Mr. Magazine

“I would say that having a print magazine gives the readers more ownership of the magazine. It gives them a closer relationship with it. And to be honest, I think a lot of us are tired of our kids staring at screens these days and so we encourage them to read magazines. They should be able to hold the magazine in their hands, flip the pages back and forth easier than scrolling, mark it up if they want. It’s their magazine and they can do what they want with it rather than just looking at it on a screen.” Elizabeth Crooker…

“I can say specifically with our magazine, Faces, they’re used educationally, so especially with the whole remote situation that everyone is in these days, these printed magazines can be used as extra learning materials outside of the classroom. We try to make everything, such as things that can go in teacher’s guides and materials like that. So we keep it educational.” Nicole Welch…

Faces magazine takes young readers to places as far as the other side of the world and as close as the next state to get an honest and unbiased view of how children in other places live. Whether it’s planning a trip or just wanting to learn about faraway places, Faces gives then the information they need to feel like a local. From common customs to rules of the road, unusual foods to animals found in the region, games to housing, Faces uses breathtaking photography and authentic local voices to bring the entire world right to young readers’ mailboxes.

I recently spoke with editor, Elizabeth Crooker and art director, Nicole Welch, about this charming magazine that is one of Cricket Media’s prized possessions. Faces readers are usually between the ages of 9 and 14, and as Elizabeth proudly says, they are never talked down to inside the pages of the magazine. They are treated with sophistication and respect in both content and design. Nicole is as adamant about that in her design methods as Elizabeth is in her editorial talent. It’s a winning combination – Elizabeth and Nicole. They genuinely care about the kids who read their content and they genuinely care about their brand. 

Now please enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Elizabeth Crooker, editor and Nicole Welch, art director, Faces magazine.

But first the sound-bites:

On what role a printed magazine plays in a digital world (Elizabeth Crooker): I would say that having a print magazine gives the readers more ownership of the magazine. It gives them a closer relationship with it. And to be honest, I think a lot of us are tired of our kids staring at screens these days and so we encourage them to read magazines. They should be able to hold the magazine in their hands, flip the pages back and forth easier than scrolling, mark it up if they want. It’s their magazine and they can do what they want with it rather than just looking at it on a screen.

On why they chose to reinvent the magazine now, during a pandemic (Nicole Welch): One of the biggest reasons was that the art director for Faces actually retired and I was taking over the magazine. And when I take over magazines, the first thing I do is sit down with everybody and I see what works and what doesn’t and it’s part of an art director’s job to do so. And we decided that a lot of the pages weren’t templated as well and we just wanted to make something a little more modern-looking and engaging for our readers. So with that, we did a full redesign of the magazine before I took over.

On the biggest challenge Elizabeth faced in 2020 as editor of a children’s magazine (Elizabeth Crooker): Part of the challenge was that we work so far in advance that we didn’t really touch on any of the big changes that were going on in kid’s lives with our 2020 issues. It’s not until now, which we’re working on our February issue, and we’re talking about global health and we’re talking about how vaccines work and how different organizations work together to get vaccines from the factory to places all around the world. So for us, 2020 was almost a wrap. We already had our themes chosen.

On whether she feels a stronger responsibility to her readers as an editor of a print magazine versus online (Elizabeth Crooker): Our audience is from 9 to 14, so we have to take into consideration where these kids are and what they’re learning at school so it can supplement that, but we also need to give the kids the benefit of the doubt and let them come to their own conclusions, present the facts and you come to the conclusion you want.

On the role the audience plays in the magazine’s design (Nicole Welch): I do a lot of research and I look at a lot of magazines. I look for different colors to bring into the magazine; different fonts that are easy to read; stylistically and visually easy to flip through. I try to make it as engaging and interesting for our readers as possible, to draw them in, almost like I’m telling a story, so that they can follow the editorial but they can also look at the pictures and get a good idea by just looking at those pictures what the features are about. And that’s a big part of it.

On whether the job of editor is getting easier or harder as she moves forward into 2021 and beyond (Elizabeth Crooker): Well, I would never admit it if my job were getting easier. (Laughs) It’s definitely evolving. When I first started at Faces we were probably a very different magazine than what a kid would pick up now. We’ve always been a magazine that doesn’t talk down to the kids. And Nicole’s design reflects that too; her design isn’t too young and it’s very sophisticated, which I think the kids appreciate.

On how they put an issue of the magazine together (Elizabeth Crooker): The first thing we do on an annual basis is select our themes. I’ve been doing this long enough that I know which themes we’ve covered recently and what themes we haven’t covered at all. And if there’s something that we haven’t covered in a while, for example we’re doing South Korea again in May and June, which we haven’t done in seven or eight years, so the thought is to add to what we have and update and then with new information, like the global health issue, it will be much different than the global health issue that we did 15 years ago.

On the role diversity and inclusion plays in the brand (Elizabeth Crooker): Because of the nature of Faces, diversity has always been at the top. Even when we do issues that have more of a general theme, I always make sure I have something from all over. If we’re doing music, I have something from Asia, I have something from Africa, something from Europe, South America, North America. It’s always been part of the planning process. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with making sure the diversity is there, but for Faces I feel like it’s always been there. But there’s nothing wrong with being sure.

On anything they’d like to add (Elizabeth Crooker): I’ve always been Faces biggest fan. And today, when everyone is kind of turning in toward their homes, Faces is a way to still connect with the outside world. So, it’s more important now than ever. I really hope people know that it’s here and a resource for them to use and parents are giving it as gifts.

On what makes them tick and click and get out bed every morning (Nicole Welch): Just the excitement of designing; it’s always something new when I’m designing magazines. It’s like a new story, I’m telling these kids stories and I like to engage them and I like when they engage back with us. So I try and create my magazines in that way so that we have that type of communication, even though it’s on paper. And I like to keep it fun. And like Beth said, we’re always learning something new from our own magazines. We definitely hope the readers keep on reading.

On how they unwind in the evening (Nicole Welch):  I do a lot of freelance work on the side as well and I have two small children, so they keep me very busy, making dinner and doing the mom thing. We try to watch movies together at night sometimes just to relax and let my mind sink into something different. 

On what keeps them up at night (Elizabeth Crooker): Probably just worrying about my kids. I have a freshman in college and a sophomore, they’re older, but you still worry. Once a mom always a mom. 

And now for the lightly edited Mr. Magazine™ interview with Elizabeth Crooker, editor & Nicole Welch, art director, Faces. 

Samir Husni: We live in a digital age; there is no doubt about it. What role does a printed children’s or teen magazine play in today’s digital world, whether it’s Faces or Muse or any of the other magazines that your company publishes?

Nicole Welch: I can say specifically with our magazine, Faces, they’re used educationally, so especially with the whole remote situation that everyone is in these days, these printed magazines can be used as extra learning materials outside of the classroom. We try to make everything, such as things that can go in teacher’s guides and materials like that. So we keep it educational. That’s what we do specifically on our end, I’m not sure about teen magazines, but I assume it’s a similar process.

Elizabeth Crooker: I would say that having a print magazine gives the readers more ownership of the magazine. It gives them a closer relationship with it. And to be honest, I think a lot of us are tired of our kids staring at screens these days and so we encourage them to read magazines. They should be able to hold the magazine in their hands, flip the pages back and forth easier than scrolling, mark it up if they want. It’s their magazine and they can do what they want with it rather than just looking at it on a screen. 

I have a whole stack of them in my office, so it’s easier for me to go back and look and I hope that’s what the kids are doing too because we’re talking about the world, we have issues that will touchback. We did an issue on birds and then we did an issue on New Zealand where we talk about birds, so you can go back to the bird issue and see that one. And it’s easier when you have them right in front of you rather than on a screen where you have to turn on a device and make sure it’s charged. 

Samir Husni: Why did you decide in the midst of a pandemic and during these times of immense unrest in our country to reinvent Faces or reinvent Muse? Did you have so much time on your hands working remotely that it seemed like the right moment for a reinvention?

Nicole Welch: Absolutely not. One of the biggest reasons was that the art director for Faces actually retired and I was taking over the magazine. And when I take over magazines, the first thing I do is sit down with everybody and I see what works and what doesn’t and it’s part of an art director’s job to do so. And we decided that a lot of the pages weren’t templated as well and we just wanted to make something a little more modern-looking and engaging for our readers. So with that, we did a full redesign of the magazine before I took over. But that’s the only reason why, not because I had more time, because trust me, I did not. (Laughs)

Samir Husni: What was the biggest challenge you faced in 2020 as a magazine editor for a publication aimed at children and how did you overcome it?

Elizabeth Crooker: Part of the challenge was that we work so far in advance that we didn’t really touch on any of the big changes that were going on in kid’s lives with our 2020 issues. It’s not until now, which we’re working on our February issue, and we’re talking about global health and we’re talking about how vaccines work and how different organizations work together to get vaccines from the factory to places all around the world. So for us, 2020 was almost a wrap. We already had our themes chosen. We did intersperse – we have a young girl in New Hampshire named Kylie who pen pals, and it kind of seeped in through her organically with her correspondence with people around the world. Talking about wearing masks at soccer and things like that.

Samir Husni: Do you feel a certain responsibility as an editor of a print magazine rather than someone posting on social media or online?

Elizabeth Crooker: Our audience is from 9 to 14, so we have to take into consideration where these kids are and what they’re learning at school so it can supplement that, but we also need to give the kids the benefit of the doubt and let them come to their own conclusions, present the facts and you come to the conclusion you want. And I’m thinking about an article we did on the Amazon and we talked about how the current administration wasn’t supporting legislation so the rainforest was getting cut down at a faster rate. So, we’re just presenting the facts and we’re leaving it up to the kids to draw their own conclusions and hopefully go on and find out more with their own research. 

And with print, I feel like it’s going to be around longer. I think if you read a magazine online you’re done with it once you’re finished reading it. With print magazines it might lay around on your coffee table; you might share it with a friend; you might donate it to a library, so it has to have timely information in it as well, you don’t want it to be so current that it becomes useless. It needs to be timely and timeless, and that’s the tricky part. (Laughs)

Samir Husni: What role does your audience play in the design of the magazine?

Nicole Welch: I do a lot of research and I look at a lot of magazines. I look for different colors to bring into the magazine; different fonts that are easy to read; stylistically and visually easy to flip through. I try to make it as engaging and interesting for our readers as possible, to draw them in, almost like I’m telling a story, so that they can follow the editorial but they can also look at the pictures and get a good idea by just looking at those pictures what the features are about. And that’s a big part of it.

I also feel that research is huge. I do a ton of research; I take photos and I sit down and I analyze everything. I do that because I want to keep everything modern and I want to make sure that I’m staying within the guides of what’s going on in the world.

Samir Husni: Based on what’s going on in the world, do you think your job is getting easier or harder as you move forward into 2021 and beyond?

Elizabeth Crooker: Well, I would never admit it if my job were getting easier. (Laughs) It’s definitely evolving. When I first started at Faces we were probably a very different magazine than what a kid would pick up now. We’ve always been a magazine that doesn’t talk down to the kids. And Nicole’s design reflects that too; her design isn’t too young and it’s very sophisticated, which I think the kids appreciate. 

But where the challenge comes in is that kids today do have access to all kinds of social media. They get their news from so many different sources, so making sure that we have accurate and unbiased content is important. Like Nicole said, research, research, research, so that we can back up all of our facts, just so that we know what the kids will be reading is true and accurate. That’s probably the biggest challenge. If a child is doing a project for school on Brazil, I hope that they would do more than just google Brazil. I hope that they’re looking at magazines, books and newspapers. So, I would say that my job is definitely evolving and challenging.

Samir Husni: Can you tell me about how you put an issue of the magazine together, from the creation to the birth process?

Elizabeth Crooker: The first thing we do on an annual basis is select our themes. I’ve been doing this long enough that I know which themes we’ve covered recently and what themes we haven’t covered at all. And if there’s something that we haven’t covered in a while, for example we’re doing South Korea again in May and June, which we haven’t done in seven or eight years, so the thought is to add to what we have and update and then with new information, like the global health issue, it will be much different than the global health issue that we did 15 years ago. 

That’s the initial thing and then Nicole will make suggestions. She was the one who recommended Costa Rica and Central America because of the vibrant colors and how much fun it would be. Then the education team will make suggestions. We’ve worked with the Smithsonian before on topics. We talk to the editors. Our global issue is coming out at the same time Cobblestone is doing an issue on Clara Barton, so we try and match up with other magazines to expand the type of content that we have across the company. 

Then when it comes to deciding what articles to put in it, that’s probably my favorite part of my job, going through the queries, doing the research. And for me it’s just trying to find that wow factor, something that is unique about the culture, but hopefully we’re looking at it in a different way. If we’re going to do an issue on Italy, we’re going to cover the ruins, but we want to do it in a way that’s different from what kids have found other places. 

Then Nicole and I will meet and talk about the articles and I’ll suggest photos and art and then which ones I want illustrated. And then she’ll suggest illustrators. 

Nicole Welch: At that point we’ll have a design meeting after Beth has done her research. And we sit down and talk about every single feature or department that’s in the magazine. She’ll add a lot of primary source photos for us to use and from there it’s just going into designing. Before designing I read every story and try to get a good feel for it. I do additional research on photos myself if I want to add different elements or maybe I might suggest a sidebar or a fun fact to bring into the feature to kind of elevate it. We work really well together and we’re constantly communicating. And I think that’s what makes our magazine successful. 

We have professionals from all over the world adding to our issues, whether they’re illustrators or people who are writing the stories. So we try to just bring in people from the areas to add to it which helps our magazine tell the story that it needs to tell. 

Samir Husni: Being a global magazine, you’ve covered social issues. What role does diversity and inclusion play in the brand? 

Elizabeth Crooker: Because of the nature of Faces, diversity has always been at the top. Even when we do issues that have more of a general theme, I always make sure I have something from all over. If we’re doing music, I have something from Asia, I have something from Africa, something from Europe, South America, North America. It’s always been part of the planning process. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with making sure the diversity is there, but for Faces I feel like it’s always been there. But there’s nothing wrong with being sure.

Nicole Welch: I think everybody is making sure there’s more diversity and inclusion, but specifically with Faces, as Beth said, we cover specific areas like New Zealand or Africa, so we’re covering the kids that are within those areas no matter what their ethnicity. It’s not forced with that specific magazine, but yes, we want to make sure everybody is included and that our magazines are accessible and that they feel accessible to everyone. 

Elizabeth Crooker: There are times when illustrating or using photos for an activity, we’ll make sure that there is a very diverse group. 

Samir Husni: Is there anything either of you would like to add?

Elizabeth Crooker: I’ve always been Faces biggest fan. And today, when everyone is kind of turning in toward their homes, Faces is a way to still connect with the outside world. So, it’s more important now than ever. I really hope people know that it’s here and a resource for them to use and parents are giving it as gifts. 

Nicole Welch: We like to say it’s the gift that keeps on giving. (Laughs)

Samir Husni: What makes you tick and click and get out of bed in the morning?

