When they first started We Media in 2007, entrepreneurs Andrew Nachison and Dale Peskin had a vision: They wanted to turn ideas into innovation. But they didn’t want to do it in the usual way. “We had a lot of corporate experience,” Peskin explains. “We decided we didn’t want to work with assholes anymore.” Since then, We Media has helped media companies, universities and philanthropies create Web sites, perform research, and form a strategy for success in the digital world.

Nachison and Peskin also manage iFocos, a nonprofit media think tank and futures lab with partners ranging from the Associated Press and BBC to Ashoka, a global network of social entrepreneurs.

And Peskin says they are always looking for the little (or big idea) that could. “There are wows for us every day. I think it’s the scope of things that inspires us — the kind of society we live in where any smart person can have a chance.”

mediabistro.com caught up with the duo as they prepared to host their annual We Media conference in Miami March 9–11, where they’ll present “Game Changers” awards to people, projects, ideas, and organizations leading change and inspiring a better world through media.

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What led you to start We Media?
Andrew Nachison: We Media grew from our work for the news industry, first as journalists, then as strategists, advisers, and futurists. Our work early in the decade was with news companies and helping them understand the Internet, and that really led us to thinking about the changing shape of news and ultimately the changing nature of the culture — and a world in which information flowed through the digital mediascape. That changed our perspective from thinking about one industry in particular to literally the entire planet.

We commissioned a research report called We Media and then a series of conferences, which at the time were really more future-focused and forecasting changes to the news industry and to society’s relationship with information. And that forecast proved to be true. We anticipated massive disruption to businesses, critical changes in behavior, and sweeping innovation. We Media grew from that to where we are today — a global community of media creators, thinkers, investors, innovators, visionaries and game-changers.

What’s the idea behind the name “We Media”?
Dale Peskin: It’s really a phrase we coined back in 2002, although we had been using the expression probably prior to that. It was the title of that first research report we did. The forecast was about the change and about how citizens would influence the future. We looked at the technology processes, and those were the cultural behaviors that would grow exponentially for that proposition to happen. It was a sweeping phrase for that phenomenon.

“You can’t be too in love with your idea, products, or companies in the age we live in […] All companies fail, whether that takes six weeks or a year or a century. “

What makes your summit different from other media conferences?
AN: We focus on creativity, participation, and inspiration. And we hope that the conversations and the people who come to We Media are able to set aside some of their short-term, day-to-day obsessions to channel their energy in a creative way, and think about how innovation occurs and what it takes to be a creative game changer in the We Media culture. For me, most media conferences and most industry conversations are very incremental. They’re about best practices, they’re about short-term strategies, which vendors do I need to set up a relationship with next week. We Media takes the longer view and also the inspiring view about which opportunities are unfolding.

In the world of We Media, every institution is a media company, and the people who come to We Media get that, whether they come from government, brands, philanthropies, whether they’re senior executives or young media creatives working on their own. It’s an incredible range of creative, ambitious, smart people out there who are applying technology and being imaginative with media, and that’s what We Media is all about.

One problem a lot of companies face is that the larger they get, the fewer risks they’re willing to take. How can a media business grow and still be innovative?
DP: That’s essentially a question about leadership and vision and integrating those key elements into the processing culture of an organization. You can’t be too in love with your idea, products, or companies in the age we live in, and these are ultimately going to fail. All companies fail, whether that takes six weeks or a year or a century. In this environment of change, they grow exponentially very quickly. So growth is a factor in capturing more specialized audiences. You need to understand what’s occurring with those audiences and the access they have to information in the competitive landscape. In some ways, the question answers itself. We think creativity, innovation and problem-solving are the paths to success, not just doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

“We bring companies and groups of people together in a way that trade and industry conferences can’t, and I think that smart companies like [the] AP value that kind of exposure.”

How does a big idea become a game changer?
DP: We set specific criteria by which we judge that and look at the world. One is pattern change: How does the idea really change things in a substantive way? What patterns have changed to this project? Second is social impact: What kind of problem are you solving for people or the marketplace? Third is design: How does the idea express itself in a creative way? The fourth is storytelling: We think that ideas are very much stories, and stories are really what brands are about. The last one is success: Is this a sustainable idea that will matter into the future?

How did you get the funding to form We Media?
AN: We didn’t start out looking for the funding, so in a sense, the question is backwards. We set out with values, ideas and a mission. And that led us to seek the funding and business partners to help build the idea. The funding, business partners, and financing came from a variety of sources. Through our nonprofit think tank, we had funding from a variety of foundations, and through the business-consulting and innovation process, we developed a small group of clients organically. We didn’t take investment, and we focused again on the values and mission of building something.

What are the key factors in getting a company like The Associated Press on board as a sponsor?
DP: I think that’s the common business proposition. It’s all about relationships. You seek and sort of migrate to companies and ideas that value your idea. And you cultivate those over periods of years. We’ve been fortunate to have sponsors like AP, the BBC, Thomson Reuters and many smaller companies in smaller ways. The other fact of that is this diverse group of people we try to reach. Most companies recognize that they’re internal organizations and they exist in cultural silos. We Media gives them an opportunity to really open their eyes to other cultures and other organizations dealing with the same kind of issues they are, but probably with a different perspective. We bring companies and groups of people together in a way that trade and industry conferences can’t, and I think that smart companies like [the] AP value that kind of exposure in a world where essentially all companies are media companies.

From the Tweentribune news site for kids to the Infegy blog aggregator, We Media has highlighted some obscure but up-and-coming players in the media world. How do startups such as these inspire your company’s success?
DP: Well, once upon a time there was this silly thing called Twitter, which was an obscure company. These brilliant, little ideas come up, and they’re inspirational to us. They don’t come from the institutional assembly line of incremental adjustments and changes to products. They look at things in a new kind of way, and they deliver a new story. Their thinking, problem solving, [and] execution are inspirational to us.

AN: They’re also creative and fun. There are some wonderful entertaining and inspiring companies out there. As a business proposition, we’re drawn to someone who makes us say, “Wow.” The element of pleasure and execution of those ideas is a big deal for us.

What are the keys to starting a think tank based on ideas compared with a company with more concrete services?
DP: I think the word “concrete” probably works to our detriment. [laughs] Yeah, life is about ideas; it’s not that concrete. We have to look at the skies and the pavement I guess. When you do that, there are maybe a million big ideas you have to pass on and focus on what has meaning to you as a human being, and if they’re a business, certainly as a businessperson. That’s a huge way to look at the world as either a think tank or a business leader. And I think either one can lead the world that way. There’s a lot of marketing. [laughs] Selling the idea is something as important and meaningful for how people live their lives these days — and understanding that you can translate that into something more concrete.

AN: We’ve built our business around ideas and the quest for ideas and inspiration, but we’ve done so, we think, in a practical way to extract meaning and business value from those ideas. ”Yeah, we’re a think tank — we collect and try to find meaning from the swirl of ideas in the digital culture we’re living in, but we’ve always thought that there’s a practical intent and business proposition. And the companies we work with get that.

Four ways to convert a big idea into a success story
1. Know when to say no and when to say yes. “We say no more often than we say yes because we’re looking for the one idea in a thousand that takes our breath away,” Nachison says.

2. Focus on values. “We launched We Media based on our values and our vision for how to do business in this digital culture,” Nachison explains. “I think any successful business needs to understand why it’s in business and what it represents.”

3. Use technology as a competitive advantage. According to Nachison, efficient, scalable growth comes when a company is faster than others that don’t implement technology as effectively. “Use that not only to grow but to manage costs and be massively efficient with your time,” he advises.

4. Eat your own cooking. “Conduct your relationships with integrity and creativity that respects what a lot of other people are thinking as well,” Peskin says.

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Brian T. Horowitz is a freelance writer based in New York.

Time recently observed that a bunch of marquee television events managed to avoid the prevailing ratings slump affecting many shows. This year’s Super Bowl, it noted, was the highest-watched television program ever. The Winter Olympics had more viewers this year than in 2006. And the Emmys, Grammys, and Oscars all enjoyed ratings boosts. Part of the explanation, wrote James Poniewozik, is social media. “Along with the decline of evening-news, drama and sitcom ratings, the fall of water cooler TV has been playing out for years,” he said. “When that happens, you can try to make better TV. Or you can find a better water cooler.”

One of the companies taking the lead in building a better water cooler is Bravo, whose vice president of emerging media, Aimee Viles, will be speaking at Mediabistro’s upcoming Think Mobile conference. The network started mobile fan clubs years ago, and in 2007, it launched a Top Chef game for mobile. Earlier this year, it partnered with Foursquare to enable fans to collect badges when they visit locations recommended by cast members from their reality shows. And last year, the network started hosting live “viewing parties” which enabled fans to interact — via Twitter, Facebook, and mobile chat — with cast members during the finales of the Real Housewives of New York and Top Chef. The events were so successful that they are now taking place weekly during the current season of RHNY.

Viles came to Bravo in 2008 from Portland, Ore.-based Ensequence, where, as director of creative services, she helped build interactive TV authoring solutions for the likes of NBC, MTV, and ESPN. Before that she was at UK-based Vodafone, where she worked on the mobile provider’s Internet applications and strategies.

mediabistro.com caught up with Viles to ask her how Bravo is using social media to stoke viewers’ passions for the network’s shows and, ultimately, contribute to the bottom line.

