Environmentally savvy freelancers can snag bylines at one of the oldest continuously published mags in the country: Audubon. The pub gets 90 percent of its content from freelancers, and editors are very open to working with new writers.

The advocacy magazine promotes the mission of saving birds, wildlife and habitat and serves as the flagship publication of the National Audubon Society, one of the oldest environmental groups in the country. Audubon is the only pure nature magazine on the market, but it aspires to the reach and commercial success of National Geographic, while still maintaining its commitment to the thought-provoking, long-form type journalism of The Atlantic and The New Yorker.

For more details on how to score a byline, read How To Pitch: Audubon.
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.

Condé Nast Traveler is coming to the Middle East, marking the first time a Condé brand has been available there. The new edition of Traveler — launching sometime with in the next year, according to WWD — will be its eighth.

Middle East Traveler came about via a partnership with ITP Group, the region’s biggest magazine publishing house.

In a statement, Jonathan Newhouse, chairman and Condé Nast International’s CEO, said the new edition was a “natural step.”

Welcome back to another edition of FishbowlNY’s weekly Cover Battle. This time around we have The New York Times Magazine versus Mental Floss. The Times Magazine went with an adorable photo of a dog licking a chubby baby. It’ll be tough to beat this cover, because who doesn’t like dogs and babies? If you answered “me,” please know you’re a bad person.

Read more

Matthew Zeitlin is joining BuzzFeed’s business vertical. According to Peter Lauria, editor of the business section, Zeitlin will serve as an economics and finance reporter.

Previously Zeitlin served as a business reporter for Newsweek/The Daily Beast. He has also contributed to Bloomberg View.

The BuzzFeed business site hasn’t launched yet, but with the addition of Zeitlin, Lauria tweeted that “the team is complete.”

Ben Widdicombe is joining The New York Observer as a contributing editor. The Observer reports that Widdicombe will pen a regular column for the paper. He will also remain editor of Gilt City.

Widdicombe was the founder of the Daily News’ popular gossip column, GateCrasher. He wrote the column from 2004 to 2008.

“This is just the latest good news for the Observer,” said Rafi Kohan, the Observer’s deputy edior, in a statement. “Ben is the best, so obviously we’re excited to have him.”

Read more

Click here to receive Mediabistro’s Morning Media Newsfeed via email.

Criticized on Seizure of Records, White House Pushes News Media Shield Law (NYT)
Under fire over the Justice Department’s use of a broad subpoena to obtain calling records of Associated Press reporters in connection with a leak investigation, the Obama administration sought on Wednesday to revive legislation that would provide greater protections to reporters in keeping their sources and communications confidential. Capital New York The administration opposed an initial draft of the Free Flow of Information Act, but eventually supported a compromise version that would allow federal judges to protect reporters from subpoenas for information, if the judge determined that the news value of the reports exceeded the government’s interest in uncovering the sources of a leak. HuffPost / The Backstory New York Times reporter Charlie Savage asked Attorney General Eric Holder, who had just announced he’d recused himself from the AP leak investigation, “Are you also recused from the Stuxnet investigation out of Maryland?” The New York Times has reason to be concerned about whether investigators are using similar tactics on them. The Maryland case is believed to be focused on Times chief Washington correspondent David Sanger’s reporting on how the U.S. and Israel helped derail Iran’s nuclear program through cyberattacks. Sanger’s June scoop, along with the Times’ front-page article on Obama’s terrorist “kill list,” spurred Congressional calls to investigate the leaks of classified information. The Washington Post / Erik Wemple Media Matters for America, a group that monitors the country’s conservative media for distortions and inaccuracies, fell in for criticism Wednesday over the Justice Department’s secret subpoena of the Associated Press’s phone records. Evidence of this Media Matters-Obama administration mindmeld? This piece here, which says: “If the press compromised active counter-terror operations for a story that only tipped off the terrorists, that sounds like it should be investigated.” The Daily Beast / Politics Beast David Brock explained all in a statement. “Media Matters for America monitors, analyzes, and corrects conservative misinformation in the media and was not involved with the production of the document focusing on the DOJs investigation,” he said. “That document was issued by ‘Message Matters,’ a project of the Media Matters Action Network, which posts, through a different editorial process and to a different website, a wide range of potential messaging products for progressive talkers to win public debates with conservatives.” Read more