Elizabeth Crooker: Coffee. (Laughs) My favorite part about this job and it sounds really weird, but I feel like doing a research paper every month. I was the nerd in school that always read the book, so for me that’s exciting. I love to learn new things. I am an excellent Jeopardy player. (Laughs again) If you ever want to go on Jeopardy, read our magazines, you’ll learn so much. Learning new things is the exciting part for me. 

Nicole Welch: Just the excitement of designing; it’s always something new when I’m designing magazines. It’s like a new story, I’m telling these kids stories and I like to engage them and I like when they engage back with us. So I try and create my magazines in that way so that we have that type of communication, even though it’s on paper. And I like to keep it fun. And like Beth said, we’re always learning something new from our own magazines. We definitely hope the readers keep on reading. 

Samir Husni: How do you unwind in the evening?

Elizabeth Crooker: Definitely a book. I read a lot of fiction, because for work I focus mostly on non-fiction. So my escape is fiction, although I love historical fiction, which is a little of both.

Nicole Welch: I do a lot of freelance work on the side as well and I have two small children, so they keep me very busy, making dinner and doing the mom thing. We try to watch movies together at night sometimes just to relax and let my mind sink into something different. 

Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

Nicole Welch: I’ve had that problem from the very beginning of time, I think. (Laughs) Being in the creative industry, that’s where I get most of my thoughts. There’s a lot going on in the world politically and with the Coronavirus, it’s just been awful. But for me what pops up in the middle of the night is different creative ideas that keep floating into my head. 

Elizabeth Crooker: Probably just worrying about my kids. I have a freshman in college and a sophomore, they’re older, but you still worry. Once a mom always a mom.

Samir Husni: Thank you both.

“When Real Simple was launched and what this brand stands for cuts to the chase of what women need in their lives. It’s that word simplicity. It’s that word simple.” Liz Vaccariello…

“Simplicity really lends to creating more valuable time to do the things that we want to enjoy. And that’s how we sell it to advertisers, that presents a beautiful environment for the advertiser to deliver their message to the consumer.” Daren Mazzucca…

Real Simple launched in March 2000 and quickly became one of the industry’s biggest success stories. Dedicated to making lives easier for women everywhere, the brand has achieved its mission even during a pandemic, giving its readers that “me” time of escape that they need right now. 

I recently spoke with Liz Vaccariello, Editor in Chief and Daren Mazzucca, SVP Group Publisher, about working during a pandemic and about an upcoming redesign that will continue the 20-year tradition the magazine has of staying “simple,” yet offer a bit of a new aesthetic at the same time. It’s a rejuvenation, not a change, but something Real Simple can offer its readers in the new year that will lend a bit of a different look to the beloved magazine that they know and treasure.

So, please enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ video cast with Liz Vaccariello, editor in chief & Daren Mazzucca, SVP Group Publisher, Real Simple. 

But first here are the sound-bites:

On whether being truly “Real Simple” works for the magazine (Liz Vaccariello): I think everybody wants to and needs to simplify their lives. They want to simplify ideas. I think that’s really the outcome of this Internet age, every consumer, every reader of all ages is now overwhelmed by content, ideas, by points of view and opinions. I firmly believe that’s why magazine media has never been healthier, because of everyone’s need for curation. 

On how they sell that “Simplicity” to advertisers and media (Daren Mazzucca): I really believe that simplicity saves us time. When you’re organized and you know where things are, you don’t have excess of things; it saves time. And that allows the consumer, us, the bandwidth to do the things we want to do. Simplicity really lends to creating more valuable time to do the things that we want to enjoy. And that’s how we sell it to advertisers, that presents a beautiful environment for the advertiser to deliver their message to the consumer.

On how Real Simple is different from its competitive set (Liz Vaccariello): When Real Simple was launched and what this brand stands for cuts to the chase of what women need in their lives. It’s that word simplicity. It’s that word simple. All women’s magazines have tried to make life easier for women, whether it’s giving them a recipe or helping them clean the house. But Real Simple is the first brand to make the user experience of the magazine simple. And one of the most beloved aspects of the Real Simple print product is the user experience.

On how Daren Mazzucca, as chief revenue officer, operated during the pandemic (Daren Mazzucca): Truthfully, we adjusted very quickly. I told everyone initially to pack like we’re going to be going to a snowstorm for a week or two, bring home your materials. Little did we know we would be home for eight months. Most people brought their initial packets as if they were going on a trip for a week or two. And I think this is very important for Meredith, but we also did it at brand level, we had regular check-ins with our teams, daily or every other day, with everyone to make sure we were healthy, our employees, making sure they were safe and to put aside any concerns so they could stay focused. And truthfully, we did a lot of phone calls before we all started adapting very rapidly into Zoom and Webex. 

On whether, as editor, Liz Vaccariello is longing to go back to normal and sit around a table with her team (Liz Vaccariello): That’s precisely what I miss, I miss standing around the art table. And I can look at a layout on a screen and send a note to Emily Kehe (creative director) about what I think about it, but that huddling over it, that moving it around and the looking at the wall, moving the pages around, I miss that. And then also the editorial process, the creative process, particularly when you talk about magazine making and all the areas that a brand like Real Simple covers, from food to home to beauty to fashion, the walking around, the talking with each other, the standing over the coffee machine  and complaining about my shoes aren’t comfortable enough, those are story ideas for us and it’s very much a part of the creative process. But in some ways it has been illuminating, you don’t need to send nine people to a photo shoot. 

On how the advertising marketing side has felt during the pandemic (Daren Mazzucca): For sure, we miss just spontaneously walking 10 feet away to ask a question or just give some thought versus texting someone on their phone. But I would say that we’ve made adjustments and we certainly miss the old way, but I’m not so sure we’ll go back to the old way. I think some of us are trying to figure out, and we talked a lot about this, what are the boundaries of our workplace? And how long do we work? I’ve been on the phone with our corporate people at 9:00 or 10:00 at night, whereas normally I would have returned home from the commute and stopped. So, I think we’re all trying to work this work/life balance now and because we’re not able to just huddle around a conference room, I think our day has been extended a little longer as a way to keep the flow going.

On whether the magazine can be used as Prozac for the audience or Vitamin C (Liz Vaccariello): A lot of people say that the magazine is their “me” time. They put down the phone, they put down the computer, I think the time spent is like 90 minutes with the magazine. It’s a soothing experience. A prescription of getting a subscription to Real Simple.

On being the chief revenue officer for Real Simple and Martha Stewart Living and any internal competition (Daren Mazzucca): There’s a good degree of internal competition for food and some packaged goods, but clearly both brands stand on their own. Yes, there are categories and lifestyles by the ad community, but the readers don’t see it as such. They come to Real Simple for a whole different set of values and content and they come to Martha Stewart for their own set.

On working for her first non-legacy title and whether she feels more energetic and free (Liz Vaccariello):Surprisingly, to me it’s about brand strength. And the strength of the Real Simple brand, thanks to my predecessors, thanks to Kristin van Ogtrop and the launch editors and Leslie Yazel who came before me, the Real Simple reader knows what to expect, trusts the brand to the same extent and with the same passion that my 95-year-old lifetime subscriber of Reader’s Digest did. This is their Real Simple, it’s not mine.

On the redesign (Liz Vaccariello): This is the name of the Roadshow, The Future of Home is Here. I remind everyone what the brand pillars are, then I talk about consumer trends and insights for the last year or so. How has COVID, how has this election, how has everything that’s happening in the world from May on, how has it impacted what’ people’s sense of what home is? And then a sneak peek of the redesigns. 

On when the relaunch will take place (Liz Vaccariello): The February issue. 

On anything they’d like to add (Daren Mazzucca): This brand has a lot of expectations. You mentioned legacies or years of a brand, although we’re young, 20, there is a high expectation within the Meredith Corporation. I was talking with Tom Harty yesterday, from a portfolio Liz mentioned HHI, we sell at newsstand at $5.99 and still sell a lot of magazines at the newsstand at $5.99 and our subscriptions continue to be renewed at very high rates, so from a profitability perspective, consumer revenue, ad revenue all works together to make a really great brand story for the Meredith Corporation. 

On anything they’d like to add (Liz Vaccariello): I’ve worked with some great publishers in my career and Daren and his team are really the A-Team. When Doug Olson moved me over to Real Simple he was like you have Daren and Daren has Kristin Guinan, and you guys have got to win and I said okay. (Laughs)

On what keeps them up at night (Liz Vaccariello): I always care deeply about my team, but this has been a year where I worry even more, how everybody is doing. And not just their health, but their mental health as well. Across the Meredith Corporation we have a lot of parents who are particularly in the content organization and they are just doing triple duty. Yes, we don’t have commutes anymore, but it is very exhausting to be on a computer all day, to have to be up and also to potentially homeschool. 

On what keeps them up at night (Daren Mazzucca): In these times, and you mentioned relationships earlier, relationships if you have them can be maintained when we’ve been in the business sometime. I think often about some of our up and coming marketing teams and junior sellers and establishing those relationships, both internal at Meredith and external because we’re doing a lot of calls but we’re stuck behind a screen. I often see that secret sauce that we had at Meredith, where people were congregating in the open space areas, that’s really good especially when you’re 26 or 27 and looking to make the next pivot move.

And now, without any further delay, enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ video cast with Liz Vaccariello, Editor in Chief & Daren Mazzucca, SVP Group Publisher, Real Simple. 

“I wanted something that was unabashedly in print. First of all, I don’t think print journalism is dead; I think it’s actually coming back and it’s coming back in a way that only print can do. And that isn’t breaking urgent news on paper; we do that, we break news every day. We publish between seven and 11 stories a day on The Nation dotcom. Ken Klippenstein had a story about DHS monitoring protestors, tapping protestor’s telephone calls and reporter’s telephone calls that led to questions being asked in Congress, so we break significant news all of the time. But that isn’t what people turn to the print Nation for.” D.D. Guttenplan…

“It wasn’t a look to begin with, it was more of a tone of voice. The Nation has and continues to have a very strong personality. And before, where the design was shouting just a little too much, the tone has been brought down to a more level voice where it’s not exasperating the voice of the editorial all of the time. Also, our illustrations and our photography can often be quite aggressive, so the design is trying to balance that so that it doesn’t always heighten the drama to the magazine.” Robert Best…

Founded by abolitionists in 1865, The Nation has chronicled the breadth and depth of political and cultural life from the debut of the telegraph to the rise of Twitter, serving as a critical, independent, and progressive voice in American journalism. D.D. Guttenplan is today’s editor and Robert Best, the brand’s creative director, and two of the people who helped redesign this legacy title.

Recently, I spoke to both gentlemen about the new design that has brought a fresh new change to the magazine. Don Guttenplan said that with this new upgrade, which will be showcased in the October 5/12, 2020 edition, they asked print readers what they wanted more of, their answers were clear: more investigative journalism, more political news unavailable elsewhere, and more analysis from The Nation’s distinctive progressive perspective. More great stories. More strong arguments. More fearless reporting. With more time between issues to enjoy each print edition of The Nation. So that’s what The Nation is going to deliver—twice a month, with 20 percent more pages in each issue (four of those will be special 64-page double issues) that offer even more room for vivid reporting, long-form analysis, and hard-hitting investigations.

The print redesign was handled in-house by The Nation’s enormously talented creative director, Robert Best, and it will inform a digital overhaul in 2021. The idea behind the redesigned logo, marking the broader redesign, was to retain the history of the magazine’s logo, while bringing it forward: The classic logo type is now layered with a clean modern red square, and there is a strong contrast echoing the past and marking the next chapter. The new look is bold, eye-catching, and leans to the left—all appropriate for The Nation.

And now I hope you enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ interview with D.D. Guttenplan, editor and Robert Best, creative director, The Nation.

But first the sound-bites:

On why the redesign and changes with The Nation now (D.D. Guttenplan): One of the things that I did when I took over was to take stock, and that means both looking at our journalism in terms of content and looking at everything we do, from how many pieces we publish a day on the web to what we’re putting in print. And I think I told you when we spoke last, when I first took over, that it was very important for me that we be clear on what we’re doing with print and what we’re doing with the web and what they are each for. And that they serve distinct purposes.

On what Robert Best was thinking when it came to a new design for a magazine with a more than 150-year-old history (Robert Best): It wasn’t a look to begin with, it was more of a tone of voice. The Nation has and continues to have a very strong personality. And before, where the design was shouting just a little too much, the tone has been brought down to a more level voice where it’s not exasperating the voice of the editorial all of the time. Also, our illustrations and our photography can often be quite aggressive, so the design is trying to balance that so that it doesn’t always heighten the drama to the magazine.

On their process or approach to the redesign (D.D. Guttenplan): Robert and I decided that we were going to do this and we discussed it with the business side and Katrina (vanden Heuvel), editorial director and publisher of The Nation, so everybody was onboard. Then we created a working group, a print redesign working group, which had people from editorial, but it also had people from business and circulation, We would meet regularly. Of course, that was still in the days when you could meet face to face.

Robert Best

On their process or approach to the redesign (Robert Best): I’ve been doing this a long time and I want to solve problems. And I want things to look the way they should look based on those problems getting solved. One of the problems with The Nation was the paper wasn’t the best paper, so part of the design solution has to be something that whitens the paper visually. And that is the use of darks and lights, the contrast that I’m creating throughout the design. From the front of the book, there is a very small dot pattern that’s, if you called it a one to 10 spectrum, it would be the one. And all the black bars and the heavy black type would be the 10. And that’s what gets that high contrast level, because we have a lot of text, but we still needed to be something that people want to approach.

On whether the all-cap “N” they took from the logo all the way to the inside pages was part of the visual magnet to stop a reader before keeping them on the page (Robert Best): As far as using it on the logo, they both sort of worked hand-in-hand in how they came to the issue. The logo was as you said history, and retaining that history, while sort of layering it onto this modernistic look of the red square, where it becomes something else, yet you remember where it came from. On the inside, the drop-caps were again sort of a…our colors are black and red obviously throughout the magazine, and that just sort of brings a modern quality to a drop-cap and is a good starting point.

On what role they feel journalism can play now in our world of division and the pandemic (D.D. Guttenplan): I don’t think it’s our job to offer people false hope and I also don’t think it’s our job to be Chicken Little; I think it’s our job to tell people the truth. And I suppose part of that is when you know what you’re talking about you don’t have to shout, so in that sense I very much appreciated Robert’s metaphor which he’s used throughout changing our tone of voice a bit. The Nation is not a consumer magazine, so we’re never going to write about the best pizza parlor in Chicago, but we may write about things you can do to make your vote actually count or this is what you can do to get involved on Election Day. We can give people useful information certainly. So, our role is to do that and to tell people the truth.

On the human being The Nation would be if it were suddenly struck with a magic wand that produced that person (D.D. Guttenplan): It’s not a he or she, it’s they. It’s always going to be a “they.” I think one of the things that makes The Nation different from any other magazine is our genuine openness to debate. It’s not that we’re necessarily contrary and provocateurs, we’re not here as the line, here is the correct thing to think. The Nation is one way to think about it, but within the progressive frame that we’re all committed to as a magazine. There are other ways to think about it, and here are some of them, so The Nation is never one person knocking on your door. It’s not me; it wasn’t Katrina before; it wasn’t Victor Navasky before that.