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What are the viewing parties like?
We’ve just recently rebranded them as the “Talk Bubble.” They’re really a social media hub for fans. Viewers can go to one destination, either on BravoTV.com or on the mobile Web site. They can Tweet in comments as they’re following the show (using the hashtag #realhousewives). Same thing with Facebook — they can log in and see who of their friends are there during the event. They can post comments to the RHNY Facebook page, which then automatically get posted to their Walls. We’re going to have different Housewives join us on a weekly basis, and we’ll Tweet their exclusive thoughts about what’s happening in the episode. We’ve had fun comments in the past like, “I totally forgot that that happened. Here’s what I was thinking at the time.”

We’re going to have polls, so fans can vote for things like which Housewife is their favorite, which Housewife they think will be in the most drama scenes that week, or which Housewife is the most fashion-forward at the moment. There will be a little slider on the bottom so you can see how the feelings about the Housewives change during the course of the episode. And there are going to be viral videos you can share, so that after a moment happens on air, you can see it online and immediately send it to your friends.

“If somebody Tweets out, what’s the end social reach of that Tweet? One person might be able to affect the awareness of 20,000 other people.”

How many people participate in the viewing parties?
For the Real Housewives and Top Chef finales, we had tens of thousands of people. But one of the things we’re trying to understand is the “social reach.” We’re working with Twitter to really understand, for example: If a fan Tweets a comment, and they have 500 followers, so 500 of their followers saw it, and maybe 25 percent of those retweeted out, so then it reached another X percentage.

Are you working directly with the Twitter team on that?
Yes, we’re working directly with them. They’ve been really fantastic in terms of giving us feedback about what works best with their audience. We started the experience internally. But more recently, we’ve had a deeper relationship with Twitter and have been getting deeper feedback.

All of this costs money. How are you evaluating the impact and the success of the social media projects?
There are a couple of top-line engagement factors: How it enhances fan loyalty and how it drives ratings. Secondarily, we’re looking at buzz and the social reach. Things we’ve measured in the past include the number of people coming to the Facebook group who then send an invite to friends during the event. We look at how many friends that brought in. Same thing on the Twitter side. If somebody Tweets out, what’s the end social reach of that Tweet? One person might be able to affect the awareness of 20,000 other people.
As for buzz, during the Top Chef finale, we had three of the top Trending Topics on Twitter. That tells us a lot of people are out there talking about it. We’re going to be measuring that on an ongoing basis: How many Trending Topics do we have? And what exactly are the topics? For example, is the buzz about the Real Housewives show in general, or is it around a particular Housewife?

All of that is in addition to the general performance metrics, like page views, growth in Twitter followers, and growth in Facebook fans.

Do you have the algorithms down for figuring this all out? Or is it still a work in progress?
We’re working with a partner on the algorithms for things like social reach.

“My team has to be a profit center. It can’t just be about doing cool things.”

What has been the impact of the mobile fan clubs?
We found that that was one of the strongest platforms to get engaged fans. They could sign on, and then once they signed up, they remained a loyal follower.

People in this business are increasingly talking about the need to focus on the “engaged user,” the person who can potentially influence many others through social media. What’s Bravo’s philosophy on that?
We’ve always thought about our fans as passionate and loyal about their shows. We’re thinking about what we can do that enhances that passion. It’s been a philosophy that Bravo has had for a long time. It’s just part of how we relate to our fan and how we give them a deeper relationship with us as a brand. It’s understanding what they love about the show, and then understanding what you should then do with them. [In addition to social media interactions,] it might be merchandise, or it might be a Top Chef tour, where fans can meet Top Chef contestants.

How does all this drive revenue?
My team has to be a profit center. It can’t just be about doing cool things. One of the great things about Bravo is that many of our sponsors and advertisers come to us because we do these new things. We are seen as innovators and leaders. Brands that want to be seen as doing something that’s new and unique and interesting come to us because they know that we create those types of experiences.

What’s the key to doing mobile right?
At a certain point in their day, people are looking for bite-sized content. So you don’t want to just repurpose things you have elsewhere. You should be smart about your consumer and what they’re looking for from mobile. The big question right now is whether you should build a specific app or simply use mobile Web. To me, the answer is you use them differently to achieve different goals.

“Mobile games are showing that, if you give consumers the right experience, they will participate — either with micro payments or by looking at little bits of content.”

Such as?
We’re still working on that. One of the things we look at is: Is what we want to do entertainment? Or is it utility? Will an app allow me to do something that I can’t do with the mobile Web? If you’re looking at the iPhone or some of the new Google phones, you ask: Does the touch display allow me to do something that really adds to the experience? If so, I probably need to build it as an app. If it’s something I want to make more broad-based accessible, I’m probably going to need to build it as a mobile Web site. In some cases, we’ll build both and see what our audience responds to.

What else is on the horizon for Bravo?
You’ll see more things like the partnership we recently announced with Foursquare. We’ll be partnering with some innovators in this space. There will be a few other things like that that will be coming out in the next few months.

Where do you get your inspiration?
I find gaming really fascinating. Gaming on mobile phones used to be a really painful, slow experience, but there are some really fantastic things that are going on out there, that I look at as an entertainment brand and go, Hmm… there’re some interesting things I could do, whether it’s the social gaming or the virtual goods side of things. Mobile games are showing that, if you give consumers the right experience, they will participate — either with micro payments or by looking at little bits of content.

Tips for using mobile platforms to extend your entertainment brand
1. Know your audience and know your brand. “If you start there and stay true to what those values are, it’s easier to understand the direction you should go.”

2. Less is more. “Pick one or two areas you want to try out, and then innovate and play in that space. Don’t try to do everything. Pick one or two things, do them really well, and learn from them.”

3. Look at it from the business perspective. “It’s great to put out cool things but you have to ask yourself: How does it bring value to an advertiser? How does it bring value to a sponsor? How does it bring value back to your consumer?”

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E.B. Boyd is a WebNewser contributor and San Francisco-based freelance writer.

In 2002, The Young Turks became the first original talk show on Sirius Satellite Radio. In 2005, with the emergence of video, founder Cenk Uygur and his crew purchased some cameras and started the first live, daily webcast on the Internet. Four years later came a Podcast Award for Best Political Podcast, one from Mashable for Best Political News Site, and a nomination for the Audience’s Choice Award at the 2010 Streamy Awards. All of this with zero backing from traditional broadcast networks.

“The goal is supposed to be on television. We say, ‘No, we can build a television network ironically not on television,'” says Uygur. “In TV, you have the pressure of ‘every single minute has to deliver ratings gold.’ Whereas we just let the audience pick. If people want to watch the story about Kim Kardashian more, we don’t judge them; that’s their choice. If they want to watch the story about Obama more, that’s great. Everybody wins.”

Today, The Young Turks has a sponsorship deal with Netflix, plans for a spinoff YouTube channel focused on bloggers, plus — count ’em — 250 million viewers and growing. Take that, Team Coco.

How did you secure and sustain funding for The Young Turks?
When we started on radio, we didn’t need much. In fact, we started in my living room. But we did need some radio equipment: mixers, mikes, etc. I got that tiny bit of seed money from a friend of mine; we technically call them “angel investors,” but they’re really family and friends. Then, we wound up getting the contracts from Sirius, so that sustained us for a long time. Once we left Sirius to do online video, we needed more seed money; that, again, we got from more angel investors.

“We kept experimenting with what works and doesn’t work. In the beginning, we weren’t on YouTube and realized, along with a lot of other people, that most of the audience was there.”

We raised a little bit of money, and we’re very frugal. We know how to get the most bang for our buck. We’re not in over our head. We have reasonable, solid goals. And we rely on our audience. A lot of our bills are paid by our members, people who podcast the show. They feel like they have ownership over the show, and they do.

What is the significance of the show’s title, and how does this concept shape content?
We selected “The Young Turks” because it means young rebels looking to overthrow the established system. That’s what we fancy ourselves. When we started out, we were basically the only liberal show on radio. In ’02, everything was wall-to-wall conservative. Almost no one in the media was speaking out against the Iraq War — partly because if they did, they got fired. I couldn’t believe we were the only ones saying, “This war is absolutely crazy.” You have to find your audience and be willing to take risks — and not do things the established way. It’s just in our DNA that we challenge conventional wisdom wherever we find it.

The show focuses on an “honest” delivery of news, but how do you deal with the influences shaping every reporter’s viewpoint?
There’s a difference between the truth and honesty. We don’t claim to have a monopoly on the truth. Sometimes truth is relative, depending on your perspective. But you can be completely honest. We’re not biased by all of the other factors that might be involved with the party, sponsors, contributors; all the things that bring bias into the press — access. We strip all those things away, so you know that what you’re getting from us is really what we think about the situation at hand.

Our priority is trying to deliver the real news to our audience. So we don’t give a damn about access. We end up getting the top politicians and celebrities anyway because we found such a large audience. But we don’t bend our program to their will and needs. We try to serve the needs of our audience.

Why do you think the show has reached a mass audience?
You start with a passion in whatever field that might be. For us, it was news and current events — and that’s not just politics; all of the current events. I deeply care about the news, even if it’s goofy news, I’m fascinated by it, to a fault probably. Once you do that show, you find the audience that is attracted to that.

We kept experimenting with what works and doesn’t work. In the beginning, we weren’t on YouTube and realized, along with a lot of other people, that most of the audience was there. We experimented with the size of the clips, titles and tags. Online, if you do a good video clip or write a good article, people are going to forward that to the people they know will like that and bring the audience to you.

