Whenever I told someone this past year that I was researching the state of children’s magazines in America, their response was almost always the same: Aren’t they dying?
At first, I’d laugh and say, “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.” But over time, I started pushing back with curiosity. “Why do you think that?” I’d ask. The answer was always—you probably guessed it—screens.
For my master’s degree thesis, “Magazines Matter: An Analysis of Children’s Magazines in Post-Pandemic America,” I interviewed executive leadership of many publishers across the industry, including Highlights for Children, Scholastic Magazines+, TIME for Kids, Inc., Cricket Media, Topix Media, The Week Junior, Ranger Rick, Kazoo, Honest History, Kennedy Publishing, DC Thomson, Storytime, and past leadership at LEGO Publishing and National Geographic Kids. I also spoke with experts in editorial, distribution, newsstands, accessibility, and the magazine industry in general (including Mr. Magazine himself!). Legacy titles and newcomers, school-based and home-based, subscription and newsstand—my interviews touched most corners of the industry to provide a well-rounded snapshot of its current state.
And here’s what I learned: No, children’s magazines aren’t dying. But they are still figuring out their place in a shifting landscape.
What I Found
The pandemic boosted magazine sales. Parents turned to subscriptions as screen-free tools to keep kids engaged at home, while school-based publishers quickly pivoted to launch digital editions for virtual learning.
That boom didn’t last. Since the return to (somewhat) normalcy, sales have flatlined or declined.
Affordability is a major concern for both publishers and customers. Not unfamiliar to the rest of the publishing industry, costs are rising across the board—paper, production, shipping, distribution, retail space, you name it. Publishers are limited in how much they can pass on to the customer, though, as children’s magazines have a lower ceiling that customers are willing to pay than the rest of the magazine industry.
Competition is fierce for time, attention, and money. Because magazines operate in such a gray space—not quite a toy nor a book—competition isn’t just with screens, but with anything that could fill a child’s time or anything an adult might buy their child for entertainment or learning.
Publishers need to be findable. Because children age out of magazines quickly (within 5-7 years), publishers emphasize acquiring new customers, not getting renewals. But traditional marketing methods are becoming inaccessible, with direct mail increasing in cost, SEO falling victim to artificial intelligence, and social media ads providing mixed results.
Traditional retail is not working. Checkout pocket costs are increasing, the overages are inefficient, and availability is shrinking because of retailers prioritizing more profitable products.
International publishers face unique challenges. U.K.-based publishers cite high overseas shipping costs, difficulty navigating the U.S.’s distribution infrastructure, worries about America’s heightened litigation culture, and unsustainably high retail return rates.
Content ecosystems are the future. Publishers are shifting from thinking of themselves as magazine publishers to content companies. They’re repurposing stories across newsletters, podcasts, videos, books, and other media.
Niche magazines are thriving.Kazoo, Honest History, and other indie titles prove that tightly focused, mission-driven products can succeed with passionate audiences willing to pay for quality.
Why It Matters
Child reading scores in the U.S. have been declining since 2012 and are now at levels unseen since the 1970s. While magazines haven’t been found to directly improve reading scores, plenty of research shows that they get reluctant readers excited about reading. Magazines blend play with learning, spark curiosity, build confidence, and create community. Flexible and low-pressure, they are tactile and screen-free reading materials that easily fit into busy lives. They also scale efficiently, making them a cost-effective way to get print into underserved communities.
In short, children’s magazines can be one of the best tools to spark a lifelong love of reading. They help not only develop the next generation of readers and leaders, but also safeguard the future of the publishing industry.
The Path Forward
If children’s magazines are going to help address falling literacy rates, publishers need to:
Find their place in content ecosystems. Print should complement digital, not compete with it. Children don’t want to choose between the two mediums, and they shouldn’t have to.
Double down on print’s strengths. Print magazines are the tangible, finite, and premium component of content ecosystems and should be treated as such. For example, The Week Junior, the fastest growing magazine in America, succeeds by taking the news—a topic that can easily overwhelm kids with how endlessly available it is online—and explaining it in a concise way that kids understand and adults trust.
Stay financially viable. Diversify revenue streams, especially by repurposing magazine content for licensing and other product lines. Lower costs by smartly thinking through how to make the business more efficient.
Build communities, not transactions. Loyalty comes from a sense of belonging, not one-off sales. Magazines offer a safe space to connect for kids who are too young for social media, and they can also be a natural community for parents looking to find others with shared interests or values.
Grow audiences intentionally. Organic PR builds credibility, and strategic partnerships (such as Highlights for Children’s recent collaborations with Google and Cocomelon) expand audiences for both parties. Some publishers are also focusing on younger audiences to funnel them in earlier and extend the time before the children age out of their products.
Lean into niches. Confident, purpose-driven magazines are proving resilient by attracting and retaining families that resonate with their message.
Expand access. Organizations such as MagLiteracy partner with publishers and the public to get magazines into underserved communities. Low-hanging fruit is the inefficient excess due to high return rates, but a solution would require coordination between many publishers and distributors.
Don’t be afraid to experiment. The most successful magazines are adapting to changing trends in where people shop, how to reach their customers, and the latest popular media. (Do anyone else’s kids have KPop Demon Hunters music on repeat right now?)
Know that we’re all in this together. The pandemic disbanded a lot of communication between publishers, but collaboration in the future will be key. Some publishers are already collaborating by hosting their licensed content on the same platform, negotiating scale deals with printers, and sharing checkout pockets.
The leaders I spoke with were cautiously optimistic, yet deeply realistic about the future of the children’s magazines in America. While up against many challenges, no one is predicting doom. Children’s magazines have survived the advent of the radio, TV, the internet, and smartphones. They can survive this moment, too, if publishers approach them with intention, creativity, and a willingness to change.
Molly Bruni is a freelance editor with a particular passion for children’s magazines and other avenues of learning through play. You can find her at mollybruni.com.
John F. Kelly fell in love with comics at age 10. He was so fascinated by Air Pirates Funnies that he dedicated the second issue of his new magazine, Dummy, to the Air Pirates. His story reminded me a lot of my own childhood in Lebanon, when I first discovered Superman at the same age that he discovered Air Pirates Funnies.
John went on to become a writer, a marketer, an educator, and later in life, an editor and publisher of a new magazine he aptly named Dummy. In the magazine industry, the term “dummy” refers to a prototype edition of a publication. He had originally been showing the prototype of his magazine and referred to it as the Pee-Wee Playhouse zine prototype—essentially, the dummy issue. And thus, Dummy magazine was born.
As a comics historian, John uses Dummy to explore comics history one subject at a time. In addition to the magazine, he also hosts a YouTube channel called DummyZine. I had the pleasure of interviewing John, where we talked about his love for print, his views on comics and their history, the impact of new technologies such as AI, and the reasons many are returning to print as independent publishers in this digital age.
So, without any further ado, please join me in this pleasant conversation with an editor and publisher that reminded me of myself falling in love with comics and transitioning to magazines.
Enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ Interview with John Kelly, publisher and editor of Dummy magazine. But first, the soundbites:
On what is Dummy magazine: “It’s a comics history publication that I focus on one particular topic for each issue.”
On why he launched Dummy: “I missed the printed magazine, holding something in my hand that had something that I spent a long time writing about and researching.”
On naming the magazine Dummy: “I was taking out this Pee-Wee’s Playhouse zine and showing it to them and saying, here’s the dummy of my new zine, my new Pee-Wee’s Playhouse zine. And that’s just what I was calling it because I started in printing and publishing, and that was just a term that I was familiar with.”
On the resurgence of print in this digital age: “There’s an analog movement for different people in this country and in the world. We consume so much information online. Print is like taking a break medium. I think that’s part of it.”
On the difference between issue one and two: “It was very important to me to have it look like a real magazine, so that there was a much more of a disciplined approach to it than my, let’s just throw this thing together, first issue. The second issue, which took a lot longer, in part was also tracking down the art.”
On his love forAir Pirates Funnies since he was a kid: “I opened Air Pirates Funnies number one and looked inside and saw, ah, this is not Mickey Mouse. This is not the Mickey Mouse that I know. They’re doing something very different here. And so from that point on, I’ve been really puzzled and fascinated by the Air Pirates. This was my chance to explore that deeper.”
On his view about AI: “I don’t really consider any technology a foe. I think things can be misused. Anything can be misused, and AI certainly misuses a lot of things.”
More on his views on AI: “Most of my friends are cartoonists or artists or writers. I’m a writer myself. The threat of AI stealing the intellectual property of artists and other people, plus other issues beyond that, makes it extremely dangerous and something that is theft.”
On his advice to start a new magazine: “It’s very difficult and very expensive, but that’s not a reason not to do it, right?”
On what he does to rewind: “I don’t really rewind. I’m working all of the time.”
On what keeps him up at night: “Nothing. I sleep great. I take care of myself. I eat well. I exercise. I’m doing something I absolutely love to do. I’m completely content with everything.”
And now for the lightly edited Mr. Magazine™ Interview with John Kelly, publisher and editor of Dummy magazine:
Samir Husni: Give me the elevator pitch of this new magazine, Dummy.
John Kelly: Well, it’s a funny story. The elevator pitch, I guess, would be that it’s a comics history publication that I focus on one particular topic for each issue, and the guideline for what that topic is, is that it’s something that I’m extremely interested in, maybe I know something about it, but I want to know a lot more.
So by doing the research in the writing and putting it all together, I do a very deep dive on that topic so that I educate myself about it. And as a result, when it’s printed, others can also learn what I’ve learned.
Samir Husni: What’s the genesis of the magazine and why did you decide to call it Dummy?
John Kelly: It’s a funny backstory because I was not planning on doing this at all.
I’ve been writing about comics history for many years. I’ve been writing for TheComics Journal magazine since the late 1980s or early 1990s, but more than 35 years. And I’ve written many, many pieces for that publication.
In recent years, as magazines, the printed magazines, have mostly disappeared, including, for the most part, The Comics Journal. They do a print publication occasionally. Most of my pieces have only existed online, and I was just kind of getting sick of that.
I missed the printed magazine, holding something in my hand that had something that I spent a long time writing about and researching. I’d written many pieces, and they only existed somewhere out there on the internet. I love printed materials.
I certainly am of the age that I grew up with them, and I wanted to put together something for myself. I chose to do that first issue on the Art of the Pee-Wee’s Playhouse show because I knew the people who were involved in that process, and I had seen all their archival material many times. So, I put together, really just for myself, a printed publication about that story, and I brought it to a friend’s house.
He had a color copy machine, and I had laid it out in InDesign and quickly put it together, brought over some flats to his house. We printed out the pages, folded, stapled them, and there it was. I held it in my hand, and I was very happy, and I thought that would be it.
I thought that I was making one copy just for myself because it was something that I wanted to do. Then people started seeing it. I was showing it to them, and I was saying, you know the term dummy in printing? It refers to a prototype publication. I was taking out this Pee-Wee’s Playhouse zine and showing it to them and saying, here’s the dummy of my new zine, my new Pee-Wee’s Playhouse zine. And that’s just what I was calling it because I started in printing and publishing, and that was just a term that I was familiar with.
More and more people wanted copies of it, so I thought I would print up a couple of them. I wanted to give a copy to the people who I had interviewed, to Gary Panter and Mark Newgarden and Kaz and Wayne White and Ric Heitzman. I wanted to send them copies for their own, and I thought I would print up 10 copies of it.
But more people learned about it and they wanted copies, so I, reluctantly, decided that I would print up a hundred copies of it. And the last thing that I did before I sent the files to the printer was, I thought, well it’s got to have a name, you know? I just don’t want to call it the Pee-Wee’s Playhouse zine? I wanted to call it something, and I liked the name Dummy. It was stupid and it had a secondary meaning to it, so I thought it was kind of funny to call a magazine Dummy.
Very quickly, maybe in 90 seconds, I composed the logotype for that name for the masthead title and just slapped it on to the magazine at the last moment. I was printing a hundred copies thinking that it would take me 10 years to get rid of them, that they would be in boxes in my basement forever. Then I posted one little thing on my Facebook page saying, hey, I made up some copies of this.
If you want one, just contact me. And they sold out in two hours. They were all gone immediately.
I was like, wow. Then the money from selling those copies allowed me to print 300 more, and those sold out immediately too. Then since then, I’ve just been reprinting them and still today, I still get orders for that copy.
That’s basically how it all started, but it was not something that was planned. I’m extremely happy that there are people out there who want it, who want a printed publication. I didn’t realize that there as many people out there, like me, who missed print and the printed matter. I’m happy that they exist.
Samir Husni: Why do you think is this resurgence of the independent return to print?
John Kelly: There’s an analog movement for different people in this country and in the world.