On whether they believe there is a good exchange of ideas in our country or it’s just everyone shouting at everyone else (D.D. Guttenplan): Everybody is clearly shouting everyone, that’s what Twitter is for. (Laughs) I feel like there are magazines that matter, and that’s becoming increasingly true during the pandemic because people are spending more time at home. One of the things that you can do at home is read. And we want to be part of that; we want to be a part of people’s intellectual lives. Part of the political life of the country as we have been for 155 years.

On anything they would like to add (Robert Best): It’s ideas and a new voice, like we talked about. And what we’re finding now as we finish up the second issue is finding a familiarity to that voice and knowing that it’s not going to stay the same. It will start moving left and right, and that’s an exciting time. It’s invigorating to have a certain sense of feeling a little off balance, because we’re not used to it. And that’s going to bring fresh ideas and content, so that we’re not resting on what we’re used to.

On what keeps them up at night (D.D. Guttenplan): What keeps me up at night is trying to find a way through this pandemic to keep The Nation relevant and keep my staff happy without being able to meet face to face. That has been a challenge. It’s a challenge for all of us, but it is what keeps me up at night. How to manage when we can’t actually be together in a room. Robert and I have very good rapport, so we were able to do this even though we were very far apart geographically.

On what keeps them up at night (Robert Best): What keeps me up at night – well, since Don is in England right now, it’s not the nights, it’s the mornings. (Laughs)

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with D.D. Guttenplan, editor and Robert Best, creative director, The Nation magazine.

Samir Husni: We know change is the only constant in journalism and the media business, but why change The Nation now?

D.D. Guttenplan: There are a couple of reasons. One of the things that I did when I took over was to take stock, and that means both looking at our journalism in terms of content and looking at everything we do, from how many pieces we publish a day on the web to what we’re putting in print. And I think I told you when we spoke last, when I first took over, that it was very important for me that we be clear on what we’re doing with print and what we’re doing with the web and what they are each for. And that they serve distinct purposes.

My view then was that our print magazine was not clear about why we were still in print; why we are on paper. What kind of experience do we want people to have and what kind of experience do our subscribers want? The second part of that equation, what kind of experience do our subscribers want is important, because those are the people at this point in our funding model, who pay our salaries. In other words, we could imagine a world in which The Nation was supported by supporters who donate because of the wonderful things we publish on the web and that would be a different model, but that isn’t the model we’re in. The model we’re in is where the bulk of our revenue comes from subscriptions. Not all of the subscriptions are print, but the majority of them are print.

So, I needed some time to find out from our print subscribers just what it was they wanted and that meant talking to our businesspeople, talking to circulation; designing a questionnaire, getting it out, getting responses. So part of this was I always felt that we needed to change but we weren’t able to change until we had data. And some of that data is what do our subscribers want.

When the data came back it was very clear what they wanted. And you probably know this already because you pay a lot of attention to magazines, but if you look at the cover of The Nation and then you look at the cover of, for example, The Atlantic or Harper’s, they are on slick paper and we are not. They’re on coated stock and we aren’t. The reason for that is because our readers have always been very clear, they want our money to go into the journalism. It’s not that they don’t care how it looks, they do care. I’m sure they appreciate good design as much as I do, or almost as much as I do, since I think I appreciate the design enormously. I certainly appreciate my good fortune in having a genius like Robert Best on staff, because we couldn’t have done this otherwise.

It’s very important that you know this was all done in-house. We did not go to some consultant and ask how can we look better? This was done under the lead of someone who has been working on designing, had his hands on our product for seven years. He is very deeply immersed in what we do.

Our subscribers said that what they wanted was stories with more impact; stories that could go deeper; stories that you’re happy to spend more time with; more investigative reporting; more in depth analysis, and they were at the very least not fussed about whether it came every week or every other week. Again, this wasn’t a thing that was widely noticed, but The Nation hasn’t published 52 issues a year in a very long time.

We had this rhythm of going biweekly in the summer, biweekly at Christmas, but I was also getting complaints from people saying they didn’t get their issue. Then I would go to circulation and ask what happened to that person’s issue and they would say they received their magazine, it’s just that we went biweekly. And they didn’t realize that and thought they had missed an issue.

So, there was this message that they wanted more; they wanted a bigger canvas. And they would be very happy to have more time to read what we were giving them. All of those things together led to this shift where we’re quite regular twice a month and predictable. And where there is more time between issues than there was some of the time, because some of the time we were already publishing on this schedule, but now we’re on this schedule all of the time. And now each issue is bigger, we added 20 percent length to each issue, so the features well got four extra pages, the front of the book section, which is editorials, comments, and short pieces got two pages; the books and the arts section got two extra pages, and we also have these four double issues, four times per year, of 64 pages. The next issue that comes out, the fall book issue will be one of those double issues and it will be 64 pages.

In terms of total  pages, published in the course of a year, there’s not that much change. And of course, that means we’re not actually saving much money doing this; we’re saving money on postage, but in terms of publishing costs it’s pretty much a wash. But we are able to go deeper and to give people more. What I wanted in that case was a design that people would be happier to spend more time with. I felt in my gut that our previous versions were done at a time when the Internet and social media were transforming journalism and leading a lot of people to think that it was dying.

I wanted something that was unabashedly in print. First of all, I don’t think print journalism is dead; I think it’s actually coming back and it’s coming back in a way that only print can do. And that isn’t breaking urgent news on paper; we do that, we break news every day. We publish between seven and 11 stories a day on The Nation dotcom. Ken Klippenstein had a story about DHS monitoring protestors, tapping protestor’s telephone calls and reporter’s telephone calls that led to questions being asked in Congress, so we break significant news all of the time. But that isn’t what people turn to the print Nation for.

It was thinking about what people turn to a print magazine for and what we need to change to meet those needs and desires and to create a product that people will be happy spending more time with. And hopefully be more happy to pay for. We want more subscribers.

Samir Husni: Robert, what was your thinking when it came to a new design for a magazine with more than a 150-year-old history? You don’t want to touch the DNA, yet you want to give it a new look. Was it just a new look or was it what Don said about taking a deeper dive into journalism and presenting it in a way that only print can do?

Robert Best: It wasn’t a look to begin with, it was more of a tone of voice. The Nation has and continues to have a very strong personality. And before, where the design was shouting just a little too much, the tone has been brought down to a more level voice where it’s not exasperating the voice of the editorial all of the time. Also, our illustrations and our photography can often be quite aggressive, so the design is trying to balance that so that it doesn’t always heighten the drama to the magazine.

Samir Husni: How did you use the data that was collected to see what readers wanted from a print magazine to create the new design? What was the process, the approach?

D.D. Guttenplan: Robert and I decided that we were going to do this and we discussed it with the business side and Katrina (vanden Heuvel), editorial director and publisher of The Nation, so everybody was onboard. Then we created a working group, a print redesign working group, which had people from editorial, but it also had people from business and circulation, We would meet regularly. Of course, that was still in the days when you could meet face to face.

The Nation has a very nice conference room, I miss it, with a view over 8^th Avenue, and we would meet in there. Actually, in early February I got a couple of bulletin boards on legs and people would put up pages from magazines that they liked or things that they thought worked well.

So, we had those meetings and those meetings continued on Google Chat regularly even  after we closed our office on March 17. And the group was chaired very capably by Rose D’Amora who is our managing editor. Everybody had input and we came up with what was called a strategic document for the redesign. And that was what Robert and I steered by.

There’s an important point that I want to make. Very early in this process Robert made a distinction between a redecoration and a redesign and I’m going to let him explain it to you. Because of that distinction, we thought it was very important for people to talk about what they wanted the print magazine to do. What were our what’s? So we spent a lot of time in these meetings asking people what it was they wanted to see in the new version; what they wanted it to do. Not how they wanted it to look, but what kinds of things they wanted to create space for.

For example, we have a piece in this issue called “The Argument” where someone makes a strong polemical statement. That was one of the “what’s” that came out of these meetings. We have a thing in this issue called “The Leak” where Ken Klippenstein takes a document that has been leaked to him and he annotates it in a way that shows readers what is significant about this document. That was also one of the “what’s.”

But I think it’s very important that you hear from Robert because he is very eloquent about why he didn’t want us to talk about how it should look and the distinction between a redecoration and a redesign.

Robert Best: I’ve been doing this a long time and I want to solve problems. And I want things to look the way they should look based on those problems getting solved. One of the problems with The Nation was the paper wasn’t the best paper, so part of the design solution has to be something that whitens the paper visually. And that is the use of darks and lights, the contrast that I’m creating throughout the design. From the front of the book, there is a very small dot pattern that’s, if you called it a one to 10 spectrum, it would be the one. And all the black bars and the heavy black type would be the 10. And that’s what gets that high contrast level, because we have a lot of text, but we still needed to be something that people want to approach.

As far as the “what’s,” I really believe people want to feel familiar with the magazine; want to expect certain things, that when they go to it, they go to those things first. I was at New York Magazine for years and our research said that best bets, there were certain intelligencers, certain pages that people looked forward to. The features are the extra stuff, the things that they don’t expect, and that’s great.

Creating brands for the magazine that heightens the writers and heightens the series like “The Leak” will become something that when you mention it people will say, oh yes, that’s the piece that was in The Nation magazine. So we wanted brands that can be parts of conversations.

Samir Husni: I’ve noticed also from the all-cap “N,” you took that theme from the logo all the way to the inside pages, was that part of that visual magnet to stop a reader before keeping them on the page?

Robert Best: As far as using it on the logo, they both sort of worked hand-in-hand in how they came to the issue. The logo was as you said history, and retaining that history, while sort of layering it onto this modernistic look of the red square, where it becomes something else, yet you remember where it came from. On the inside, the drop-caps were again sort of a…our colors are black and red obviously throughout the magazine, and that just sort of brings a modern quality to a drop-cap and is a good starting point.

Samir Husni: Tell me more about the need in this day and age for the type of journalism The Nation offers. What role do you feel journalism can play now in our world of division and the pandemic?

D.D. Guttenplan: We live in a very polarized country and we live in very perilous times. If you think about what has been in the national conversation during the last week, we don’tknow whether we’re going to have a second wave of the pandemic that will be even worse than the first. We know that America has squandered a lot of the experience we could have had in the first wave, in terms of preparing. There is still not testing on demand, there’s still not adequate testing provisions, there is still not national provisions of PPE, there is no track and trace infrastructure in place; all the things that other countries have done, we haven’t done. So, we’re all living with uncertainty as to what is going to happen with our physical health now.

One of the things that occurred to me in March was we all have opinions about the Coronavirus, but you know what they say about opinions… everybody has one. So, I wanted someone who I knew would know what they were talking about, so I reached out to an epidemiologist, Gregg Gonsalves, who is at the Yale School of Public Health and who now writes a column for us every two weeks or so. But it’s online; I think he’s been in print once. But the pandemic is one big element of uncertainty.

Whether the results of the presidential election are going to be disputed, and we don’t know if there will be a peaceful transition of power that the Constitution takes for granted, but doesn’t actually guarantee. So, there is a lot of uncertainty.

I don’t think it’s our job to offer people false hope and I also don’t think it’s our job to be Chicken Little; I think it’s our job to tell people the truth. And I suppose part of that is when you know what you’re talking about you don’t have to shout, so in that sense I very much appreciated Robert’s metaphor which he’s used throughout changing our tone of voice a bit. But also nobody wants to spend two weeks with somebody shouting at them from their coffee table or from their kitchen table or from wherever you keep the things that you read and don’t throw away the same day. You don’t want the magazines shouting at you and you don’t want them to be so time-tied that they’re disposable. You want them to have things that you feel you’ve learned something from or that have made you think or have been useful for your life.

The Nation is not a consumer magazine, so we’re never going to write about the best pizza parlor in Chicago, but we may write about things you can do to make your vote actually count or this is what you can do to get involved on Election Day. We can give people useful information certainly.

So, our role is to do that and to tell people the truth. One of the things I wanted from the design and this is where I think Robert has succeeded brilliantly is I wanted our pages to be sticky. I wanted people flipping through it to think this is something they would want to read. And for them not to feel like the magazine was something that had already seen yet again. I mean, you want a certain amount of predictability, where people come to you for certain voices, our columnists are wonderful and we have a great rotation and an amazing diversity of voices, but in the rest of the magazine I want people to be able to be surprised. And I want there to be a variety of different kinds of sticky articles so that people will want to spend time with it, because that’s the thing, we’re all competing for readers’ time.

I feel like what print can do is it can give you a lean-back, time-to-think-about-it, explaining complexity, living with complexity depth that you can’t get from a screen.

Samir Husni: If I could give you a magic wand to strike this new The Nation magazine with and a human being suddenly popped out, who would it be? Can you describe that person?

D.D. Guttenplan: It’s not a he or she, it’s they. It’s always going to be a “they.” I think one of the things that makes The Nation different from any other magazine is our genuine openness to debate. It’s not that we’re necessarily contrary and provocateurs, we’re not here as the line, here is the correct thing to think. The Nation is one way to think about it, but within the progressive frame that we’re all committed to as a magazine. There are other ways to think about it, and here are some of them, so The Nation is never one person knocking on your door. It’s not me; it wasn’t Katrina before; it wasn’t Victor Navasky before that.

The Nation is more like Christmas carolers coming to your door; it’s more of a group. And some people hate them, but some people like them and they usually sing more than one carol. (Laughs)

Samir Husni: Robert, are you the leader of that Christmas caroling group? (Laughs)

Robert Best: (Laughs too) No, I’m in the back row.

Samir Husni: Do you feel we have a good exchange of ideas in the country or everybody is shouting at everyone else?

D.D. Guttenplan: Everybody is clearly shouting everyone, that’s what Twitter is for. (Laughs) I feel like there are magazines that matter, and that’s becoming increasingly true during the pandemic because people are spending more time at home. One of the things that you can do at home is read. And we want to be part of that; we want to be a part of people’s intellectual lives. Part of the political life of the country as we have been for 155 years.

And I also think that was Robert said is true; a tremendous amount of work and thought went into this first redesigned issue. But that’s just the first one. There’s a lot of modularity and flexibility so that we can move things around within a structure. One of the things that I think Robert is so brilliant at is using visual hierarchies to organize people’s reading experiences.

I used to use this word a lot with my staff, but I stopped because they started making fun of me, which is intentionality. But I think there is  a lot of intentionality in this design. It’s very considered. We have discovered the features of this new house that we’ve built and what we can do with it, and then we take that to our digital and we redesign that too. That will be the next phase, which will probably be about a year off. And getting to know the house will undoubtedly shape that. Digital is a different thing than print, so it will be its own thing. But we now have a visual vocabulary that we’ll want to carry over when we do the digital redesign.

Samir Husni: Is there anything else either of you would like to add?

D.D. Guttenplan: One of the things that Robert told me and the staff when we were starting this was that the difference between a redesign and a redecoration was that a redesign is driven by ideas. Robert, would you like to elaborate on that?

