Magazeum

LOST IN TRANSLATOR

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There are more than 7,000 languages in the world and there’s a good chance that you don’t speak or read most of them. Being an English-language speaker is, among other things, a huge privilege in this multilingual world because while it may not be the most widely spoken first language, English is the language that is most widely spoken.

There’s a chance that you can get by in English almost everywhere. And so Engl...

AN ELEGY FOR THE ELITE

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Michael Grynbaum is a correspondent for The New York Times, where he has covered media, politics, and culture for 18 years. He’s reported on three presidential campaigns, two New York City mayors—they're always so boring—and the transformation of the media world in the Trump era. He lives in Manhattan and he’s a graduate of Harvard.

His first book, Empire of the Elite: Inside Condé Nast, the Media Dynasty that...

POP GOES PRINT

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“Today, creativity feels like it’s being squeezed into smaller and smaller boxes. Content is designed to chase likes, rack up views, serve a clear function—a purpose….we’re here—to celebrate creativity for creativity’s sake, no strings attached. Analog isn’t dead; it’s the new rebellion.”

This manifesto is a part of a striking editorial in the first issue of Playground, a new magazine created out of Singapore by Pop M...

SHE LOVES HER WORK

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The word ‘unicorn’ gets thrown around a lot these days. But in our book, Sarah Ball is the Real Deal. The editor of WSJ. Magazine is a student of old-guard, in-the-trenches, work-on-a-story-for-years magazine making, which has earned her cred among the Jim Nelsons and David Grangers of the biz.

She’s also a digital native with a flare for experimentation and a new media scrappiness. Sarah spent her career bridging...

A NEW RECIPE FOR FOOD MAGAZINES

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You may think a magazine called Famous for My Dinner Parties would be about food or entertaining—and I wouldn’t blame you if you did. You wouldn’t be wrong, but you also wouldn’t be right.

Taking its name from Robert Altman’s film, 3 Women, Famous for My Dinner Parties started as a pandemic-inspired digital project among three friends (Junshen Wu, Sandra von Mayer-Myrtenheim and Yannic Moeken) in Berl...

THE GOOD CITIZEN

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This episode is a special one for us here at Magazeum. We even gave it its own code name: “Project Rosebud” (IYKYK). But if you only know our guest as the grandson of the man who inspired the lead character in the film classic Citizen Kane and the founder of one of the largest publishing empires in the world, you are missing out. 

Will Hearst could have done the easy thing, but he chose not to. As the current chairm...

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT

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While it’s not true that kids don’t read, it may be true that adults aren’t teaching kids to read. It’s also true that today’s children face issues that those of the past didn’t. And the pandemic—there’s that word again—impacted everyone in ways we’re still figuring out, including kids. Perhaps especially kids.

There are, amazingly, and encouragingly, many new magazines for children of all ages now. One of them ...

A MODERN FORM OF WORSHIP

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Name the five photographers who, more than any others, defined the dramatic shift in the approach to magazine photography in the late eighties and early nineties. There’s Herb Ritts, Bruce Weber, Steven Meisel. Richard Avedon, of course. 

Who’s missing? I’m getting to that.

Today’s guest was discovered while still a student at ArtCenter College of Design in Los Angeles, by Andy Warhol no less, whose upstart (...

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

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Josh Jones has done a lot of things when it comes to magazines: Editor. Writer. Maker. Custom publisher. Mentor. Evangelist. All of the above. 

Has Josh helped write a book about hip hop in Mongolia? Yes. Has he sat back and watched Gordon Ramsey mash his face into a sandwich? Indeed. Has he written an instructive how to book that reminds the reader to always lift a box of magazines by bending one’s knees? ...

GUARDIAN AT THE GATEFOLD

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Today’s guest has become almost synonymous with graphic design and editorial publishing. His career began in the defiant New York “sex press” of the late 1960s, where not-actually-that-surprisingly, as a teenager he was already art-directing magazines like Screw and The New York Review of Sex. That unlikely starting point gave him a rare education in the power of design to command attention and shape meanin...

THE REST OF THE STORY

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Most people in the world live in what we in the west sometimes dismissively call the “rest of the world.” Depending on where you live, “the rest” probably includes parts, if not all, of Latin America, Africa, and the vast majority of Asia. Much like the tendency of Americans to call the champions of their sports leagues “world champions,” the word “world” is never what it seems.

Except when it is.

Founded as a n...

IMAGINE FRIENDSGIVING AS A MAGAZINE

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The pandemic hit New York first and harder and longer than most places. And as a New Yorker, Joshua Glass was appalled by the eerily quiet and empty city that resulted. He wanted to connect with people, any people, but he wanted quality gatherings, as opposed to quantity. 

When restrictions on gatherings began to ease up, he started curating a series of dinner parties around town. And these get-to...

THE ROADS LESS TRAVELED

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Much of travel media comes with a kind of sheen to it. A gloss. Whether you are traveling Italy with a hungry celebrity or cruising Alaska in the pages of a magazine, the photos are big and Photoshopped, the text kind of breathless. And while Afar has plenty of both, it just feels a bit different. It is not a magazine that puts a focus on consumption but on feeling. On the experience of travel.

Julia Cosgrove...

GOOD TROUBLE

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Troublemakers is a magazine about society’s misfits. At least from the Japanese point of view. A bilingual, English/Japanese magazine, Troublemakers came about as a way to showcase people who were different, who stayed true to themselves, or about the long road those people had taken to self-acceptance.

The founders, editor Yuto Miyamoto and art director Manami Inoue, were inspired by a notion that Japanese culture perh...

A LIFE OF SLICE

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What happens when a pastry chef meets a magazine editor in Brooklyn? No, this isn’t the setup for a joke that perhaps three people might ever find funny. But…what do you get when a pastry chef meets a magazine editor in Brooklyn?

You get the start of a media brand and a movement and a community. In other words, you get Cake Zine.

Started as a post-pandemic stab at reconnecting with the world, Cake Zine is the result o...

DÉPÊCHE MODE

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Viscose Journal calls itself “a journal for fashion criticism” which sounds like a simple enough—and niche enough—premise for a magazine. Founded by Jeppe Ugelvig in Copenhagen and New York in 2021, Viscose has quickly become a vital touchpoint in the fashion world. And it has evolved into something far more complicated than what it still calls itself.

In many ways, Ugelvig and his team have created a magazine that is a...

THE GOING WAS VERY, VERY GOOD

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I’m a writer and the former deputy editor of Vanity Fair. Now if you know anything about me, which statistically you don't, unless—shameless plug—you read my memoir, Dilettante, about my time at Vanity Fair and the golden age of the magazine business. Which, statistically, you didn’t.

The only reason I have a career at all is because of today’s guest on Print Is Dead (Long Live Print). He hired me in th...

NOTED. (RELENTLESSLY)

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When a company publishes a magazine, or at least an “editorial” product, for whatever reason, it is called custom publishing. I have a long editorial background in custom. And custom has a surprisingly long history itself.

How long?

John Deere started publishing The Furrow in 1895. The Michelin Star started as a form of custom content: what better way to sell tires to monied Parisians than by enticing them to ta...

THE SYSTEM WORKS

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When I decided to launch this podcast back in 2019, it didn’t take me long to realize that I didn’t want to do it alone. The first person I called? Today’s guest, Debra Bishop.

I’ve known Deb a little bit for a long time, but well enough to know her insight, humor, and world view would elevate every conversation we’d have. But also, and more importantly, she is without question one of the most consequential editoria...