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Former Ms. Magazine Editor Mary Thom Dead at 68 (AP / Huffington Post)
Prominent feminist Mary Thom, a writer and former editor of Ms. magazine who also was an avid motorcyclist, crashed while riding on a highway and was killed, her nephew said Saturday. She was 68. NYT Thom joined Ms. magazine in 1972 as an editor, rising to become executive editor in 1990. She was known as a journalistic virtuoso who shaped the writing of many of the feminist movement’s luminaries, including Gloria Steinem.  Ms. “We who are Mary’s friends and family haven’t absorbed her loss yet; it’s too sudden,” said Women’s Media Center co-founders Robin Morgan, Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda in a statement over the weekend. “Ms. magazine, the Women’s Media Center, the women’s movement and American journalism have suffered an enormous blow. Mary was and will always be our moral compass and steady heart.” FishbowlNY Thom lived for decades in New York City and served as an editor for Ms. for nearly 20 years before leaving the feminist magazine in 1992. The glossy, which began as an insert in New York magazine, became a feminist powerhouse read in the 1970s but struggled to leverage commercial success with its ideological voice.

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In Mediabistro’s latest So What Do You Do? interview, Star editor-in-chief James Heidenry tackles his newsstand nemeses head-on, calling People and Us Weekly “the mouthpiece of celebrity publicists” – and he didn’t mean that in a positive way.

Some of his other beefs with the mags? They pay celebrities for stories but don’t admit it, and they get most of their biggest “scoops” right from the pages of Star.

“Even Bonnie Fuller, who used to run Star magazine, doesn’t give us credit at HollywoodlLife.com. But Us Weekly, I think, is the biggest culprit of hypocrisy,” Heidenry said. “Us Weekly has Kim [Kardashian] on the cover saying ‘Don’t Call Me Fat,’ and when you open up the issue, it points out our cover and says ‘Look how these tabloids are making fun of her’ when they are doing it on the cover themselves — not making fun of her, but using Kim’s pregnancy to sell magazines and trying to take a holier-than-thou attitude. To me, it was just a lack of respect for their readers.”

For more of Heidenry’s thoughts on the competition plus what he looks for L.A. reporters, read So What Do You Do, James Heidenry, Editor-in-Chief of Star?

In his over 20 years in the fashion business, Elle creative director Joe Zee has worked for such titles as Details and Allure and styled advertising campaigns for companies like Gap and DKNY. And, in our Media Beat interview, the Toronto native and star of Sundance Channel’s All On the Line with Joe Zee was very clear about how he got to the top.

One: he worked for people he could learn from, namely legendary fashion stylist and editor Polly Mellen. (“She taught me what it was like to have a passion for something.”)

And, two, he worked his butt off. “I won’t put stock in people who tell me they wanna work in fashion, because they wanna be glamorous. They wanna be famous. They wanna be well known,” he said. “If you wanna be those things, wrong business.”

Part 1: Elle‘s Joe Zee Puts It All on the Line for Sundance Channel
Part 2: Elle‘s Joe Zee Reveals Exactly What a Magazine Creative Director Does

As creative director for Elle, Joe Zee describes his as an “interesting, sort of nebulous title.”

“I work with all the visuals from cover to cover, so when you read the magazine, whether it’s the model, the celebrity, the styling, the fashion, the photography, all those things come into my play,” Zee explained in our Media Beat interview. “It’s really sort of helping to define a visual signature for the magazine.”

And @mrjoezee gets pummeled with questions daily from women trying to mimic the seemingly effortless style of their favorite celebs. The number one question he gets? No, not that white pants after Labor Day thing — seriously, are we still discussing that?

“I think the biggest question I get all the time is people want my job. How do I do what you do?” said Zee. “I love my job, and it definitely is glamorous after all these years. But there was a lot of years of no glamour to get to that point.”

Part 1: Elle‘s Joe Zee Puts It All on the Line for Sundance Channel
Part 3: How Elle‘s Joe Zee Broke Into Fashion (and How You Can Too)

For two seasons of Sundance Channel‘s All on the Line with Joe Zee, Elle creative director Joe Zee was part mentor, part professor and part psychologist for struggling fashion designers. But, for Season 3, Zee said it was time to shake things up a bit.

“We had done seasons one and two in New York, and not that it’s tapped out, but it’s time to sort of really grow what the series can be about,” he explained in our Media Beat interview. “And I think West Coast fashion has really sort of evolved in terms of what the importance of it has been in the past few years. And also this is the world I live in. The celebrity culture in America is huge and only getting bigger, and what someone wears on the red carpet, on television, or in the media can ultimately change a struggling designer’s business.”