“I have no desire to turn down a larger audience and more money. We’re just not willing to compromise for the money.”

How do you work extemporaneously without relying on writers?
I read voraciously — every article imaginable, ranging from dense financial news to light entertainment news. I have a way of organizing it in my head, and I print out the stories that we’re going to talk about. Then, I put them in a stack of papers in the order that I’m going to go in the show. If I need to refer to a number, I’ll usually remember it; if not, I’ll just look down at the papers in front of me. In my mind, what I do is I tell a story. I don’t know how I keep it all in my head, but I do.

Will The Young Turks go mainstream?
If somebody says, “We’ve got a TV show for you. Stop what you’re doing, and just do our show,” I would say, “No way.” I love what we’re doing and would never shut it down just to do TV. But if someone asks, “Do you want to do this on TV, as well?” then I’m definitely interested. I have no desire to turn down a larger audience and more money. We’re just not willing to compromise for the money, and I think that’s an enormous difference.

Do you have any stories about The Young Turks inspiring others to do good work?
Usually someone in college says, “I’m going to switch my major to journalism or political science.” This morning, someone said he was going into pre-law because he wants to make a difference; his dream is to be part of the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union]. I guess we inspire them to go for it; to live out their dream and make a difference in the world. That’s, by far, the best part of the job.

What are your future plans for The Young Turks?
We’re going to start a network of other bloggers who are like-minded and we think are smart, interesting and entertaining. We’re going to start a new YouTube channel and a new show on our website surrounded around them. So it’s not just me anymore, and it’s not just The Young Turks anymore; it’ll be this network of people we think are stars or who can be stars.

Then, we’ll start a similar network on YouTube for our listeners. We’re going to call that one The Young Turks Nation; it allows the audience to pick who they like. So if someone who is a viewer does these terrific blogs, we’ll move them up to what we’re tentatively calling The Young Turks Stars. If they do really well from that, then we give them their own show. We eliminate the middle man.

Uygur’s tips for rising bloggers and video stars
1. Find your passion. If you’re not intensely passionate, you’re not going to put in the gargantuan number of hours that you need to find the audience that’s going to enjoy your work.
2. Work hard. I don’t want to delude anyone. It’s really difficult. It takes a long time and a lot of hard work.
3. Figure out all the ways for people to find you. Do all the nitty-gritty hard work behind the scenes: tags, titles and SEO [search engine optimization].
4. Be responsive to your audience. If they say, “Hey, have you covered this, or did you think about that?” have a real interaction with them. If I do something wrong, I’ll get tweets and emails on it. The first thing I’ll do is correct it and give credit to the guy who emailed or the many people who did.
5. Become a trustworthy expert. If you do all of that, eventually people will say, “OK, he’s good at this. When I want X, I’ll turn to him.”

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Andrea K. Hammer, a freelance writer, is the founder and director of Artsphoria: Visual Word Artistry.

One morning a year ago, Slate editor David Plotz came into his office, a stone’s throw from the DuPont Circle neighborhood of Washington, and discovered a 50-foot-high billboard of an attractive, Michelle-Obama-looking woman hanging off the side of the SEIU building, directly out his window. “This gigantic woman appeared to be staring directly into my office. It spooked me,” Plotz said. “I felt like I was being watched all the time by gigantic Michelle Obama. I had to lower my shades, and kept them lowered until they removed the billboard a few months ago.”

Such are the minor hauntings of working at a place like Slate where old-school journalists are thought to be doing serious, intellectual, higher brow journalism. Plotz is so open about Slate’s political consciousness (or lack thereof) that writers’ votes are regularly posted on the site for all to see. Having a political opinion isn’t necessary, he says, but it is never denied or avoided.

What Plotz likes about his job: “Amazingly intelligent and decent and funny colleagues, a magazine I am always proud to be working on.” What he dislikes: “Almost no time to write.”

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Name: David Plotz
Position: Editor, Slate.com
Resume: Before joining the magazine in 1996, Plotz was senior editor and staff writer for Washington City Paper. Plotz has written for a variety of publications, including NYT Magazine, Harper’s, Rolling Stone, GQ, The New Republic, and the Washington Post. He’s the author of The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank and, most recently, Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible, based on his “Blogging the Bible” series for Slate.
Birthday: Jan. 31, 1970
Hometown: Washington, D.C.
Education: BA from Harvard
Marital status: Married to Hanna Rosin of The Atlantic Monthly and DoubleX. Three kids.
First section of the Sunday Times: Book Review, Styles, KenKen
Favorite TV show: Friday Night Lights, Barclays Premier League Review Show
Guilty pleasure: “Bubble tea from Teaism every day”
Last book read: The Master Switch by Tim Wu
Twitter handle: @davidplotz

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How do you keep your employees motivated, or do you not worry about such a thing?

I worry about it a huge amount. I’m neither a fear-based nor a charismatic Vince Lombardi motivator. Not Tony Robbins either, I’m not tall enough, and my teeth are quite small. Slate has always been a writer-driven place and it’s pretty collegial. My goal is to make people feel as much as possible that they control the health and prosperity of the magazine by working together, by keeping an eye out for each other and depending on each other. I feel that with the sense of group solidarity that we all hang together and that it’s not only true, but is a motivator. I hope nobody at Slate writes stories out of fear, or sucking up. My goal, my hope, is people are doing the work they are doing because they sense that they will benefit all of us and Slate as a whole.

On the other hand, you can’t pretend that we don’t need to create traffic. That’s one of the reasons we do these Fresca projects [in-depth field reporting in which the writer takes a month off to complete a project]. One thing to motivate people is to structure their job so that it gives them wonderful, delightful time. Give them a special time each year, give them a whole month to work on something that is ambitious that can turn into something marvelous. It creates great journalism for Slate and delights readers, but it makes people feel good about working here, I hope.

Where does Slate fall ideologically and politically?
Slate doesn’t have a party line, an ideological platform or positions on anything. We never feel any obligation to cover an issue a particular way or to stake out a position or to serve some higher public good. Our view is the public good is served when we are honest and journalistically ambitious. If that means we are savaging something the right loves, fantastic. There is no intentional political activism at Slate. One thing we’ve done during the past few elections is everyone on staff says how they’ve voted. We publish it. It’s cool. It speaks well for our transparency so people can look and say that our work stands and falls based on its truth and integrity and consistency.

There is no effort to do political activism. We want to be engaged, but if we decide we write about health care, it is not to get it passed, but because Americans need to know about it. As long as the stories are smart and new and fresh, it doesn’t matter where they fall.

“Our view is the public good is served when we are honest and journalistically ambitious. If that means we are savaging something the right loves, fantastic.”

What do you look for in hiring someone?

The baseline for Slate is that you have to be really smart; you have to be really funny. You’ve got to get the joke. Once you get beyond those two, it’s just a huge infectious enthusiasm. That’s one of the things I love about [Dave] Weigel. He’s got a million ideas. He always wants to be in the game, always wanting to do the next thing. It’s great watching that. For younger people, it’s journalists with technical skills.

Where does opinion fit into writing?
Everyone’s always had opinions. The only thing made easier is the ability to broadcast your opinions more. We’re not a daily newspaper. We have a luxury that the Post doesn’t have. I don’t have to think about it. I don’t care if my writers are objective. I don’t care if they are biased. I know they are. Do they grapple with counter arguments to their point? Do they use fact in a fair and straightforward way and address facts that are counter to their thesis? As long as they are transparent about what they are doing, I think that’s great.

Speaking of which, you most recently brought on Dave Weigel. Have you known him over the years? How did you come to hire him?
I had not known Dave that long. I had not met him until we interviewed him. I knew his work. He was friends with Chris Beam and he’s known some of my other colleagues. When the Post dropped him, a number of people immediately within Slate said, we should talk to this guy. He just seemed to have the things we’re looking for — enthusiasm, expertise, brains — and was plugged in to a part of politics we weren’t covering heavily. [He] seemed like a great fit, and it has been fantastic. He has been a delight.

Isn’t his hire just a pass off from WaPo? You both are owned by the same company, so how is WaPo sending a message that it won’t tolerate biases in reporting when Slate picks him up?
I had no conversations with anyone at Post corporate until after the hire. No one said a word. After I made an offer, I called [executive editor] Marcus [Brauchli] and contacted people at corporate, and they were like, fine. I think the Post wished him well. Corporate folks were fine with it. We’re editorially independent. He has explained fully to my satisfaction those Journolist emails and that stuff on Twitter. I think his explanations are aces with me. In no sense was he handed off from the Post to us. In no sense was there an attempt to get approval from the company before we did it. It was the editorially right thing for us to do at that moment.

What is the personality of Slate and its readers?

Slate is the person at the cocktail party who is standing slightly aside and having the funniest conversation. I think it aspires to be smart, irreverent, funny, and kind of respect no sacred cows, to believe that all subjects are fit for discussion whether they be extremely serious or light.

Our readers are a lot like the magazine. They are very media literate. They are very tech literate. If you look at Slate readers, they blog at an incredible rate. They are very plugged into Web culture, but I don’t think they are techies. A fraction of them are. We are not a tech site in that way. They are interested in Web culture, but they are not high tech, they’re not Web developers. They’re probably not wildly dissimilar from The Economist, New Yorker readers, probably little bit younger than those.