We consume so much information online. Print is like taking a break medium. I think that’s part of it. There’s a novelty aspect to it too, that people are not expecting a printed publication that’s well printed, produced, and designed as possible.
I want it to be a beautiful piece that people can look at. I can only say personally, I absolutely hate reading long things online. I’m getting older, maybe that has something to do with it.
My eyesight is failing and the chore of reading something online that is extremely long and complicated. I just won’t do it, and that includes my own work. I still write for TheComics Journal, and I tend to write very long pieces, one of the things that prompted me to really embrace doing a publication again, myself, was that I would say I wouldn’t even read my pieces online because they’re too long.
Not that because they’re bad, but just because there’s too long, and you get distracted. You get pulled away from something and you think, well, I’ll go back to that. Then you’re bombarded with 9 million other things that take you away from it.
You end up two years later thinking, oh, there was something that I wanted to read. If you have the printed thing, you can read part of it, put it down, read it again. And if you like it, you can save it and read it years from now.
Samir Husni: Your journey from issue one to issue two, has it been a walk in a rose garden or you had some issues?
John Kelly: No, no, no, no, no. With the first issue, since I wasn’t expecting it to exist, I probably designed that issue very quickly. I have rudimentary InDesign skills and layout skills.
I can get by to do like a mock-up of something. I’ve been using Adobe products since they came out, so I know how to use them. Also the subject matter for that first issue, the looseness of the art of the Pee Wee Herman program really worked well with my somewhat laissez-faire design for that issue, right? Once I was going to do a second issue, I wanted to really step it up and make it as beautiful as I possibly could.
All the images in the second issue are scanned at very high resolution from primary sources, so either the original art or usually a very rare, printed publication. There’s a lot of work that goes into cleaning up those images and having them color corrected and presented on the page so that they look like the actual artifact, like you could reach down and pick it up off the page.
That’s what I was going for, at least. It was very important to me to have it look like a real magazine, so that there was a much more of a disciplined approach to it than my, let’s just throw this thing together, first issue. The second issue, which took a lot longer, in part was also tracking down the art.
There were specific pieces of art that I wanted for that issue that took a long time to find, like who owned the originals for this piece, who had the original piece or who had a copy of this thing that there’s maybe three copies in existence. Getting that and then scanning it and working with the it took a long time, but in the end, it was worth it. Also, the Air Pirates story is a very complicated story.
It’s an extremely complicated story that I don’t think has been captured in the way that I’ve done in this issue. So, there were a lot of moving parts and a lot of people that I was talking to from the Air Pirates and around the Air Pirates for that issue. I wanted to make sure that I said that story as well as I possibly could.
Samir Husni: Judging by the poster above your chair, you’re an Air Pirates fan?
John Kelly: Oh yeah, sure. The Air Pirates have been very important to me since I was a little boy. I first saw copies of Air Pirates one and two when I was 10 years old and I was over a friend’s house. This friend had an older brother who was a junior or senior in high school.
He had a stash of underground comics hidden in his room that I knew about. When I would be over their house and when the brother wasn’t around, I would sneak into his room and go through the comics and look at them. I was way younger than I should have been looking at those things. But mixed in with the guy’s copies of Zap and Freak Brothers and some other underground comics were these like Mickey Mouse comic books.
At first, I didn’t know what they were. To me, they were just like regular Mickey Mouse comic books. That’s what they look like to me.
I paid no attention to them. But I wondered why those were there? Why were these Mickey Mouse comic books in there with these dirty comic books? And eventually I opened Air Pirates Funnies number one and looked inside and saw, ah, this is not Mickey Mouse. This is not the Mickey Mouse that I know.
They’re doing something very different here. And so from that point on, I’ve been really puzzled and fascinated by the Air Pirates.
This was my chance to explore that deeper.
Samir Husni: We live in a digital age and AI is everywhere now.Do you consider AI a friend or a foe of the printed matter?
John Kelly: I don’t really consider any technology a foe. I think things can be misused. Anything can be misused, and AI certainly misuses a lot of things.
Most of my friends are cartoonists or artists or writers. I’m a writer myself. The threat of AI stealing the intellectual property of artists and other people, plus other issues beyond that, makes it extremely dangerous and something that is theft.
I agree with those friends of mine who absolutely hate it and don’t want it in their lives. They don’t want their artwork stolen and reconfigured and used for other purposes without their permission. I completely understand that, and I support that.
That said, AI is a lot more than just that. That’s a bad side of what it does. I don’t think we were recording this, but when we first started, you were talking about how you do your transcriptions and that’s an AI process. That’s helpful.
That’s extremely helpful. There are other things that AI can do that is beneficial.
So, I am not 100 percent against it, because in theory it can be a very useful tool. I remember when desktop publishing was first starting, that was a threat to people who were publishing in the earlier, more traditional ways.
Society adapted to the new technology and now it’s what’s used. I still love the old methods of printing. I print a lot of things on a letterpress machine.
I love the fact that I have access to a letterpress, not just one, access to several letterpress machines. And I take advantage of that, and I print things with that technology.
I love the way that they look. It’s not efficient for me to be printing an entire issue of Dummy on a letterpress machine these days. And so it’s offset printed in Chicago and then mailed to me.
I would love it if I had a letterpress machine or some other old-fashioned printer in my basement that I could crank it out whenever I wanted a new copy and do it myself. But, logistically, I’m not able to do that.
So, that’s how I view AI. It can be a very bad thing. In some ways it is a very bad thing. In a lot of ways, it’s a very bad thing.
In other ways, it’s something that we all use, whether we know it or not.
Samir Husni: If someone came to you and says, John, I have this idea of a new magazine, should I go ahead, and do it? Would you tell them, yes? Or you would tell them forget about it.
John Kelly: It’s very difficult and very expensive, but that’s not a reason not to do it, right? It would depend on what their idea was. I hope that because of Dummy and a couple of other newer publications that I really love, I hope a lot more people start doing their own, whatever it is, their own printed thing.
I was just at the Small Press Expo this past weekend in Bethesda, Maryland, and I ran, along with Gary Hallgren, a member of the Air Pirates, we ran a workshop for younger artists on how to make mini-comics, Tijuana Bibles, and how to print your own little publication. We had a jammed session. The session was sold out, and it was great to see all these artists making their own little comics and holding them up and showing them. They were coming up to me afterwards and showing me what they did, and I loved that. I think people should explore whatever channels they can to have their expression created, whether that’s digital, whether it’s printed, whether it’s music, whether it’s painting, anything that they have a passion for.
I would say that I think one of the reasons Dummy is doing well is that it’s really a pure labor of love on my part. I think that’s very important. I’m not doing it because this will, I’m thinking, oh, this is going to make me money, because that’s probably not going to happen. My goal is that it makes enough money that I can keep doing it. So far it is.
The reason to do it is because it’s something I want to do. Each issue of Dummy so far there’s only been two, but subsequent issues, they’re all going to be based on, here’s something that I wish existed, you know, here’s something that I don’t know enough about. As a writer, the only way that I learn, truly learn about something, is through the process of writing about it, through the process of researching it, to talking to the people who were involved in it, and writing the story, and then rewriting, and rewriting, and rewriting, and rewriting, and talking to more people, and then it comes together for me. I’m doing it as, because my focus, my target audience is one person, that’s me.
I’m the target audience. It’s something that I wish that existed, that if I walked into a store and I saw, or if I saw somebody posting about it, I would say, I need that, I’ve been waiting my whole life for that thing, and now it exists. So, if other people feel the same way, that’s great, but I’m doing it for myself, and that’s important for people, and especially doing a printed thing like this, it’s just because you got to really do it, because it’s something that you’re just motivated to do, because you want it to exist.
Samir Husni: Well, John, before I ask you my typical last two questions, is there any question I should have asked you I did not? John Kelly: No, I think you’ve hit all of them so far. I’m having a lot of fun doing this. It’s a lot of work.
It’s a tremendous amount of work. I would say one thing that I wasn’t expecting, I hadn’t really thought about was the amount of work. I sell a lot of copies of the magazine as a result, I’m going to the post every single day, dropping off stuff at the post office to mail out, sometimes two times a day, sometimes three times a day, bringing piles of mailers stuffed with Dummys to the post office, and that’s great. It’s a lot of time.
It’s a lot of time to stuff them into the envelope to get them to look the way that they want to. All the mailers are hand stamped. You know, they have a little note in there.
There’re some extra items. It’s very time consuming. There’re issues with mail delivery at times, especially right now, international mail delivery is really a nightmare.
You take a lot of questions from people about their orders. I also sell t-shirts and other related merchandise. Somebody orders the wrong color or the wrong size. What do you do then? There’s a lot of customer service stuff that takes a lot of time away from the actual writing.
I wasn’t expecting that because I wasn’t expecting any of this. It’s been a real learning experience.
Samir Husni: If I come to visit you one evening, unannounced, what do I catch John doing? Reading a book, watching TV, cooking, having a glass of wine? What do you do to rewind at the end of the day?
John Kelly: I don’t really rewind. I’m working all of the time.
The only I leave the house is I go to the gym every day, early in the morning. I get up really early. I get up around 4, 4:30 in the morning and I start working on Dummy at that point.
I’ll go to the gym around 7:00 or 8:00 am and then I’m working on Dummy or something for The Comics Journal or some other project until my wife and I usually watch about an hour of non-traditional television. It’s like a movie or a documentary or something, maybe an hour and a half of that before I, I usually start falling asleep about 10 minutes into it. Then we’re in bed at 10 or 9 pm.
Samir Husni: What keeps you up at night?
John Kelly: Nothing. I sleep great. I take care of myself. I eat well.
I exercise. I’m doing something I absolutely love to do. I’m completely content with everything.
I’m a very happy person at this point in my life. I don’t think there’s anything that keeps me up at night. Everybody’s life has issues and concerns, and you just deal with them as they come.
I’m like powerless over most things. Usually, I figure out a way to make things work.
I have always been an advocate for a strong editorial letter in the first issue of any magazine. It is essential to introduce the magazine to your audience and to ensure the fact that they understand its mission statement and the role it is going to play in their life. Magazines that launch without such an introduction, to me, are a sign of laziness and lack of care of their audience.
What follows is the launch editorial of Digest Of Treatment that its first issue appeared on the nation’s newsstands in July 1937 and was aimed mainly at doctors. Under the heading “We Begin,” the editorial went on to say, “First issues, to almost everyone, are an exciting curiosity. To the collectors, they have intrinsic value; to the critics, they have a dissecting table value; and to the editors, authors, and publishers, they have a deep sentimental value.”
It continued, “Our purpose in presenting a monthly periodical, “Digest of Treatment,” free from any suggestion of advertising bias, is three-fold: first, to bring to the practitioner, in brief form, the newer developments in the technic of treatment; second, to stimulate an interest in the worthwhile current medical literature today; and third, to bring to those physicians who have become defined as specialists, a well-rounded viewpoint regarding branches of medicine other than their own.”
The editorial added, “Each month, Medical Editors, every one a clinical practitioner, carefully select, from over two hundred journals, material to be condensed. In their selections they choose both the favorable and unfavorable reports, realizing that the physician is keenly interested in the unbiased evaluation of the therapy he contemplates trying. The digests and condensations, selected and made by men of clinical experience, fill a need expressed by physicians many times.”
Digest of Treatment continued, “No physician engaged in practice has available the complete current literature of the medical profession, nor does he have the time to look over thoroughly more than three or four periodicals. The presentation of outstanding articles in this convenient form, “Digest of Treatment,” saves the practitioner many hours of research.”
The editorial concluded by stating that, “The editors will always welcome suggestions and criticisms from their fellow workers. They invite a hearty participation in the enterprise through which they serve the interests of medicine. All communications will find a receptive ear.”
Cooking and quilting—two hobbies that require a lot of love and patience—find their match in homecooked magazine and Quiltfolk magazine, each providing that same love and patience to their audiences every quarter. These two beautiful, ad-free publications bring a tactile experience to two tactile crafts.
Michael McCormick is the young man behind both magazines. He started Quiltfolk nine years ago and launched homecooked just last year. You may ask, why would a young man start two print magazines in this digital age? His answer is simple: “I love magazines, and I believe in the business model.” It’s a model that has served him well with Quiltfolk and now with homecooked: 164 pages, no advertising, and excellent content. Each issue carries a premium price—$22 on the newsstand, or $16 per issue by subscription.
Michael is quick to credit his success to the art of storytelling and the tactile nature of his products. His passion for these topics is evident in every issue of both magazines. He is constantly on the road, searching for stories to tell, and focuses on one region at a time. As one Facebook ad for homecooked puts it: “You’ll read it like a magazine. And keep it like a cookbook.”
