Magazines

TIME‘s new mag is out and this week they have stories on the Trayvon Martin case, 10 questions for Angelina Jolie including an inquiry about that slitted Oscar dress, the GOP presidential race and obviously, oil.

Moving to D.C. doesn’t have to mean forgetting where you came from. So, if you’ve still got a place in your heart for Southern traditions (hold the fried chicken stereotypes, please), you could land a byline in this regional pub.

South concentrates on highlighting remarkable Southerners and any brand new establishments and trends happening in the Creative Coast. (Think that Southern belle who’s influencing national politics, or that hip, new restaurateur from North Carolina who’s got the District buzzing.)

“The pub has an entire section dedicated to profiles on interesting Southern characters which definitely lends itself to outside ideas,” said managing editor Lauren Hunsberger. ”The characters, events, culture and stories are second to none and provide for some of the best reading in the world.”

For more on word count and which sections are open to freelancers, read How To Pitch: South.

National Journal – sultry?

The March 17th cover is a little seductive.  It features this dude giving sultry bedroom eyes with his arm over his head, his button down is pulling out his Boss jeans to show peek of his stomach and orange underwear.

A little strange for them, no?

The deck on the cover reads…”Sam Chaudhary came to America with a plan [and apparently orange underwear] to create jobs. He’s the kind of immigrant both parties want. So why can’t Washington help him?”

For the second year in a row, House Beautiful is leveraging an online sensation surrounding Keanu Reeves as part of the marketing strategy for its chair giveaway that came to D.C. last week.

It may sound strange, but it works for them. Last year, House Beautiful took a picture from the “sad Keanu” meme and photoshopped it on pink chairs all over Chicago. This year they took “conspiracy Keanu” and slapped him onto pictures of  Washington- related conspiracy theories now posted on HB’s Facebook page.

House Beautiful is continuing with its chair campaign by auctioning off chairs to benefit Homes for Our Troops.

Associate publisher Sean Sullivan explained the marketing strategy to FishbowlDC… Read more

If you learn nothing else from today’s The New Yorker piece on Politico‘s new livestream show by Ryan Lizza, it’s that they largely don’t take bathroom breaks. Probably more than we wanted to know. But actually, we’re relieved we know that Mike Allen can go six hours sans potty. Impressive!

“We started in Iowa, and that one was me on a barstool, by myself, with an iPad,” Allen told Lizza. “We wound up going six hours – not one bathroom break.”

Lizza declares the show a “hit” and explains why it appears to be catching on in recent weeks. He writes, “It’s just hours of unfiltered banter by Politico‘s motley writers, who revel in how untelegenic they are.”

We enjoyed this graph: “During a discussion of Barack Obama’s basketball game summit with Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron, where the two world leaders ate hot dogs, [Jim] VandeHei turned to [Jonathan] Martin and said, ‘You look like a hot-dog eater, Jonathan.’”

VandeHei, who plays host and relentlessly ribs the reporters, explains why he thinks the show is a success. He says, “Traditional TV, it ain’t doin’ it for ‘em anymore. They want something more authentic.”

He says people enjoy the sausage-making process.

Note to readers: We can’t bring you the story since it is behind a subscriber paywall. But see the story in the latest issue of The New Yorker. Also…look for another episode of Politico‘s reality TV show tomorrow night.

(A Sprinkling of Things we Think you Ought to Know)

Meghan McCain is “Strictly Dickly” - It’s a bit deceiving to say that Meghan McCain posed for Playboy magazine. But, she did sit down for an interview and had some pictures taken fully clothed. Compared to some pictures that McCain has put out on Twitter, it’s quite tame. But, it’s not her gigantic rack that’s getting all the attention quite as much as her take on sexuality. In the 20 Questions portion of the magazine, McCain has this to say about bumping uglies.

“I’m not a lesbian, if that’s what you’re asking. I’d be the first person to tell the world I was gay. I’m not private about anything. I think you should live how you should live. But I’m strictly dickly. I can’t help it. I love sex and I love men.”

So, Meghan professes her love of making the beast with two backs, so long as she’s inserting Tab A into Slot B.

Buzzfeed versus Daily Caller Round 3,249 – Buzzfeed continues to ride the wave of controversy that it helped create by peeking in at media reaction to the catfight revolving around a Daily Caller reporter and the DNC. Buzzfeed makes the point that the “media landscape” these days is so vastly different than before, that lines are becoming blurred. They write,

There are now news outlets like ThinkProgress and the Free Beacon that are explicitly part of partisan organizations. Others, like the Caller and TPM, are independent but aligned with one of Washington’s two sides. Do press aides have the same responsibilities to reporters from partisan organizations as to those from outfits, from BuzzFeed to the Post, whose stance is more traditional, and neutral?

It’s an interesting read and sure to make reporters ask questions of not only how they work their sources, but how their sources may work them.