Robert Best: It’s ideas and a new voice, like we talked about. And what we’re finding now as we finish up the second issue is finding a familiarity to that voice and knowing that it’s not going to stay the same. It will start moving left and right, and that’s an exciting time. It’s invigorating to have a certain sense of feeling a little off balance, because we’re not used to it. And that’s going to bring fresh ideas and content, so that we’re not resting on what we’re used to. The redesign is just beginning, actually. And it will continue with good content, good thinking, excitement and enthusiasm.

Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

D.D. Guttenplan: What keeps me up at night is trying to find a way through this pandemic to keep The Nation relevant and keep my staff happy without being able to meet face to face. That has been a challenge. It’s a challenge for all of us, but it is what keeps me up at night. How to manage when we can’t actually be together in a room. Robert and I have very good rapport, so we were able to do this even though we were very far apart geographically.

Maintaining that kind of rapport with every member of my editorial team takes a lot. And that’s what keeps me up at night. It used to be so easy in The Nation’s office. When I opened my door I could see Robert sitting at his desk. I could walk over and ask him what do you think about this or that? And that was true with everyone in the office. I might not be able to see them directly in my office, but I knew they were there. But now it’s harder.

Robert Best: I’d like to say that working with Katrina over the years, and now Don, these are two editors that have always trusted me and the entire staff. They trust us and let us have our own voice. And that makes for a really great place to work.

What keeps me up at night – well, since Don is in England right now, it’s not the nights, it’s the mornings. (Laughs)

Samir Husni: Thank you both.

“The cover has been a big part of the discussion, obviously, about what we want to do as a magazine. For me, the goal to create the cover represented many different things that we were trying to do. My aim is that when you extend 1843 in whatever format, you find it surprising, it makes you smile and it leaves you with something that you want to share. It should be funny, but it should also be beautiful. And those are a lot of things to try and get into one place.” Rosie Blau…

“The relaunch is going to enable us to do two things and that is bolster reader revenue and advertising revenue. So, one thing that we are seeing is that both readers and advertisers are wanting to engage with audiences in a range of platforms and by relaunching 1843 on a number of platforms, we make those platforms available to advertisers and that will bolster advertising revenue. But also we make the content more engaging to readers too and they can read us where they want to read us.” Mark Beard…

The Economist announced the relaunch of its bimonthly lifestyle publication 1843, named for the year The Economist was founded. 1843 gives readers stories of an extraordinary world, with long-form narrative journalism a dominant feature, both in its print version and online. And as we all know, long-form narratives online are a no-no – or are they? Mr. Magazine™ loves a rebel, don’t you know. (Ole Miss pun intended)

I spoke with Editor in Chief, Rosie Blau and Publisher, Mark Beard recently and we talked about this taboo thing called long-form journalism online. Rosie explained that in 1843’s case, readers loved the meatier stories, the long-reads that keep them enthralled and begging for more. And with a redrawn logo and the tagline “Stories of an extraordinary world,” 1843 begins its new journey down a path that puts stories first and allows readers to be surprised and delighted by what they find along the way.

Mark explained that one of the excitements lay in the new incorporation of 1843’s app within The Economist’s app, and while the intricacies of the actual transfer of content was a bit hair-raising, it was well worth a few sleepless nights.

Rosie said the goal of the new design and compelling content was to make readers question assumptions and take a sideways look at the enduring stories of our age, with a bit of humor and irreverence. And Mark added that all of those great stories can now be enjoyed by even more readers since all editions of 1843 will be included in The Economist’s classic app.

And with a powerhouse like The Economist behind you, there is no way to go but up and all over the world. So, I hope that you enjoy this delightful interview with our friends from across the pond, Rosie Blau, editor in chief, and Mark Beard, publisher, 1843 magazine.

But first the sound-bites:

On why the relaunch of 1843 is getting so much media attention: because of the refinement of James Wilson’s vision or because it’s part of The Economist (Rosie Blau): Obviously, we like to think that it’s a brilliant magazine that deserves the media attention in its own right, but it’s always wonderful to have the backing of a well-respected and already well-established and well-known brand behind us. So, we’re very lucky.

On why the relaunch of 1843 is getting so much media attention: because of the refinement of James Wilson’s vision or because it’s part of The Economist (Mark Beard): From the commercial perspective, it’s because we’ve kind of captured the mood in the sense of many publishers and that is, there is a need to change the business model and create content that readers and advertisers can engage with in different ways. And I think one of the reasons why we are seeing so much attention from the readers is that we are doing lots of that all in one go. So, publishers around the world are looking at how they can create film content and podcast content and they can place their content in digital environments like apps and online.

On the relaunch including the 1843 becoming bigger and more dominant on the cover and what they are trying to achieve with 1843 as a brand (Rosie Blau): The cover has been a big part of the discussion, obviously, about what we want to do as a magazine. For me, the goal to create the cover represented many different things that we were trying to do. My aim is that when you extend 1843 in whatever format, you find it surprising, it makes you smile and it leaves you with something that you want to share. It should be funny, but it should also be beautiful. And those are a lot of things to try and get into one place.

On whether she thinks the role of the magazine cover in this crowded information age has changed at all (Rosie Blau): I think it has changed because as you say it’s such a crowded market. But I think it’s also in that crowded market, as I said, there are these shorthand’s that we use to signal what we are. And so it’s difficult; interesting, but difficult, to signal that we’re something different. So, to me this is a move in that direction.

On the business model for 1843 (Mark Beard): The relaunch is going to enable us to do two things and that is bolster reader revenue and advertising revenue. So, one thing that we are seeing is that both readers and advertisers are wanting to engage with audiences in a range of platforms and by relaunching 1843 on a number of platforms, we make those platforms available to advertisers and that will bolster advertising revenue. But also we make the content more engaging to readers too and they can read us where they want to read us.

On whether her stories-first approach is similar to an audience-first approach (Rosie Blau): The thing about the stories-first approach is that the idea is there are really exciting things that we don’t tend to think about. And so for me, if I’m thinking what do the readers want or what do the audiences want, I don’t know that they know what they want. Part of the point is to challenge and surprise them, and it’s hard to think, okay, we know that this is something that they want, we know that they want more stories about hem lengths or whatever. So, I think what we’re trying to do is trust our intuition. For me, being a journalist is all about trusting your intuition, but there is something interesting here and let me find out more. And that’s really what we’re going with, kind of looking at these stories and thinking in what way can we push them and in what ways might we see them. So, that’s the stories-first approach.

On the genesis of the tagline: Stories Of An Extraordinary World (Rosie Blau): What that comes from, it was a very hard thing to come up with, and one of the other contenders was: Life, The Untold Story. What we feel we do best and what we really show in common with The Economist is this idea of challenging and posing and questioning assumptions. And our subject is “your world” and “your stories” and “the world that you experience.” And so my main aim is to be looking at the things that we take for granted, the things that we see around us, the issues of our day and the enduring issues of our time, and try and look at them in new and different ways.

On how it feels to be publisher of a global brand (Mark Beard): I’m obviously very proud to be publisher of 1843. It’s a job that I hoped I would get at some point in my career, so I’m very proud to have the role. One of my other roles at The Economist is I have past experience marketing for The Economist. And of course, The Economist is also global. So, I’m very used to operating in a global environment and the basics and challenges that come with that. And trying to benefit from being able to roll things out globally while understanding that there are local nuances to what you need to do to perform effectively around the world.

On the biggest challenge they have had to face (Mark Beard): One of the things that you’ll see if you were to open The Economist’s app today is that 1843 now sits within The Economist’s app, which enables many of our subscribers to The Economist to also benefit, read and engage with 1843 content. And that might look like a relatively simple process, a good strategy and relatively simple on the surface, but you can well imagine that working with the tech teams and the editorial teams to move content from one platform to another is not simple and that’s been challenging, but also rewarding because we’ve been told by a number of people that what we’re doing is cutting edge. And creating an app environment where our consumers can consume all of our content in one place is something that is added again, as I understand it.

On having a long read section on the web and whether she knows something others don’t when it comes to the thought that snippets of information are better-suited for the web (Rosie Blau): Do I know something that others don’t? Well, I don’t know, but what I do know is that with our content over recent years, the long reads are the things that people read most, read for longer, depending on how long they are. Our most popular stories are always our long reads. So for us, it’s a question of how we do more of it, not how we do less. And we actually find that the snippets often don’t do nearly as well, even things that we think might do well. So, our experience is that long reads do extremely well online and if we have the resources to do more of those, then we will.

On how she differentiates the long reads online from the long reads in print (Rosie Blau): Some of it is exactly the same and the features that we run in print also go online, and those are extremely popular typically and continue to be popular. But we don’t have a distinct form for long-form features online versus in print. There are a lot of things that we’re thinking about, different types of long reads that we might do for online only to help us be more timely, and things that work better for an online audience than in print, because we have quite a long delay even between going to press and coming out. But also, we only publish every two months, so there are things that we can do online, it offers us a chance to do things that we are excited about that we couldn’t do in print.

On whether he is selling the brand, the print magazine, the digital, or 1843, no matter the platform when he approaches advertisers (Mark Beard): We’re selling the content and the environment and an audience, of course. We have an extremely engaged audience. We are creating content and placing that content on the platform where we know they are grazing. We are able to offer incredible insight to advertisers as to who the audience is; we’re very clear that they are in the main existing Economist readers. We can describe exactly where they are, they are loyal subscribers.

On whether 1843 now has a different audience on digital than in print or it’s the same audience, or somewhat of a shared DNA (Mark Beard): We’ve been asked to describe a base for The Economist so let’s talk about those first, because a significant number of readers of 1843 are Economist subscribers. The subscribers who receive 1843, some of them are print subscribers and some are print plus digital subscribers, our bundle subscribers. And some of those people, of course, will be accessing 1843 content through the app, rather than from just receiving the print copy. And we do know that the make-up of our print plus digital subscribers is slightly different from our print only subscribers. You might imagine, for instance, that they’re younger and more digitally engaged. By making our content available on this range of platforms, we are able to tap into the different audience profiles of our subscribers to The Economist.

On what someone would find him doing if they showed up unexpectedly one evening at his home (Mark Beard): You would probably find me walking my dog. I live a half an hour outside of London in a leafy green village. It’s a complete antidote and opposite of London. I generally come home from work and the first thing I do to relax is take our Border Terrier, Oakley, for a walk to clear my mind.

On what someone would find her doing if they showed up unexpectedly one evening at her home (Rosie Blau): I usually hang out with my kids, they’re quite a good leveler in all things, they’re six and nine. We discuss their day and I tell them silly things about mine, but for me that’s a great way to come back to earth and think about the really important things in my life, which is my family.

On what she would have tattooed upon her brain that would be there forever and no one could ever forget about her (Rosie Blau): Maybe the word interesting.

On what he would have tattooed upon his brain that would be there forever and no one could ever forget about him (Mark Beard): Positivity.

On what keeps them up at night (Rosie Blau): It was quite stressful producing the final; getting there for this relaunch. And the weird thing for me was after it had gone to press, but before we had it, this kind of fear of what I hadn’t saw, these huge glaring errors that were so big that I hadn’t seen. That is what has most often been keeping me up at night recently. But thankfully, no glaring errors have been found yet. (Laughs)

On what keeps them up at night (Mark Beard): What has been keeping me up at night recently is the switchover of our digital platforms and namely the move from websites and apps to being incorporated into The Economist app, which as I said before, sounds like a simple job on the surface, but had lots of intricacies. Of course, we had a launch deadline to work toward and everyone was working to ensure a smooth transition of the app of 1843 appearing in The Economist app, which fortunately it did. But as you can imagine, there were a few sleepless nights before that.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Rosie Blau, editor in chief, and Mark Beard, publisher, 1843 magazine.

Samir Husni: It’s rare to see a magazine relaunch get as much attention as 1843. Is it because it’s The Economist or is it because you’re refining James Wilson’s vision of what a magazine was back then and what a magazine is today?

Rosie Blau: I’m not sure that we’re redesigning James Wilson’s vision, but we have continued to interpret it, of course. I think The Economist is obviously a very well-known and respected and loved brand and we’re part of that and we’re really delighted to be in the same wit and rigor and trustworthy independent journalism, but on very different subjects and in a very different mode.

Samir Husni: So, do you think that’s the reason? Let’s say you’re doing 1843 without The Economist and you decide to relaunch it, would you have received the same media attention, if nothing else?

Rosie Blau: Obviously, we like to think that it’s a brilliant magazine that deserves the media attention in its own right, but it’s always wonderful to have the backing of a well-respected and already well-established and well-known brand behind us. So, we’re very lucky.

Mark Beard: From the commercial perspective, it’s because we’ve kind of captured the mood in the sense of many publishers and that is, there is a need to change the business model and create content that readers and advertisers can engage with in different ways. And I think one of the reasons why we are seeing so much attention from the readers is that we are doing lots of that all in one go. So, publishers around the world are looking at how they can create film content and podcast content and they can place their content in digital environments like apps and online.

Of course, what you’re seeing from the reader is that we’re doing much of this at the same time, and we’re able to do that in many instances because we are part of The Economist Group and we can tap into all of the good things that our association with The Economist brings. And I think that is also a valid reason as to why there is quite a lot of attention on this event, because we’re doing this holistically in one go, when many of the publishers kind of did that tied into various different platforms one at a time.

Samir Husni: Tell me then, we moved from Intelligent Life and a tiny 1843 to a big, dominant 1843 on the cover, tell me about the progression and the thinking behind the relaunch and what you’re trying to achieve today as an 1843 brand.

Rosie Blau: The cover has been a big part of the discussion, obviously, about what we want to do as a magazine. For me, the goal to create the cover represented many different things that we were trying to do. My aim is that when you extend 1843 in whatever format, you find it surprising, it makes you smile and it leaves you with something that you want to share. It should be funny, but it should also be beautiful. And those are a lot of things to try and get into one place.

Previously, we have almost always run a person on the front of the magazine. And as you know from the magazine world, that tends to be shorthand in the magazine world for: this is a magazine for men or for women. So, I’m not ruling out the idea that we might put people on the cover in the future, we may well do that, but for me, I wanted to move away from something that instantly looked like a magazine for men or for women and instead have this message of: this is something super-interesting and funny and challenging.

Samir Husni: Do you think the role of the magazine cover in this crowded information age has changed at all?

Rosie Blau: I think it has changed because as you say it’s such a crowded market. But I think it’s also in that crowded market, as I said, there are these shorthand’s that we use to signal what we are. And so it’s difficult; interesting, but difficult, to signal that we’re something different. So, to me this is a move in that direction.

And then in terms of the size of the logo, the first thing that I wanted to do when I became editor was get rid of the white strip across the top of the previous incarnation of 1843, because I just hated it. (Laughs) And we had a lot of discussions about it and we kept coming up with different covers, though we very often would have, with the possible new covers or the new logos and all of that, the white strip every time and that was one thing that I was adamant about that I didn’t want.

Samir Husni: Mark, as you see this relaunch and as you see the changing landscape of even the magazine business model, The Economist has always been as much circulation-driven as advertising-driven. What’s your business model for 1843?