What is Slate’s best story of this year?
The thing I’m proudest of at the moment is Emily Bazelon’s series on the Phoebe Prince case. For her Fresca project, Emily has been reporting the living daylights out of that story. The entire pop narrative of that story is wrong — that the bullies did much less than the prosecutor accused. That the girl had previous suicide attempts before and that she herself was a bully. [Bazelon] was on the Today show three times in three weeks. She’s based in New Haven.

What worries you most about the unstable newspaper business and what do you do, if anything, to ensure that Slate won’t go under?
We have to make Slate a really financially successful website with a huge devoted readership. We’re on the way, but we’re not there yet. We’re not printing money just yet. The instability of the newspaper business, there’s not much that we at Slate can do about it. We share a bunch of resources with the Post. If Don Graham has ideas for us to collaborate with the Post, then we’ll do it in a second. This happens in an informal way right now, meaning right now we do a bunch of collaboration — the Sunday business and living sections pick up Slate stuff and that’s awesome. [Executive editor] Marcus [Brauchli] and I have talked about certain personnel sharing that maybe we’ll try. But there’s not an overarching policy of how Slate and the Post should interact. We think of ideas, and we try them out.

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Betsy Rothstein is co-editor of FishbowlDC.

Call him a genius, call him a heretic, but don’t call him a pornographer. From first bringing bodacious bods to newsstands across America in the conservative 1950s, to later infiltrating cable television, to revealing all in his recent authorized documentary, Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel, there’s always been an air of mystery surrounding Hugh Hefner and his empire. And with news breaking almost daily about the possible sale of Playboy, interest in what could be his next and some say his last chess move for the multimillion dollar company is only beginning to heat up.

Magazines, TV shows, films, even club casinos are just a few of the things Hefner says he envisions for the future of his company. And although some may feel he is in the sunset of his career, the iconic 84-year-old insists he’s not going anywhere.

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Name: Hugh Hefner
Position: Founder, editor-in-chief and chief creative officer of Playboy
Resume: Hefner worked as an assistant personnel manager for the Chicago Carton Company and as an advertising copywriter for the Carson Pirie Scott department store. He then went on to land a copywriter job at Esquire. But Hefner had his eye on a bigger vision, his own magazine. After failing to raise capital to launch a Chicago magazine, he tried again a year later collecting $8,000 from friends and family to launch the first issue of Playboy. The rest is history.
Birthday: April 9, 1926
Hometown: Chicago, Illinois
Education: Bachelor’s degree from University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) with graduate courses in sociology at Northwestern University.
Marital status: Single
Twitter handle: @HughHefner

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When you began Playboy, what was your vision for it and how has the vision changed since its beginnings?
When I started the magazine in 1953, it was a very conservative decade, and I wanted to create a magazine for young single guys that were interested in the outdoor adventure of stag and odyssey, but who really connected to a life lived with a little style. The way you decorated your apartment, the clothes you wore, the car you drove and all of that, obviously connected to a romantic interest in the opposite sex. I think it remains essentially the same, the balance in terms of the heart and soul of the magazine remain essentially the same, but I think that the magazine contains smaller pieces now, less fiction. I think the reading habits of the people have changed.

What do you consider to be your duties as Playboy‘s editor-in-chief and chief creative officer?
Every day begins in my office here at the mansion in telephonic connection with my editors, my art director, etc. Planning the issue — rejecting or accepting covers, centerfolds, editorials, features, the layouts, etc. Then the second part of every day is usually involved in interviews, phone or otherwise. And then, in the evening, I spend time with my girls or the girlfriend and friends, and my life is fairly structured in that sense.

Why do you think Playboy would be better off as a private company?
I think it will simply be more secure, that’s all. We need more economic stability — and I just celebrated my 84th birthday and I decided the future is secure.

Describe your personal stake in Playboy. What do you want to see the company accomplish going forward?
What lies ahead is a very exciting time, even though the magazine, like a lot of other magazines and other prints [are] having some economic problems. The brand itself is hotter now on a global level than ever before, and we will be launching in the months immediately ahead a series of Playboy club casinos around the world. We are opening a club in London. We are opening a resort hotel down in South Beach, Florida all within the next year and a half. [There’s] Playboy branding, particularly men’s and women’s clothing and television. We have three television shows going at the same time. They are spinoffs of The Girls Next Door. We are going to be expanding into films, so I think that the future is bright because of the power of the brand.

“The Playboy name represents personal economic and political freedom, and that’s an export that has great appeal around the world.”

What do you consider to be Playboy’s chief asset as a company?
I think without question it is the iconic image itself. That rabbit, that trademark, is one of the most famous iconic trademarks in the entire world, and there is nothing else that really competes with it. There is no other sophisticated adult brand out there. So, we are in a very unique situation around the rest of the world. That rabbit and the Playboy name represents personal economic and political freedom, and that’s an export that has great appeal around the world.

You’ve said Playboy is undervalued. What do you think investors have been overlooking?
Well, [the investors are] probably not impressed by the bottom line. I can’t disagree with that. I don’t think we’ve been showing a very healthy P and L here in the recent past, but I also think they don’t really recognize what lies ahead.

What do you think of the current bidding war for Playboy Enterprises, including the offer from your competitor Penthouse‘s parent company FriendFinder Networks Inc.?
That’s all nonsense. That’s simply their attempt to get some press. Absolutely nothing to that — whatsoever. I am not selling my part of the company. I am buying shares.

Should one of them actually buy the company, what other criteria for the new company besides money would you like to be considered?
I would be considering partnering with people that supply synergism to what we are already doing. The businesses that compliment the businesses that we are in.

“My life is rather like a Rorschach test. I think people project a great deal of their own particular fantasies, dreams, and prejudices onto my life.”

After speaking with a few colleagues of yours, I understand that you’re an avid art collector, as well as a philanthropist. What would you say are some of the biggest misconceptions about you?
The misconception depends on who the person is. I think that I’ve said on more than one occasion, my life is an open book with illustrations. Some people know who I am very well. Some people have their own particular perceptions, fantasies, or prejudices to get in the way of their perceptions.

The documentary Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel is the first time you’ve authorized such an in-depth look at your personal and business life. What do you think will be the most surprising to viewers?
It would depend very much on the viewer. I think that I expressed it a long time ago, that my life is rather like a Rorschach test or like an ink blot test. I think people project a great deal of their own particular fantasies, dreams, and prejudices onto my life. So, what a person gets out of this documentary and indeed what a person knows about my life depends on the individual. One of the virtues of this particular documentary we’ve made is that it focuses on the more serious side of my life, and I do think that it is done in such depth and done so well that even people who think they know me well are going to come away with some new insights.

You have had the image of a “playboy” for most of your career. How important has branding yourself in a certain light been in marketing the magazine?
I don’t think that the public image happened by accident. It certainly was a conscious connection to that and I don’t think [there was] any question with what the lifestyle reflected in the magazine. The more serious aspects of my life and the more serious aspects of the magazine tend to get hidden in the glare of the attention played on the pretty ladies.

One of your first jobs was as a copywriter for Esquire. Media has changed so dramatically since you began, what advice would you give the younger generation who are interested in delving into today’s marketplace?
The future of communication and entertainment obviously is very much connected to the Internet and if, for example, I was starting today, I would probably be doing something relating to the Internet rather than print. It’s a sad thing to say because I do think that we are a little less because of the way we get our information now. There are great virtues to the Internet, but we’ve also lost something. Young people don’t have much of a sense of yesterday.

What kind of legacy would you like to leave behind?
I’d like to be remembered as somebody who played some positive part in changing social sexual values of my time, and I think I am pretty secure in that.

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Jeff Rivera is the author of Forever My Lady (Grand Central) and a regular correspondent for GalleyCat and The Huffington Post.

Author Jennifer Weiner burst onto the scene in 2001 with Good in Bed, a novel about a modern-day plus-size heroine who gets the fairy tale ending. The book became a word-of-mouth hit, and Weiner’s been burning up the keyboard ever since, turning out another five novels in as many years, along with a collection of short stories. All told, her books have sold 11 million copies in 36 countries, one was made into a Hollywood movie (In Her Shoes, with Cameron Diaz and Shirley MacLaine), and ABC even gave Weiner a development deal. Now, Redbook is serializing a new story in its July and August issues, and the former newspaper reporter and magazine columnist just inked a new four-book deal with her publisher, Atria.

With her latest novel Fly Away Home, about a 57-year-old politician’s wife confronting her husband’s infidelity, now in stores, Mediabistro caught up with Weiner to talk about the things she wish she’d known when she first started and why tweeting commentary on The Bachelorette makes for a good marketing strategy.

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Name: Jennifer Weiner
Position: Novelist
Resume: Reporter, Centre Daily Times, State College, Penn., 1991-1994. Reporter, Lexington Herald-Leader, 1994. Reporter and columnist, Philadelphia Inquirer, 1995-2001. Author of Good in Bed (2001), In Her Shoes (2002), Little Earthquakes (2004), Goodnight Nobody (2005), The Guy Not Taken (2006), Certain Girls (2008), Best Friends Forever (2009), and Fly Away Home (2010). In Her Shoes was made into a major motion picture in 2005, starring Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette and Shirley MacLaine.
Birthday: March 28, 1970
Hometown: Born in DeRidder, La., raised in Simsbury, Conn.
Education: Graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1991 with a bachelor’s degree in English literature.
Family: “I live with my family in Philadelphia.”
First section of the Sunday Times: “I read the ‘Book Review’ online. Bitterly.”
Favorite TV show: “God help me, The Bachelor.”
Guilty pleasure: “I don’t think pleasures are ever guilty! But: Reality TV.”
Last book read: One Day, by David Nicholls
Twitter handle: @jenniferweiner. “Because I’m just that creative.”

