Leading up to the May 1, 2007 National Magazine Awards, mediabistro.com is publishing a special package of our popular interview series, “So What Do You Do?,” with daily interviews of selected nominees, ranging from well-known to obscure. Today, we chat with newly-elected ASME secretary and New York editor-in-chief Adam Moss

See our other interviews with Ellie 2007 nominees:
Cindi Leive, Editor, Glamour; Joyce Rutter Kaye, Editor, Print; David Granger, Editor, Esquire?; Moisés Naím, Editor, Foreign Policy; Jay Stowe, Editor, Cincinnati; Ted Genoways, Editor, Virginia Quarterly Review; Mark Strauss, Editor, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

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Name: Adam Moss
Position: Editor, New York
Resumé:Esquire/7Days/The New York Times Magazine/New York
Birthdate: Almost exactly one half-century ago
Hometown: New York
Education: Oberlin College, B.A.
Marital status: Single, legally speaking. But more or less married.
First section of the Sunday Times: Front page
Favorite television show:Friday Night Lights, plus the usual HBO stuff
Guilty pleasure: I feel guilty about all my pleasures. I’m Jewish.
Last book read:The Yiddish Policeman’s Union
2007 nominations: Seven (General Excellence, Public Interest, Profile Writing, Magazine Section, Design, Interactive Service, Interactive Feature)

You have the most nominations of any magazine this year. How does it
feel?

Well, it would feel wonderful if that were true. It still feels pretty
wonderful that we were tied for second with Esquire. The most went to
… The New Yorker. Which, I guess, leads to your next question.

Do you ever say to yourself, “Eat it, David Remnick”?

Um no. Do you?

Speaking of, what is your relationship like with The New Yorker. Do
you
feel you compete with them directly? Is it like the Mets-Yankees?

My relationship to The New Yorker is mostly one of a very satisfied
subscriber. It’s a great magazine. But, we hardly compete with them at
all. They’re pretty much about New York in name only. But I’m sure we
would whup them in an interleague game.

What do you think of your Ellies chances?

I can’t even guess. I’m just happy that ASME recognized us pretty much
across the board. For general excellence, which for starters honors the
whole staff. But, also public interest, and profile writing, and
magazine section, and design and two of the three Web categories.
Everybody here can feel pretty good about how we did, and I think
everybody does. We try to do a lot of things around here, and I’m just
glad our peers don’t feel we’re screwing too many of them up.

What’s the biggest challenge of your job as an editor?

Focus. Thinking beyond the next issue or even the next day. On a
weekly, everything comes at you pretty fast.

Take us through a typical day in the life as New York‘s editor. (be
specific if you can — “Wake up @ 8:30, watch the Today show,” etc….)

I wake up a lot earlier than that (7am? 6:30am? I don’t do that on
purpose, I just can’t sleep like I used to), grab a a cup of coffee and
read everything I can (on paper and online) as quickly as I can. I go to
work around 9:30am. I sit in a lot of meetings. I make everyone else sit
in lots of meetings, for which they resent me. Then, I go home around 8pm
or so most days (11pm on closing nights; 6pm or so on Fridays). Everything
between that is a blur. But, the issues seem to come out.

How do you feel about the state of the industry?

It’s obviously a complicated time, as most of us have to learn to be
bilingual in print and the Web, at least. The advertising industry,
which pays most of our bills, is especially enamored of the Web these
days, which means we’d be foolish not to spend more and more of our time
trying to do what we do in an online form. But, of course, the Web is a
much different medium.

That’s what’s interesting to me about working in
this business at this moment — the opportunity to take the things
magazines have always done, like telling stories and delivering smartly
filtered information, and translating that to a medium with moving
pictures and sound, instant response, sophisticated sorting tools, and a
totally different relationship with the reader, who has almost as much
control over your site as you do. I’m not saying anything new here.

But,
I’m especially loving how primitive and even forgiving the Web still is.
You can try anything, and if it doesn’t work, you just take it down and
try something else (you just have to avoid a mocking comment or two on
someone else’s site). Among other things, the Web part of this job is
really fun. And, all of this is not to say that I think print is going
away. What print magazines are for will change, but if each arena is
managed correctly and differently, print and the Web can both thrive.

A lot of magazines are currently trying to figure out the Web. You
guys
were nominated for a Web-only award. Do you feel you are any closer to
“figuring it out”?

God, no. Whatever anyone figures out on the Web has to be figured out all
over again every six months.

What’s the next step for New York? What’s the next step for you
personally?

We’ve just launched something called Vulture on our site, which is a
daily entertainment micro-magazine (in deference to Anna Wintour, I’m
trying not to say blog). Also, a daily entertainment newsletter called
Agenda, tailored to different tastes (populist, indie, etc.) You should
check them out. And, we have a whole mess more to launch online as fast
as we can turn it out. We’re tinkering with a few new standing features
for the magazine, and then next year is our 40th anniversary, which we
plan to exploit in as shameless a manner as every other magazine. Then,
we have an issue a week to put out. The next step for me, personally, is
to go home and take a nap.

Finally, what will you be wearing to the Ellies?

Whatever still fits. Which most definitely limits my options.

[Dylan Stableford is mediabistro.com’s managing editor, media news. He can be reached at dylan AT mediabistro DOT com.]