Mark Beard: The relaunch is going to enable us to do two things and that is bolster reader revenue and advertising revenue. So, one thing that we are seeing is that both readers and advertisers are wanting to engage with audiences in a range of platforms and by relaunching 1843 on a number of platforms, we make those platforms available to advertisers and that will bolster advertising revenue. But also we make the content more engaging to readers too and they can read us where they want to read us.

And that has two benefits: there will be more people reading 1843 and we expect more to subscribe to 1843, but what we also see is that in many instances 1843 is a kind of onramp and an entry point into the Group’s other products, so people may begin to subscribe to 1843, but then also move on to ultimately subscribe to The Economist. The idea behind the relaunch is to bolster both sides of the business, circulation and advertising revenue.

Samir Husni: And Rosie, you mentioned in one interview that you start with a stories-first approach. Almost all of the editors I’ve interviewed tell me they start with an audience-first approach. Is the stories-first approach similar to an audience-first approach?

Rosie Blau: I suppose so. What tends to happen if you discuss a story is sometimes, if you’re thinking about different ways to do a story, you reach the realization sometimes quickly, sometimes more slowly, that it’s not that interesting. And you don’t continue to be interested in it. So, in that sense, yes, I think we try and think about how attuned we are and how excited we are about stories, with a gauge for how we do them and what will work for our audience too.

The thing about the stories-first approach is that the idea is there are really exciting things that we don’t tend to think about. And so for me, if I’m thinking what do the readers want or what do the audiences want, I don’t know that they know what they want. Part of the point is to challenge and surprise them, and it’s hard to think, okay, we know that this is something that they want, we know that they want more stories about hem lengths or whatever. So, I think what we’re trying to do is trust our intuition. For me, being a journalist is all about trusting your intuition, but there is something interesting here and let me find out more. And that’s really what we’re going with, kind of looking at these stories and thinking in what way can we push them and in what ways might we see them. So, that’s the stories-first approach.

Samir Husni: Is that the genesis of the tagline: Stories Of An Extraordinary World?

Rosie Blau: What that comes from, it was a very hard thing to come up with, and one of the other contenders was: Life, The Untold Story. What we feel we do best and what we really show in common with The Economist is this idea of challenging and posing and questioning assumptions. And our subject is “your world” and “your stories” and “the world that you experience.” And so my main aim is to be looking at the things that we take for granted, the things that we see around us, the issues of our day and the enduring issues of our time, and try and look at them in new and different ways.

And I feel that sets incredibly well with the current news, which we are all subjected to a deluge of news and even news junkies, even those of us, and I include myself in those news junkies, we sometimes get sick of the constant breaking news, but also the fact that the world out there seems pretty scary and a worrying place, and like other Brits, I feel humiliated by my government right now. And so there’s a difference; it’s not saying go bury your head in the sand, but it’s saying there is an optimistic and incredibly positive side to the mess that lives around us. And I want us to see that extraordinariness. I want us to feel excited about understanding our own world better.

Samir Husni: Mark, how does it feel to be a publisher of a global publication? Yes, it is based in Britain; yes, it is also in the United States, but it’s available all over the world. Does that make you think twice when you wake up, thinking wow, this isn’t just a British publication, it’s a global publication?

Mark Beard: I’m obviously very proud to be publisher of 1843. It’s a job that I hoped I would get at some point in my career, so I’m very proud to have the role. One of my other roles at The Economist is I have past experience marketing for The Economist. And of course, The Economist is also global. So, I’m very used to operating in a global environment and the basics and challenges that come with that. And trying to benefit from being able to roll things out globally while understanding that there are local nuances to what you need to do to perform effectively around the world.

But yes, I’m extremely proud to be publisher of 1843. And more so at this point in time rather than any other; it’s such an exciting time for a publication and we’re transforming the business plan from top to bottom. We’ve looked at every single element of the commercial plan, from the brand positioning to the platforms that we want to be present on. And we’ve made conscious decisions for everything that we’ve done. I’m very proud, and the organization has been very supportive and patient and listened to what we believe and want to do. And they have supported Rosie’s vision, so yes, it’s a very exciting and thrilling time for us.

Samir Husni: And what has been the biggest challenge that you’ve faced and how did you overcome it?

Mark Beard: To some extent we can talk about the digital platforms and as you know, since apps and websites have come into fruition for publishers there has been a want and a willingness on the part of publishers to set up individual websites and apps for each and every publication that is within their stable. And we were one of those publishers for a period of time, we embarked upon a journey of setting up individual platforms, those apps and websites for 1843. And one of the things that Rosie and I certainly believe is that we should be taking much greater advantage of The Economist’s audience. And because of that we have commercially gone on a journey to incorporate 1843 content into more of The Economist’s ecosystem.

So, one of the things that you’ll see if you were to open The Economist’s app today is that 1843 now sits within The Economist’s app, which enables many of our subscribers to The Economist to also benefit, read and engage with 1843 content. And that might look like a relatively simple process, a good strategy and relatively simple on the surface, but you can well imagine that working with the tech teams and the editorial teams to move content from one platform to another is not simple and that’s been challenging, but also rewarding because we’ve been told by a number of people that what we’re doing is cutting edge. And creating an app environment where our consumers can consume all of our content in one place is something that is added again, as I understand it.

Samir Husni: You have a long-read section on the web, on the digital side; does this go against the norm, where people just want snippets on the digital side and long reads in print? Are you swimming against the current or do you know something that other people don’t?

Rosie Blau: Do I know something that others don’t? Well, I don’t know, but what I do know is that with our content over recent years, the long reads are the things that people read most, read for longer, depending on how long they are. Our most popular stories are always our long reads. So for us, it’s a question of how we do more of it, not how we do less. And we actually find that the snippets often don’t do nearly as well, even things that we think might do well. So, our experience is that long reads do extremely well online and if we have the resources to do more of those, then we will.

Samir Husni: How are you going to differentiate that from the long-read in print? What’s your philosophy on giving print what print deserves and giving digital what digital deserves?

Rosie Blau: Some of it is exactly the same and the features that we run in print also go online, and those are extremely popular typically and continue to be popular. But we don’t have a distinct form for long-form features online versus in print. There are a lot of things that we’re thinking about, different types of long reads that we might do for online only to help us be more timely, and things that work better for an online audience than in print, because we have quite a long delay even between going to press and coming out. But also, we only publish every two months, so there are things that we can do online, it offers us a chance to do things that we are excited about that we couldn’t do in print.

To go back to the stories-first idea, the idea of telling personal stories and trying to sort of illuminate and question our assumptions from the ground-up and through individual narratives is something that we apply across all formats, so that’s what we think about when we think about online features too.

Samir Husni: Mark, do you do the same when you are selling? Are you selling the brand; are you selling the print magazine; are you selling digital; or you are selling 1843 regardless of the platform?

Mark Beard: We’re selling the content and the environment and an audience, of course. We have an extremely engaged audience. We are creating content and placing that content on the platform where we know they are grazing. We are able to offer incredible insight to advertisers as to who the audience is; we’re very clear that they are in the main existing Economist readers. We can describe exactly where they are, they are loyal subscribers.

So, on the whole we have a very compelling proposition I think, not only to readers but to advertisers in that if they want to reach a certain audience on a range of platforms, we are perfectly positioned now to do that. And I think that’s a compelling proposition to advertisers who are, in increasing numbers, when they’re talking to publishers like us, asking for responses to their advertising briefs. And they want us to go back with a multiplatform response. And in the past, a few years back, we could have gone back with a print-only response, but in many instances advertisers are now saying we want you to tell us how you can help us reach these audiences in a range of platforms. And I’m proud that we can now to do that.

Samir Husni: Are you finding out that you have a different audience on digital than in print or it’s the same audience, or there’s some kind of shared DNA between the print and digital audiences?

Mark Beard: We’ve been asked to describe a base for The Economist so let’s talk about those first, because a significant number of readers of 1843 are Economist subscribers. The subscribers who receive 1843, some of them are print subscribers and some are print plus digital subscribers, our bundle subscribers. And some of those people, of course, will be accessing 1843 content through the app, rather than from just receiving the print copy. And we do know that the make-up of our print plus digital subscribers is slightly different from our print only subscribers. You might imagine, for instance, that they’re younger and more digitally engaged. By making our content available on this range of platforms, we are able to tap into the different audience profiles of our subscribers to The Economist.

I should also say that 1843 is helpful for us when we are attracting more women and females to the Group, and we know they’re a greater number of readers for 1843. So, 1843 is also useful in that regard.

Samir Husni: If I showed up unexpectedly at your home one evening after work, what would I find you doing? Having a glass of wine; reading a magazine; cooking; watching TV; or something else? How do you unwind?

Mark Beard: You would probably find me walking my dog. I live a half an hour outside of London in a leafy green village. It’s a complete antidote and opposite of London. I generally come home from work and the first thing I do to relax is take our Border Terrier, Oakley, for a walk to clear my mind.

Rosie Blau: I usually hang out with my kids, they’re quite a good leveler in all things, they’re six and nine. We discuss their day and I tell them silly things about mine, but for me that’s a great way to come back to earth and think about the really important things in my life, which is my family.

Samir Husni: If you could have one thing tattooed upon your brain that no one would ever forget about you, what would it be?

Rosie Blau: Maybe the word interesting.

Mark Beard: Positivity.

Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

Rosie Blau: It was quite stressful producing the final; getting there for this relaunch. And the weird thing for me was after it had gone to press, but before we had it, this kind of fear of what I hadn’t saw, these huge glaring errors that were so big that I hadn’t seen. That is what has most often been keeping me up at night recently. But thankfully, no glaring errors have been found yet. (Laughs)

Mark Beard: What has been keeping me up at night recently is the switchover of our digital platforms and namely the move from websites and apps to being incorporated into The Economist app, which as I said before, sounds like a simple job on the surface, but had lots of intricacies. Of course, we had a launch deadline to work toward and everyone was working to ensure a smooth transition of the app of 1843 appearing in The Economist app, which fortunately it did. But as you can imagine, there were a few sleepless nights before that.

Samir Husni: Thank you both.

“I really believe that we have come out of the era of broad general interest being a place of power for magazines. So, instead of trying to be everything to everyone, I want to be really clear about what GQ does better than anyone else on earth and I want to focus on those things.” Will Welch…

“It’s really a balance, and the words that I would use are participation and amplification. One of the first things that I wanted to establish in a really strong way when I started this role was rebuilding a core community for GQ. And that means identifying all of these people in our world. And they’re writers, photographers, stylists, and actors; some of them are super-famous, some are not famous at all and may have more of a creative director role or a guy-behind-the-guy role. This is the community of core people, and not only should they be in the core pages of GQ, but they need to be our first readers and they need to be our community that we’re talking to every day.” Will Welch…

“I think that one thing that I’ve always loved, whether it’s an early interview with Kanye where he was talking about a particular uncle who had a stack of GQs in the living room that was his height, or some friends that have texted me pictures of each issue of GQ Style saved in chronological order on their shelf; I think with print we are leaving a different kind of record behind in that it is a documentation of a moment.” Will Welch…

There’s a new era at GQ and the man running the epoch is Will Welch. The dynamic, newly refreshed generation of the magazine has been honed and infused with a stylish new “anything goes” mentality. No more “wear this, but don’t wear that” prescriptions for a man’s closet, but more along the lines of fashion is an individual decision, so be yourself.

Will also believes the power of the general interest type magazine is gone and being more niche-driven is the answer to the profitability question. I spoke with Will recently and we talked about all of these new directions and the clear vision he has for GQ. From the creative community from which the magazine lives and breathes to the reader realizing that they are as much a part of the GQ world as the people between the pages, GQ has come alive with new ideas, new passions and a new perspective of individualism and creativity.

The multiplatform brand has distinctive content and powerful images across the spectrum and Will has innovated the thinking behind the engine of the magazine, while maintaining the authenticity it has earned over its many decades. To say GQ has come of age in this new era of magazine making would be an understatement, it has come of age within its own individual era of men’s fashion and style.

So, please enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ interview with an editor in chief who is just as comfortable in jeans and a T-shirt as he is in an Italian suit, and makes them both look “GQ” fashionable, Will Welch, editor in chief, GQ magazine.

But first the sound-bites:

On his vision for GQ under his leadership: I really believe that we have come out of the era of broad general interest being a place of power for magazines. So, instead of trying to be everything to everyone, I want to be really clear about what GQ does better than anyone else on earth and I want to focus on those things.

On whether with all of the changes he is implementing at GQ, the brand will be more of a reflector of what’s going on or an initiator of things moving forward: It’s really a balance, and the words that I would use are participation and amplification. One of the first things that I wanted to establish in a really strong way when I started this role was rebuilding a core community for GQ. And that means identifying all of these people in our world. And they’re writers, photographers, stylists, and actors; some of them are super-famous, some are not famous at all and may have more of a creative director role or a guy-behind-the-guy role. This is the community of core people, and not only should they be in the core pages of GQ, but they need to be our first readers and they need to be our community that we’re talking to every day.

On whether the changes he’s implementing are trying to bring back the “good-old days” where GQ was definitely different than Esquire: I am an almost completely forward-looking person, I would say. So, the moves that we’ve been making in this new era are not specifically inspired by the relationship between GQ and Esquire from the past. I have been at GQ since 2007, so I’ve been here a long time and have fully metabolized the history of the brand and what it stands for. But I also think that a brand as strong as GQ is incredibly flexible. And I feel completely empowered to really push it to a new place.

On the reinvention he did with GQ Style and whether he feels that magazine is a little bit different than GQ, and each one should have its own revolution: I think each will have its own revolution. I’ve definitely learned an incredible amount by the experience of launching GQ Style and the radical moves that I made and thinking about what the architecture of that magazine should be and what was possible in terms of the storytelling.

On whether he would rather have that one-on-one conversation with his readers, as though friends: The experience of being the editor in chief of the smaller spinoff title, GQ Style, it was an incredible experience, not just on a professional level, but also on a personal level, because I found that the more that I just allowed myself to be who I am, rather than trying to adopt any expectation or image of what an editor in chief or a Condé Nast editor in chief is supposed to look like, the more successful that we were.

On the biggest challenge or obstacle he’s had to overcome to get to the point he is today: In the early stages of GQ Style, with the first issue, I wanted to prove that it was its own magazine and could stand alone and that it had its own voice. And I was a little bit more calculating with the balance of stories in the first issue and was very methodical about what message that we would be sending to the industry and to our community and our readership, and to our potential readership. I was diagnosed with testicular cancer last year in late 2018, and that was an incredible witness test. It’s one thing to hold all of these beliefs and to hope that you’re living your life in a certain way, and then when you’re faced with a doctor telling you that you have cancer at age 37, although 37 is actually on the older side for that particular type of cancer, but I feel like a young vivacious man, and to be told that you have cancer, you definitely examine your life and ask yourself if you’re really practicing what you preach.

On anything he’d like to add: One thing that’s important is that we’re now in this time, especially with social media, which is just incredible, like Instagram is an incredibly intimate format. Podcasting is an incredibly intimate format. Instagram stories are amazingly intimate, you can watch people broadcast themselves waking up in the morning with their partner or with their pet; it’s just deeply intimate. And a title like GQ has to ask itself in this environment, the idea of GQ is this kind of vaunted, haloed thing, but what people want now is a little bit more down-to-earth, but at the same time with GQ, I don’t want to give up this authority that we’ve earned over the decades and the hard-earned gloss that we’ve also earned. So, how do you do both of those things and I think one way, there are many ways, but one way that I really believe in is, as you have identified, I’ve done it through personalizing some of the writing that I’ve been doing, as have many of the other writers and editors on the staff.