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How did the new four-book deal with Atria come about?
I had written the last book in my previous contract. My agent and I sat down and looked at the landscape, looked at ebooks, and looked at marketing and publishing and all the stuff we think is going on. We talked about where I am in my life and what I wanted to be doing. We decided the book-a-year approach made sense for me. Four books felt ambitious, like it was me committing to my publisher in a very real way, and my publisher committing to me in a very real way. But not 12 books. Who knows what the world’s going to look like in 12 years. We think we know what it’s going to look like in four.

You mentioned ebooks. How did those play into this deal?
Ebooks are about 20 percent of my sales, which is higher than average for contemporary fiction and tells me that my readers are early adopters of these technologies. It’s interesting to watch people go off on their own and say, “I’m going to deal directly with Amazon,” or “I’m going to sell directly to the Kindle.” That wasn’t anything I was interested in doing. I’ve got a fantastic relationship with my publisher, and I really appreciate all of their support in terms of editing and marketing and promotion. But it’s fun to watch other authors do different things with the new technologies. Not for me yet.

“There are people in publishing who fervently believe that a book is worth $27 and would like readers to believe that, as well. If the answer is $9.99 [ebooks], publishing is going to have to adjust.”

This new four-book deal came almost 10 years to the day after you sold your first book. What changes have you’ve seen in the publishing industry over the past decade that most impact you on the business end?
Any writer will tell you that the biggest change in the marketplace has been the writer as promoter of her own work. Ten years ago, people were hanging on to the idea that the writer’s job was to write this wonderful, smart, funny, engrossing, relatable book, and you would give it to your publisher, and they would make the magic happen. You could just go back to your apartment and work on your next one, and the publisher would be as busy as elves in their workshop, getting the word out and promoting it and getting it into all the right readers’ hands. I think I was smart and lucky to recognize early on something that all writers seem take as gospel at this point, which is that nobody is going to be a more passionate advocate of your first novel than you are.

How about the Kindle? Some people in publishing think it’s killing the book business. Do you agree?
No, I don’t at all. It’s causing a lot of fear because of that $9.99 price point. I feel that that big question, “What is a work of fiction worth?” has been answered. Amazon, in setting that price, is announcing to the world that a work of fiction, no matter how many years it took to write it, no matter how many people edited it, no matter how long the cover design or the page design took, a book is worth $9.99. (Unless it’s worth $14.99 its first week of release.) It’s a tough pill to swallow. Because there are people in publishing who fervently believe that a book is worth $27 and would like readers to believe that, as well. If the answer is $9.99, publishing is going to have to adjust. I don’t know if those adjustments are going to come in the form of lower advances, different royalty structures for ebooks, or what.

“Nobody is going to be a more passionate advocate of your first novel than you are.”

In Her Shoes was made into a film, and you and your sister were cast as extras. How involved were you in the screenplay and the production?
I had a film critic friend tell me that a novelist trying to adapt her own book was like a mother trying to circumcise her own son. Let somebody else cut. I made a decision really early on that I had told the story I wanted to tell in the book. The book was done. It was published and in bookstores. Nobody was going to go into bookstores and start changing what I’d written. So I said I’m going to let the movie be the filmmaker’s story to tell. And I wound up really, really pleased with every choice they made. I loved the screenplay. I was very happy with the casting. I was very happy with the movie.

From the big screen to the small screen: What happened to the pilot you were working on for ABC?
I had a two-year development deal with ABC in which I wrote a half-hour pilot and an hour-long pilot. I came really close with both of them, but eventually neither one wound up getting picked up, which was a little heartbreaking. But it was a really incredible learning experience in terms of how things work out there [in Hollywood] and how things make the journey from “I have this idea for a show” to you turn on your TV set at eight o’clock and there it is. It’s a lot more collaborative than writing a novel. I was working with different writing partners for the pilots, and I really liked that part of that. You’d get notes, and I think for people out there, it’s like, “Ugh, another notes call.” But for me, it was, “Yay, I get to hear what somebody thinks.” Because when you write a novel, your publisher is like, “Great, we’ll see you in a year.” I liked the back-and-forth of television.

You’re a big social media user. You tweet, Facebook, and blog a lot. Do you have any sense of what impact that has on book sales?
When I ask people who come to my readings how many of them are my Facebook friends, half the hands go up. But I don’t know if it’s creating new fans or creating more feeling of connection among existing fans. I would hope it’s both. One of the things I do do is, every week, I live-tweet The Bachelor or The Bachelorette. [Ed. Note: Sample tweet: “Ty pronounces himself ‘tickled to death’ that Ali has ambitions. Betty Friedan rolls over in her grave; gives him the finger.”] And I would get a couple hundred new followers every time I did this. And at the end of the night, I would say, “Welcome new followers, thanks for joining in. By the way, I also write books.” And then I’d say something like, “They’re like tweets, but all strung together.” And then I’d direct them to my website. I hope they back into it that way.

“You realize you’re making certain trade-offs when your first book is called Good in Bed, and there’s naked legs and cheesecake on the cover.”

What are three things that you wish you’d known 15 years ago?
I wish I would have known how little the New York Times review would matter. Like every writer, I bought into the myth that you haven’t written a book until The New York Times takes notice. I remember realizing it wasn’t going to happen. You realize you’re making certain trade-offs when your first book is called Good in Bed, and there’s naked legs and cheesecake on the cover. One of the things you’re letting go of is the idea that Michiko Kakutani is going to take your galley home for the weekend. I wish I’d known it’s okay to be called “a delightful beach romp.” Lots of people want to read a delightful beach romp.

Second, I should never, ever go to the art department with an idea for a book cover, because all of my ideas are crap. I would tell the me of 10 years ago: Just let the cover be the cover. You just tell the story.

And third, like many writers, I had the fantasy that, once I had a book contract, everyone would be nice to me. Because they’d think, “What if I’m not nice? Maybe, she’ll put me in her book, and I won’t like it.” It doesn’t work that way. No one’s nice to you because you have a book deal. And the people you try to settle scores with by putting them in the book, generally by the time I’m through five or six drafts, they’re so altered that I don’t even remember who it was supposed to be anymore.

Your books are in print in 36 countries, and yet your stories seem very specific to the lives of women in Western countries. What do you hear from readers in non-Western countries?
It’s the body stuff. The one thing the West has managed to 100 percent successfully export is distorted ideals of what it means to have a good body as a woman. Women all over the world have told me, “I’ve been on a diet since I was… (insert ridiculously young age). I’ve never been able to feel good in my own skin, and I never thought I could have a happy ending looking the way I look. Thank you for writing books where someone who looks like me gets the happy ending.”

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E.B. Boyd is a freelance journalist based in San Francisco.

Chicago chef and restaurateur Rick Bayless wears many toques. Best known for raising the profile of Mexican cuisine in America over the past quarter century, he’s also a major media figure outside the kitchen. He holds the title of Top Chef Masters winner, hosts his own PBS show, Mexico: One Plate at a Time, and his seventh cookbook, Fiesta at Rick’s, hits shelves July 5. And in his spare time (read: the duration of an elevator ride from his office to the rear entrance of the Frontera Grill kitchen), he’s taken to Twitter like mole to a flame.

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Name: Rick Bayless
Position: Chef/owner of Frontera Grill, Topolobampo, and XOCO in Chicago. Host of PBS’s Mexico: One Plate at a Time
Resume: Founded Chicago restaurants Frontera Grill and Topolobampo in 1987. Began the Frontera Farmer Foundation in 2003 to attract support for small Midwestern farms. Owner, Frontera Foods prepared food items. Winner of Bravo’s Top Chef Masters, season one. Author of seven cookbooks.
Birthday: November 23, 1953
Hometown: Oklahoma City
Education: University of Michigan
Marital status: Married
First section of the Sunday Times: “I always read the book section first.”
Favorite TV show: Modern Family
Guilty pleasure: Doughnuts
Last book read: Momofuku by David Chang
Twitter handle: @Rick_Bayless

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How can a cookbook author convey some personality while also explaining how to prepare a dish?
I try to keep my recipes as clean and clear as possible and then I always find one or two places, maybe three, in the recipe where I can interject something that’s in my own voice that’s personal. I can’t stand to read recipes that look like they were generated by a computer. I actually want to know that my cookbook author, the person that I’m reading, has actually made that dish.

What most people want in a cookbook is a voice. They want somebody to help them through it and they want to know that you know what it’s like for them to be in their own kitchen. When it gets to those once in a lifetime kinds of dishes, those just take a lot of words. If it’s complex dish that somebody’s going to build up to, they’re going to buy the ingredients, get all the preparations done — usually the really complicated dishes are made over several days — you don’t want to oversimplify it because then they get in the middle of it and they go, “Oh my god, what did I get into?” You really want to break it down for them and hold their hand through it, but also don’t tell them, being really wordy, “Now it’s going to start to turn a little gold and then after that it will brown a little bit more.” Be concise and reassuring to people without being too wordy.

“You should never underestimate the power of a local groundswell.”