So, how much does Zee’s on-screen persona align with the real thing? All of it, he says.

“The reality is we do what we do, because I am authentic in that position. I don’t do it because of the cameras. I don’t do it for any heightened drama. I do it because I really believe in it.”

Part 2: Elle‘s Joe Zee Reveals Exactly What a Magazine Creative Director Does
Part 3: How Elle‘s Joe Zee Broke Into Fashion (and How You Can Too)

Back in the late 70s, actor LeVar Burton was a sophomore at USC when he landed the starring role of Kunta Kinte in the landmark mini-series, Roots. In fact, Burton was so uninterested in TV (and film, too) that he didn’t even have an agent.

“Roots was my first audition. The business had exhausted all the normal means of finding professional talent. They’d seen every young, black kid in L.A. who had an agent, and they were beating the bushes,” Burton said in the final installment of our Media Beat interview. “My goal was to graduate with a BFA (a bachelor of fine arts majoring in drama) and move to New York and work on Broadway. I had no aspirations toward television or film work at all. I was a theater baby.”

So, how has he managed to rack up this crazy long list of credits? ”You would be surprised,” he said. “For me, it’s not like I’m making the decisions. It’s just about what the universe brings to me.”

Part 1: LeVar Burton on the Future of Reading Rainbow & Printed Books
Part 2: LeVar Burton: By Not Focusing on Reading, “We’re sacrificing our kids”

Congratulations are in order for New York mag’s Frank Rich and the crew at HBO’s Veep. The send-up of Washington politics just picked up Emmy nominations for Outstanding Comedy Series,  Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for star Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Outstanding Casting for a Comedy Series.

Rich is an executive producer for the show and by far one of the most likable Media Beat guests we’ve had. So, we couldn’t think of a better person to get such an honor. Don’t believe me? Check out the video for yourself.

Part 2: Frank Rich Compares New York Times andNew York Magazine
Part 3: New York‘s Frank Rich Breaks Down 2012 Presidential Election, Talks Media Bias

In the final segment of our Media Beat interview with Lucky editor-in-chief Brandon Holley, the print vet talked about the explosion of street style, where women can find designer goods (or versions of them) for cheap, and that hot-button issue every magazine editor grapples with: Photoshop.

Sure, a petition against Seventeen has the pub pledging to feature more “healthy, real women,” but is it even possible for a magazine to succeed without airbrushing its models? Uh, no, said Holley.

“I’ve done a bunch of focus groups, and women will constantly say, ‘Why don’t you just put a real person on the cover? I don’t wanna see a celebrity.’ That cover would sell 10 copies,” said Holley. “So, what women say they want and what they want are two different things sometimes. I mean, we do need to show more women with real bodies, absolutely. But I don’t think that should be a dead set rule.”

Part 1: Lucky EIC Brandon Holley on Getting a Magazine Job
Part 2: Brandon Holley Calls Fashion Blogging ‘Most Exciting Thing to Happen in Publishing in Decades’

They say if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em… or, do one better and let ‘em eat off your plate. That’s Lucky editor-in-chief Brandon Holley‘s approach to the Web.

In the second installment of our Media Beat interview, Holley, who once headed Yahoo! Shine, said she realized pretty early that the days of finding new readers “on the back of a CVS newsstand somewhere” are over.

“Fashion blogging, to me, is the most exciting thing that’s happened in publishing in decades. It’s really created a new tier of content, and you can either separate yourself from that content or you can bring it in,” she explained. “One way that we bring it in is we have a desk where bloggers can come in and sit — they’re called our Lucky Style Collective — they contribute content to the magazine; they contribute certainly online. So, it’s a sharing of pockets of audience.”

Part 1:Lucky EIC Brandon Holley on Getting a Magazine Job
Part 3: Lucky’s Brandon Holley Talks Photoshop and Fashion

You don’t have to live in the Bay Area, but you do have to be familiar with its culture in order to pitch San Francisco magazine. And with new FOB sections ranging from politics to food to fashion, there is ample opportunity for any freelancer to write for this regional glossy, no matter where you’re from.

“It’s big-city journalism on a number of levels. We have in-depth feature reporting on civic issues, social justice, politics and personalities in power positions. Then, we cover the service side: how to live the good life in a vibrant, exciting, constantly changing city. Then there’s our food, style and cultural coverage,” said editor-in-chief Jon Steinberg.

For editors’ contact information, read How to Pitch: San Francisco. [Mediabistro AvantGuild subscription required]

– Andrea Hackett