Magazines

People magazine won “Best Celebrity & Entertainment Cover” for its royal wedding issue in the American Society of Magazine Editors’ annual Cover of the Year competition. People was also a finalist in the same category for its tribute to Liz Taylor after her passing last year.

New York won the big “Best Cover” award for its shot of an elderly pregnant woman posing naked a la Demi Moore.

Full list of Steve Jobs-themed winners and cover shots here.

Despite all the recent reshuffling in its staff,  Maxim remains tethered to its initial man-minded mission, featuring pieces with the brashly irreverent yet surprisingly instructive tone of an enlightened frat brother.

“I’d say the level of humor and discourse has gotten a little sharper and smarter,” said editor-in-chief Dan Bova, “but the goal is still to be that plain-spoken, witty best friend guiding you through the guy universe.”

But don’t think you’re going to break in with a pitch about yet another celebrity. ”Somebody proposing we should interview Chris Rock is not being particularly helpful. We do most of the star-wrangling ourselves,” Bova explained.

So, what type of pitches are editors looking for? Get the details in How To Pitch: Maxim

This article is one of several mediabistro.com features exclusively available to AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, you can register for as little as $55 a year and get access to these articles, discounts on seminars and workshops, and more.

The American Prospect, a left-leaning political magazine, is facing the possibility of shutting down at the end of May. To keep the lights on, the nonprofit rag is in need of $500,000. Prospect editor Kit Rachlis (previously an editor at the LA Times, Los Angeles Magazine, and LA Weekly) told Michael Calderone of the Huffington Post that the publication hopes to raise the needed funds through donors and readers.

Still, Rachlis thought the situation was serious enough to inform staffers last Thursday of the magazine’s current financial woes.

Rachlis said Prospect editors “thought it was important to be fair to the staff, to let them know there was a possibility that if we didn’t fill it, the Prospect‘s last issue as currently constituted would be the July/August issue.” The Prospect, which has a robust website, publishes 10 print issues annually; the July/August double issue closes in late May.

Here’s hoping they pull through. The world doesn’t need any more unemployed journalists.

Unlike the gossip and innuendo rampant in the blogosphere, Sister 2 Sister routinely gets its information from the stars themselves. Whether Halle Berry‘s ex-husband Eric Benet was denying a reported sex addiction or Tamar Braxton and hubby Vince Herbert were dishing about their upcoming reality show, it was S2S that often got stars to open up when other publications couldn’t.

“Our mission is to try to teach,” explained senior editor Ericka Boston. “So, we’ll talk to the entertainers about the lessons that they’ve learned from whatever experiences they’ve gone through, and it’s more so about achieving an understanding, as opposed to just fishing for a headline.”

Although there’s little room in the print magazine for outside Q&As with celebs, freelancers can still pitch their entertainment stories to S2SMagazine.com. But, “Be prepared to include multimedia in your pitch,” Boston advised.

For more details and Boston’s contact info, read How To Pitch: Sister 2 Sister.

This article is one of several mediabistro.com features exclusively available to AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, you can register for as little as $55 a year and get access to these articles, discounts on seminars and workshops, and more.

Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner officially said goodbye to Chicago this weekend, penning a guest op-ed column in the Chicago Tribune:

Chicago shaped Playboy in ways I didn’t realize at the time. New York City seemed a world away from the rest of America, sophisticated and socially advanced, detached from the remainder of the country. Chicago stood as the most significant representation of true, post-war America. The high-rises and subways brimmed with urban men who returned to the city after their experiences abroad and found themselves receptive to ideas that challenged their socially conservative surroundings.

Read more

This glossy prides itself on being the only American mag that speaks to a key demographic: wives and moms, women who want to celebrate — not just survive — the young family years. So editors are looking for service-y pieces to guide these women in their 30s and 40s through a “happy but hectic life stage.”

That includes a wide variety of topics, like health, money and food, along with features on marriage, relationships, family and amazing ‘real woman’ stories. And freelancers get full rein of the the majority of the glossy, including a philanthropy page titled ”Be Part of the Solution.”

Get more details in How To Pitch: Redbook.

This article is one of several mediabistro.com features exclusively available to AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, you can register for as little as $55 a year and get access to these articles, discounts on seminars and workshops, and more.

In the latest episode of mediabistroTV’s “My First Big Break,” we hear from HollywoodLife.com editor Bonnie Fuller. Fuller gained international acclaim as the editor of magazines such as Marie Claire, US Weekly and Cosmopolitan, but did you know that she started out as a beat reporter writing about sports clothes? Or that a friendship with an upcoming fashion designer named Tommy Hilfiger led to a meeting that would change her professional career? Watch below, as Fuller explains how she went from a young cub reporter, to one of the most powerful women in publishing.

For more videos, check out our YouTube channel and follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

Since launching in 1951, Jet has sought out to be the authority on breaking information in the black community — but this is not your mama’s Jet. Freelancers who fail to do their journalistic due diligence will be swiftly sniffed out.

“If you just send me whatever and it’s not very well thought-out and it makes no sense for my magazine, you’re wasting my time. And I remember that,” says editor-in-chief Mitzi Miller. “A lot of things have changed recently with Jet in terms of our tone and the type of stories that we’re now covering, and I can tell when writers have truly been paying attention and when they’re just like, ‘Oh, I remember when my mom used to read Jet.’”

Since pitching is your one opportunity to make an impression, get to the point of the story succinctly and swiftly, advises Miller. “Make it impossible for me to say no.”

Find out which sections are open in How To Pitch: Jet.

The editors of AARP The Magazine are set on featuring rich content that inspires, informs and entertains, but freelancers don’t need to have reached the second half of life to break into this widely-read publication. All it takes is a timely story that resonates with their 50-plus audience.

“We tend to green-light freelance queries that are innovative, forward-looking and indicate that the writer has carefully studied the magazine,” deputy editor Marilyn Milloy said. And, lucky for you, any section not penned by a regular columnist is wide open to pitches.

Get all the details in How To Pitch: AARP The Magazine.

As an intelligent travel magazine with eye-opening photography and bucket-list travel experiences, ISLANDS keeps true to its mission to empower readers to find what editor Eddy Patricelli calls “the last little pockets of independent cultures.” So, to land a byline, freelancers will need to offer literary tales of an exotic destination.

That means no half-baked queries on a resort or spa, Patricelli warns. Editors hate receiving a destination pitch “that smells of a Wikipedia entry” and lacks a unique, compelling and well researched angle. “You know what I mean, in that someone’s just pitching us on, ‘Oh this place has great snorkeling, great diving, great resorts,’ but there’s no story angle there for us,” he said.

For more on freelancer-friendly sections, check out How To Pitch: ISLANDS.