I had a fascinating interview with Michael, where we discussed both magazines, his love for print, and the challenges of owning a small business. Without further ado, please join me on this journey with Michael McCormick, publisher of homecooked and Quiltfolk magazines.
But first, the soundbites:
On the reasons he is publishing printed magazines: “I’ve always loved magazines, I believe in the business model fundamentally, and we like storytelling. I think the combination of storytelling, the tactile nature of what we’re producing, and just an underlying belief in the business.”
On why “Live to eat and not eat to live”: “It would make sense that we wouldn’t just do it just to live. It’s not just like breathing or whatever, it’s an outlet. I would say the same thing for quilting.”
On whether the ad free business model is working: “Yes, it’s working. If you a single issue, it is $22. And when you join us with a subscription, you get a discount plus you get a free issue. It works out to be about $15 or $16 an issue for your first year.”
On the challenges of owning a business: “Owning a business, no matter what it is, it’s just never a straight path. It’s never a straight line.”
On using Facebook for marketing the magazines: “That’s pretty much our number one paid platform would be Facebook and Instagram.”
On the reason for regional coverage of each issue: The “reason why that makes sense for us is that both Quilts and Food, you do have regional differences and curiosities and different pockets of the world that you get to explore.”
On what he does to recharge at the end of the day: “I would say right now in this stage of my life, there’s not a lot of recharging, relaxing. It’s sort of we’re going 100 miles an hour from usually 5:30 in the morning till 8:30 at night.”
On what keeps him up at night: “The answer is always, at least for me, it’s always cash flow.”
And now for the lightly edited interview with Michael McCormick, publisher, Quiltfolk and homecooked magazines:
Samir Husni: My first question to you is, why would a young guy like you start a print magazine in this digital age?
Michael McCormick: Actually, I don’t know if you know this, but I have another magazine called Quiltfolk that we started about nine years ago that’s very similar to homecooked. It’s very similar format, 164 pages, no ads, we travel around.
And why? I’ve always loved magazines, I believe in the business model fundamentally, and we like storytelling. I think the combination of storytelling, the tactile nature of what we’re producing, and just an underlying belief in the business, I think, why not? I mean, there’s not as many people doing it. I feel like in a way it’s a little bit less competition, we get to go out there and make the thing that we really want to make, and we love doing it.
Samir Husni: Both magazines deal with tactile issues, Quiltfolk and homecooked. Are the printed magazines a reflection of the concept of the two magazines?
Michael McCormick: I think so. I think especially for quilters, that’s the space that I know the best.
They are tactile, and they’re getting that joy and that pleasure from feeling their materials and sitting down in quiet time and producing something that means a lot to them. Quilts hold a lot of stories in them. And then food, it’s amazing, the similarities between food, cooking and quilts in that way.
A lot of times it’s something you’re making for somebody else, it’s creative, it’s traditional, but you can also put a new spin on it. So, there’s a lot of overlap there, and I think the audience is to your point, appreciate being able to hold something in their hands and pass it around, and even enjoy it in a quiet setting.
Samir Husni: I read an article in the first issue of homecooked, “Live to eat and don’t eat to live.” What do you mean by live to eat, but don’t eat to live?
Michael McCormick: It was a quote from somebody in the article, but I think just on the topic we’ve been discussing, There are things we do every day, like as an example, eating and preparing food, that you can put a little bit more care into, a little bit more creativity, elevate those things into something that expresses who you are and what you love a little bit more deeply. And especially with cooking and food, we’re doing it multiple times a day, all the time, all around the world. We’re doing it with people that we love in the spaces that are the most intimate to us.
So, it would make sense that we wouldn’t just do it just to live. It’s not just like breathing or whatever, it’s an outlet. I would say the same thing for quilting.
You could just have a blanket, but in the case of quilting, that thing is with you when you’re sleeping on your bed and again, in the places that are the most used. So, as humans, we find ways of adding our own personal spin and our passion and our creativity into the things that we spend the most time with. I think that’s one of the uniquely fun things about being human.
Samir Husni: You utilize an advertising free model and even no sponsorships, nothing. 164 pages of editorial and a hefty cover price of $22. Why do you believe this business model works or is it working for you?
Michael McCormick: Yes, it’s working. If you a single issue, it is $22. And when you join us with a subscription, you get a discount plus you get a free issue. It works out to be about $15 or $16 an issue for your first year.
I don’t think it’s astronomically more than a lot of other newsstand prices. It does catch people off guard the first time that you see a magazine that’s priced at that price point. But we believe in the model because in the end of the day, people will pay for stories and content, they love and that they enjoy that inspire them.
So, for me, it’s not so much will the customer pay, it’s can we produce the kind of magazine that they really, truly love and that has the potential of transforming their lives? Because if that’s the case, whether it’s $15 or $20 or whatever that price point is, it’s still a small price to pay for, what in a perfect world, they’re getting back from us.
Samir Husni: Since you started Quiltfolk like nine years ago and now homecooked, has your journey been a walk in a rose garden or there have been some challenges?
Michael McCormick: Owning a business, no matter what it is, it’s just never a straight path. It’s never a straight line.
Sometimes maybe for a selected few people, but most people, it’s full of ups and downs. That’s certainly been my experience. I tend to always be overly optimistic about how long it’s going to take us to hit certain goals.
On one hand, that’s frustrating because I always feel like we’re sometimes missing the mark. On the other hand, I think that optimism is probably why I felt we could start a print magazine in 2024. But I would say the education of the customer, in terms of what we really are, is difficult because when you say the word magazine, particularly now, people have a specific idea of what comes to mind.
It’s usually thinner and there’s ads and whatever that is, what we expect from a magazine. The process of trying to educate the audience is what we’re trying to and this is what makes us different It can take a lot longer than we anticipate. It’s been a slow but pretty steady climb, I think for us in terms of subscriptions.
We’ve been fortunate. But it’s always something, if it’s not selling things and whatnot, it’s something else, it’s paper costs or shipping costs or whatever it might be, there’s always something going on.
Samir Husni: How are you marketing the magazines? I first saw it on Facebook…
Michael McCormick: That’s pretty much our number one paid platform would be Facebook and Instagram. And then we are on newsstand for homecooked, which we think more as a marketing value to us just to get us out in the world.
It’s really word of mouth. I would say paid Facebook, Instagram to kind of amplify that message.
Samir Husni: With homecooked, with every issue you concentrate on an area, either a region or a city, why is that?
Michael McCormick: Well, it’s two reasons.
And they’re very different, but they come together, which is great. The first reason is, it’s just more cost effective to, because, let me back up. One of the things that’s different is we send photographers and writers on the road for these issues that we produce.
So, I just got off the road from Kentucky a week before that we were in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. And so, we’re in their homes, in their spaces, in their studios, on the road for two weeks at a time at the bare minimum to produce these issues. It’s very difficult logistically.
And from a cost standpoint, if we were doing that, across the country, across the world. So just logistically, it allows us to do what we want to do, which is be on the ground in person with our crew.
The second reason why that makes sense for us is that both Quilts and Food, you do have regional differences and curiosities and different pockets of the world that you get to explore.
So one thing we like to do is say, hey, look, there’s this through line of people who are passionate about cooking as an example. And there are things that they do that are the same. There are values that they share that are the same.
But also, when you’re doing that in Louisiana versus the Pacific Northwest where I’m from, you’re working with different ingredients, you’re working with different cultural things that add a little spice and a little bit of uniqueness to those home cooking dishes. So for us why not celebrate that? Why not lean into it and just make that both logistically make sense and editorially provide like a backbone for the way we do storytelling.
Samir Husni: If somebody comes to you and say, Michael, I want to start a new magazine, what do you tell them today?
Michael McCormick: I would say, well, the piece of advice I give people for starting anything is if it takes twice as long as you think, and it’s twice as expensive as you think, and you still want to do it and can afford to do it, then you’re in the right framework for kind of tackling that.
It’s just starting stuff is difficult no matter what it is, whether it’s a magazine or an app or anything like that. So just going in with the right mindset of knowing it’s going to be like a lot of pushing and a lot of getting that flywheel spinning. I think that’s important.
But from a magazine specific standpoint, I would say, make the thing that you really want to make. Don’t worry a lot about what’s out in the market or what people have done before. Just try to make the thing that really excites you that you believe other people will find valuable.
Then you just must have a crazy conviction for that. And you must be willing to adjust and pivot as time goes on. And that’s exactly what we did with homecooked.
We had the core of the idea, but I would say this first year has been a lot of trial and error, a lot of learning. So, the North Star remains where it’s always been. We know the product we want to make, but the whole team has worked hard to try to figure out how to get there.
So, it’s not, again, been a straight road. It’s a lot of trial and error and you must be kind of prepared to go on that journey.
Samir Husni: Can you pinpoint a major challenge that you faced and then you’ve overcome and how?
Michael McCormick: The initial marketing launch of homecooked was slower than I thought it was going to be.
It took probably four to six months to really figure out the messages that were resonating with folks online. So, you can imagine during that first four to six months, you got a lot of cash burn. There’s a lot of frustration because we’re producing this great product.
Everyone likes it. We believe in it. And you have enthusiasm on one hand, is at an all-time high, because you just launched something, but you’re not seeing things necessarily respond that way in the market when you first start.
That was very difficult. Thankfully, our team kept going, kept working on that. Now we’re in a good spot, six, nine months later, we’ve found our voice a little bit and settled in and things are coming along much better.
Samir Husni: Is there a question that I failed to ask you you’d like me to ask?
Michael McCormick: I don’t think so. Hopefully those answers are okay.
Samir Husni: My typical last two questions are, one, if I come uninvited to your house one day in the evening, what do I catch you doing to rewind from the busy day?
Michael McCormick: If you came to my house right now, I would be chasing my three children.
They’re six, four and two. And then my wife’s also pregnant with our fourth. She’s due in a couple of months.
I would say right now in this stage of my life, there’s not a lot of recharging, relaxing. It’s sort of we’re going 100 miles an hour from usually 5:30 in the morning till 8:30 at night. My wife and I get a half hour or so to catch up on the day.
Then we’re usually in bed and trying to get ready for the next day. So that’s sort of what it’s like right now.
Samir Husni: And my typical last question, what keeps you up at night?
Michael McCormick: It’s a small business. The answer is always, at least for me, it’s always cash flow. We bootstrap everything and we’re always constantly working on sales and managing costs and trying to balance what we can build and how fast we can go with what we have. I’m always paranoid about that. I’m always working on sales, and the team knows like Monday morning when I got off here, we’ll have a marketing call.
We’ll review our numbers. I’m pretty dialed into that. I would say around the clock, even when I’m sleeping.
Please join The Forum on the BBC worldwide service as I and two other colleagues discuss the history of magazines. What follows is what the BBC wrote for the introduction to The Forum. To listen to the podcast please click here.
“When magazines first emerged, they were the preserve of an elite who could afford to pay for them. But as time went on, the cost of paper fell, printing technology became more streamlined, literacy improved and would-be publishers spotted an opportunity to connect with audiences hungry for information and entertainment.
Magazines found a place to appeal to all types of interest, in the same way that the internet does today. In their heyday they attracted some of the best writers such as Charles Dickens and Ernest Hemingway, sometimes acting as a vehicle to establish literary careers. Later magazines were to become the go-to place for quality photography and design.
Falling advertising revenues have largely contributed to the decline of printed magazines, as well as editions moving online. However some titles have found a way of reinventing themselves in the 21st century.
Iszi Lawrence is joined by a panel of guests to discuss the rise and evolution of magazines. Usha Raman is a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Hyderabad in India, who began her career in magazines, writing and editing a variety of publications. She’s also the owner and editor of a specialist magazine for teachers.
Samir Husni is the founder and director of the Magazine Media Centre in the United States. He’s also written many books, including Inside the Great Minds of Magazine Makers.
And Tim Holmes is a former magazine editor, writer and until his retirement, leader for many years of the magazine journalism course at the University of Cardiff in the UK. We’ll also hear from a variety of Forum listeners from around the world, who share their thoughts on magazines.
“Print Only,” says the ad promoting subscriptions to Summit Journal magazine. There is no waste in its business model: “We only print the exact number of copies as our subscribers.” There are no newsstand sales, and every issue is printed with two different covers—one of which is sent randomly to each subscriber. If you want both covers, you’ll need two subscriptions. And for how much? Two subscriptions will cost you a hefty $120. Print-only is expensive, but it is permanent and lasting. It is yours, and you can prove it by holding the oversized magazine in your hands.
The person behind the resurrection of Summit magazine—now Summit Journal—after a 27-year dormancy is Michael Levy, a journalist, photographer, writer, and editor who is both a climber and a lover of ink on paper. I reached out to Michael to ask him about Summit Journal—why a young man would bring a magazine back to print, and not just print, but print only in 2025—and about the role he most enjoys in creating this beautiful publication, in which every issue is a collector’s item for today, tomorrow, and forever.