Anderson Gets the Middle Finger from Singer – Recording artist M.I.A. made headlines earlier this year when she gave the middle finger to a camera during her performance with Madonna. Capital New York’s Joe Pompeo reports that she called out CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Twitter. Here’s the offending tweet and Cooper’s confused comeback.

What are you talking about? RT@MIAuniverse: @AndersonCooper called me a terrorist for speaking out , and expressed support for the SLgov

— Anderson Cooper (@andersoncooper) March 14, 2012

This all stems from a story published on a blog associated with Cooper’s show back in 2009 that profiled the singer’s father. He was a political activist with the Tamil Tigers. Cooper went on to say that he only knows her as the “lady who sung at the Super Bowl.” One thing we all know about her is that man can she hold a grudge.

Last night, according to TV spies, The New Yorker‘s Ryan Lizza spent the night hanging out in Politico‘s newsroom as they did their livestream show. He observed backstage production and pestered politicos with lots of questions. He was dedicated. The date went long. He started at 6 p.m. and stayed until the end, which was 11:30ish.

So…presumably, Lizza was preparing for a piece on the show?

We reached out to Lizza for comment. As most reporters know, revealing too many details on upcoming stories is a serious no-no. “‘Spending the night with Politico‘ sounds so risqué!” he wrote FishbowlDC. “It was strictly platonic, I assure you. Probably shouldn’t say more than that, but nothing earth-shattering is in the works.”

House Beautiful Magazine Editor-in-Chief Newell Turner is on Capitol Hill this morning for a presser with Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) to promote the buying of American-made furniture and to address an issue that is of great concern to the industry. We caught up with the southerner to grill him about his furniture tastes. Experience: He worked at Conde Nast’s House & Garden for three years and at Metropolitan Home for more than a decade. He earned his BA in journalism and Southern studies from the University of Mississippi. Where he resides: He lives in New York City and has a farmhouse in the Catskills. (See a photograph of his dream house below.)

What’s the most comfortable chair you’ve ever sat in? There are more comfortable chairs than people realize, or maybe being tired can make a wooden stool feel good. Lee Industries makes a small square club chair that always caught my eye. The arms are narrow but padded, and the seat is deep. It looks small, but it’s really comfortable. I bought two!

What do you think of when you think of Washington? Do you like the cherry blossoms or are they overrated? I fell in love with Washington a few years ago. There may be a lot of politics in the city, but there are a lot of wonderful people living in DC. It’s a beautiful city. As for cherry blossoms, what’s there not to love about an explosion of flowers?!

How did you get your start in the magazine publishing industry? I was in graduate school in Mississippi studying magazine design. I met the editor in chief of Metropolitan Home and pursued a job with them. I was hired as an editorial assistant at the very bottom of the editorial ladder.

What tips do you have for young journos just starting out? Is the profession still worth it? I think the profession is more exciting than ever. There are many more opportunities to show what you can do. I believe without a doubt that the more information people have access to, the more they’ll need editors they trust to make sense of it for them. My best piece of advice is to be confident in what you can do—but with a big dose of humility. Find a mentor and trust his or her guidance.

If you had to furnish a room with stuff from two or three stores at most, what do you choose? No more than three, Turner. We’re watching you. Ha! Start with Crate & Barrel for basics. Visit Restoration Hardware for pieces with texture and some character. Then shop a vintage store or antique auction for pieces that have a history….you might even score a treasure.

Freelancers never know where their next story could come from. For freelancer Christian Feuerstein, it was attending a keynote speech at her college reunion that brought her the awe-inspiring story of a famous alum and Nobel Prize winner who survived Nazi Germany.

So, she did some digging to find the appropriate editor at  the Italian American mag Ambassador and fired off her pitch.

“None of [Feuerstein's clips] blew me away, necessarily,” said editor Don Oldenburg, “but I appreciated her professional approach and that she followed our requirements for a pitch: make it brief and convincing, tell me why you’re the writer to handle the story, and give me two or three clips.”

To see our breakdown of the actual query letter and more reasons Oldenburg green lighted the assignment, check out Pitches That Worked: Ambassador. [sub req'd]

In her new book Commander in Chic, Essence editor-at-large Mikki Taylor doles out fashion and beauty tips for the everyday woman based on examples from Michelle Obama.

“I love her clear cut assurance, the way she owns her style from within,” she explained in our Media Beat interview.

And one thing FLOTUS has done, according to Taylor, is inject a much needed sophistication into America’s dress code. Casual Fridays? No, thank you, she says.

“I think that we’re a little too relaxed. I think a relaxed nation creates other kinds of flexibilities that shouldn’t exist. Let’s treat each other with the respect and the honor that we are due, and so the subliminal things play into that. If we’re coming to work in sneakers, if we’re coming to work in ripped jeans and plaid shirts, who are we representing?”

Part 1:Mikki Taylor on Her 30 Years at Essence
Part 3: Mikki Taylor’s Advice for Magazine Editors: ‘Take the Leap Forward’