Is working for Anna Wintour really that bad?Is life as Vogue editor Anna Wintour’s assistant as hellish as The Devil Wears Prada makes it out to be? And what about working for other Condé Nast editors? New York mag tracks down some former assistants who “escaped”.
Magazines
A magazine for stranded travellers
Journalist Andrew Losowsky is stuck in Dublin due to the volcano, and has put a call-out to fellow stranded journalists around the world: Let’s pass the time by creating a magazine.
VIDEO: The story of Frankie magazine
Founder of trendy Australian fashion magazine Frankie, Louise Bannister, explains how two 20-somethings turned a little idea into a big, successful magazine.
Welcome to the Great Magazine Freeze of 2010
2008-09 were the years that saw magazines folding and crumbling and Gawkers Great Magazine Die-off tag (rather like our own Newspaper Death Watch one) getting a work out. But times they are a-changing, with less mags dying and less being born.
Ethical wipeout at surf magazines
A gnarly expose on the surf magazine industry, where reports of racism and drug scandals have been spiked and censored in an effort to keep relationships with multi-million-dollar surf brands sunny. Bummer.
Why the iPad can’t save the magazine industry
Business Insider crunches the numbers on the iPad economy: even if iPads sell beyond all expectations, the return for magazines will just be small change compared to their print revenue.
How spam filters damned The Beaver
Canadian history magazine The Beaver has been around for almost a century — but the unintentionally naughty name has been killing its web traffic.
Video of the Day: The magazine stand of the future
Is this the future of magazine purchases? A stand at the South by Southwest festival shows how you can pick your magazine from hundreds of options on a screen, drag it onto your e-reader and voila! No paper evidence that you just bought O, the Oprah magazine.
There’s no right of reply if you’re mobbed by The Spectator
How do you get a right of reply in The Spectator Australia? asks Professor Mike Daube. It’s harder than you might think.
Nylon: where white skin is the new black
It’s quite common to see a whitewash of models in the media, but is brightly coloured US It-girl mag Nylon the whitest of them all? Only one non-white cover model has been used in seven years.
What your taste in magazines says about you
Jezebel shamelessly (yet hilariously and accurately) stereotypes various magazines’ readerships. Vogue? “People who use the names of seasons as verbs”. Time? “People waiting to get a colonoscopy”.
Hussein: I don’t buy Quadrant — but I still pay for it
How do you reconcile the need to know what the enemy is saying with the prohibition against tipping money -– even small change -– into their war-chest? asks Shakira Hussein.
The phoniest tabloid tales of the year
From Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s endless breakups to by-the-minute updates on Katie Holmes’s uterus, Jezebel takes a look back at the year that was in the celebrity news that… wasn’t.
Stephen Colbert: America’s favourite covergirl
Why would Sports Illustrated make comedian Stephen Colbert its latest cover star? Because he’s pure sales gold, already generating huge sales boosts for the likes of Rolling Stone, New York, Wired and Newsweek.
The Slate guide to magazine gift guides
It’s that time of year again: every magazine in the western world issues its official Christmas Gift Guide and we’re all buried in a pile of “must haves” and “hot buys”. Slate cuts through the crap with a guide to this season’s guides.
Ben Bernanke: Time‘s Person of the Year 2009
Time magazine has named US Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke as its Person of the Year for 2009, lauding him as “the most powerful nerd on the planet”. Well, at least it wasn’t bloody Twitter.
Time‘s 2009 Person of the Year: the nominees
Time has revealed the 2009 nominees for its coveted title of Person of the Year. This year’s list ranged from the obvious — Obama, Bernanke — to some more left-field suggestions like the Somali Pirates and Iran Protesters.
Time‘s Top 10 of everything for 2009
Time magazine has released its highly anticipated annual list of the Top 10 of everything for the year. From the top gadgets of the year to the top animal stories, which will come out on top?
If magazines were restaurants
With news that Rolling Stone mag is going to open a chain of restaurants (Oy. Rock ‘n roll-themed eateries attached to a hopelessly dated brand. Hard Rock Cafe, anyone?), Slate imagines what other glossy rags would look like as food outlets.
Variety goes paywall
There goes another one: entertainment industry bible Variety is putting up a paywall tomorrow. It’s an icon of the industry, but with a $248-a-year subscription fee, its real cachet will be put to the test.
From glass making to magazines: a classic Young Rich mix
An interview with entrepreneur Ash Hunter, owner of Just Magazines (Just Cars and Just Bikes) and Hunterfive, an investment company. How do you combine new media, publishing, manufacturing and property?
Lachlan Murdoch makes a grab for Billboard and Adweek
Lachlan Murdoch is closing in on a deal to buy the bulk of Nielsen Business Media, publisher of Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, Adweek, Editor & Publisher and other magazines.
Rival publishers unite to create iTunes for magazines — but who’s buying?
Magazine publishers Hearst, Time Inc and Conde Nast are joining forces to create an “iTunes for magazines” — a online storefront for digital versions of their titles and articles. But they can’t sell a product that’s already free… are those paywalls we can see looming on the horizon?
The perils of political photo spreads
Julia Gillard has posed for a Yuletide photo shoot for Women’s Weekly. Compared to previous politicians’ experiences, she got off very lightly.
Silvio Berlusconi: Rolling Stone‘s Rockstar of the Year
The Italian edition of Rolling Stone magazine has named Playboy PM Silvio Berlusconi as its “Rockstar of the Year” for his “lifestyle worthy of the greatest rock star.”