Michael Levy by Kiran Kallur
Surrounded by framed covers of both the old and new editions, Michael and I had a fascinating conversation about the magazine, print, art, digital, and climbing. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed having it. So, without further ado, here’s my lightly edited conversation with Michael Levy, founder and editor-in-chief of Summit Journal.
But first the soundbites:
On why print only: “With online it’s just like drinking from a fire hose. There’s too much stuff, a lot of good stuff but you get lost in the noise.”
More on why print only: “There’s an audience who really appreciates a boutique well-made and well-designed product and something you can hold in your hands and put on your shelf and come back to.”
Even more on why print only: “I love print. I used to work at a couple other climbing magazines, so my dream was to start a print magazine and that’s how it goes.”
On picture curation: “Then the curated photos, I see so much good photography these days, being able to choose exactly what we want to put in a magazine, there’s a lot of intentionality to it.”
On more reasons why print only: “Big part of that is to protect the value proposition of the printed magazine. If you can read it online it undermines the value of someone subscribing to print.”
On the reason for two covers with each issue: “It’s treating it as a novelty item, it’s closer to a coffee table book than a magazine.”
On his love of climbing: “I have been a climber for 15 years. I’m obsessive rock climber and mountain climber. For people who know climbers we tend to be very obsessive about it.”
On his biggest competitor: “The closest competitor I have is a magazine called Alpinist which is focused on highly technical mountaineering and alpinism and icy snowy peaks.”
On the magazine model: “Mountain Gazette for sure was the model I based it off. Summit, same as, Mountain Gazette is an old property that’s resurrected and just like Mountain Gazette you hold in your hands a beautiful magazine.”
On what keeping him up at night: “Basically, how the magazine, which is a climbing magazine, can be a vehicle with an interesting mode to tell human stories, interesting characters, and consider things in the world through different lenses.”
And now for the lightly edited interview with Michael Levy, founder and editor-in-chief, Summit Journal:
Samir Husni: My first question to you is 27 years after Summit magazine folded you decided to bring it back in 2023 as a print only publication. I guess you did not notice all the changes that took place in the digital world since 1996. Why print only?
Michael Levy: There are a few reasons:
One, with online it’s just like drinking from a fire hose. There’s too much stuff, a lot of good stuff but you get lost in the noise.
It’s the curation that is an important thing has gotten lost with the ability to have everything at your fingertips at once. So, in a print magazine you only get so many pages that you can only put so much in it, so, it forces, by design, to curate and let the cream rise to the top unless you want to put out a bad product. So that’s one.
And then another reason I would say like vinyl. There’s an audience who really appreciates a boutique well-made and well-designed product and something you can hold in your hands and put on your shelf and come back to. It’s this kind of an effect, kind of cool, a little bit counter cultural to what you know the general mainstream is doing, same as vinyl.
Number three, the reading experience is just different. When I find myself reading a book or The New Yorker or whatever, you’re forced to sit down, and you don’t have the distractions of online. You can’t go check your social media and you can’t go see what the headlines are on the other site. You’re making an intentional decision to spend time with this piece of writing and print forces you to do that.
I love print. I used to work at a couple other climbing magazines, so my dream was to start a print magazine and that’s how it goes.
Samir Husni: On your website www.summitjournal.com you say the magazine carries crafted stories and curated pictures. Explain.
Michael Levy: Yes, like what we’re just talking about with online, there’s a need, a compulsion to feed the beast. You always got to churn out the next thing, even for longer things when you hit publish these editors and publishers they must fill the quota for the next day. You can only spend so much time. I’ve published two magazines a year, which is not a lot, but I’m looking for the stories that I want to tell or that people send to me, and then we’re really drilling down on them and going through many rounds of edits, many rounds of reporting and research, and completely turning them inside out changing structure. These aren’t spit out onto a page; they’re really labored over, crafted like that.
Then the curated photos, I see so much good photography these days, being able to choose exactly what we want to put in a magazine, there’s a lot of intentionality to it. Some of the pictures are not necessarily the flashiest photos but they’re saying something and they’re in conversation with the other articles and the issue, so yes, just obsessing over it and figuring out what photos will bring the issue alive.
Samir Husni: Why did you decide on print only? No online magazine?
Michael Levy: Big part of that is to protect the value proposition of the printed magazine. If you can read it online it undermines the value of someone subscribing to print. They’re like well, why do I need it. It’s simple; I like print; I wanted to do print and so by not having it online it forces people, if they want to read it, you got to subscribe. It’s simple.
Samir Husni: You publish two covers every issue and if you want to get both covers you must have two subscriptions: instead of paying 60 bucks you must pay 120 bucks.
Michael Levy: Yes, it’s not cheap, but there’s not a lot of people who do that. There are a few. It’s treating it as a novelty item, it’s closer to a coffee table book than a magazine. Unlike magazines with thin paper that’s not perfect bound, the ones you might see on the magazine rack at the airport, there’s lots of great writing and photography, but they’re not as much tactile items that you’ll savor, so you read it, put on the back of the toilet, throw it out, whatever, Summit Journal is meant to be displayed or put on a shelf and really savored. For the collectors they might want both covers. Some people might say why don’t you let people choose which cover they want, the simple answer is it becomes much more complicated logistically and from a forecasting and business perspective. I print the two covers in a50/50 split and the shipping is random, that way one cover is not more or less equally popular.
Samir Husni: You appreciate your covers so much that you sell limited prints of the cover art.
Michael Levy: I do. One of the great things about the old Summit magazine, which was started in 1955 by two women Jean Crenshaw and Helen Kilness, is that they had incredible aesthetic artistic sensibility, so, there’s avant-garde art deco bright colored covers that mix illustration and photos and people climbing and beautiful mountains. With the new covers we’re both trying to capture a bunch of that spirit and honor the original magazine from the 50s 60s 70s. We are also pushing into new territory, so the covers are minimal and the goal with each cover to be iconic. We want people to look at the covers and go whoa I haven’t seen that before, as a climber or as a not a climber, and so with that in mind the covers make great cover they make great wall art as you can see; I have a few of them behind me the old ones in the middle and these are two of the new ones and they’re very graphic and very geometric.
Samir Husni: You are a writer, photographer, climber and now publisher and editor. Are you putting all your eggs in one basket Summit Journal?
Micheal Levy: I have been a climber for 15 years. I’m obsessive rock climber and mountain climber. For people who know climbers we tend to be very obsessive about it. It’s one of those things it gets in your blood, and you can’t stop thinking about it and what are you going to climb next. It’s a wonderful lifestyle sport.
Then about 10 years ago, I started writing about climbing. I worked for two other climbing magazines Rock and Ice magazine and Climbing magazine, which were the two largest print climbing magazines in America, probably the world. Neither of which is in print any longer which is sad. They were great magazines.
So, as I’ve gotten older, I still love climbing, but it’s not quite enough to sustain me as my creative outlet. The storytelling has given me a new connection to the sport and arguably more important to me than actual climbing right. I was an English major in college and I’m a big fan of novels and narrative non-fiction. I tear up The New Yorker every time I get it. With that in mind, and the media landscape for other climbing publications is shrinking and trying to think about what I wanted to do with my time, energy and effort I decided it seemed like there was an appetite for this kind of magazine or I hoped that there was. I might as well take a crack at it and this, in in my perfect world, is how I was going to be spending my time and luckily, it’s working out enough that I can do it.
Samir Husni: Who is your main competitor today?
Michael Levy: The closest competitor I have is a magazine called Alpinist which is focused on highly technical mountaineering and alpinism and icy snowy peaks. They do some great stuff, but Summit Journal has a bit of a wider mandate. I cover all kinds of climbing from bouldering which is climbing on small rocks, to climbing on El Capitan, to climbing the snowy mountains. We’re just doing things a little bit differently.
Beyond that the magazine I used to work for Climbing magazine no longer exists in print, but it exists online so they’re technically a competitor. They have a much bigger audience, but they are doing more of what I was talking about before, news coverage and quicker things, which is all great and useful. There’s nothing wrong with that but what we’re offering is carefully crafted stories and long form journalism. This takes more time and is a different beast. So, even though we’re all kind of competing with Climbing, Alpinist, and Summit Journal I think there’s room for all of us.
Samir Husni: I know you wrote for Mountain Gazette. Did it give you the inspiration to be that unique in terms of print only?
Michael Levy: I’m not sure if you’ve ever talked with Mike Rogge at Mountain Gazette. Mike Rogge is certainly a mentor to me for sure. I met him when I wrote something for Mountain Gazette and then when I was thinking about relaunching Summit as Summit Journal, I sent him an email. I was like I would love to pick your brain, and he was very kind with his time. I think he has too many people reaching out to him these days asking about that. But Mountain Gazette for sure was the model I based it off. Summit, same as, Mountain Gazette is an old property that’s resurrected and just like Mountain Gazette you hold in your hands a beautiful magazine. I was like this is what I want to do.
Samir Husni: Tell me what makes Michael tick and click every morning? What makes you get out of bed?
Michael Levy: I get excited when I come up with a cool story idea that I want to have someone write that I know will make a great story, but I don’t know exactly where it’s going to go. I know that I don’t want to write it myself because it’s going to be too stressful. I much prefer finding those writers who I think are brilliant and good at what they do and letting them loose on this idea. Trying to come up with these ideas that are going to be great is both a painful process, because I only have so many ideas, but then hitting on them and getting really excited about them and having a writer and photographer go and execute it. Seeing the finished product come back is exciting. I would say I’m a better editor than I am businessman. I overspend my budgets for the issues because I have so much fun putting them together.
Samir Husni: You mentioned pain, has your journey with three issues under your belt, and the fourth issue comes out next week, has it been a walk in a rose garden or you had some challenges that you had to overcome?
Michael Levy: No, it’s not. I’m an editor by training, the idea of launching a magazine a print magazine two years ago in 2023 and learning how to be a publisher, was a steep learning curve for me. There are all sorts of things I didn’t know. Basically, at every turn I had to figure out distribution, profits and losses, and how to print it. That was a process for me, and are things are going well? It’s a viable business and I have so much fun working on it. It’s not like I’m getting rich. No one who wants to get rich starts a print magazine in 2025. It’s just figuring out ways to keep the business healthy enough so that I can keep making the magazine. That’s not it’s a super existential crisis at every moment, but it takes a little bit of elbow grease to make things and find new ways to keep people subscribing and other revenue streams and stuff that kind of thing.
Samir Husni: Before I ask you my final two personal questions, is there any question I need to ask you I did not ask?
Michael Levy: Why I resurrected a title versus starting a new one? I knew I wanted to start a magazine and Summit magazine had been on my radar for a good while. I had read some things about it in the past and seen some of these cool covers and like Mountain Gazette I started thinking about the benefits of potentially resurrecting an old property versus starting a new one. I bought the rights to the magazine for very little money because it wasn’t worth much. It hasn’t been printed since 1996. The hardest part was tracking down the guy who owned it.
I bought the name and the old covers. I didn’t the subscriber list or whatever. At the same time being able to tap into that history, the legacy of, and have the imagery of this old magazine that Gene and Helen built. Basically, this magazine that for 35 years told the story of North American climbing seemed invaluable to me. You can lean on that history and use it as you want while building a new brand. Not everyone is going to be able to resurrect new an old type of title. There are only so many you could probably buy. In the case of Summit, it did not feel cheating, but rather a head-start which is cool.
Samir Husni: My typical last questions, if I come to visit you one evening unannounced what do I catch Michael doing to rewind? Cooking, having a glass of wine, watching tv, or reading a book?
Michael Levy: I’m having a beer and hanging out in the backyard with my 11-month-old son. My wife is the cook. I’m not a great cook and then he goes to bed we might watch a tv show. Then I go and read whatever book I’m reading and try to avoid the doom scrolling of the state of the US. During the day, if I can sneak away, I go for a climb.
Samir Husni: So, you do still go climbing?
Michael Levy: Oh yes, every week.
Samir Husni: What keeps Michael up at night these days?
Michael Levy: The state of the world. The rise of fascism in the US and the genocide in Gaza and all this stuff.
Climbing is a nice escape. Basically, how the magazine, which is a climbing magazine, can be a vehicle with an interesting mode to tell human stories, interesting characters, and consider things in the world through different lenses.
Honoring their mom’s legacy, Eric Hoffman and his twin brother Brian Hart Hoffman, are leading Hoffman media to new heights, two years after Hoffman Media founder Phyllis Hoffman DePiano died. Eric is the CEO of the company and Brian is the COO. Eric brought the business to new heights and Brian brought the content to new heights. Between the two of them, Hoffman Media is a thriving magazine, video, events and book publishing business.