What’s your advice for authors who are trying to promote their latest book?
The more successful you are in one area, if it’s food related, the more people will be willing to talk to you about your book. But when I was just starting out, I did all the same things that everybody else did. I found a way to promote in places where people were thinking about food. [At] the farmer’s market that I’m the board of here in Chicago, we have a really strong educational initiative, and we have a couple of chefs that come and do demos, and if they’ve got cookbooks they promote them. Those kinds of things can be really positive ways to promote. Of course the best thing you can get is any sort of national placement. But at the same time, if it’s just on the national forum, you have to balance that with letting the local people you like them, too. I would say that you set your sights as high as you can set them. and then you realize that the more of a solid local base that you have, the more solid your foundation is and those people won’t ever turn away from you. Will they boost your cookbook sales up really high? No. But they’ll be the people who keep coming back, and you’ll be a part of their community so that they’ll refer more to friends and stuff like that. I think you should never underestimate the power of a local groundswell.

What’s the biggest difference for you between filming a reality show like Top Chef Masters and then your PBS show, Mexico: One Plate at a Time? What’s it like on set?
On set it’s really different, it’s totally freewheeling and there’s nothing that is very staged at all in Top Chef Masters. I didn’t know going in whether I was going to find the whole thing to be less than real reality, you know? But it actually was. What you see is what you got, basically, and we didn’t have lots of extra time. There were times when we were all back there washing pots and pans, and it was hard. They didn’t give you any support at all. You never knew was what going to happen.

My show is not scripted, but it’s got everything is very carefully laid out, I know I’ve got three and a half minutes for this scene, and I know I’ve got to convey all this information, and I’m going to get from point A to point B so I can go into the next scene. So that’s much more about me being a teacher. What you were seeing in Top Chef Masters was me being a chef who was just reacting to whatever was thrown my way. And of course in our shows, I know what’s going to be thrown my way because I helped write it.

In a recent New York Times article, the writer said you’re “one the rare celebrity chefs who can own multiple restaurants, appear on TV, sell frozen pizzas and not seem like a jerky sellout.” What’s your advice for other very visible media personalities in staying real on camera and not appearing like a jerky sellout?
I think the jerky sellout thing really doesn’t come from being on camera because it’s not something that would translate into being on camera. The jerky sellout stuff is when people think they can do more than they can do, and so they just tackle it all. They open restaurants that they don’t have staff to open that are trained enough, they write books about topics they really don’t know anything about, and they hire someone to ghostwrite it for them and it becomes just a concept book that’s just got some recipes to put on a shelf. Or when they endorse every product that comes along, and there’s no rhyme or reason to what they’re doing.

Television’s a very different thing. The one thing that most people will tell you is when you’re thinking about doing television is, “Can you break through the lens?” You can really tell the people who can do it and the people that can’t. That’s one thing that I always recommend to people like do a kind of screen test, you can usually find someone who will set up a camera and shoot you. Play around with it and see, do you think that you have what it takes to do that? Mostly what people want to see in people who are doing food on camera is that you can break through that lens and become the person’s friend.

“I’ve got this community of people that are loving seeing what other people are making, and they’re getting it through my Twitter feed.”

Let’s talk about Twitter. You’re sharing your advice and news with nearly 57,000 fans, you give people feedback for their Twitpics…
That’s my favorite thing, it just happened sort of spontaneously that somebody took a picture of what they had made from one of my books and they posted it to me because they all know that I take pictures of everything I cook and I post it to them. So somebody did the same thing back to me and I thought wow, I was showing my wife, “Look, look it’s beautiful,” and she said you should repost that. So I reposted that and then other people started doing the same thing. I’m really happy because now I’ve got this community of people that are loving seeing what other people are making, and they’re getting it through my Twitter feed.

You recently got to cook at the White House, and then you took a little heat from the Chicago Sun-Times for allegedly tweeting where you weren’t supposed to. Why did you use Twitter to set the record straight?
Because that’s my form. I’m a Twitter baby, I have no other mouthpiece besides Twitter right now. That’s kind of hilarious, but it’s true. I thought it was incredibly poor journalism. And I was shocked beyond belief that somebody would think that I would do something like that. Yes, I post a lot on Twitter and yes I posted what my feelings were about going into the White House, but I would never do it in there. Even when people around us were taking pictures, I told my crew no pictures because I felt like that we needed to be invited to do that — because there’s a lot of things I don’t know about the running of the White House. I don’t presume to know that kind of thing, and I was going to be very respectful. I thought that was really, really unconscionable that Lynn Sweet posted that I was breaking all kinds of rules by tweeting from the White House. I was never going to do that. Anyway, I got a public apology.

What do you think about food bloggers taking pictures in restaurants?
I think it’s absolutely fine. I take pictures of everything I eat. The only thing I have to say is flashes are not good. If you’re flashing, flashing, flashing, I’m sorry, it can be very disruptive to the room. Now that everybody’s got cameras with them all the time because most of them are built into the phones, it’s gotten pretty crazy that no matter where you are or who announces what, everybody will take pictures. I was just doing a public demonstration with somebody else, [and] there was an announcement made that there was not to be any photos. So we both walked out on the stage, and it was just a roar of flashes going off. When it gets to be like that, then I think the food bloggers just have to chill out. I guess maybe we need to publish a little booklet on food bloggers etiquette.

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Blake Gernstetter is mediabistro.com’s associate editor.

When it comes to women of color in radio, the ranks are thin. Yet, over the course of a two-decade career, Wendy Williams established herself as a force to be reckoned with and was inducted into the Radio Hall Of Fame alongside legends like Franklin D. Roosevelt, Edward R. Murrow, and Dick Clark. While she attempted to make the transition to television several times throughout her career, her latest venture, The Wendy Williams Show, has showcased her talents in a way that has spelled immediate success with ratings high enough to extend her contract through 2012.

“When I got the news, I was elated,” says Williams. “It’s such a sign to me that I’m in the right game. I love my job and wouldn’t have my career trajectory [go] any other way.” Here, the self-professed “outsized personality” dishes on life, broadcasting, and, oh yeah, the wigs.

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Name: Wendy Williams
Position: Host, The Wendy Williams Show
Resume: Landed a radio gig in the Virgin Islands after college; held stints at a number of New York radio stations, most notably at WQHT (Hot 97) and WBLS, where she reigned in ratings and was syndicated in a dozen cities. After several attempts at television productions, including the short-lived Wendy Williams Experience on VH1, she’s now the host of her own eponymous daytime talk show seen in 18 of the top 20 markets throughout the country.
Birthdate: July 18th
Hometown: Ocean Township, New Jersey
Education: Northeastern University: BA Communications and Journalism
Marital status: Married with one son
First section of the Sunday Times: “I usually read the Daily News and head straight for the ‘Radio’ and ‘TV’ section. When I do read the Sunday Times, I go immediately to the ‘Style’ section. And I’m not going to deny that I read the National Enquirer, too.”
Favorite TV show: Judge Judy, The People’s Court. “I love all the court shows.”
Guilty pleasure: “Whitefish! It’s an acquired taste and many people don’t like it. You have to eat it with your fingers — that’s part of the experience. You don’t heat it up. Just open it and dig in.”
Last book read: Poor Little Bitch Girl by Jackie Collins
Twitter handle: @wendyshow

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Why transition from radio to television?
Who wouldn’t? Name one person who wouldn’t. Even if they had a fabulous career in another segment of the media. I was ready for the next step. I’ve been inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame. I have inspired many women to get into radio, specifically girls in college. Radio was great. But once I got my first taste of television in 1993, I was sold: hook, line, and sinker. The Wendy Williams Show. By myself. On prime time. That became the dream.

“It takes more than good conversation to make good television.”

During the sneak peek of The Wendy Williams Show, did you feel confident that the show would do well?
I felt confident in myself, but no, I didn’t think, ‘I’ve got this.’ Every day I got better and better. I was confident that if this show didn’t get picked up, I’d done it all to try to make it happen. It’s been a learning experience, for sure. Ask me anything about radio, I know it. Television? I’m still learning. It takes more than good conversation to make good television.

What’s the biggest difference between a radio audience and a live audience?

They can see me. That’s it. Well, that and the fact that television is
a one-hour show, not a five-hour show. The segments are seven minutes, so it’s very fast-paced.

What do you miss about radio?
If I had to really think about, I think I might miss the intimacy of radio. How I had to describe things to my listeners. But honestly, there is not much I miss about radio after 23 years. I hugged it, said goodbye, and wished it well.

But on your last day on the air, you suggested that you could return to radio. Will you?
I don’t know. I like it enough. I left a great career in radio. And now my television show has been renewed through 2012. I’ll be here for a while.

Why does your traditional talk show work in a way that your other forays into television didn’t?
This time, I was encouraged to be absolutely me. That wasn’t always the case in the other shows. And this time, people who know me well surrounded me. If you’re getting hired on my show, you know the essence of the topics. You just have to get it. And everyone on my show gets it. That’s a major part of why I think it works.

Oprah’s retiring next year. Tyra has recently decided to move on. Do you think they will resurface? How might that affect your show, if at all?
It’s not like I have no competition. The playing field is still there. If it’s not them, there will be someone else. There won’t be a shortage of talk show hosts. Their exit only means that they have paved the way for me. I can only dream of having that kind of run. Give me five years, and I’m ecstatic.

