While news of Village Voice vet Michael Musto getting the axe was a shock to many, the man himself knew there was trouble ahead. When EIC Will Bourne and deputy editor Jessica Lustig were on their way out the door, one of them told Musto that he needed to worry. “I knew I was on the chopping block,” he told Mediabistro for its latest So What Do You Do? interview.

Yet, while “La Dolce Musto” may have ended, the show goes on with “Musto! The Musical!” and other fantastic things:

When it got onto Gawker.com that I was going to be laid off and the word was out, I didn’t have to pitch myself. People started coming to me. So, by the end of the week, I had lined up all this stuff. It was only on contingency, because I thought the Voice might keep me on in some capacity — the rumor was that I was going to be a Web-only [columnist] — and I was prepared to work that out with them. But it turned out to be a complete layoff, so I was able to take these other opportunities.

For more, read So What Do You Do, Michael Musto, Entertainment and Gossip Columnist?

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Michael Hastings, Rolling Stone Contributor, Dead at 33 (Rolling Stone)
Michael Hastings, the fearless journalist whose reporting brought down the career of General Stanley McChrystal, has died in a car accident in Los Angeles, Rolling Stone has learned. He was 33. Hastings’ unvarnished 2010 profile of McChrystal in the pages of Rolling Stone, “The Runaway General,” captured the then-supreme commander of the U.S.-led war effort in Afghanistan openly mocking his civilian commanders in the White House. The maelstrom sparked by its publication concluded with President Obama recalling McChrystal to Washington and the general resigning his post. BuzzFeed We are shocked and devastated by the news that Hastings is gone. He was a great, fearless journalist with an incredible instinct for the story, and a gift for finding ways to make his readers care about anything he covered from wars to politicians. BuzzFeed / Ben Smith Hastings was really only interested in writing stories someone didn’t want him to write — often his subjects; occasionally his editor. While there is no template for a great reporter, he was one for reasons that were intrinsic to who he was: ambitious, skeptical of power and conventional wisdom, and incredibly brave. And he was warm and honest in a way that left him many unlikely friends among people you’d expect to hate him. Slate / Weigel As one of the journalists who was lucky to know him, first admiring his work as a reader, then thinking “Oh thank God” whenever we reconnected on the 2012 campaign trail, I’m having trouble working through the pathetic injustice of this situation. GalleyCat Hastings was the author of The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan and I Lost My Love in Baghdad. NY Mag / Daily Intelligencer “A lot of people in the news business want to seem unafraid,” Rachel Maddow said on her show. “Hastings was actually unafraid. To the point where he radiated a sort of energy that made you realize he was unafraid, and it made you treat him differently than other people in the business.” Read more

What do you think of when you hear the name “AOL”? Dialup? Your parents’ email? Alas, this is AOL’s brand problem. But don’t worry! At least people have heard of it!

That was AOL CEO Tim Armstrong‘s message at today’s Media Minds breakfast, where he said, “It’s incredibly expensive to implant a chip in someone’s head so they know what the name of your company is.” He shared that, up until 2006, AOL had spent $22 billion on marketing. As a result, “almost every country I go to in the world, people know AOL,” said Armstrong.

“We’re going to invest in things from a brand standpoint that human beings love. AOL is already planted in your head and [we'll] back fill it with awesome things — you’re going to love AOL again.”

Readers: Could you love AOL again? Did you ever love AOL?

Our sister site 10,000 Words has more on the event.

The tagline of “Healthy kids, happy families” encompasses both Parents‘ content and attitude. The magazine is primarily a service magazine, and editors deliver what readers initially come to the magazine for: information about children’s health, safety, nutrition, discipline and development. However, editors also want to help readers enjoy family life (not escape it), delivering positive stories about keeping a marriage happy and celebrating the holidays.

Parents has “a nice balance between the content related to children and content related to being a parent,” said deputy editor Diane Debrovner. And, lucky for writers, almost every section of this service pub is open to freelance pitches, and there are numerous ways for newbies to break into the book. 

Get all the details in How To Pitch: Parents.

The full version of this article is exclusively available to Mediabistro AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, register now for as little as $55 a year for access to hundreds of articles like this one, discounts on Mediabistro seminars and workshops, and all sorts of other bonuses.

Unlike most parenting magazines, Working Mother focuses on moms instead of kids. The service mag aims to help moms throughout a busy work day, and there are plenty of opportunities for freelancers to break in. The feature well is especially friendly, and a well tailored pitch could land your byline in one of the columns, too.

“Our readers are striving to find work-life satisfaction. They’re a driven bunch who are juggling not only work and children, but often aging parents, pets, you name it,” said editorial director Jennifer Owens. “They’re also highly social, communicating with us directly through LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram.”

Think you’ve got an idea that might work for their readers? Get details on who and what to pitch in How To Pitch: Working Mother.