I had the opportunity to interview Eric Hoffman who is determined on focusing the business. We talked about the new book publishing venture, the new business model for the magazines, the events and retreats that Hoffman Media is hosting, and the video shows and programs.
Eric is very optimistic about the future of the business and places the biggest bet on his people. He places, in his words, “a lot of emphasis on our people and values our company culture, being a family business.” He is both happy and proud that it is a family business and that they have no outside investors. He told me, “Being family owned and being private and not having outside investors, it gives you a lot of latitude that, unfortunately, our industry, so many along the way, have been bought, sold, bankrupt, shut down, relaunched.”
As for AI, Eric is joining The Magazine Coalition in an advisory capacity and is working with Michael Simon to ensure that magazines receive what they deserve from the AI companies. Eric is quick to mention that “100 percent, we will never be creating content with AI.”
So, without further ado, please join me in reading what Hoffman Media is up to and enjoy my interview with Eric Hoffman, CEO, Hoffman Media.
But first, the soundbites:
On the new book publishing business: “Our imprint, 83 Press, 83 as a nod to 1983 when she (Phyllis Hoffman DePiano) started the company.”
On the event business: “For example, Bake from Scratch magazine alone will do over 15 events all around the world.”
On the magazine business: “In the core magazines, you’ll see that we still very much value print. We value our print media. But magazine revenue is only about 50% of the company’s total revenue now. Much in part to subscription, it’s still a very stable business.”
On the new offices in downtown Birmingham: “The creative center that we have now really does lend itself to thinking about the future of the business with digital, with video. Our test kitchens are second to none.”
On what should AI companies offer the magazine companies: “I do think that there are some clear opportunities for the publishing industry to flex that muscle and have the proper representation to let the AI world properly compensate but also let publishers then have a true path to partner.”
On a major highlight of his tenure at Hoffman Media: “I would say that 83 Press, our book publishing side.”
On the role his twin Brian plays: “What he’s done is taking his passion for travel and his passion for baking and really build something that harnesses all that.”
On what keeps him up at night: “What keeps you up at night is the several places in this business that can scale, well beyond where we are today. We are about 33 million in revenue and, my brother and I’ve set the target that we can reach to 50 million in the next five years.”
And now for the lightly edited conversation with Eric Hoffman, CEO, Hoffman Media:
Samir Husni: It has been a little bit over two years since your mom died and you and your brother, took the lead and moved Hoffman Media into new grounds. I know you’re a private company, but imagine you are reporting to a shareholder meeting. What would you tell them? What have you done in those two years?
Eric Hoffman: Sure. First, we very much honor her legacy. We place a lot of emphasis on our people and value our company culture, being a family business. I would say that the biggest thing that we’ve tackled over the last couple of years is focusing the business. We had 11 magazine brands.
We consolidated a couple of them, so we have eight magazine brands today. But what we found is that there’s significant growth opportunities in our book publishing business. Our imprint, 83 Press, 83 as a nod to 1983 when she (Phyllis Hoffman DePiano) started the company.
Our book publishing will be approaching close to 30% of our revenues this year. Then the event side of the business is just amazing. For example, Bake from Scratch magazine alone will do over 15 events all around the world.
We’ve got events in France, Sweden, Italy. We’ve got two next year in Japan. We’re seeing an amazing way to take the core magazine brands and build out the other revenue streams in a significant and very intentional way.
Going through the journey of losing her, it allowed Brian and I to really challenge the business model and figure out where do we want to focus going forward. In the core magazines, you’ll see that we still very much value print. We value our print media.
But magazine revenue is only about 50% of the company’s total revenue now. Much in part to subscription, it’s still a very stable business. We’ve pulled back a lot on the newsstands.
Newsstand used to be, as you know, a very large piece of our business. It’s not even 10% of the revenues now. We’re focusing a lot more on subscription.
Then on the digital side, we’re doing a lot more with video. We’re in our fourth year of a wonderful partnership with Williams-Sonoma. In fact, it’s Monday, so today is Baking School. Monday nights at seven, we do a live baking class. We film it right out of our studios in Birmingham and have several hundred attendees participate online.
It’s become a great brand builder. If I was to say, what have we done the most, I think focus keeps coming to mind. With that, 2024, we produced revenue growth and profitability growth, which is exciting.
Coming into 2025, we’re feeling great about the pipeline that we’ve got. I will say that even just in the core business, what we found is advertising is growing. We were up double-digit last year.
I think we’re tracking to beat that number again, probably up another 10%. We’re seeing advertisers are valuing the quality of the readership, which you and I have talked about for the better part of 18 years now. We’re seeing that shift to where people want high quality, they want engagement.
One of the things that Hoffman Media can bring to our clients is we’re great at the content business. We’ve been producing content for over 40 years. Now we’re able to turn the power of the publisher to the benefit of the client.
We’re doing a lot of interesting things like developing cookbooks for our advertising food brand clients. We’re doing video where we’re leveraging our test kitchens and our video teams. It’s been really exciting to see that shift.
I told this story the other day, and you’ll really appreciate this. When I joined Hoffman Media in 2007, the business was about the same size as we are revenue-wise today. Think about that.
We were 100% magazine, and probably 30% to 40% of the business was newsstand. But in totality, Cooking with Paula Deen magazine was over 80% of our revenues. We had private equity owners that owned half the business.
If you look at the 18-year progression of being with the company, not only Cooking with Paula Deen’s magazine sunset last year, so it’s not even in the business. We’ve shifted the business entirely to offset that. Along the way, we ended up buying out our private equity investors in 2012.
It’s just been a long but exciting journey. I must get you to Birmingham. One of the things we did coming out of COVID, we bought a building downtown Birmingham right in the heart of the city and redeveloped it.
The creative center that we have now really does lend itself to thinking about the future of the business with digital, with video. Our test kitchens are second to none. We’re using that.
We do a lot of consumer events in our space. We host advertisers in our space. It really gave us that thrust forward to lean into where we think the future of the business is going.
It’s been exciting. Mom got to see that project come to the finish line. We keep her office for her there every day. My brother and I, keep a lamp on her desk. It’s still there. Can’t touch it. Don’t turn it off.
Samir Husni: That’s great. You’re keeping up with the change. Change is happening faster than any time in our lifetime.
Where does AI fit in all the change that’s taken place? Do you use it? Is it a thief? Is it a helper? Where does AI fit in the equation of what you’re doing?
Eric Hoffman: I would say one is, I think we’re early in thinking about AI. 100 percent, we will never be creating content with AI. We’re fundamental believers in the power of our people, our creativity, our brands being authentic.
We always want that to be a pillar by which we stand on. But if you think about processes and things that can be automated, sure. There’re some things that we’re looking at.
But again, I would say we’re early in it. I have followed closely, in terms of the industry, just what’s going on. I know that Michael Simon and his team with the Magazine Coalition is certainly resonating very well with us.
We’re joining the Magazine Coalition. I’ve asked to help Michael in an advisory capacity to really get some momentum because I do think that our industry needs to have the proper representation. I think that the AI companies must accept that they’ve done things to violate copyright and learn off the backs of publishers.
I would say, I think enthusiast publishers that have very niche content that’s very deep in nature. I think there’s some things that will play out there. I think there’s been precedent with a lot of the larger publishers have already had settlements and licensing agreements put in place.
Gaining some traction there for the rest of the industry is important. I chaired IMAG back in the day when all the independent magazines association was together. I got to see it very young in my career, the cohesiveness of our industry, enthusiast publishers, independent publishers from across the country coming together and sharing in our learnings and having that representation.
I would say that some of that’s not as in place as it used to be with some of the consolidation with associations and everything else. I do think that there are some clear opportunities for the publishing industry to flex that muscle and have the proper representation to let the AI world properly compensate but also let publishers then have a true path to partner. That’s still early, but there’s something coming there.
I’m excited to help Michael and his team there. I think there’s a lot of action there.
Samir Husni: Is Bake from Scratch now the cornerstone of Hoffman Media? It just celebrated its10-years anniversary.
Eric Hoffman: Yes, Bake from Scratch is our most profitable brand. It is by far and away our most followed digitally on social media. I would say that when you think about just the quintessential enthusiast magazine brand that started with a newsstand special, we tested it, saw that we had something there, got the subscription side going. I give 100% credit to Brian.
He came up with this idea truly from scratch. He’s just plowing his passion and energy into that brand. It’s very reminiscent of how my mother started the business with her own interests and her own hobbies.
We have an annual cookbook. We have these events around the globe. We’ve got this Monday night video partnership with Williams-Sonoma, that is a real revenue generator, and the magazine. It’s the model by which we think about on a go-for basis, and how can we get our other magazine brands to replicate that. It’s incredible.
Kudos to Brian, Brooke Bell, our test kitchen, and our video team. Really the organization, everyone that touches that magazine has just done a fantastic job. It’s quality in everything we do. It’s truly every recipe, every video, every event, every page. It’s intentional and there’s a lot of good people that are spending time thinking about it and how to continually improve.
We’ve got seven other magazine brands, so I’m not going to say it’s the cornerstone, but it is our perfect business model and how we want to continue to grow the rest of the business.
Samir Husni: Are you continuing to shuttle between New Orleans and Birmingham?
Eric Hoffman: Yes. My wife and I and kids, we just hit eight years living in New Orleans, a city that we absolutely love. I’ll be in Birmingham next week, and then again, the following for a few days. So, I do make it back.
One of the benefits coming out of COVID is our people, we really wanted them to enjoy the flexibility of being able to do what we’re doing right here. So, we’ve embraced the meeting cadence and a lot of our communication away to where we can do video. When we do have in-person, it’s very intentional around strategic planning and kind of getting the whole team together. It’s great.
It’s not that far away. I love getting back. But yes New Orleans is home. Been here eight years. It’s a wonderful city. There’s no other place in the world like it.
Samir Husni: It sounds that the last two years has been a walk in a rose garden. Did you have any challenges, or it was smooth sailing?
Eric Hoffman: No, we had a lot of challenges. Unfortunately, mom passed away in July of 2023.
And frankly, the business was having a bad year. Our labor was running too high, cost in general coming out of COVID. We saw enormous pressure.
One of the hardest things I had to do that fall is to do the company’s first ever reduction in force, which you hope, as an owner and as an executive, you never have to go through that. I would tell any executive that. But it forced us to focus the company. We had to do some things to get the business profitable and having the right people in the right places doing the right things.
Systematically going through that, while it was tough, it positioned the business and in going into 2024 to enjoy the benefits of that and then be able to make investments in the growth side of the business. So, yes, certainly had some challenges.
Samir Husni: And what if you can pinpoint one highlight that was like the this is the best we’ve done in the two years? What will that be?
Eric Hoffman: I would say that 83 Press, our book publishing side, we were doing some amount of book publishing on a one-off basis.
Coming out of pandemic, we started doing some custom, authored work, mainly with social media influencers. Brenda Gantt Cooking with Brenda Gantt is an amazing business partner and she took a bet on us to be her book publisher. That jumped the business full into book publishing.
We followed that, by doing the Cajun Ninja’s book, social media guy out of Louisiana, saw great success there. Then as we kept looking at how we could grow, it finally became obvious that we needed an executive to own and run that that business. And so, we added Kristy Harrison to our team. She is a 20-plus year veteran of Time Inc. She joined us as a C-level executive to run the book business.
Back to my point on focus, now that we have that focus, we’ve got business development, outside sales and the pipeline is great.
We’ve got amazing projects coming out this fall and we’ve already got our 2026 pipeline well underway. That’s been fun to watch.
Samir Husni: I know you don’t travel as much as your twin brother Brian. I follow Brian on Facebook and he’s a jet setter. Last week he was flying back from Japan. He was in Paris a few weeks ago. And then before that, Italy and Sweden. Is it all for Bake from Scratch or he’s promoting the entire Hoffman media?
Eric Hoffman: The entire business for sure.
Several of our other magazines we have, are doing these tours as well. What’s great about all the countries you named is he’s going into these markets, capturing content that’s feeding the upcoming issue that is themed.
It could be Irish baking issue, or it could be French baking, whatever it is. But then we’re allowing that content to lead into releasing a retreat the following year.
Samir Husni: So, there is a system to what he’s doing. A method to the madness.
Eric Hoffman: Yes, exactly. But again, back to channeling that passion. What he’s done is taking his passion for travel and his passion for baking and really build something that harnesses all that.