You were already well-known from your radio show. Do you have a different demographic recognizing you now?
Absolutely! I have all kinds of people who are just now discovering me through television. I hear all the time: ‘I didn’t know about your radio show, but I love you on television.’ They talk about my interviews with Toni Braxton and Fran Drescher — and then they talk about how I tilt my wig and how the show is so colorful and full of personality. I love it. I feel like I’m really giving people what they want, and that’s a great feeling. Especially when you can be yourself while you’re doing it. Television of course has a much bigger range than radio, and I have to say this is the first time I’ve felt like an actual celebrity. I’ve always been known in the New York radio market. But folks in Tallahassee didn’t know me from the radio. Now they do.

“My motto is, ‘I’m a mess, you’re a mess.’ Let’s have fun with it anyway. It makes me relatable to my audience.”

Television is a beast. It is not an easy job. And the level of visibility doesn’t always make me comfortable as a mother. My son and I are being recognized in the street now. I still live my life. I still run errands on the weekends with my son. So now, I have a pair of sunglasses for him to put on if necessary. I just want to protect him as much as I can from too much exposure. And for myself, the Wendy Williams that you see on television is very different than who you might run into at Target on a Saturday morning. I don’t wear makeup in the street. I try to be as plain Jane as possible.

Your husband was always very involved in all of your projects when you were on the radio. Is he still a major part of your business team?
Of course. My husband is one of the executive producers of the show, and it’s wonderful working together. I can count on him to keep it ultra real with me at all times. He’s not the one who is going to be front and center at events. He’s the mack in the back. He doesn’t want to be photographed on the red carpet. Sometimes, I’ll tell him to just stand on the other side of the red carpet so I can see him. He’ll give me non-verbal cues on how my hair and makeup look, how to adjust my dress. All that stuff. He’s a comfort, and he’s always there for me.

You were known for being very straightforward and frank during your radio interviews. How have you had to adapt that interviewing style for TV?
I’m just as straightforward now as I was in radio. Asking questions is nothing for me. If you’re going to work in this business, you should be able to have a conversation with anyone. And I’m equal opportunity with my openness. I’m just as open as I expect my guests to be. In television, traditionally, you don’t tell your age. You’re conscious of fat angles and weight. You don’t let it all hang out. I’m just the opposite. I let it all hang out. I don’t walk like a supermodel; I’m teetering in my heels. My motto is, ‘I’m a mess, you’re a mess.’ Let’s have fun with it anyway. It makes me relatable to my audience. That kind of openness comes with maturity and growth. Twenty years ago, I would have been wearing two-inch heels so that I didn’t look too tall. Now, I wear what I like, I project what I like. I’m fully myself on camera.

You showcase your outfits and share other tidbits on Twitter and your website. How have you found the experience of social media to be helpful?
I Tweet. But it’s not my favorite thing. I think many forms of social media are responsible for a lot of miscommunication. I’m speaking from the field of communication. There is something to be said for looking someone in the eye when you’re communicating. And that’s what worked for me throughout my career — I always talked my way into everything. The idea of talking — not just emailing — is something I feel very passionate about. I’m on Twitter because I have a show and social media is a way to promote my show. I get that. But I have reservations, too.

You’ve endured several setbacks in your career, including your exit from Hot 97 and your previous TV shows that didn’t survive. Taking from those experiences, what advice would you give another media professional who is laid off or has been recently fired?

I hope you saved your money. When push comes to shove, you may have to sell Estee Lauder at Macy’s. It may not match your tax bracket. But you’ll have to do what’s necessary. I have to say I’ve been very blessed in that area. I’ve had my share of scrapes and bruises. But I’ve never been unemployed for more than two weeks, and that was back in 1991. I went from Hot 103.9, and two weeks later I was at WPLJ.

Radio has changed so much since when you first started. What advice would you give to someone who is looking to break into the business now?
Make sure you have a Plan B. A very solid plan B.

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Aliya S. King is an author of two works of nonfiction and an upcoming novel. She also blogs at www.aliyasking.com and Tweets even more @aliyasking.

“I never thought of myself as a writer,” says Jamie Foster Brown. “It was something other people encouraged me to do because of my interview style and the way I described the behind-the-scenes of the music industry.” That knack for getting inside the heads of celebrities has made her the Larry King of urban media. “Sister 2 Sister is not a place where we drag people’s names through the mud,” she says. “We just tell the truth. And encourage our subjects to do the same.”

This approach has led to a magazine with a 22-year history. Sister 2 Sister now boasts 200,000 in circulation — not People or Us Weekly numbers — but Brown does it with a full-time staff of just five. Keeping overhead small has helped her outlive and keep pace with many of her competitors at a time when the death knell is sounding for print titles. (And she plans to keep on winning, even as mainstream publishing houses, like Harris Publications, aim for her coveted female demo.) Brown details the rise of her magazine from a newsletter to a glossy, why she’s okay with being labeled “friendly press,” and the one place online will never beat print.

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Name: Jamie Foster Brown
Position: Publisher of Sister 2 Sister
Resume: Worked for Black Entertainment Television (BET) as an advertising secretary to the network’s founder, Robert Johnson. Eventually produced the station’s flagship shows: Video Soul and Video LP. In 1988, founded Sister 2 Sister, a monthly trade newsletter that has since expanded into a celebrity-based glossy. In 1998 she wrote Betty Shabazz: A Sisterfriends’ Tribute in Words and Pictures, published by Simon and Schuster.
Education: B.A. University of Stockholm
Birthdate: June 25
Hometown: Chicago
Marital status: Married 41 years, two sons.
First section of the Sunday Times: “I don’t really read papers.”
Favorite TV show: “I watch a lot of USA. Psych. Monk.“
Guilty pleasure: “I drink two or three cups of coffee a day. But they’re all decaf.”
Last book read: Hammer by Armand Hammer
Twitter handle: “I’m not on Twitter. The Internet world… I haven’t given it a lot of thought. I’m already overwhelmed with emails, phone calls, text messages…”

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Why did you start Sister 2 Sister 22 years ago?
It started out as my thoughts on the music industry. I had worked as Bob Johnson’s secretary in the very early days of BET. I’d moved up to programming shows like Donnie Simpson’s Video Soul. I was in close proximity to a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff. And even though I didn’t think of myself as a writer, I knew I had stories to tell.

Stories like what?
I was at the Soul Train Awards in 1987. Whitney Houston performed and got booed. The audience thought she was acting “too white.” And I looked out in the audience and saw many people wearing blue and green contact lenses. Those kinds of stories. I wanted to write about what I saw — things other people didn’t necessarily see. In Europe, you have royalty. We have celebrities. Who decides who becomes a celebrity? They are not born. They are made. So I was always interested in what goes on behind the scenes.

How did the early days at BET prepare you for running Sister 2 Sister?
I made sure the artists were at the studio two hours before the show started. And then I would find myself babysitting the artists and the executives during that time. I would end up interviewing them just for my own knowledge. And then it turned into me feeding the host questions based on what I’d learned: ‘Ask him what happened to him in third grade.’

“I care about the people I cover… Some call it ‘friendly press.’ And that may be. But I know when certain urban artists have something to say, they’re coming to me to say it.”

Eventually, you even started breaking artists. How did that happen?
We were in competition with MTV. MTV had videos. Our artists didn’t always have a video. So I might take someone like Full Force, bring them into the studio, tell them to lip sync to one of their songs and boom, we’ve got a video to play.

Once you entered publishing, were you able to use the same techniques, in terms of fostering a close relationship with the artists you covered?
Absolutely. I interact with the majority of the people I cover outside of work. I check in on their lives. What’s going on with mom’s health? How are the children? I care about the people I cover. And that comes out in my writing. Some call it “friendly press.” And that may be. But I know when certain urban artists have something to say, they’re coming to me to say it.

Your interviews in Sister 2 Sister are notoriously lengthy. How do you get an artist to talk to you for hours?
When someone says, ‘I only have 20 minutes,’ I don’t do the interview. And I don’t ask questions like, ‘Who’s your major musical influence?’ I have a responsibility to my readers. They let you into their homes every day. They spend hard-earned money on your music and tours. These artists have to teach. They have to give information. Some of the celebrities I cover have more influence than people who save lives every day. You owe them an in-depth interview!

You don’t have a high opinion of celebrity blogging. What are your issues with it?
Most of the links sent my way, I don’t like it. It feels like we’re eating our young. We take these brand-new celebrities and just chew them up to pieces about what they’re wearing, how they look, how big or small they are. That’s a cancer. You have people judging other people just for the sport. These words are unwholesome. A little ember can cause a lot of damage. You have children who kill themselves over cyber bullying. Why bully people on a blog?

“We started all this with a Visa card. We could never get investors. I didn’t even know I could write!”

How have you stayed afloat financially when so many magazines have gone under?
We’re very frugal people. We have a staff of eight [to] nine people. So we don’t have a huge overhead. We started all this with a Visa card. We could never get investors. I didn’t even know I could write! This had to be divine intervention. And then, there’s my husband, an earth angel. He’ll whip up homemade sausage for breakfast with celebrities who come by my home to be interviewed. My husband’s special. He quit his job 20 years ago and said, ‘I’m gonna go work for my wife.’ They don’t make them like that anymore.

What is the future of print journalism? Are you prepared to take the magazine online to be read on something like the iPad or the Kindle?
It’s online now. But the people I put in my magazine? They are not satisfied with being online. I will sometimes say, ‘I’ll put this online,’ and the answer is always, ‘No. Put it in the magazine.’ For the celebrities I cover, there is nothing like seeing yourself at a newsstand and buying copies for grandma and mom. A magazine can be on the table. And besides, you don’t get in-depth information online. You just get snippets.