The full version of this article is exclusively available to Mediabistro AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, register now for as little as $55 a year for access to hundreds of articles like this one, discounts on Mediabistro seminars and workshops, and all sorts of other bonuses.

Launched back in 1951, JET has been the authority on news in the black community for decades. With a loyal readership of over 7 million, freelancers with the right pitch will get prime real estate for their bylines.

Since the pub is largely news based, editors are looking for local stories from stringers who live in different parts of the country and can report on influential, headline-making topics in their own areas. They want to hear about news-making trends, like the outbreak of bigotry among fans at high school sporting events. So if you spot a breaking topic, pitch it with a vision for what the story will look like. “I’m always on the lookout for new trends at both the regional and national level,” said editor-in-chief Mitzi Miller.

For more, read How To Pitch: JET.

The full version of this article is exclusively available to Mediabistro AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, register now for as little as $55 a year for access to hundreds of articles like this one, discounts on Mediabistro seminars and workshops, and all sorts of other bonuses.

“No one here is concerned that the print magazine is going away,” said Entertainment Weekly managing editor Jess Cagle when asked about Time Inc.’s impending spin-off from its parent company. “The print magazine is still the spine of our brand.”

In the latest installment of Mediabistro’s So What Do You Do?, Cagle also discussed what he’s doing to keep the established brand fresh (forays into TV and radio), digital vs. print and why you won’t see “sponsored” content in the mag’s pages.

“Obviously, print advertising is a challenge, but there’s not a lot of overlap between our print audience and our digital audience,” he said. “The print audience has held really steady the last few years. It’s about 1.7 million. They haven’t left for the digital space; our audience has just grown because of digital. The magazine’s audience is something like 11 million, and the overall audience is around 18 million.”

Read the full interview in So What Do You Do, Jess Cagle, Managing Editor of Entertainment Weekly?

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IAC Seeking Buyers for Newsweek (Variety)
Newsweek appears to be on the block — again. According to sources who have been briefed, IAC is sending out inquiries to prospective buyers who may be interested in purchasing the 80-year-old title, which ended weekly publication of its domestic edition late last year in favor of a digital-only format. A revamped Newsweek.com launched earlier this month. Adweek At this point, Newsweek’s decline and predicted demise are well-trod ground. The once-venerable Newsweek used to have a circulation topping 3 million, but had fallen to less than half of that when it went digital-only this year. The move would save IAC money and enable Newsweek to make good on the copies it owed subscribers (Newsweek carried a $30 million circulation liability), but no one in their right mind expected a paid, digital magazine to be a viable option. Politico / Dylan Byers on Media In April, Diller said he regretted buying the magazine. “‘I wish I hadn’t bought Newsweek, it was a mistake,” he told Bloomberg TV. He also said he did not have “great expectations” for the digital version, which, like The Daily Beast, is edited by Tina Brown. Read more

Even if you don’t live by the sea, Coastal Living welcomes your pitches. Just make sure your story has a coastal connection. Freelancers can break into the book with a well-tailored pitch and land $1 a word for their efforts. Topics include everything from home and design to travel and food.

Designed to be a breath of fresh air, Coastal Living “captures the joy of life by the sea by giving our readers the relaxed feeling and sense of renewal that you can only get by the beach,” according to the magazine’s mission statement. Coverage includes the East and West Coasts of North America, as well as the Gulf Coast, Great Lakes, Alaska, the Caribbean, Canada and Mexico.

For more, read How To Pitch: Coastal Living.

The full version of this article is exclusively available to Mediabistro AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, register now for as little as $55 a year for access to hundreds of articles like this one, discounts on Mediabistro seminars and workshops, and all sorts of other bonuses.

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Obama: Leak Investigations ‘May Chill Investigative Journalism’ (HuffPost / The Backstory)
President Obama said Thursday that he is “troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable.” In a major speech on national security, Obama said that the “Justice Department’s investigation of national security leaks offers a recent example of the challenges involved in striking the right balance between our security and our open society.” TPM / LiveWire President Obama reiterated his support for a new media shield law to “guard against government over-reach” and has directed attorney general Eric Holder to review the Justice Department’s guidelines with reporters. The Washington Times The president’s comments came as NBC News reported that Holder signed off on at least one of the controversial search warrants that identified a Fox News reporter as a “possible co-conspirator.” TVNewser During President Obama’s speech to the National Defense University, he was interrupted a handful of times by a protester who called for him to shut down the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. As so often happens when there is a heckler, news coverage of the speech spent some time talking about the heckler rather than the meat of the speech itself.The Washington Post / Leonard Downie Jr. But the Obama administration’s steadily escalating war on leaks, the most militant I have seen since the Nixon administration, has disregarded the First Amendment and intimidated a growing number of government sources of information — most of which would not be classified — that is vital for journalists to hold leaders accountable. Read more