We’ve thought about do we get into television? He’s got the personality. He’s got the opportunity. Are there longer show formats? Are there other retreats that we can do? When you look back, you think we’ve done like San Miguel, Mexico, we’ve done Paris, we’ve done Sweden, we’ve done Italy, and we are doing Japan next. It really is amazing to think about a business like ours right from Birmingham, Alabama, that’s doing these tours on a global basis. So it’s exciting to watch.
Samir Husni: My typical last two questions are, if I come to visit you one evening unannounced, what do I catch you doing? Cooking, watching TV, having a glass of wine.
Eric Hoffman: Well, Samir, today is Monday. In the Hoffman house, we have Monday night, steak night. It’s a family tradition we started probably three years ago and do just about every Monday night. Have a couple of ribeyes we share as a family, maybe one good glass of wine.
We love to cook. So, if you caught me at home, I’d be doing something in the kitchen for sure.
Catch me on a weekend, probably go out to dinner somewhere. New Orleans has obviously no shortage of restaurants here. Amazing food.
So, but yes, that’s tonight. Tonight’s steak night.
Samir Husni: And my final question is, what keeps you up at night these days?
Eric Hoffman: What keeps me up? I keep going back to focus. Being in a in a creative business, you must decide if you’re looking at the next big, great idea or if you’re looking at a shiny object.
Being good at saying no to things can get you further down the road. We’ve tried to do is. Get more intentional about where we’re going to place our bets and where we’re going to push for growth.
We’re way ahead of where we would have been otherwise. Trying a lot of things are good, being able to do it a calculated way.
What keeps you up at night is the several places in this business that can scale, well beyond where we are today. We are about 33 million in revenue and, my brother and I’ve set the target that we can reach to 50 million in the next five years. There’re certainly some places where we look and see that opportunity.
Scaling the advertising, the event business, the book publishing business. We’re looking at digital memberships to some of our brands. And so. It’s a good problem to have, but what keeps me up at night is how to focus the organization and do it the right way and how do you fund it? How do you do that?
We love the business. We got a long view of what we’re doing. And I think it’s great. Being family owned and being private and not having outside investors, it gives you a lot of latitude that, unfortunately, our industry, so many along the way, have been bought, sold, bankrupt, shut down, relaunched.
We’re fortunate that we, in some form or fashion, made it this long. And I think scale is important.
Buying power and having marketing teams, dedicated advertising teams, production and procurement and all the stuff that comes with it, it’s a good thing and we’ve got a lot of longevity, too, which I think is fantastic. My chief operating officer, for example, Greg Baugh, started at the company in 2004 and he has taken on a lot and helped execute in so many ways.
Then we hired Missy Polhemus, who is our first ever chief marketing officer, came back to us. She worked at Hoffman from 2008 to 2013, and then she spent the better part of 10 years in the tech space with some startups and then had a chief marketing officer job at a really big company. It was the perfect timing to join the business, not too long after my mother passed.
Also, we had never had someone fully sitting on top of our digital experiences, allocating marketing dollars beyond some of the traditional direct mail and insert cards. Now we’ve probably got half our budget going into new channels that she’s driving.
I guess it’s the focus and opportunities in front of me that keep me up at night.
You can almost reach out and grab a bite from the pages of Food & Wine—the photography is so superb, it feels as if the food is leaping off the printed page. After feasting your eyes, you’re treated to storytelling that nourishes the mind. There aren’t many magazines that can truly offer a wholesome meal for both the eyes and the brain, but Food & Wine does exactly that.
Hunter Lewis photo by Cameron Wilder
Hunter Lewis, Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of Food & Wine magazine, describes the experience this way: “It’s like being at a dinner party, sitting around a table with a delicious glass of wine and a beautiful meal. You drop the needle on a record and hear that warm, rich tone—that slight scratchy sound before the first song begins. Whether you can articulate that experience or not, you feel it in your mind, body, and soul. That’s what it’s like to consume a magazine in this day and age.”
My interview with Hunter felt just like sitting at the Food & Wine dinner table—an engaging conversation about the role of print in a digital age, the impact of AI on magazine publishing, surviving and thriving through two acquisitions, and the essential value of teamwork. We also discussed the Food & Wine Classic events held in Aspen and Charleston, South Carolina.
So, without further ado, please join me at the Food & Wine dinner table for a conversation with a chef, an editor, and a storyteller: Hunter Lewis. But first—the soundbites:
On the status of Food journalism: “I think food journalism in this day and age is very fractured. There are only a small handful of power players that are still healthy and thriving, and I would include Food & Wine in that mix.”
On the reason Food & Wine is thriving: “I’m very, very thankful that Food & Wine is among the top brands and continuing to thrive in this era. It shows that when you are a part of a company that is healthy, and you’re a part of a company that is investing in its brands and its people, and investing in great storytelling, investing in events, investing in digital growth, and you’re empowering brand leaders to do what they know is best for the audience, then you can grow.”
On thematic issues: “Any magazine worth its salt has done themed issues in the past.”
On Food & Wine thematic issues: “Really is a rallying cry and putting a stake in the ground and creating a tent pole for our readers to rally around and for advertisers to get excited about.”
On the role of the print edition: “The magazine is the heart and soul of the brand. It’s a physical evocation of the brand…. The magazine continues to anchor this brand.”
On whether his job is harder or easier today: “If you’re open to change and you’re open to evolving, it’s not as hard.”
On his role during the two acquisitions of Food & Wine: “My role during those two acquisitions and when I took over at Food & Wine was to make sure that I’m creating a brand that is super healthy, making sure that I’m creating a brand that is growing on all platforms.”
On whether AI is a creator, curator, or a thief of content: “All of the above. But I’m not scared of AI. Anybody that is creating in this world today, you should at least be playing with Chat GPT and trying to better understand how AI works. I’ll be very clear; we do not use AI to create content for Food & Wine.”
On what keeps him up at night: “Thinking about my kids and this world today, and what kind of world it’s going to be for them when I’m gone.”
And now for the lightly edited conversation with Hunter Lewis, vice president and editor in chief Food & Wine:
Samir Husni: You have been at Food & Wine now for eight years, and you’ve been editor-in-chief before that at Cooking Light, and you worked almost with every food magazine. How would you describe the status of food journalism in this day and age?
Hunter Lewis: I think food journalism in this day and age is very fractured. There are only a small handful of power players that are still healthy and thriving, and I would include Food & Wine in that mix.
I think that for many reasons, including the state of the industry, social media, the rise and cult of the personality of singular people who operate as brands has made it a very interesting playing field right now in terms of what brands are on the rise, what brands are on the wane, and I’m very, very thankful that Food & Wine is among the top brands and continuing to thrive in this era. It shows that when you are a part of a company that is healthy, and you’re a part of a company that is investing in its brands and its people, and investing in great storytelling, investing in events, investing in digital growth, and you’re empowering brand leaders to do what they know is best for the audience, then you can grow.
I’ve been a part of brands that aren’t growing, and I’ve seen what that means in terms of diverting those funds elsewhere or squeezing brands too tightly to return dividends to shareholders, so I’ve been on the other end of this, and right now is a very exciting time to be at Food & Wine because we’re a brand that is being prioritized and a brand that is growing.
Samir Husni: Is that the reason you’re going with thematic issues like the innovator issue, the travel issue, the summer recipes issue? Is that part of this dominance in the marketplace?
Hunter Lewis: I think any magazine worth its salt has done themed issues in the past.
This is not a new thing. What that does for us is it really is a rallying cry and putting a stake in the ground and creating a tent pole for our readers to rally around and for advertisers to get excited about. The purpose of the travel issue in May, which has become one of our bigger issues of the year, is really to get behind global tastemakers.
It’s something we started a few years ago. It is our big travel tent pole, and it made sense to make the May travel issue and the timing of that digital launch in early to mid-April, and then also the print extension of it, all align. And so that was the timing for May.
For the innovators issue in July, the intention with that issue that comes out when we’re at the top of the mountain at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen.
That event is full of innovators across every part of the food and beverage and hospitality industry. And so, it made sense to create a magazine issue, during that timing, that reflected and celebrated the people that were participating in the event on our behalf, and then also a celebration of innovation in the culinary world. What is cool now is that we are using our events to bring our stories from the pages of the magazine to life on stage, or to create special dinners around the feature stories we’re telling.
A good example of that, this year at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, we had the July innovators issue cover blown up huge in the Grand Tasting tent, and we popped up a new activation for the brand called The Wine Bar by F&W and Friends. And we brought the family behind Red Boat Fish Sauce, and the owner of Red Boat is also making a new Cabernet in Napa. We brought Kuang Pham and his family to Aspen.
They served the cover recipe at The Wine Bar. They poured his Cab at The Wine Bar. And we made micheladas with his fish sauce, too.
So that was our way of bringing the brand to life and literally bringing the cover to life so our consumers could taste it at our marquee event. That’s one example. Another example is, last year was the 30th anniversary of Gramercy Tavern in New York City.
The idea for this restaurant was born in Aspen at our event many years ago with Tom Colicchio and Danny Meyer, two well-known New York City restaurateurs. We wanted to celebrate that legacy and that DNA within Food & Wine with a big feature story honoring Gramercy Tavern last year. And then we hosted a beautiful dinner in Aspen to bring it to life, too.
We’re really beginning to figure out how to use our events as a new extension of journalism and a new extension of telling stories and to bring these stories to life in real life where you can taste the food and meet the people behind the stories.
Samir Husni: And how do you define the role of the print, the magazine itself in this event age? I mean, what role does the ink on paper play?
Hunter Lewis: The magazine is the heart and soul of the brand. It’s a physical evocation of the brand.
A point of strength. It’s a beautiful product that people use every day in their lives. The magazine and the people that make the magazine and that work on our website and social and video and events are the beating heart of the brand.
The magazine continues to anchor this brand.
Samir Husni: Is your life today as editor-in-chief easier or harder than it was before COVID?
Hunter Lewis: I don’t think it’s about easier or harder. I think the pace of change is so much faster now than it’s ever been in my lifetime.
As long as you’re okay with change and managing and leading change, then it’s not hard. It’s always hard. Every job in the country is hard in one way or another, but we’re not scared of the hard.
What we’re asking our team to do and everybody that works for this brand to do is to understand that to remain relevant, we’re going to need to continue to embrace change. And so, if you don’t embrace change, it gets hard. If you’re open to change and you’re open to evolving, it’s not as hard.
Samir Husni: As you are open to change and evolving, what has been the biggest challenge you faced since you became editor-in-chief of Food & Wine?
Hunter Lewis: I think the biggest challenge is keeping Food & Wine healthy through multiple acquisitions. When I started at Food & Wine, I was running both Cooking Light and Food & Wine, and that was during the Time Inc. days. And then Meredith acquired Food & Wine as a part of that Time Inc. acquisition.
The priorities changed within the company. The executive team at the top of the masthead changed, and we had to navigate that change while we’re also navigating how to run a brand through COVID. And then we were acquired by Dotdash and the company became Dotdash Meredith, and we navigated that change too.
So my role during those two acquisitions and when I took over at Food & Wine was to make sure that I’m creating a brand that is super healthy, making sure that I’m creating a brand that is growing on all platforms, making sure that I’m growing a brand that has more value and is earning more revenue and has a larger audience now than when I started, and that I’m stewarding a brand that will be stronger when I leave it than when I found it.
Samir Husni: Did you accomplish all these goals?
Hunter Lewis: I’m very, very excited. I’m very happy about the work we’ve done.
I’m very excited about us growing in the way that we have, but our work’s not done. I’m riding a wave on this glorious surfboard, and I want to keep riding it. So, my goals are not complete.
This brand still has a long way to go and more growth ahead. I want to keep riding this wave with my colleagues and see how far it’s going to take us.
Samir Husni: What’s the secret sauce for this wave that keeps Food & Wine healthy, like 130 pages in print and, you know, with all the events and all?
Hunter Lewis: There’s no secret sauce. It’s the executive team at Dotdash Meredith investing in Food & Wine, believing in us, understanding that what we are creating is hyper-relevant in today’s times, empowering us, and then for us to go and do the job every day and show up and bring great energy.
The energy that we’re putting out at Food & Wine across all platforms, in the magazine, online, on social, on video, and at our events, is absolutely about the team and the energy they’re putting forward individually and collectively in our team culture. There’s not one answer to that in terms of the secret sauce, but it’s all about the energy that we’re putting in, the focus that we have, and it’s a blessing that we have all these different platforms and different revenue streams because it’s not one, we’re not a one-sided brand. We’re not just earning revenue and growing audience on the website.
We’re doing that in multiple ways, and that’s why Food & Wine is thriving.
Samir Husni: You have an event coming up in Charleston, South Carolina, The Food & Wine Classic. Tell me about that event.
