Magazines

Mikki Taylor spent over 30 years at Essence, first in the mag’s fashion and sewing department in the early 80s and most recently as its cover and style director, and she says the key to longevity in publishing is a combination of good ideas, enthusiasm, and a pro-active attitude.

“First, you have to know the territory. You also have to know your gift,” she explained in our Media Beat interview. “Is there room for your gift at the magazine at which you currently work? And, if so, how will you play that forward? And how well are you selling yourself everyday not only in the things that you say but in your actions, in the ideas that you come to the table with. Are you asking yourself ‘what great things am I going to do today?’”

Watch the full video to find out how Taylor found the courage to leave Essence and start her own consultancy, Mikki Taylor Enterprises.

Part 1: Mikki Taylor on Her 30 Years at Essence
Part 2: Mikki Taylor: Michelle Obama Brings ‘Sophistication’ to American Style

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

Motor Trend parent company Source Interlink Media has launched a new YouTube channel. Though the channel bears Motor Trend‘s name, it will incorporate content from other SIM mags like Hot Rod, Motorcyclist, Lowrider, FourWheeler, Dirt Rider, Car Craft, Automobile and Import Tuner. SIM is producing eight new shows, including two 22-minute feature-length TV shows–Roadkill and Epic Drives.

“Automotive is an extremely popular category on YouTube,” says YouTube’s head of original programming Alex Carloss. “We’re excited to bring a company like Motor Trend to our platform where millions of fans around the world can tune in and watch some of their favorite Motor Trend content.”

Release after the jump:

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And Harrelson, perhaps smarting from the most embarrassing “Ask Me Anything” in Reddit history, was a total jerk to Vice‘s Annette Lamothe-Ramos. She writes about what she witnessed on the press junket for the film Rampart just prior to her own interview:

Before they went into Woody’s hotel suite, I met the girls who were conducting the AMA. They seemed sweet, so I didn’t mind the additional wait—imagining that they might butter him up with a light-hearted Q&A before Woody and I got down to business.

Ten minutes later, a stampede charged the waiting room, each person whispering furiously and cupping their mouths in horror. I didn’t hear everything but I knew it wasn’t good. The only fragments I could make out were something about “de-virginizing a high schooler” and “really angry.” I immediately broke out in hives and my mind went blank. Seconds later I was called into the next room to chat with a visibly irritated Woody Harrelson.

The interview was not a success. Harrelson was rude, dismissive, and more than a little inappropriate. After a few minutes, he stopped answering questions and just sat staring Lamothe-Ramos up and down. The two were alone in his hotel room, and Lamothe-Ramos was so uncomfortable she ended the interview early.

We feel the need to preface this item by saying that we here at FishbowlLA tend to fall more into the glue sniffing department when it comes to our drug of choice. So we’re not regular readers of High Times. But cruising through the Reddit “Ask Me Anything” section this afternoon, we came across a pretty cool community interview with the staff of the mag.

First off, nice redesign. The cover shot with Snoop pictured to the right is for the upcoming April issue. Apparently, the mag launched its redesign last month. We’re impressed.

We also learned that the mag is publishing a new marijuana cookbook called The Official High Times Cannabis Cookbook: More Than 50 Irresistible Recipes That Will Get You High. Betcha you can guess when it comes out. Hint: It’s in April. Think real hard.

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Looks like OWN isn’t the only Oprah Winfrey media property struggling since the talk goddess left her syndicated show. Adweek reports that O, The Oprah Magazine‘s newsstand sales were off by 32 percent in the second half of 2011. That came after an 8 percent dip in the first half of the year.

The mag did note that things weren’t all bad, however, as subscriptions to O were up four percent in 2011.

Oprah has said in the past if OWN doesn’t work out she’s going to quit TV and become an organic farmer in Hawaii. Sounds like a TV show to us.

The latest issue of Deadline.com’s awards season print magazine Awardsline is out. Distributed for free to AMPAS voting members and film execs, the February 1 edition is once again chock full of studio ads.

There is also some clever editorial sourcing of a panel held last December at a two-day industry event hosted by the PMC/Nikki Finke site. Alongside Relativity Media CEO Ryan Kavanaugh and Open Road CEO Tom Ortenberg, Roadside Attractions co-president Howard Cohen shared stories about awards seasons past:

“Last year we had Biutiful, and were doing a campaign for Javier Bardem for Best Actor. [At the end of] last year, it did not get a Golden Globe nomination, it did not get a SAG nomination, it did not get a BFCA nomination, nothing. We thought we were dead, basically.”

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When Mikki Taylor first started working for Essence in the early 80s, there weren’t nearly as many images of black women in the media as there are today. In our Media Beat interview, the fashion and beauty maven credited longtime EIC Susan Taylor for instilling staffers with the mag’s mission early on.

“I just remember her saying to me, ‘We come to this magazine to contribute,’ and it was something that she instilled in me that day that I walk with to this day,” Taylor recalled. “In fact, when I got the job, I was ready to go on a mission. It became more than a job from the moment I walked in the doors and began serving black women.”

Watch the full video to find out which Essence covers Taylor found most difficult to direct and what she has to say to the magazine’s critics.

Part 2:Essence‘s Mikki Taylor Takes on Casual Fridays
Part 3: Mikki Taylor’s Advice for Magazine Editors: ‘Take the Leap Forward’

Acclaimed Los Angeles artist Mike Kelley, who died this last Tuesday from what is believed to be suicide, told Artillery magazine back in November that he was through making art. The statement so shocked Artillery editor Tulsa Kinney that she ended the interview. “There was a sadness in his voice, and he looked sad,” she explained today in a letter to readers. “It felt invasive to press on.” The interview had already been a difficult one. Kinney reflects:

Even not knowing Mike, I could tell when we met that he was depressed. For our interview we sat in a darkened living room and he left the curtains drawn. As we spoke, he blankly stared straight ahead, replying to my questions in a deliberate monotone.

Kinney goes on to share notes she made while typing the interview:

He seemed solemn, almost melancholy even. He was dutiful in carrying out his promise to me, which was to let me interview him for the magazine, but it seemed like it was going to be a painful ride for some reason.

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Vanity Fair‘s 18th annual Hollywood Issue hasn’t even hit newsstands yet and it’s already drawing heat. At issue, once again, is the three-panel fold-out cover, which, this year, features 11 actresses dressed in 20′s glam. The four actresses who made the actual cover–Rooney Mara, Mia Wasikowska, Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain–are all white. Adepero Oduye and Paula Patton, the only non-white women to take part in the shoot, are pictured in the fold-up panels to the right.

Not a big deal? Well, this is about the twelfth time this has happened. Jezebel has a rundown of the various Hollywood Issue covers, and just how many times actors and actresses of color were pushed to the side, off the cover. After about the fourth or fifth time it’s clearly no longer an accident or coincidence.

In the February issue of Los Angeles magazine, Steve Mikulan takes an in-depth look under the headline “Left Behind” at the late Yvette Vickers. The actress best known for her role in 1958′s Attack of the 50 Foot Woman made sad, international headlines last spring after her mummified body was discovered at home in Benedict Canyon.

Via a Web extra conversation with the magazine’s executive editor Matthew Segal, Mikulan provides some interesting framing info. For example, here’s how this forgotten member of Hollywood was able to continue to support herself, in lieu of residuals and such:

“For someone of her middling stature, she could probably count on $25 a pop for a signed 8-by-10. Apparently, though, this was enough to sustain her at some level of comfort.”

Mikulan also reveals that Attack of the 50 Foot Woman was in fact one of the first sci-fi movies he ever saw on TV, and that the film’s ending made a lasting impression.