On whether he thinks the printed page leaves a different kind of impact: I think that one thing that I’ve always loved, whether it’s an early interview with Kanye where he was talking about a particular uncle who had a stack of GQs in the living room that was his height, or some friends that have texted me pictures of each issue of GQ Style saved in chronological order on their shelf; I think with print we are leaving a different kind of record behind in that it is a documentation of a moment.

On the biggest misconception he thinks people have about him: There is a funny one, very low-key, it’s not a big one, but we’ve really been evolving the look and feel of the fashion in the pages and because with my first editor’s letter I was wearing jeans and untied shoes, and then I did this other interview about the future of the suit, and so people have been asking if GQ was turning away from the suit, (Laughs) because for years we’ve been the champions of the suit and I would just like to say that I’m wearing a suit right now; I was wearing a suit yesterday. Tomorrow, I don’t know, it may be a suit and it may not. We haven’t turned our back on the suit.

On what keeps him up at night: What keeps me up at night and the sort of next phase in this new era of GQ is really getting all of the things that we’re doing moving in the same direction. We’ve been working really hard together as a team to articulate exactly what this new vision is for GQ. And I think it’s already pretty dialed in print, because with print you have the opportunity to…each month it’s just blank pages, there is a stop and a start to building each issue.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Will Welch, editor in chief, GQ magazine.

Samir Husni: You write in your latest editorial that this is a new era for fashion; it’s like a freestyle. Tell me your vision for GQ under your leadership.

Will Welch: I really believe that we have come out of the era of broad general interest being a place of power for magazines. So, instead of trying to be everything to everyone, I want to be really clear about what GQ does better than anyone else on earth and I want to focus on those things.

And first among those is fashion with a focus on men. GQ has long been perceived as and really is the flagship of men’s fashion in America. And if you stop somebody on the street and ask them what GQ means to them, they’ll say men’s style. I think in a way we’re returning to that core and really imbuing the entire brand, everything we do and we do so many things now across all of our platforms, with this sense of taste and stylishness. That is really the foundation of everything we do.

And making sure that when people think about GQ it’s not just how to get dressed, but it’s how to be stylish in a way that is forward-thinking and progressive. So, I think that’s a part of it. And then one really important way that the landscape of how men dress has shifted is we’re in this “anything goes” era. We’re seeing dress codes go away; there was a lot of news made recently when Goldman Sachs announced that it was softening its dress code, going more business-casual.

And also, with the Internet, basically in the past when designers were creating clothes they would find an inspiration and they would go digging in libraries and watching old movies and going deep into archives to explore one throughline for their collections, and now it’s all at your fingertips online. So, we’re seeing where you could make a great case for the 1950s being back in style or the 1960s, ‘70s or ‘80s or even the ‘90s, so all of this is happening at once.

And I think when we see a seismic shift in the way people are dressing, it’s really important that GQ be configured in a way that has the right combination in responding to that and then leading the way forward. So, we’ve been making all sorts of changes to reflect the way that I see what’s going on in the style space. And that means we’re taking a little bit less of a “do this” or “don’t do that” approach, like buy these pants, not those pants; you want your suit to fit this way, not that way. So, in this environment where anything goes, we want to be this aspirational board of ideas almost, rather than this super-prescriptive do this, don’t do that finger-wagging. I just don’t think the modern audience responds to that.

To give you a more technical example of the way that’s working, we’ve really taken a lot of the traditional-style service journalism that has been a part of the pages of GQ and moved it to GQ dotcom, where we find our audience comes looking for it, because it’s the audience that wakes up every morning and checks GQ dotcom style section first who is looking for it there, but so are readers who are just searching and coming to GQ dotcom through Google.

So, in a way what we have is this magazine that is incredibly elevated and aspirational on this really beautiful, luxurious environment, and then you have some of that simple service that our readers have always wanted, which we’re still doing, but we’re bringing it to them on GQ dotcom.

Samir Husni: I have been looking at some copies of the original GQ, from the late 1950s and early 1960s, and one copy I have has President Kennedy on the cover. And the editor was just singing praises about what an honor it was to have the president of the United States, donning his suit with two buttons instead of three. There has always been a dual role with the magazine, on one hand it initiates things and on the other hand it reflects. As you approach the new GQ with all of the changes, and with having the multiplatform where you’ve moved service to dotcom; how do you see your role as editor, and the magazine as a brand? Will you be more of a reflector of what’s going on or an initiator of things moving forward?

Will Welch: It’s really a balance, and the words that I would use are participation and amplification. One of the first things that I wanted to establish in a really strong way when I started this role was rebuilding a core community for GQ. And that means identifying all of these people in our world. And they’re writers, photographers, stylists, and actors; some of them are super-famous, some are not famous at all and may have more of a creative director role or a guy-behind-the-guy role. This is the community of core people, and not only should they be in the core pages of GQ, but they need to be our first readers and they need to be our community that we’re talking to every day.

And we need them to feel like GQ is the magazine that truly gets it, like that’s “my” voice, that’s “my” magazine, that’s “my” outlet. We need to interact with them every day on Instagram; they’re texting me when a new issue comes out and telling me what they think about the cover. It was hugely important to me and one of the first things that we had to do, was to reestablish that connection to our creative community, who of course are very broadly influential in our world. In other words, the power of GQ radiates through them.

But they’re also doing all of this really interesting stuff themselves. And so rather than GQ’s pages reacting to what they’re doing or leaving them and saying that they’re following us; I see it as we’re participating in this community of creative, plugged in people who are doing interesting stuff in the style space and in the culture space. They’re political reporters and the best photographers in the world. So, we’re participating in a dialogue with them and creating content sometimes with them, but often about them as well.

And then we’re able, because GQ is this massive platform, as you said, it has this incredible history and we’ve really built authority and audience over the years, so then we’re able to take the best of what’s happening in this community that we’re a part of, and really amplify it. I think that’s a slightly different way of thinking about the role of GQ. But for me it was really the starting place; how do we rebuild this brand in this new era?

I have to say that so far it feels like it’s really been working. These very influential creative people who, like us, are just pouring themselves into this work every day, they’ve really been responding to what they’ve been doing. They’ve been writing for the magazine, shooting for the magazine, while other people have been featured in the magazine.

And when I’m onset with some of the people who we have put on the cover in these first few issues, who are these types of people, I find a moment when onset for the shoot to tell them that I’m interested in this not being a onetime transactional relationship, where we put them on the cover and they further their career or promote a new project they have going on, and we all just brush off our hands and move on when it’s done. Instead, how can this be an ongoing conversation and how can GQ be part of their world? When they have their next project, they call me again and we create something cool together.

So again, it’s about participation and amplification, instead of us just being this completely secondary source that is reacting or determining what is good and bad.

Samir Husni: The amazing thing to me, and I don’t know if it came to you subliminally or intentionally, but when Esquire launched GQ back in the fifties, they did their best to differentiate between the two magazines. And GQ was more of the fashion-driven title. Are you right now trying to bring back the “good-old days,” where GQ was definitely different than Esquire?

Will Welch: I am an almost completely forward-looking person, I would say. So, the moves that we’ve been making in this new era are not specifically inspired by the relationship between GQ and Esquire from the past. I have been at GQ since 2007, so I’ve been here a long time and have fully metabolized the history of the brand and what it stands for. But I also think that a brand as strong as GQ is incredibly flexible. And I feel completely empowered to really push it to a new place.

It’s kind of a both ends situation where, I’ve been here for quite a long time, obviously not since 1959 (Laughs), but I’ve been here for a long time and really do think that I know where we come from, and rather than feeling like I have to serve that or pay homage to it in some dutiful way, I really feel like that gives me the flexibility to push it someplace new. And to trust that I will be honoring the history of the brand by going with my gut instincts.

Samir Husni: And those gut instincts served you really well when you took over the helm of GQ Style and reinvented that magazine. Last time we spoke, it was more like a revolution, where you just destructed the whole magazine and got rid of some of the traditional things in the front and back of the book. Are we going to see something as revolutionary as that? Or is this Will-Style and you’re looking at it like GQ Style is a little bit different than GQ, and each one will have its own revolution?

Will Welch: I think each will have its own revolution. I’ve definitely learned an incredible amount by the experience of launching GQ Style and the radical moves that I made and thinking about what the architecture of that magazine should be and what was possible in terms of the storytelling.

But GQ Style also has a really unique format in that the advertisements, in addition to being oversized and printed on beautiful, thick paper, the advertisements are banked as spreads in the beginning of the magazine, and then you have some singles with the table of contents and the editor’s letter and that sort of thing. But then once the editorial pages proper begin, it’s just all double-paged spreads all the way to the end. And that was sort of a radical format that I received almost as a gift and then I really wanted to see where we could push it.

So, there were elements of experimentation, a lot of which I think were really exciting and successful in GQ Style that don’t apply in a one to one way to GQ, which has a little bit more of a traditional structure. There’s a front and middle of the book which has single-page ad adjacencies and then there’s a traditional feature well too.

But those structural differences aside, I have been challenging myself and the whole team here to really think about what is possible. These are blank pages that we’re given every month and we really get to do whatever we want with them.

I’ve been talking a lot about just trying to free ourselves of too much institutional memory, in terms of what print magazines are supposed to do, so that we can really look at each page and each story in a fresh way. And we’ve already been making a lot of the moves; my third issue as editor in chief, the April issue, came out recently and we put the cover online; it has J. Cole on the cover.

There have been quite a few moves that we’ve made to make it different and I think what I intended and what we’re finding so far in the reaction is that people are really noticing a difference, but I don’t think it’s in any way like unrecognizably GQ. We haven’t transformed it so much that large portions of our audience are confused or wondering what happened to it. (Laughs) But at the same time it seems like everybody notices the difference. So far I’ve just been thrilled that the reaction has been incredibly positive.

Samir Husni: We seem to be seeing a shift from the celebrity editors to more of the down-to-earth person editors. In your case, I’ve read some of your editorials in GQ Style, you get very personal, even discussing your battle with cancer. Are we seeing a transformation in the magazine business, would you rather have that one-on-one conversation with your readers, as though friends?

Will Welch: The experience of being the editor in chief of the smaller spinoff title, GQ Style, it was an incredible experience, not just on a professional level, but also on a personal level, because I found that the more that I just allowed myself to be who I am, rather than trying to adopt any expectation or image of what an editor in chief or a Condé Nast editor in chief is supposed to look like, the more successful that we were.

So, that applied to the stories that I would find, the covers that we went after, the way that I approached writing my editor’s letter, and the way that I interacted with my team. And then also with the way that I presented myself in a more public way to the world at large. And I just found that the more I trusted myself to be who I am in my gut, it was right. And I’ve done a lot of personal work over the years to try to align the person who I am in my head and my heart, in my family with my wife, to who I am when I show up at work and who I am if I do an interview or have my photo taken or hold a meeting; all of those things, I just really try to have all of those things be aligned. And I’ve found that as I’ve done that, not only do I just feel good about myself, but we also have been having success in the work.

So, it’s really just been a matter of gaining confidence and trust in myself that I don’t need to be anybody else’s idea of what the editor in chief of GQ should be. I just need to be myself. In a way, sure we’re a men’s fashion and style magazine and we’re a lifestyle magazine and we do these incredible reported features, and there are all of these proud histories and different throughlines for what GQ is about or what it is meant to accomplish, but to me it’s really about helping our readers to be their best selves. And I’ve been trying to do the same.

Samir Husni: Being yourself today, what do you think has been the biggest challenge or obstacle that you’ve had to overcome to reach this stage?

Will Welch: In the early stages of GQ Style, with the first issue, I wanted to prove that it was its own magazine and could stand alone and that it had its own voice. And I was a little bit more calculating with the balance of stories in the first issue and was very methodical about what message that we would be sending to the industry and to our community and our readership, and to our potential readership.

But over the course of making the first handful of issues, I just found that I didn’t need to be so calculating, I could just be more instinctive. There’s an editor that I hired, now he works on GQ and GQ Style and GQ dotcom, but I initially hired him to work on GQ Style and his name is Noah Johnson and he was the GQ Style senior editor throughout the course of the last few years of making that magazine. And he grew up in Troy, New York as a skateboarder, and he was bringing all of these amazing skate ideas, because the way I see style through the lens of music, he sees style through the lens of skateboarding in a lot of ways.

As I was finding that the more I let my best ideas just be what they were, as Noah started getting all of these skateboarding-related content into GQ Style, that stuff really took on a life of its own. So again, it’s not just about me, it’s about the staff as well. Just getting to be their best selves through the pages.

So, just that process was one thing, and then the other would be what you mentioned; I was diagnosed with testicular cancer last year in late 2018, and that was an incredible witness test. It’s one thing to hold all of these beliefs and to hope that you’re living your life in a certain way, and then when you’re faced with a doctor telling you that you have cancer at age 37, although 37 is actually on the older side for that particular type of cancer, but I feel like a young vivacious man, and to be told that you have cancer, you definitely examine your life and ask yourself if you’re really practicing what you preach. How square is the life I’m living with the life that I would like to think that I’m living? And when I asked those questions when faced with that experience, I was just filled with so much gratitude for what I felt like were the answers that came back.

So with those two experiences, one was like more of a slow building of self-confidence over a couple of years, the process of leading this little team and this little magazine called GQ Style, and the other one was being faced with what could have been a frightening moment and found that I was just so full of gratitude. I went into surgery and had a healthful prognosis and I’m very grateful for that as well. Those two experiences were nice benchmarks for me and have given me a lot of confidence going into this new role.

And the experience of sharing about it was really powerful. The decision to write my editor’s letter about the testicular cancer diagnosis; I was really unsure if I was going to regret that decision. But instead, it was quite the opposite. There was an incredible outpouring of love and support and some readers saying that they had gone through the same thing, or their moms had breast cancer; just every imaginable response. It all came flooding back when I put that out there and it was an incredibly rewarding experience and also just a testament to the power of the platform. You’ve been on this editor’s letter page at the front of an issue of GQ Style, if you say something meaningful to people this amazing dialogue will come out of it. It was remarkable.

Samir Husni: Is there anything you’d like to add?

Will Welch: One thing that’s important is that we’re now in this time, especially with social media, which is just incredible, like Instagram is an incredibly intimate format. Podcasting is an incredibly intimate format. Instagram stories are amazingly intimate, you can watch people broadcast themselves waking up in the morning with their partner or with their pet; it’s just deeply intimate.

And a title like GQ has to ask itself in this environment, the idea of GQ is this kind of vaunted, haloed thing, but what people want now is a little bit more down-to-earth, but at the same time with GQ, I don’t want to give up this authority that we’ve earned over the decades and the hard-earned gloss that we’ve also earned. So, how do you do both of those things and I think one way, there are many ways, but one way that I really believe in is, as you have identified, I’ve done it through personalizing some of the writing that I’ve been doing, as have many of the other writers and editors on the staff.