While it was a bit more subdued than usual at Michael’s today with some of the glitterati off to Cannes and a few others up in Greenwich watching Prince Harry play polo (our invite must have gotten lost in the mail),  the usual mix of editors (Anne Fulenwider, Lucy Danziger) and media moguls (David Zinczenko) were in full power lunch mode celebrating each other’s successes and hatching their next big deals.

I was joined today by Kimberly Cherebin and Alaska Gedeon, stars of the new docu-series Newlyweds: The First Year, which premiered May 6 on Bravo. Also in attendance were the network’s PR marvels, Jennifer Geisser and Julia Nietsch, as well as the happy couple’s manager, Camille White Stern. The show is a hit, having snagged over 1 million viewers for the first episode. With Kimberly stuck in traffic en route from the studio where she was styling Justine Skye‘s new video, I got a chance to chat with Alaska first. I asked him what in the world would possess anyone to allow cameras to follow them during their entire first year of marriage. He told me he’d been absolutely opposed to doing the show at first, and Kimberly asked him “about six or seven times” before he finally agreed. Looking back on the experience (shooting wrapped earlier this year), Alaska said having the details of your daily life play out for all the world to see “forces you to raise the standard of who you are: how you treat others and especially how you treat your wife.” He then added brightly, “It’s like a mirror and like therapy.” So did he like everything he saw reflected back at him? “I just don’t think I’m that big of a jerk,” he said with a laugh. (After meeting him, I’m inclined to agree). “My sarcasm doesn’t always read well on camera.” He also told me that it wasn’t until after he viewed the scene where he and Kimberly discussed their bi-coastal marriage that he realized just how “heartbroken” Kimberly was at the prospect of their separation.

Alaska Gedeon, Kimberly Cherebin and Diane Clehane

When Kimberly arrived, I asked her why she was so enthusiastic about  doing the show, and she admitted that she didn’t exactly know what she was getting into. “At first, I thought it was one of those David Tutera>-type ‘planning your wedding’ shows, and I thought that would be fun, but it was nothing like that,” she explained. Once she did understand that she and Alaska would be agreeing to 10-hour shooting days over the course of year and be required to use their ‘Couples’ Cam’ on each other to capture intimate moments (not that kind, silly), she remained undaunted. “It seems like when you see marriages on TV you either see these fairy tales or something pretty terrible. We have really ‘extreme’ careers, and this was a chance to show how you balance it all.” 

Read more

SocialTimes: Google just revamped Google+ and packed it with over 40 new features! Yeah, we know, you still don’t care about Google+. We were hoping that exclamation point would swing you, but yeah, we get it.

AgencySpy: Twitter fights are stupid, but they’re even worse when they’re with brands.

AllTwitter: Speaking of Twitter, the SEC ruled that companies can spread vital info via social networks. What could go wrong?

Everyone loved The New York Times’ digital Snow Fall piece. We praised it. It won a Pulitzer. Even Jill Abramson started using Snow Fall as a verb. Now Newsweek/The Daily Beast appears to be taking it a step farther. Its site redesign is very similar to Snow Fall. It features a giant banner photo at the top of each story, and (while in beta) no ads among the copy.

Baba Shetty, CEO of NewsBeast, told Ad Age that the site’s design was already in place when Snow Fall was published, and that might be true. Either way, the new Newsweek/Daily Beast is great. It’s clean and bold.

One thing we do worry about? Shetty says that when ads do come to the new site, they’ll be going the sponsored/native route. Shetty said that they’ll be “beautiful, high-impact units.” Let’s all hope that doesn’t actually mean “Annoying, disruptive ads that try too hard to mimic editorial.”