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. You’d think leaving such a prestigious job for the uncertainty of entrepreneurship would come with some trepidation, but Taylor says stepping down to an editor-at-large position just felt right.

“I think for about 60 seconds I had the fear that ‘what if Mikki Taylor doesn’t make it with Mikki Taylor Enterprises?’” the style and beauty expert explained in our Media Beat interview. “Well, what if this doesn’t work? Then, I’ll do something else, because I’m always going to find myself in the place of empowering women. And I know too much to stop now.”

Watch the full video for more of Taylor’s tips on climbing a magazine masthead.

Part 1: Mikki Taylor on Her 30 Years at Essence
Part 2: Essence‘s Mikki Taylor Takes on Casual Fridays

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In her new book Commander in Chic, Essence editor-at-large Mikki Taylor doles out fashion and beauty tips for the everyday woman based on examples from Michelle Obama.

“I love her clear cut assurance, the way she owns her style from within,” she explained in our Media Beat interview.

And one thing FLOTUS has done, according to Taylor, is inject a much needed sophistication into America’s dress code. Casual Fridays? No, thank you, she says.

“I think that we’re a little too relaxed. I think a relaxed nation creates other kinds of flexibilities that shouldn’t exist. Let’s treat each other with the respect and the honor that we are due, and so the subliminal things play into that. If we’re coming to work in sneakers, if we’re coming to work in ripped jeans and plaid shirts, who are we representing?”

Part 1:Mikki Taylor on Her 30 Years at Essence
Part 3: Mikki Taylor Reveals Why She Left Essence

Quinstreet’s purchase of Ziff Davis Enterprise, announced yesterday, will result in up to 100 layoffs, Folio reports.

Yesterday 30 people were let go immediately and 70 will be cut in the coming weeks, sources told Folio. That leaves just 20 ZDE staffers who will keep their jobs with their company’s new owners.

The people who haven’t yet been laid off are being retained to “help transition the ZDE assets and ongoing business operations to QuinStreet,” Folio says. But “given the size of the cuts, it’s hard to see what QuinStreet has in mind for ZDE’s brands, because content-based operations require content creators.”

The people being retained are a mix of editorial, sales and marketing.

In a New York Times interview with Amy Astley, the Teen Vogue editor says that she likes to hire people who can prove they like to work hard.

“I’ll see someone who was a waitress for many summers and I’ll say, ‘Well, tell me about that,’” she says. “In today’s upwardly mobile résumé, you don’t always see that. You often see kids who’ve never had a job. But I love seeing someone who scooped ice cream or was a waitress. To me, it means they had to make some money and they had a job dealing with the public…I had jobs like that, too, when I was a kid. I respect it. I respect all forms of work, and I don’t see it on a lot of résumés anymore.”

According to parent company Conde Nast’s careers page, there are no openings at the teen magazine right now, but certainly keep an eye out.

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 Reveals Why She Left Essence

Elle China has doubled its frequency to twice monthly, only the second Elle edition to do so, minonline reports.

The magazine was averaging 500-800 pages per month; the size will now be reduced to 280-400 pages and the cost will be cut in half.

In a perhaps related development, the magazine is hiring but unless you’re fluent in Chinese, we wouldn’t bother.

The only other Elle edition that publishes more than 12 times a year is the original Elle in France, which has been a weekly “for decades” and remains owned by Lagardère. Ownership of Elle China transferred to Hearst Corp on Dec. 6, 2011.

Ziff Davis Enterprise, publisher of IT magazines Baseline, CIO Insight, eWeek and ChannelInsider, was sold Friday to lead-generation company QuinStreet, Folio: reports.

ZDE was created in 2007 when Ziff Davis Media sold its enterprise division. The remainder of Ziff Davis Media, publisher of PC Magazine, entered bankruptcy a year later. Presumably the enterprise half was also not doing so well, so the purchase was likely a steal.

“It was unclear whether there were layoffs associated with the acquisition, or what QuinStreet planned to do with ZDE’s media brands,” Folio: adds.

Quinstreet’s release says: “With a current estimated annual marketing spend of $8 billion in North America, of which $3 billion is spent online, B2B technology is an important area of opportunity and growth for QuinStreet.”

The Quarterly Review of Wines, a 35-year-old wine bible, ceased publication at the end of last year, a move that went unnoticed by the press until now, minonline reports.

Why? Well, the usual, said publisher Richard Elia recently: “upcoming retirements, the magazine world is in perilous shape, advertising is down, the digital age is king, out-of-state wine delivery problems.”

That, and the romance is just gone, he says. Since people are more concerned with toys and being able to quickly look up a wine’s score on their cell phones, it just isn’t fun anymore.

Tell that to the magazine’s 25 contributors, though, and they’ll probably say they wished the magazine had stuck around, “romance” or not.

Just ahead of its fifth anniversary, Garden & Gun is profiled on CBS This Morning.

In the segment, editor-in-chief Dave DiBenedetto says that the only subjects that are off-limits are “politics, religion and SEC football.” Oh snap.

Craving more info on how to pitch this Southern lifestyle mag? Look no further than mediabistro’s premium How To Pitch piece (subscription required, of course).

Meredith Corp (MDP) today reported earnings of $31.5 million for the second quarter of fiscal 2012 on revenues of $328 million.

The quarter for the womens’ media company covers the three months ended December 31, 2011.

The company was able to lower expenses and keep circulation steady, but wasn’t able to counter the downward slide of advertising revenues, just like most media companies struggling to take in advertising dollars from an increasingly fragmented media world.

While $21 million of Meredith’s $30 million advertising slide was from a lack of political advertising (as expected in an off year), the remaining $9 million came from a lack of ads in the food and consumer packaged goods categories, whose producers have been “particularly impacted by higher commodity prices,” and pharmaceutical companies, who brought fewer new drugs to market.

“We are seeing gains in food-related advertising in early calendar 2012, and we believe overall advertising performance will improve as calendar 2012 progresses,” Meredith CEO Stephen Lacy said in a statement. “While the advertising market remained challenging for our National Media Group, we’re seeing an improving trend as we look to early calendar 2012, particularly in the food and home advertising categories.”

Meredith also announced today that it would acquire Allrecipes.com from the Reader’s Digest Association for an undisclosed sum.