But we are also increasingly looking at GQ dotcom and our incredibly powerful social media platforms, and our absolutely, enormously thriving video platform, as opportunities to turn the staff and the way the brand is structured inside out a little bit and show some of the mechanisms and say this is a bunch of cool and talented, diverse men and women who are making an impact. GQ is not this glowing brand on a mountaintop; it’s made by cool people like you who really love this stuff and live and breathe it, whether that’s pop culture or politics, style or long-form journalism, eating, drinking, or travel. It’s really just put together by the hard work of some really interesting people.

And so we want to put those people forward and now we have all of these incredible pools to do that, specifically social media and video and occasionally the pages of the magazine. That’s something that we’ve been mindful of and I do think it’s a little bit different. It’s been evolving over the years. I remember first noticing Jane Magazine doing this. You really got the sense of this cool community of stylish girls who were making this magazine and the pages were really imbued with their voices, so that was kind of a predecessor of the way that we’re thinking now and we also have all of these cool pools to bring it to life.

Samir Husni: What you are introducing in print also is amazing. When I look at the couples that you publish, or the family, such as Simon Rasmussen, Marz Lovejoy, and their daughter, Nomi; do you feel that the impact a print page can have is different? I mean, this would be a fleeting moment on Instagram, but when you can hold it in the magazine, you’re still looking at it, but it’s tangible. How do you decide what goes into print and what goes on Instagram?

Will Welch: I think that one thing that I’ve always loved, whether it’s an early interview with Kanye where he was talking about a particular uncle who had a stack of GQs in the living room that was his height, or some friends that have texted me pictures of each issue of GQ Style saved in chronological order on their shelf; I think with print we are leaving a different kind of record behind in that it is a documentation of a moment.

One thing that I think is really fun about magazines in general is they’re not gone in a flash, but they don’t have the permanence of books either. In a way, you want to pick up a book and feel like it should be as relevant today as it was the day it was printed. A magazine is intended, I’ve called it in the past, it’s semi-permanent. It’s like the semi-permanent documentation. You want a magazine to feel urgent and timely and of the moment, but the stories should also be worth printing in a way that can stay on somebody’s shelf or in an archive.

So, it’s really a balance. I love the immediacy of social media; I love that my Instagram stories go away after 24 hours. They just evaporate. That is really exciting to me. If you’re interested in image making and editorial and all the things that I’m interested, that presents its own unique opportunity. What do I want to say with this image or this short video that’s broadcast out to my followers and then just goes away? That’s an awesome editorial opportunity. With a magazine, it’s only on sale for a month, but then it hangs around longer, that is its own incredible opportunity. And digital in one sense feels more fleeting, but you can Google any story that GQ has published in the last 12 to 15 years and find it on GQ dotcom right now and read it for free. So, there is also digital archiving going on. All of these dials are really fun to play with.

It’s exciting to me that you called out the fact that we’ve shot couples because I just love shooting couples. Basically what I’m looking for in our photographs is for them to strike you visually but also emotionally. And I feel like taking an intimate portrait or going to do a travel story with a couple and they’re not a couple that we have cast and put together for the trip, but they’re actually partners in life, you just get something interesting and dynamic and electric and intimate.

We published a photo of Simon Rasmussen, who is editor in chief of Office magazine and he does some styling for us, he is a really interesting stylist. He and his wife Marz Lovejoy, and their baby Nomi are in a picture together and Marz is breastfeeding Nomi. And it was a cool, young, stylish influential, exciting family in our New York fashion community, let’s put them in the pages of the magazine.

And again, I’ve really been thinking of these early issues as an active community building and that’s just one example. They’re an influential couple in the New York fashion community; Simon works with us, I got to know Marz just a little bit through seeing her and Simon out and about. I’m still getting to know them. I know Simon much better because we’ve done a bunch of shoots together, but they’re interesting people and I want them to think of GQ as an outlet for them and also hopefully it’s a magazine that they can’t wait to grab every month. And that they are super-engaged with what we’re doing online. I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, so if a reader in Atlanta sees that cool community being established between GQ and Simon and other people like that, they can be a part of that too from Atlanta. That’s what we’re building.

Samir Husni: What’s the biggest misconception you think people have about you?

Will Welch: There is a funny one, very low-key, it’s not a big one, but we’ve really been evolving the look and feel of the fashion in the pages and because with my first editor’s letter I was wearing jeans and untied shoes, and then I did this other interview about the future of the suit, and so people have been asking if GQ was turning away from the suit, (Laughs) because for years we’ve been the champions of the suit and I would just like to say that I’m wearing a suit right now; I was wearing a suit yesterday. Tomorrow, I don’t know, it may be a suit and it may not. We haven’t turned our back on the suit.

I’m just really interested in exploring all modes of men’s styles, some of them are super-conservative and some of them are super-progressive. So, that’s just one little thing that’s popped up in the last few weeks. Otherwise, I don’t know. I don’t feel misunderstood, I feel like the GQ community and the magazine industry and the fashion industry and the culture industries, music and Hollywood; I feel like people are still getting to know me. As I said, I started working at GQ in 2007 and really it’s been a slow evolution with me having a more public-facing role. I feel like me and the world are just getting to know each other; I don’t feel particularly misunderstood.

Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

Will Welch: What keeps me up at night and the sort of next phase in this new era of GQ is really getting all of the things that we’re doing moving in the same direction. We’ve been working really hard together as a team to articulate exactly what this new vision is for GQ. And I think it’s already pretty dialed in print, because with print you have the opportunity to…each month it’s just blank pages, there is a stop and a start to building each issue.

But with GQ dotcom and our social feeds and our video channels, especially on YouTube, those are always on and they’re just churning and churning. And so to redirect any one of them, you can’t just do it overnight, it has to be a steady evolution. That is really what this next phase is. It’s making sure that all of those pieces, because we are a multi-tentacle brand. We push out so much really cool content everyday across all of these different platforms that we have at our disposal. And I just want to keep refining the vision and keep evolving what that vision means to each of those platforms, because I think you have to be really platform specific, even just within Instagram itself. Instagram stories are best at something that is incredibly different when you really get into it than what works on the Instagram main feed. But you have to think about each of those things as their own editorial idea.

To give you an example, what we do in the magazine is quite polished, but what thrives on Instagram’s stories, what’s exciting and gives you a thrill is something that’s really raw. So, how can this legacy Condé Nast fashion/style magazine that has always prided itself on incredible polish find a raw expression that is going to be in keeping with the environment of Instagram stories?

So, that is what the team and I talk about every day and we’ve already made huge strides, but I do think we have a ways to go still across GQ dotcom, video, social; each minute piece of each of those platforms, such as how can we be using Twitter in a more compelling way instead of just pushing out links. And we’re doing it; we’re doing it every day. I just want to keep refining.

That is the next phase in terms of the internal priorities. In the meantime, I feel like we’re off to the races with the broader vision and this idea of focusing on elevated stylishness. We’ll just keep going with that.

The other thing I would say is just keep having fun. I love this work; I love this role; I love this job; I love this title; I love my team. And I truly believe, and if it sounds a little bit like a Hallmark card, so be it, I don’t care, I truly believe that if we’re having fun making this stuff that our audience will have fun reading it, watching it, and engaging with it. That to me is the key. I am excited to come to work every morning and if the other people on the team feel that way too, I think people are going to be excited to wake up every morning and check out what we’ve been doing.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

“The magazine is a different experience. Each issue of the magazine is just a beautifully curated product that stands on its own, so we craft our lineups for every issue to feel cohesive and interesting, to be this great mix of information that will stand the test of time.” Amy Conway (On the difference between finding answers on Google and the magazine)…

“When we reach out to them, we ask them to be on the cover and being on the cover of a magazine is still a really powerful thing for people. So yes, in terms of that, being on the cover of a magazine, there is no substitute for that. It’s a permanent thing, so to speak, that you’re creating. And it’s a beautiful object. It’s a living entity, and there is no substitute for that.” Amy Conway (On when they reach out to people about being on the cover of the magazine, do they specify it’s for the printed magazine)…

Health magazine has been a trusted authority in wellness for almost forty years. The January/February issue marks the debut of an updated design with a cleaner look and bolder typography. Editor in Chief Amy Conway has led the brand’s creative team to provide the magazine’s audience with inspiring and empowering information that speaks to the way people think about wellness today, and the redesign is an offshoot of that, her belief in the way health and wellness are reflected in today’s society: clean, simple, fresh, and modern.

I spoke with Amy recently and we talked about the redesign and the infusion of streamlined simplicity that it gave the magazine. Amy defined Health as the handbook for living well in every way. She added that the magazine was staying true to its roots in giving readers smart, science-backed health content they can trust. And with the redesign, that same trusted content is showcased in a much fresher and more modern design.

Amy’s belief in the power of the printed cover is also deep. The cover of the magazine is a powerful tool and Amy believes it still holds the key to credibility and that there is no substitution for that credibility. The cover of the magazine still holds permanence and integrity as nothing else does.

So, I hope that you enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Amy Conway, editor in chief of Health magazine. It’s a refreshing conversation that will have you seeking good “Health” at the newsstands.

But first the sound-bites:

On her first few months at Health magazine: It’s definitely been an evolution since I got here. What I always tell people is that I was a subscriber to Health and a fan of the magazine before I was the editor. I love working out and I’m very interested in food and nutrition and in living well longer. So, I am a reader. Lucky for me, this is really a dream job for me. And again, as a reader of the magazine, I knew when I came on that this brand had a lot of talented people creating great content. It’s really solid, trusted information, this magazine has been around, and people really rely on it. But at the same time, I knew that I wanted to refresh it, both visually and in terms of the tone. So, that’s what we’ve been working on for the last several months.

On how her job as an editor today has evolved or changed over the years: To be an editor you have to be curious and you have to be thinking all the time about what’s happening in our industry, about what our readers want, and you have to be really, really agile. It’s a very dynamic environment. Certain things stay the same. You mentioned that I used to work for Martha Stewart Weddings in particular, right before I came over here, and the two brands might seem really different, but in fact they’re both about quality, authority, and authenticity. So, there are qualities that you can bring, values that are a part of you professionally that you can really bring to any brand and any job once you’ve been in this industry for a while.

On some of the changes she has seen taking place in the health and wellness magazine category: People are just very interested in taking care of themselves, but the shift that I’m really interested in is this idea of health infusing your entire life. And that’s something that we’re bringing to the magazine. Positivity, the sense of motivation, and we’re really empowering our readers to take good care of themselves.

On the value proposition for people to pick up a copy of Health magazine rather than Googling something: If they’re Googling something they have a specific concern and they’re going to find information on it online. And they’ll most likely end up on health.com, which is great because we have a ton of amazing content there. So, we don’t need people to stop doing that. Instead, the magazine is a different experience. Each issue of the magazine is just a beautifully curated product that stands on its own, so we craft our lineups for every issue to feel cohesive and interesting, to be this great mix of information that will stand the test of time.

On whether she tries to do things differently than other health and wellness magazines in the marketplace, such as Women’s Health or Shape: It used to be a much more crowded marketplace in this area, and many areas in our industry. Our publisher always says that there’s been a little bit of a natural selection that’s happened, so the magazines that you just mentioned are the big ones in this area. And of course Shape is one of our sister brands, they sit right next to us here at Meredith. The thing that’s nice is that because there are fewer brands out there, there’s really room for all of us. There are certain things that we cover where there will be overlap. Sometimes I’ll read those magazines and discover that we were going to do that same topic, but then we pivot and do something a little bit different.

On her unique selling proposition when it comes to Health magazine: Health is the handbook for living well in every way. We are staying true to our roots in giving readers smart, science-backed health content they can trust, whether about physical or mental health, fitness, beauty, or food and nutrition. We geek out over the details and love going deep into topics. We don’t just tell you WHAT to buy, we tell you WHY. So if we say a certain beauty product should be in your arsenal, we explain how it works.

On why today she thinks we see health magazines for men or women, but we don’t really have anything for both anymore: I think a lot of the health concerns are different for men and women, and frankly as I’m sure you know, this is a business and the advertisers are definitely going to be different for men and women. So, from a practical standpoint, that’s the way it is. And there’s a lot of content in our magazine; you can do a lot of mental health, emotional health, and relationship health that could be that a man would find interesting. And certainly I’m sure that men are picking up the magazine as well when they see it in their house, But yes, you do need to target a little bit, both from an editorial standpoint and a business standpoint.

On whether she has a specific reader in mind when she assigns articles or stories: We are creating content for a woman who is an adult; she’s not a kid, she’s probably in her 30s, 40s, or 50s and so that’s a pretty big range, there are going to be certain commonalities in that area. But we are creating content that should be applicable and of interest to women in that range. So, when we’re thinking about articles, and that’s the fun part of the job, there are so many different, amazing things that we can cover. We’ll sometimes get excited about something and think well that’s probably a bit too narrow or that’s not going to appeal to everyone, so we try to come up with story ideas and packages that are going to appeal to, again, this woman who is looking for information that will help her live her life now and as she gets older and looks at these different stages in her life.

On whether she ever hits a stumbling block where ideas are scarce: Definitely not. We wish we had more and more pages. There is an infinite number of topics that we can cover, and literally one of the most challenging parts of the job is editing down all of the things that we are excited about here at Health, editing them down to fit into an issue of the magazine.

On what she would hope to tell someone that she had accomplished at Health in 2019: I would say that we would have created a year’s worth of beautiful magazines; the cover is something that we’re really focusing on, of course, it’s a “welcome to the magazine” for every issue. So, we would have created a year’s worth of beautiful magazines with really enticing covers, working with amazing subjects for those covers and great creative teams, photographers as well, to really set the tone that we’re looking for with Health. And the magazine would be robust; we’d be getting great feedback from readers and advertisers, and we’d really be a part of the conversation out there in a big way, in terms of the health and wellness space.

On what she thinks the role of the cover is today, and is that role different today than it was when she first started in the industry: Covers definitely used to be more of a selling vehicle, you needed to scream at readers on the cover to stand out on the newsstand. And it’s a little bit different now for Health. When we’re looking at our covers, for us, we want to stand out by being a little bit quieter and when we were thinking about January/February, the first cover of the redesign, it has Connie Britton on the cover, we were really thinking of it almost as if it were a poster. And we wanted it to look beautiful on its own. We feel like that’s what’s going to make it stand out, and that’s what’s going to make people happy to have it in their home.

On whether that description of the cover fits the majority of magazines today or just Health: I was just speaking about Health, but I do think it’s pretty incredible what we’re seeing in covers out there. People are being less formulaic and they’re looking more to catch your attention with something different and something interesting. So, it’s really fun to look at the newsstand and see what people are doing, because I think a lot of the formulas are going out the window. Their old conventional wisdom, the rules that you were supposed to follow, people are breaking those rules all of the time. And it’s really fun to see.