Hunter Lewis: The Food & Wine Classic in Charleston is a collaboration with Travel & Leisure and Southern Living, two of our sister brands. I’m very close with Jacqui (Gifford) and with Sid (Evans), and it’s our way to bring the DNA and the legacy and the beauty of gathering at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, which we’ve now done for 42 years, and taking that magic and bringing it to the low country region of Charleston. We have deep, deep relationships in Charleston. It’s an incredible culinary scene.
There’s no other city in the country like it that has such rich history and architecture and culture and food ways, and so our job in hosting the Classic in Charleston for the second year is to bring all that local talent to the stage and spotlight the culture that is there, and then bring some of our partners and chefs and drink professionals and hospitality pros from the national stage to the city and blend that talent together to create a special event that these three brands host in Charleston.
Samir Husni: And if somebody approached you at that event and said, Mr. Lewis, I have an idea for a new food magazine, what do you tell them?
Hunter Lewis: A new food magazine? I think that there’s always a place for print in this environment. I just went to Casa Magazines the other night to grab a couple journals and other magazines for research, and I’m either the most naive guy on the planet, or the strongest, deepest gut reaction I’ve ever felt in my career is what I feel right now, that in the age of artificial intelligence, the brands and the magazines that are coming from a point of strength, the brands and the magazines that are differentiating themselves from the competition by putting out a beautiful product with great imagery and crackerjack writing are going to continue to differentiate themselves from the competition, and they’re going to differentiate themselves from what is not real, and they’re going to differentiate themselves from AI slop.
I strongly believe that artificial intelligence is going to make food and wine more valuable in some ways. Now it’s going to threaten pieces of our business, and we’re not going to be immune to some of those challenges like Google Zero, and the issues with Google not sending sessions back to brands like Food & Wine like they’ve done for the past 20 plus years. We’re not immune to that like any other brand in the digital space, but I fully believe that whether consumers can articulate it or not, they want real experiences.
They want to gather at our events. They want to read and engage with a magazine, whether they’re leaning back in their armchair, or they’re leaning forward and they’re cooking from Food & Wine at the stove. They’re going to continue to want this physical object in their hands that is beautiful and usable.
And I equate it a lot to being at a dinner party when you’re sitting around a table with a delicious glass of wine and a beautiful meal, and you put a needle on a record, and you play that record, and you hear that warm, rich tone and that slight scratchy noise that happens before the first song plays. Whether you can articulate that experience or not, you feel it in your mind, body, and soul. And that’s what it’s like to consume a magazine in this day and age.
I think that is going to become an even more valuable experience as the world becomes less real and more artificially manufactured.
Samir Husni: So, do you think AI will be more of a curator, creator, or a thief when it comes to content?
Hunter Lewis: All of the above. But I’m not scared of AI. Anybody that is creating in this world today, you should at least be playing with Chat GPT and trying to better understand how AI works. I’ll be very clear; we do not use AI to create content for Food & Wine.
We are investing in video, we’re investing in photography, we’re investing in award-winning writing. You know, we just won our first National Magazine Award this year for a story called The City That Rice Built, also won a James Beard award. So, we’re not using AI for shortcuts.
But as creators, we’re using AI to better understand how it works and what we’re up against. I think it’s already transforming creative spaces. It’s already transforming how people are searching online in the ways that they used to type in a search question in a Google browser.
It’s absolutely happening overnight, and it’s happening rapidly. I mean, this feels like the fastest change to me since the iPhone was created, if not faster. And I think the implications are much greater.
Samir Husni: If I come, unannounced, to visit you one evening, what do I catch Hunter doing? Reading a book, watching TV, cooking? Hunter Lewis: I’ll welcome you upstairs and into the kitchen, and there’ll be some jazz playing on the speaker, and I’ll be cooking dinner for my family, which is what I do in Birmingham, six nights a week, and welcome you to our table, and pour you a glass of wine.
That’s my happy place.
Samir Husni: And what keeps you up at night these days?
Hunter Lewis: Thinking about my kids and this world today, and what kind of world it’s going to be for them when I’m gone. It’s a crazy world right now, and I think it’s becoming a more selfish world, and a more selfish country, that’s what keeps me up at night.
It’s a known fact that the average sell-through (number of copies sold from the copies sent to the newsstands) is at best 30% and at its worst less then 20%. That is to say that from every ten magazines sent to the newsstands, only 2 or 3 magazines are sold, and the rest are returned to “the shredder.” You will say, this is a lot of waste in this environmentally conscience world we live in.
However, it is also known that if you reduce the number of copies you place on the newsstands, you will reduce the number of copies you will sell. This dilemma is not new; it dates back as far as magazines were placed on the newsstands.
So how do we solve this problem? One solution comes from the United States government: No returns are accepted. Yes, that was the solution of the issue of returns in 1918, more than a century ago.
In an editorial titled “Roycroft on News Stands” dated September 19, 1918, in the October 1918 issue of Roycroft magazine, the editors wrote, “We have always tried to give ROYCROFT a very thorough distribution on all the News Stands throughout the country, and in doing so, of course, have had to be generous in the matter of returns from the dealers.”
The editorial continues, “The Government now asks all publishers to restrict these returns. This means that practically every News Dealer will order only such quantities of ROYCROFT as he has advance orders for. He cannot take chances on being stuck with a bunch of unsold copies. There should be no unsold copies, anyway, but occasionally there are.”
The editors came up with a solution to this problem by suggesting to “all readers of ROYCROFT who have been purchasing the Magazine on the News Stands, that it will be necessary for them to order the Magazine – NOW—from their dealer, or else they may be unable to get it on the Stand.”
Another option the editors offered the readers of Roycroft magazine, “If, for any reason you would rather not place a definite order with your local News Dealer, send in your subscription to us. This will insure your getting the Magazine every month.”
The editorial ends up with a plug about the magazine, “ROYCROFT will present to its readers a series of articles each month, touching upon vital things and viewed from the unusual standpoint. It will continue to be of vital interest, and we want you with us for all time.”
So, here you have it, a solution from 1918 only preserved in print where history comes alive on every page of the printed magazine. Print preserves history and history needs print to be preserved.
To find out more of the golden olden gems from magazines please visit the Samir Husni Magazine Collection at The University of Missouri-Columbia by clicking here.
Armed with a degree in curiosity from the University of the World, Jacqui Gifford navigates the seas and skies of the globe safely, wisely and brilliantly — offering glimpses of it on a silver platter to the audience of Travel + Leisure multimedia platforms, whether it is the ink on paper or the pixels on a screen.
Jacqui is quick to acknowledge that there is less than 5% duplication between her print audience and her digital audience, but she makes no excuses for that.
The travel market suffered a major blow during the COVID pandemic. Jacqui, who had been editor-in-chief for only two years at the time, had to react and act swiftly to keep the brand afloat. She told me, “Obviously, there’ve been pandemics before. In modern times to completely shut down the world as it was — for the travel business, it was heartbreaking.”
Quick to adapt to the necessary changes, Jacqui — “on the fly,” her words not mine — developed a plan and strategy to continue Travel + Leisure on all fronts. And that strategy worked.
Ever the planner, she recalled, “Coming out of COVID, that formative time, I saw the desire for in person networking and interaction, and discussion was really at an all-time high.” That insight led to the idea with an idea of convening travel business leaders, which culminated in Travel + Leisure’s first World’s Best Summitt in 2024. It was such a success that an encore one is planned for this coming July in NYC.
So, without further ado, here is my interview with Jacqui Gifford, editor-in-chief, Travel + Leisure:
But first the soundbites:
On the influence of being born overseas and moving to many countries due to her father’s job: “I think it really made me a more curious, empathetic person, because my parents really enjoyed learning about other cultures.”
On her strategy during COVID: “The game we could win was giving people inspiration and hope that there was something on the other side. So, we continued to do these beautiful travel stories. We used local reporters.”
On the biggest change in Travel + Leisure since she became editor: “I’d say letting the photography speak for itself.”
On whether they use AI or not in Travel + Leisure: “No, we do not. We have real people producing our content and that’s something that’s fundamental to who we are as a brand. We have people checking into the hotels. We have people flying the planes. We have people visiting, sailing on the cruise ships to create the content that matters to our audiences. So that is not something we’re doing.”
On her biggest competitor: “There’s a lot of great content out there and you’re competing for the eyeballs of all these people and you realize that they’re time poor these days, whether they’re busy at home, at work, they’re bombarded by content all day long.”
On her advice to deal with competition: “I think anybody who’s in this position at any brand must acknowledge that the competition isn’t just the traditional format. It’s, all sorts of things.”
On the value of print in a digital age: “Well, the magazine to me, the magazine is healthy. It’s beautiful. It’s that classic lean back experience that allows you to see our covers in the back. Long form journalism is something we still do at Travel + Leisure. We’re incredibly proud of it.”
On the second World’s Best Summit: “This year, we have a full new round of topics to discuss whether it’s expedition travel, solo travel, all inclusive, like the rise of and reinvention of all inclusive, the loyalty landscape and where that’s shifting and going. So those are just a few of many topics, but I think it’s going to be great.”
On her biggest challenge: “I would say this. I think that the biggest challenge that anybody has today, if you’re a journalist, if you’re an editor in chief, is, is prioritization.”
On how she unwinds at the end of the day: “If I’m going to unwind, I probably take a bath.”
On what keeps her up at night: “The main thing will always be my son. I’m always worried about him. But he’s a great kid.”
On her favorite country: “I’m going to say as of right now, and I’m biased a little bit, because I was born there. Japan…”
And now for the lightly edited interview with Jacqui Gifford, editor-in-chief, Travel + Leisure:
Samir Husni: My first question to you, you have a marvelous background, born in Japan, headed to Saudi Arabia, then Qatar, then Bahrain, and then back to Philadelphia.
Jacqui Gifford: Yeah.
Samir Husni: Does this background help you as an editor-in-chief of Travel + Leisure?
Jacqui Gifford: 100 percent. There’s not even a question. I was so fortunate. My father’s work took us to all the countries you just named.
And when we were living in the Middle East, and when we were living in Japan, my mom and dad prioritized seeing all the countries that were in the region. So, when we lived in Japan, we went to Hong Kong. I did mainland China when I was 13 years old. We went to Malaysia, the Philippines.
When we lived in the Middle East. We did Egypt. We did Dubai.
We were really, I don’t want to say ahead of the curve, but in some ways, I think when I lived in Doha, there were three hotels in the whole destination. And now every single luxury brand is there. The airport is state of the art.
I was just writing about this in my current editor’s letter. We used to deplane on the tarmac. Basically, the old airport, there were six gates. It’s amazing to see the transformation of that part of the world, but also just in general, how much more intrepid travelers are these days.
We would go to places. I think it really made me a more curious, empathetic person, because my parents really enjoyed learning about other cultures.
Samir Husni: So, can we say you have a degree in curiosity?
Jacqui Gifford: I love that.
I got my BA, not at Princeton, but a BA in global curiosity from University of the World. Yes, you’re right.
Samir Husni: You started working at Travel + Leisure in 2013, but you became editor-in-chief in 2018.Then two years later, the world changed. How did you cope?
Jacqui Gifford: That was one, without a doubt, the most difficult thing I’ve ever lived through as on a human level, just personally, and then certainly in business, it was unprecedented for the travel industry. The travel industry has been through ups and downs. We had 9-11 impact global travel, also in New York where I moved here right after that. And people were hesitant to travel, for sure.
There’s always been sort of dips after the financial crisis, people pulled back a little bit, but COVID-19 was unprecedented. Obviously, there’ve been pandemics before. In modern times to completely shut down the world as it was, for the travel business, it was heartbreaking.
I saw people must let go of employees. They didn’t know which way their business was going to go. And at Travel + Leisure, what we did, we moved to work remotely, and we still produce the magazine.
We never stopped, never stopped producing content for the website or social media. We adjusted our tone, and we were looking and monitoring the news. But I think the strategy that I developed, and in all honesty, I developed it on the fly because, again, no one had ever lived through this before.
I knew that people would travel again. And we were never going to fully, as journalists, travel journalists, understand the nature of the disease and how fast and where it was going to go. That was a game we weren’t going to win.
The game we could win was giving people inspiration and hope that there was something on the other side. So, we continued to do these beautiful travel stories. We used local reporters.
We got people out in the field safely. There were plenty of stories when we would be sending a photographer and then wait, nope, we couldn’t do it. There were stops and starts, but most of the time, we kept things running.
I think that was the right approach because now we’ve seen it play out that travel is now so ingrained and fundamental in people’s lives. They just don’t want to give it up.
Samir Husni: If you are to pinpoint one major change that you did with the magazine since you became editor-in-chief, what will that change be?
Jacqui Gifford: I would say the biggest change is, I know that, here I have our latest issue. I can hold it up for you. It’s a beautiful picture. I’d say letting the photography speak for itself.