So you’re really pro-print.
Are you sitting on the toilet reading your laptop?

You get your subjects to say things they don’t tell the mainstream media. Many times, you and I have interviewed the same subject and your story will contain much more than I could get. What do you attribute this to?
My celebrities know, I’m not talking to you because I want to hurt you. I want your side of the story. And I will mix it in with my opinion.

But does it bother you that people may be more open with you because the print run for Sister 2 Sister is not as large as Vibe or Ebony or Essence? Perhaps they feel like they can be more open because less people may read it?
Doesn’t bother me at all. I provide a niche service for a special audience. And they are devoted, loyal fans.

I’m 36 and I find it harder and harder to keep up with who’s who in entertainment. Do you have a tough time keeping up with young hip-hop acts that you cover in the magazine?
I try. But I don’t stay on top of it as much as I could. It’s overwhelming. That’s what my staff does for me. I can’t keep track of what’s on BET or MTV. There’s so many artists out there. You know, it’s funny, my girlfriend asked me to set her up with a man, 50 years old or older. I said, how am I supposed to do that? I don’t know anyone my own age! I’m surrounded by people under-30 all day. The celebrities I cover? They come to interviews with a van full of people. None of them over 30. And I hug and kiss them all.

And your husband doesn’t mind?
I told you, the man’s an angel!

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Aliya S. King is an author of two works of nonfiction and an upcoming novel. She also blogs at www.aliyasking.com and Tweets even more @aliyasking.

Alan Richman’s food writing career was an accident. In 1975, the then-sportswriter began moonlighting as a restaurant critic and eventually got a gig at GQ which led to his meteoric rise as the most decorated food writer in history. The “Meryl Streep” of the James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards, the GQ contributor boasts 14 wins and 29 nominations, including three this year. He’s spent the last three decades traveling the globe to bring insightful, often funny and sometimes cranky, food stories to the table. Fearless in the face of Neapolitan pizza lovers yet comically threatened by a 12-year-old boy, Richman firmly believes all good food writing starts with good journalism — the first lesson he teaches his students at the French Culinary Institute of New York.

Ahead of the 2010 James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards, Richman talks to mediabistro.com about crafting his award-winning stories, honing his voice as a food writer, and the “disastrous” rise of citizen criticism.

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Name: Alan Richman
Position: Freelance food and wine writer; Dean of Food Journalism at The French Culinary Institute in New York City
Resume: Started as a news editor at The Portland (Indiana) Commercial Review in 1967 before moving to The Philadelphia Bulletin, where he was an NBA beat writer from 1969-1974. Joined The Montreal Star as sports columnist from 1974-1977, was a sportswriter, columnist, and assistant managing editor at The Boston Globe from 1977-1979 and from 1980-1985; he worked as a Metro reporter for The New York Times in between. Was a writer-at-large for People. Has been GQ‘s food and wine critic since 1989.
Birthday: January 25, 1944
Hometown: Philadelphia, Pa.
Education: BA, University of Pennsylvania
Marital status: Divorced
First section of the Sunday Times: “Who can afford the New York Times anymore?”
Favorite TV show: “None whatsoever, but my last one was Buffy The Vampire Slayer (before she went to college).”
Guilty pleasure: “SyFy channel, for films such as Spring Break Shark Attack, or at least the first 15 minutes of them.”
Last book read: Ian Rankin detective novel, The Naming of the Dead
Twitter handle: “What?”

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You began your journalism career as a sports writer, so what made you realize you wanted to write about food?
I once had a sports editor who said I was the best sports writer he ever saw that didn’t know anything about sports. And I don’t think he was exactly correct. I know a lot about sports, but I wasn’t immersed in just loving every detail, in the minutiae of sports the way really successful sports writers do. For a long time, for fun I did food stories. I was the sports columnist for the Montreal Star in 1975 and 1976, and at the same time under a pseudonym I was the restaurant critic for the Montreal Star. Whatever anybody asked me to do with food, I always just wrote about it, and eventually I got a break, which didn’t come until around ’90 or ’91. That’s how I became a food writer. It was by accident.

How did you hone your voice as a food writer?
I’ll give you a quick story. I’d written a really good story for [GQ editor Art Cooper]. We were having a meeting and he said to me, “You know that was my idea.” And I said to him, “No Art, that wasn’t your idea, that was my idea, but I was your idea.” Basically I had an editor who believed in me, who not only believed in me, knew what I could do and knew what he could get out of me, and also very fortuitously, what he wanted from his writers was what I could do best, but neither of us knew that when I took the job. Art Cooper was the editor who wanted voice and he wanted individuality and he wanted writers to really say what they felt like saying. He wanted me to be the voice of food, he didn’t want me to interview other people and let them be the voice of food. In fact, every time I’d say something like, “Wolfgang Puck is coming to town, should I interview and ask him what he thinks about the new trends?” Art Cooper would say, “No, I want you to tell me what you think of the new trends.” Voice was everything with Art.

“I’m not a foodie, but if there was such a thing as a restaurantie, I would be that.”

Being funny in print is not very easy. What’s your advice for infusing writing with humor?
If you’re not funny you can’t make it funny. […] If you look at my stories, they’re not that funny. I mean I go along writing and I just write pretty simple stuff, pretty clear plain sentences and all of a sudden I just zing one in there. You have to know when to do it and you have to know how much of it you can do and, you know, when to stop.

One of the things I tell people is write your first draft of the story as though you’re writing a letter to a friend, with all kinds of casualness and all kinds of wise guy remarks. Then you have to be able to look back at it in the rewriting and say, ‘Do any of these work, are any of these successful, are these jokes funny?’ And then you have to learn where to put them in the joke. I mean, every joke I write in my first draft doesn’t go into my story, thank God.

You’ve traveled the globe; I know you’ve been a million places with a fork in one hand and a pen in the other. Which of those is your most memorable experience?
I still love restaurants more than anything. I think I love restaurants more than I love food. Because restaurants have everything in them: They have the people, they have the food, they have the wine, they have the experience, they have the possibility of enjoying yourself with the person across the table from you. I’m not a foodie, but if there was such a thing as a restaurantie, I would be that.

Every great restaurant experience to me is my favorite thing I’ve ever done, if that makes any sense. And it never stops. If it happens today, I’m just as happy as I was 30 or 40 years ago.

“The one way in which my restaurant reviews differ from others is I try to do storytelling more than most people.”

How do you begin crafting a story around a dining experience?
I have two things in mind when I do a review. Number one, I want to say something really interesting about the restaurant. I want to make the experience I had there, at least I’m trying to do this, something that the reader can enjoy reading, because restaurant reviewing is really about taking the person into the restaurant with you and having them either enjoy or hate the experience as you have enjoyed or hated the experience.

The second thing I try to do is somewhere in that story give some sort of indication in my opinion what this restaurant is all about. Give some sort of feeling that this is the essence of this restaurant, this is what this restaurant is trying to do and whether they’re doing it successfully or not. I think the one way in which my restaurant reviews differ from others is I try to do storytelling more than most people.

One of your nominated stories is the profile of David Fishman who’s the 12-year-old NYC restaurant critic. He had such a blitz of media attention, and he was on the Today show. What about your approach to the story with David made it unique?
We were alerted to that by a little item in the Times. And in fact it wasn’t my idea, it was Jim Nelson, who’s now the editor-in-chief of GQ. I of course immediately jumped on it; I thought it was a brilliant idea because it was fun. I enjoyed every moment of it. I mean, I didn’t know exactly what he was going to be like. Who knows what a 12-year-old kid’s going to be like? But if you read the lead of the story, I met him, we had a meal together and he said something so brilliant about one of the dishes we were eating, and it just hit me right away what this story was going to be. It was going to be me against him, mano-a-mano, and that’s what it was, seeing who’s the better critic, me or him? Let me tell you something about this kid, I don’t know if he’s a great critic, but he’s probably the greatest natural journalist I’ve ever run across. I never saw a kid who knew everything to do right about journalism in my life. I mean he was right, he was dead on.

Now you’re the dean of food journalism at the French Culinary Institute.
I love teaching. I mean I’m always amazed there are still people who have enough faith in journalism that they think they can make a living at it that will come to this class. It gives me hope.

What kind of advice are you going to give them when they ask about finding a job in food writing?
I just can’t give them advice on something like that. I basically say to them, get experience, take any job you can get, write, just make sure you write, make sure you work hard and hope that you have a spouse who’s making a lot of money to keep you going until you get your break, because there is no secrets of how to get work. No, there’s plenty of work. There’s no secrets on how to get paying work in journalism any more. It’s really not easy. Everybody can write, there’s more writing opportunities than there ever has been. There’s just not a lot of paying writing opportunities.

Social media is very popular now and it seems like everybody can be a “critic.” Do you think that citizen criticism has the potential to make full-time critics obsolete?
I think it’s of course disastrous. It’s like asking your neighbor whether or not you need penicillin for a cold.

You’ve been called the Indiana Jones of food writing.
The greatest compliment of my life.

Well Indiana had his fedora — what’s your signature?

My signature is I carry a purse, of course. You know I was the original metrosexual. I was carrying a handbag in the early ’70s because I could put notebooks in it. The reason you always carry the bag when you became a restaurant critic was to steal menus. But I’ve only been caught twice stealing a menu in my life, so that’s pretty good, isn’t it?

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Blake Gernstetter is mediabistro.com’s associate editor.