to me since the iPhone was created, if not faster. And I think the implications are much greater.
Samir Husni: If I come, unannounced, to visit you one evening, what do I catch Hunter doing? Reading a book, watching TV, cooking? Hunter Lewis: I’ll welcome you upstairs and into the kitchen, and there’ll be some jazz playing on the speaker, and I’ll be cooking dinner for my family, which is what I do in Birmingham, six nights a week, and welcome you to our table, and pour you a glass of wine.
That’s my happy place.
Samir Husni: And what keeps you up at night these days?
Hunter Lewis: Thinking about my kids and this world today, and what kind of world it’s going to be for them when I’m gone. It’s a crazy world right now, and I think it’s becoming a more selfish world, and a more selfish country, that’s what keeps me up at night.
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.
Mr. Magazine 