You know, a lot of the old magazine-making covers, cover lines were designed for a newsstand where people would go and physically walk past a newsstand and this line would catch their eye, right? And so, if you look at magazines, even from like five or six years ago, a lot of them were still doing that and having, the line at the top. There’s an art to it. I appreciate that art, but that art is frankly dying as newsstands die.
They’re still important, but it’s not as big of a part of our business. Travel + Leisure never was really a newsstand brand anyway. I think one of the biggest changes is just not feeling like so tied to old ways of doing things.
I was like we’re going to let the imagery speak for itself. We don’t need to clutter it up and make it into something that a person at an airport is going to just like grab their attention, let them be grabbed by the picture and less about the words.
Samir Husni: And talking about pictures, we must mention AI.
Do you use AI in any of your photography or content?
Jacqui Gifford: No, we do not. We have real people producing our content and that’s something that’s fundamental to who we are as a brand. We have people checking into the hotels.
We have people flying the planes. We have people visiting, sailing on the cruise ships to create the content that matters to our audiences. So that is not something we’re doing.
Samir Husni: Excellent. There are quite a few new travel magazines that were born in the last two or three years, Travel. They are very specialized with high cover prices and low frequencies. Do you consider this competition?
Jacqui Gifford: Sure. I consider them competition, but you must remember Travel +Leisure isthe world’s largest travel media brand, across print, digital, social. But in this period of media and history, if we were to look back, the media ecosystem, there’s a lot of great content out there and you’re competing for the eyeballs of all these people and you realize that they’re time poor these days, whether they’re busy at home, at work, they’re bombarded by content all day long.
Their friends’ content on Instagram, obviously we’re on Instagram bombarding them with content too, in a good way. So, I consider, I don’t consider just niche magazines, travel magazines, competitors. They are so many other things, like Netflix is a competitor of ours to a certain degree because people want to watch travel shows and food shows and that’s something that we cover.
So, I think anybody who’s in this position at any brand must acknowledge that the competition isn’t just the traditional format. It’s, all sorts of things. That’s the hardest part of this job and any, job in media is that there’s just more and more stuff to consume and you need to cut; you must be good at what you do to cut through the clutter. Everybody’s time poor.
We cannot add another hour to our day, and even we did add that extra hour, there’s other stuff that people want to do.
I have a young son, sitting in and reading books at home to him or other things. There was a way of life that I remember very, quite distinctly when, before the internet, before this, the way that the pace of life was, it was a little bit slower. You grew up watching TV, you had in Philadelphia, where I lived for a little bit, you had three, six, and 10, the major channels and networks and Fox eventually came in there, but that was your options. Now, I don’t even know how many options there are. I think people are paralyzed by choice sometimes.
Samir Husni: As you investigate your experience as a travel writer, as an editor, what do you enjoy most, the service journalism aspect or the aspirational aspects? The do something writing or the sit back relax and enjoy writing?
Jacqui Gifford: That’s a great question. I love it all.
That’s part of my problem is that I probably try to do too much, but I’ll give you two good examples. So I’m on TikTok, I just posted of something yesterday about traveling with my parents who are older, and what you can do to help, to navigate that process when you’re traveling with someone who’s older, check your bags, don’t do carry on, research where your gate is, research where the bathroom is, the restaurants, all sorts of stuff, because as they’ve gotten older, and they were professional travelers back in the day, it’s gotten more challenging. That’s service journalism, me talking right to my fans and followers.
I love doing stuff like that. The flip side, I also like checking into a hotel and writing a little bit of a longer piece about something that’s not quite so straightforward. I did a story for us that won an award which was exciting about a cruise that we did to the way it sparked curiosity, to your point earlier about nature and wildlife in my then seven-year-old son.
That just took more time to produce. There’s value in both things.
Samir Husni: Before we talk about the World’s Best Summit that is coming up in July, let me ask you if your journey at Travel + Leisure has been a walk in a rose garden?
Jacqui Gifford: No, no, it’s never a walk in a rose garden. I mean, well, COVID being a big challenge for travel, and you know, and this is true, science proves me right. You are trained to forget trauma. Your brain wants you to forget something that’s traumatic.
COVID was incredibly traumatic for the globe. I purposely tried to remind the travel industry how dark that period was, because I don’t want us to forget. And I don’t want to forget how hard it was for me as a manager, but I did it.
Some of my most creative work came out of that time. But again, nobody wants to talk about it because our brains, it’s too hard to think about. But, no, it’s not been a walk in a rose garden.
But look it’s like any job. There are some days when you feel like things are going your way. And then there are some days that, no matter what you do, you just feel like you can’t get the right foot forward.
I feel very confident in team we have at Travel + Leisure, which is why we launched the summit, and which we’re very proud of and going into year two, it’s going to be fantastic.
Samir Husni: Before I ask you about the summit, what do you believe in 2025, is the role of the printed Travel + Leisure in this digital age?
Jacqui Gifford: Well, the magazine to me, the magazine is healthy. It’s beautiful.
It’s that classic lean back experience that allows you to see our covers in the back. Long form journalism is something we still do at Travel + Leisure. We’re incredibly proud of it.
We invest in sending photographers and writers out into the field to tell the more immersive stories that people want to pick it up a magazine and sit back and have some time to themselves. I do that with other magazines when I’m at home. I also think there’s something aspirational if you have a beautiful magazine in your house to have it on your coffee table.
There’s a timeless quality to it. I’ve noticed this with some of our magazines; you could pick up last year’s July issue of Travel + Leisure and find plenty of articles. Most of them, no, you know what I’m going to say, all of them are still relevant because they’re there, the writing is sharp, the execution is good.
You’re not being fed that content by an algorithm. Right? It’s there’s a sense of discovery. And I find that when I read anything in print, usually I find something that I wasn’t, I didn’t know I was looking for.
And that’s the beauty of why people still read magazines is that they can get a great idea. And they’re not just typing and searching; the intent isn’t there yet. And then they, they find something, and they go, oh, I never thought about that.
Maybe I’ll take that trip in another, in another year, and six months, whatever. So that’s the value of print. And you must have across all the different channels; you have to have a strategy that speaks to that audience.
There’s a 5% duplication rate between the digital audience of Travel + Leisure and the print audience. We’re talking to two different people. And that’s okay. Maybe we don’t need to worry so much about how you grow the pie; you don’t have to hit people at every single medium; it’s okay, if someone who’s on TikTok and loves Travel +Leisure isn’t reading the magazine, I’d love for them to, and maybe they will someday. But if they’re not doing it right the second, that’s fine.
Samir Husni: Through the grapevine, I heard that you have a favorite cover of Travel + Leisure, can you tell me which one and why?
Jacqui Gifford: You heard from the grapevine, my favorite cover? Oh, wow. I don’t know. I don’t want to give you wrong answer. From this year? Or was it just in general?
Samir Husni: In general.
Jacqui Gifford: Favorite cover? I don’t know. I don’t know what to say. I mean, this year, I loved the cover we did of Gabon, of two gorillas.
It was a mother gorilla holding a baby gorilla. I thought that was breathtaking. Because the gorillas faces and the way she was looking at the baby and the baby was looking at her and holding its arm around her.
I know our readers like wildlife, and I enjoy that. It’s one of the things that moves me when I travel. And when I saw that picture, I was like, oh, my gosh, this is evolution.
Samir Husni: Thank you. Moving to the Second World’s Best Summit that you intend to host in NYC this coming July, what can you tell me about it?
Jacqui Gifford: The summit is interesting. I will say it’s mostly B2B.
It’s not necessarily, we do have reader interaction, which I’ll get to at the Food and Wine Classic in Charleston, which Travel +Leisure is a part of. I know because I interacted with our readers there, because they would see the advertisements in the magazine, on social media, and they bought tickets. And I hosted a crabbing tour, which was awesome.
The World’s Best Summit is something I’ve thought about doing for some time. But we finally pulled the trigger as it were to do it last year, because I think coming out of COVID, that formative time, I saw the desire for in person networking and interaction, and discussion was really at an all-time high. Travel + Leisure participates in so many conferences, so many events.
I’ve been to enough of them to know what’s a good one. I felt like we could do a really good job of showing our expertise, our authority, our trust with our own in-house editors, moderating and curating discussion. It’s not huge, it’s 350 people, which is but we want. the right 350 people, we want people to come and to really participate and learn.
We launched it last year. And it was a lot of work, but it was fun. I have a very healthy respect for people who do events.
It’s very time consuming, but it was a runaway success, people really enjoyed it. And so, we have our World’s Best Awards around the time of the summit. It’s kind of just a big celebratory moment for Travel + Leisure in general.
I think what’s great about it is that there’s a lot of conferences out there that do a great job of talking about the industry, but I think from an editorial lens and sort of weaving consumer trends with business knowledge, thinking about it from the readers perspective. That’s where we’re coming from. And nobody really was doing that.
They’re doing it perhaps with other topics and other brands. But that’s what we did. And it’s great.
Samir Husni: How is this year’s Summit going to be different?
Jacqui Gifford: This year, we have a full new round of topics to discuss whether it’s expedition travel, solo travel, all inclusive, like the rise of and reinvention of all inclusive, the loyalty landscape and where that’s shifting and going. So those are just a few of many topics, but I think it’s going to be great. We’re very excited.
Samir Husni: Are you adding to your title Event in Chief.
Jacqui Gifford: Yeah, exactly.
But you know what, the thing about an in-person event, it’s draining, it’s that adrenaline rush that gets you through but once you’re done, and you look back at what we accomplished and all the people we met and talked with; I think it was inspiring. I see for the future of Travel + Leisure, whether it’s the Summit, or the Classic in Charleston, or as yet unnamed event, I think going and meeting people where they are is important.
Samir Husni: And do you think this is to help solidify the brand?
Jacqui Gifford: For sure.
There’s no question. If you’re not talking about yourself and all that you’re doing, and this is something our CEO Neil Vogel is so great about, and really, you must be getting out there and telling your brand story if you’re not doing it. You have to be relentless about explaining the mission, talking to the audience, and you can repeat yourself, that’s fine.
This is what I was talking about earlier with the fracturing of people’s time and attention. There are people that don’t know yet that we’re doing this Summit. And that’s okay, but we’ve got to keep telling people about it. We’ve got to continue to message how important it is and why people need to be there.
Samir Husni: Before I ask you my two final typical questions, is there any question I failed to ask you I should ask you?
Jacqui Gifford: Oh, my gosh. I don’t think so.
You know what, I would say this. I think that the biggest challenge that anybody has today, if you’re a journalist, if you’re an editor in chief, is, is prioritization. You know, that’s to me is the hardest part of this job, you kind of asked about it a little bit earlier.
I’ve sort of always lived by the mantra that more is more is more. And that sort of mentality is what keeps Travel + Leisure going.
The people who work here, they’re just naturally curious people. But still, we need to be focused on the right things all the time. And if something’s not working, it’s okay to say goodbye to that thing if it’s not working.
Sami Husni: And if I come to visit you one evening unannounced, what do I catch Jacqui doing to unwind?
Jacqui Gifford: Well, I’m an intense person. So, it’s very hard for me to unwind. But you’re going to like this answer.
I am militant about taking a bath. I take baths all the time. I don’t really like showers.
If I’m going to unwind, I probably take a bath.
Samir Husni: And what keeps you up at night these days?
Jacqui Gifford: There are lots of things that keep me up at night.
But the main thing will always be my son. I’m always worried about him. But he’s a great kid.
It’s not one specific thing. It’s just, when you’re a mom, you want the best for your kid. And that’s it.
The other thing too, I like to if I’m up, which I am, sometimes 2 am to 4 am, you can always text me. I use that time to read. And I know it’s not necessarily the best thing.
But I find I’ll often just go into my living room and sit and look out at the skyline and read. And that’s another form of my meditation on living in New York City. Gosh, like, isn’t this cool? I don’t want to fight being awake sometimes.
I just look out at the skyline and appreciate it.
Samir Husni: And one final question, best country or city you’ve been to?
Jacqui Gifford: Okay. This is a very difficult question.
I’m sure I get a version of this all the time. I’m going to say as of right now, and I’m biased a little bit, because I was born there. But Japan, having just been and come back from Tokyo, I grew up there, I think it’s, it’s got to be up there for all the reasons that, you know, culture, food, art, fashion.
I love Tokyo Disneyland. There’re so many great things about it. And I feel similar vibes when I’m up in Tokyo, because usually I’m jet lagged.
I like to just look out at the skyscrapers and the lights, and I leave my blinds up just because I don’t like feeling sort of entombed in a soulless hotel room somewhere. I think Tokyo is really a great place.
Mr. Magazine 