On whether she thinks the power of print is that you can’t get that same emotional reaction from humans if they just see it or read it online: I do think there is something very special about print and holding a magazine in your hand and looking at these beautiful pictures of her, but certainly you can get an emotional reaction from reading something online as well. They’re different experiences, but what I think is exciting about the time where we are right now, is that there are so many different ways to reach a reader. The fact is when you have a strong brand you can reach your reader in many different ways. You have print and digital; you have social, and there are just new things coming all the time. You just have to have a strong brand and then you can reach your reader in all the places where they are.

On when she reaches out to people to be on the cover, if they ask is it for the cover of the magazine, or does it matter to them if it’s print or digital: When we reach out to them, we ask them to be on the cover and being on the cover of a magazine is still a really powerful thing for people. So yes, in terms of that, being on the cover of a magazine, there is no substitute for that. It’s a permanent thing, so to speak, that you’re creating. And it’s a beautiful object. It’s a living entity, and there is no substitute for that.

On anything she’d like to add: With the redesign, we wanted to give the magazine a much fresher, cleaner, and modern feeling, which really reflects the way people feel about health and wellness today. Our design team is amazing and they worked to give the magazine a cleaner, more streamlined and simple design. It’s inviting and a little bit more elevated. So, we really redesigned the magazine from the covers right on through.

On what grade she would give the redesign project if she were a professor grading a class project: I have to give us an A, but I will say there’s always room for improvement. You do the redesign issue, and anyone who’s worked at a magazine knows this, you do the redesign, it feels like you’re working so hard on this one issue and then you can breathe for about a second and then you’re working on the next one. And you can always make it better. The redesign is not an endpoint, it’s a beginning. And then you have to keep going from there.

On what she would have tattooed upon her brain that would be there forever and no one could ever forget about her: This question of yours, Samir, I always think of as: what’s your mantra? And that’s the language that we use over here at Health. So, I would say be kind, work hard, appreciate the little things, and hug your kids.

On what keeps her up at night: Sleep is something that I am absolutely working on. I’m trying to sleep more and sleep better, that’s definitely a goal of mine. It’s a work in progress, the sleep thing.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Amy Conway, editor in chief, Health magazine.

Samir Husni: It’s been a little over six months since you took over Health magazine, has it been like a walk in a rose garden for you? Describe your first few months at Health.

Amy Conway: It’s definitely been an evolution since I got here. What I always tell people is that I was a subscriber to Health and a fan of the magazine before I was the editor. I love working out and I’m very interested in food and nutrition and in living well longer. So, I am a reader. Lucky for me, this is really a dream job for me. And again, as a reader of the magazine, I knew when I came on that this brand had a lot of talented people creating great content. It’s really solid, trusted information, this magazine has been around, and people really rely on it. But at the same time, I knew that I wanted to refresh it, both visually and in terms of the tone. So, that’s what we’ve been working on for the last several months.

The first couple of issues that I worked on; there were a few little tweaks that I made, but really things had been in progress already and I kind of just went with that for a couple of issues. But then we started working in earnest on the January/February issue, where we did the redesign and a bit of a refresh of the brand overall. So, that’s what we were working on and now we’re well underway with that. It’s been fun and it’s been hard work and both of those things are continuing.

Samir Husni: Before Health, you were the editor of a wedding magazine and editor of Martha Stewart’s books; if someone asked you what qualifies a person to be an editor today, compared to five or ten years ago, what would you tell them? How has your job evolved or changed over the years?

Amy Conway: To be an editor you have to be curious and you have to be thinking all the time about what’s happening in our industry, about what our readers want, and you have to be really, really agile. It’s a very dynamic environment. Certain things stay the same. You mentioned that I used to work for Martha Stewart Weddings in particular, right before I came over here, and the two brands might seem really different, but in fact they’re both about quality, authority, and authenticity. So, there are qualities that you can bring, values that are a part of you professionally that you can really bring to any brand and any job once you’ve been in this industry for a while.

Samir Husni: As you look at the industry, specifically the health and wellness category, being an avid reader, a marathon runner and an exercise enthusiast; what are some of the major changes that you see taking place in the health and wellness magazine category?

Amy Conway: The health and wellness world is really exploding right now. People are so interested in taking good care of themselves, which is amazing. And some sort of poke fun at it a little bit, because certainly having specific workout clothes or gear or going to certain classes is a bit of a new status symbol. So, you could make fun of that a little bit, but at the same time, if going to a great yoga class becomes a status symbol, that’s a lot more positive than some things that people could be doing.

People are just very interested in taking care of themselves, but the shift that I’m really interested in is this idea of health infusing your entire life. And that’s something that we’re bringing to the magazine. Positivity, the sense of motivation, and we’re really empowering our readers to take good care of themselves.

It wasn’t too long ago that when people thought about health and particularly media and the stories that were out there, it was about quick fixes and about losing five pounds in a week, and it’s really not about that. For me, what we’re trying to do is just help women be the very best that they can be, to reach their own goals that they want to set. We’re not going to tell them exactly what they should do, we’re going to give them ideas and we’re going to give them inspiration and they should feel really good and strong and empowered after reading our magazine, and have it be a positive experience. And then use it to make the changes that they want to make in their own lives.

So, we’re not going to tell them what’s wrong with them, we’re going to tell them how to be the best person that they want to be for themselves. To live well, to feel good, to eat well, and to just bring all of these positive changes about in their lives.

Samir Husni: In a digital age, where the first thing a lot of people do is Google if they have a question about something, how do you show them the importance of Health magazine, whether in print or digital? What is the value proposition for people to pick up a copy of Health magazine rather than Googling something?

Amy Conway: If they’re Googling something they have a specific concern and they’re going to find information on it online. And they’ll most likely end up on health.com, which is great because we have a ton of amazing content there. So, we don’t need people to stop doing that. Instead, the magazine is a different experience. Each issue of the magazine is just a beautifully curated product that stands on its own, so we craft our lineups for every issue to feel cohesive and interesting, to be this great mix of information that will stand the test of time.

So, when you come to our magazine, you’re going to be surprised and delighted we hope by what you find in each issue. You’re going to be informed, inspired and you’ll find things that are relevant to your life because we know our reader and what she wants. And again, it’s a different experience. You’re going to go online and search for something more likely and you’ll come to us and you’ll get this mix that we’ve created for you and hopefully feel that it really enhances your life.

Samir Husni: Being a health enthusiast and an avid reader of Health even before you were the editor, when you’re looking at the entire health and wellness magazine spectrum out there, do you feel you need to do things differently? For example, Health magazine needs to do this differently that Women’s Health or Shape or other magazines in the same category? How do you conceive your new issues of Health and do you take into consideration what’s already on the marketplace?

Amy Conway: It used to be a much more crowded marketplace in this area, and many areas in our industry. Our publisher always says that there’s been a little bit of a natural selection that’s happened, so the magazines that you just mentioned are the big ones in this area. And of course Shape is one of our sister brands, they sit right next to us here at Meredith. The thing that’s nice is that because there are fewer brands out there, there’s really room for all of us. There are certain things that we cover where there will be overlap. Sometimes I’ll read those magazines and discover that we were going to do that same topic, but then we pivot and do something a little bit different.

There are certain topics that we definitely have in common, but we each have our own vibe, so I feel like a reader could read all three of us, or could just come to one of us. There is room for all of us out there right now.

Samir Husni: But for you, how do you decide on that point of differentiation? What is your unique selling proposition?

Amy Conway: Health is the handbook for living well in every way. We are staying true to our roots in giving readers smart, science-backed health content they can trust, whether about physical or mental health, fitness, beauty, or food and nutrition. We geek out over the details and love going deep into topics. We don’t just tell you WHAT to buy, we tell you WHY. So if we say a certain beauty product should be in your arsenal, we explain how it works.

Some of the other brands out there go deeper into fashion and lifestyle, and that works for them. But we keep it more focused on what women—largely in their 30s to 50s—can do to feel and look great as they move into and out of different life stages, to live better, longer.

We want all women to feel welcomed by our brand. Inclusivity is important. Real, relatable advice is crucial–no false promises or unattainable goals. No more rock hard abs! Health means many things, and it comes in many shapes and sizes. All are welcome.

Samir Husni: At one stage when Health magazine was American Health, or actually it was a competitor before they merged, American Health magazine was published for both men and women. Why do you think today we see health magazines for men or women, but we don’t really have anything for both anymore?

Amy Conway: I think a lot of the health concerns are different for men and women, and frankly as I’m sure you know, this is a business and the advertisers are definitely going to be different for men and women. So, from a practical standpoint, that’s the way it is. And there’s a lot of content in our magazine; you can do a lot of mental health, emotional health, and relationship health that could be that a man would find interesting. And certainly I’m sure that men are picking up the magazine as well when they see it in their house, But yes, you do need to target a little bit, both from an editorial standpoint and a business standpoint.

Samir Husni: As you mentioned targeting, health is as general interest as it can be. As you are assigning stories, assigning articles, do you have a specific reader in mind? Do you think in terms of Amy is a reader and she’s 35-years-old and loves working out, or do you cast a wider net?

Amy Conway: We are creating content for a woman who is an adult; she’s not a kid, she’s probably in her 30s, 40s, or 50s and so that’s a pretty big range, there are going to be certain commonalities in that area. But we are creating content that should be applicable and of interest to women in that range. So, when we’re thinking about articles, and that’s the fun part of the job, there are so many different, amazing things that we can cover. We’ll sometimes get excited about something and think well that’s probably a bit too narrow or that’s not going to appeal to everyone, so we try to come up with story ideas and packages that are going to appeal to, again, this woman who is looking for information that will help her live her life now and as she gets older and looks at these different stages in her life.

Samir Husni: Do you ever hit a stumbling block where you seem to be running out of ideas?

Amy Conway: Definitely not. We wish we had more and more pages. There is an infinite number of topics that we can cover, and literally one of the most challenging parts of the job is editing down all of the things that we are excited about here at Health, editing them down to fit into an issue of the magazine.

And our website is really incredible and of course they can cover a much broader group of topics; they can cover a lot of newsy things. We have a great team on the web as well, so there’s great info there, some things that we can’t cover in the magazine because they’re just too specific, but they can do them online and they may perform really well there.

Samir Husni: If you and I are chatting a year from now, what would you hope to tell me that you had accomplished at Health in 2019 and how happy are you with that accomplishment?

Amy Conway: I would say that we would have created a year’s worth of beautiful magazines; the cover is something that we’re really focusing on, of course, it’s a “welcome to the magazine” for every issue. So, we would have created a year’s worth of beautiful magazines with really enticing covers, working with amazing subjects for those covers and great creative teams, photographers as well, to really set the tone that we’re looking for with Health. And the magazine would be robust; we’d be getting great feedback from readers and advertisers, and we’d really be a part of the conversation out there in a big way, in terms of the health and wellness space.

Samir Husni: You mentioned the cover, and I’m giving a speech soon about the role of covers in today’s magazine media landscape. What do you think the role of the cover is today, and is that role different today than it was when you first started in the industry?

Amy Conway: Covers definitely used to be more of a selling vehicle, you needed to scream at readers on the cover to stand out on the newsstand. And it’s a little bit different now for Health. When we’re looking at our covers, for us, we want to stand out by being a little bit quieter and when we were thinking about January/February, the first cover of the redesign, it has Connie Britton on the cover, we were really thinking of it almost as if it were a poster. And we wanted it to look beautiful on its own. We feel like that’s what’s going to make it stand out, and that’s what’s going to make people happy to have it in their home. So, we’re going for something a little bit simpler and we want to sell it in that way, instead of really screaming at our reader with cover lines.

Samir Husni: Do you think that description of the cover fits the majority of magazines today, or specifically just Health?

Amy Conway: I was just speaking about Health, but I do think it’s pretty incredible what we’re seeing in covers out there. People are being less formulaic and they’re looking more to catch your attention with something different and something interesting. So, it’s really fun to look at the newsstand and see what people are doing, because I think a lot of the formulas are going out the window. Their old conventional wisdom, the rules that you were supposed to follow, people are breaking those rules all of the time. And it’s really fun to see.

Our March issue is on sale now. And we have Shannen Doherty on the cover and that was really interesting because she is obviously someone people are interested in, in general as an actress, but she also has a real health story to tell. She had breast cancer, she’s now in remission, and she just went through reconstructive surgery. So, she gave us this beautiful, really open, really raw interview, and that’s something that definitely sets this issue apart in a really special way. To see someone who is a personality who people know and want to read about, but she actually had something very powerful and resonant to share with us about Health.

Samir Husni: Do you think that is the power of print, that you can’t get that same reaction from humans if they just see it or read it online?

Amy Conway: I do think there is something very special about print and holding a magazine in your hand and looking at these beautiful pictures of her, but certainly you can get an emotional reaction from reading something online as well. They’re different experiences, but what I think is exciting about the time where we are right now, is that there are so many different ways to reach a reader. The fact is when you have a strong brand you can reach your reader in many different ways. You have print and digital; you have social, and there are just new things coming all the time. You just have to have a strong brand and then you can reach your reader in all the places where they are.

Samir Husni: When you reach out to those people to be on the cover, do they ask is this for the cover of the magazine, or does it matter?

Amy Conway: When we reach out to them, we ask them to be on the cover and being on the cover of a magazine is still a really powerful thing for people. So yes, in terms of that, being on the cover of a magazine, there is no substitute for that. It’s a permanent thing, so to speak, that you’re creating. And it’s a beautiful object. It’s a living entity, and there is no substitute for that.

Samir Husni: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Amy Conway: With the redesign, we wanted to give the magazine a much fresher, cleaner, and modern feeling, which really reflects the way people feel about health and wellness today. Our design team is amazing and they worked to give the magazine a cleaner, more streamlined and simple design. It’s inviting and a little bit more elevated. So, we really redesigned the magazine from the covers right on through.

Samir Husni: So, you’re a professor, Amy, and you’re going to grade this project. What grade would you give it, an A, B+, an A-, a C?

Amy Conway: I have to give us an A, but I will say there’s always room for improvement. You do the redesign issue, and anyone who’s worked at a magazine knows this, you do the redesign, it feels like you’re working so hard on this one issue and then you can breathe for about a second and then you’re working on the next one. And you can always make it better. The redesign is not an endpoint, it’s a beginning. And then you have to keep going from there. They’re always evolving, always changing, and you can always keep improving.

Samir Husni: If you could have one thing tattooed upon your brain that no one would ever forget about you, what would it be?

Amy Conway: This question of yours, Samir, I always think of as: what’s your mantra? And that’s the language that we use over here at Health. So, I would say be kind, work hard, appreciate the little things, and hug your kids.

Samir Husni: What’s the biggest misconception people have about you?

Amy Conway: I have absolutely no idea how to answer that one. But now I’m intrigued. I may have to pull my colleagues aside and figure that one out. But I hope that I’m pretty much just myself with people, so I don’t think in those terms, but now you’ve really got me thinking.

Samir Husni: Last time you and I talked, you were the editor in chief of Martha Stewart Weddings and now you’re at Health; so, are you sleeping better or is there something keeping you up at night?

Amy Conway: (Laughs) Sleep is something that I am absolutely working on. I’m trying to sleep more and sleep better, that’s definitely a goal of mine. It’s a work in progress, the sleep thing.

Samir Husni: Thank you.