Even while covering the TV and entertainment beat at the Raleigh News & Observer, Maile Carpenter found herself sneaking epicurean features onto the front page. Determined to pursue her passion for food, Carpenter moved to New York to become a magazine writer by day and culinary student by night. After stints as food editor at Time Out New York and senior editor at San Francisco, Carpenter became executive editor at Every Day With Rachael Ray. In January 2008, Carpenter left Rachael Ray to launch Food Network Magazine as editor-in-chief. A test issue hit newsstands in October 2008, just as the economic downturn was gaining steam and causing publications to fold. But the magazine seems to have found a working formula, with the highest direct-mail response in Hearst’s history and a growing tally of ad pages. Since climbing to 400,000 with the June/July official launch issue, the magazine will more than double its rate base in October and just announced it will reach 1 million in January, six months ahead of schedule.

Now that the title is gaining momentum, Carpenter aims to build more awareness for the magazine, capitalizing on the synergy with the network’s TV and online content. On August 2, Food Network will name the newest addition to its on-air team in the finale of The Next Food Network Star. The winner will be featured in the October issue of the magazine and, Carpenter anticipates, will join the other chefs as a fixture in its pages.

Carpenter, who is seven months pregnant (her husband is chef Wylie Dufresne), recently spoke with mediabistro.com about conceptualizing a print iteration of an established TV and online brand, how her culinary training influences the way she runs the magazine, and what it’s like to get in the kitchen with Bobby Flay, Ina Garten and Guy Fieri.

---

Name: Maile Carpenter
Position: Editor-in-chief, Food Network Magazine
Resume: Staff writer, the Wilmington Morning Star (Wilmington, N.C.); staff writer, the Raleigh News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.); writer then editor, FYI (Time Inc.’s in-house magazine); senior editor, San Francisco; food editor, Time Out New York; executive editor, Every Day with Rachael Ray; editor-in-chief, Food Network Magazine
Birthday: August 17, 1973
Hometown: “We moved every few years with the Air Force, so I never had a hometown. I’ve lived in NYC since 1997.”
Education: BA in journalism, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1995); Culinary Arts degree, French Culinary Institute (1999).
Marital status: Married
First section of the Sunday Times: “‘Real Estate.’ I can dream!”
Favorite TV show: CBS Sunday Morning
Guilty pleasure: “Candy corn, year-round.”
Last book read: The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs

---

You’ve had a 14-year long career in journalism — in food journalism in particular — how did you break in?
I didn’t start in food. I started in newspapers, actually, on a straight news [editorial] track. But then I after a couple jobs at newspapers I moved up to New York, and while I was working at Time Inc. I went to culinary school at night. I didn’t think I’d end up cooking in a kitchen — I thought maybe I’ll fall in love with it and become a chef — but really in the back of my mind, I just wanted to specialize and focus my writing career and editing career in one area. After that, I moved to San Francisco, and that’s where I first started doing more serious food journalism.

What made you decide to choose food as your specialty?
Since I was little, I’ve always loved cooking, I’ve loved food magazines. I used to go to the library when I was really little and flip through food magazines and copy recipes to take home and try.

Can you tell me a little more about your career path? You said you started in newspapers…
Everyone always asks me, ‘Well, how did you get this job?’ My original intent was to go into straight newspaper reporting, but the more I wrote, the more I found myself writing feature-style stories, even for the front page. So I eased into the features section, and I became a television and entertainment reporter at the Raleigh News & Observer. It’s funny, even then, I was covering television, but I would always skew toward food. The Food Network was just starting, and I just always took an interest in it. In my extra time, I would always do food stories. I very gradually steered that way. Then I moved up to New York to work at an in-house magazine at Time Inc. — it was called FYI. I really got to see how all the magazines at Time Inc. worked and meet a lot of people, and that’s when I started going to cooking school and deciding I wanted to be in magazines and I wanted to do food. From there, I went to San Francisco and then came back here to work at Time Out, which was a totally different experience because that was very street-level reporting. It was weekly, so the pace was very fast. So I’ve really done the daily reporting, and then weekly at Time Out and then monthly at San Francisco magazine and then — the most specific training for this was at Every Day With Rachael Ray.

“It’s really supposed to be a print version of the network, and I think the popularity of the network proves that this is a good time for it. And obviously, things are going on economically — it’s a natural fit for that, too. It doesn’t feel forced for us to say, ‘This is easy, this is a great value, do this with your family instead of going out.'”

Food Network Magazine launched in October 2008 and you left Every Day With Rachael Ray in January. What was that interim period like?
To Hearst’s credit, the way we launched this magazine was really interesting in that we produced a full-blown prototype of this magazine that we took out to focus groups that [the public never] saw, which is great, because we were able to make all of our mistakes then. Sometimes you’ll see a magazine launch and you’ll notice it’ll change drastically in the first few issues because you get feedback from readers and you work out kinks. We were able to make huge changes because only a few dozen people around the country had seen the magazine. Instead of a focus group where maybe we were showing fake stories on boards with dummy text, this was a case where people were holding something that felt exactly like [the magazine], and they were able to flip through it. We got real reaction from them, like, ‘Well, this doesn’t make sense following this,’ or ‘I don’t like this design,’ and we came back with tons of information. The focus groups were in May, so we really spent the summer fine-tuning everything, changing our creative direction.

Was there anything you thought was going to blow away the focus groups that you found they absolutely weren’t pleased with? Or something you took from their feedback that specifically you think is really working well?
What I thought might have been a weakness going into the project, which is, ‘How on earth are we going to take all these different personalities and find one common voice?’… What the focus group said is, ‘We kind of want all that.’ So I was thinking that the person who likes to watch one show would never watch this other show [which] is completely different, and that wasn’t the case at all. We asked, ‘Okay, just spit out words that describe Food Network’ — and every single one of them said ‘diversity’ — as a plus. Obviously we knew there’s a mix of stars, but what I saw as a problem of trying to consolidate the stars into one voice, they kind of gave us a license to just let all those voices be those voices, in one place, because that’s why they like the Food Network. They expected to get the magazine and see everything from Guy [Fieri] to Ina [Garten] and Sandra Lee and Iron Chef and Ace of Cakes. They’re strong personalities, and they’re really different. So, that was the best takeaway.

What was it like to make the jump from working with one personality specifically, Rachael Ray, to tackling this diverse group of celebrity chefs?
In a way it was good training, because you just become aware of how incredibly busy these chefs are and how respectful you need to be of their time. I was already in the habit of booking things really early and being flexible, but it’s great to have this mix of people because you can really have some fun with the different voices.

Food Network is an established television and online brand, and it would seem like a natural extension to have a magazine. Why now?
I say, ‘What took so long?’ It’s just such a perfect fit right now in terms of the strength of the network and the popularity of the network, and just in terms of the way people cook. It’s really supposed to be a print version of the network, and I think the popularity of the network proves that this is a good time for it. And obviously, things are going on economically — it’s a natural fit for that, too. It doesn’t feel forced for us to say, ‘This is easy, this is a great value, do this with your family instead of going out.’

How do you translate the brand identity of Food Network into a magazine format? How much input do you have in the editorial mix? What’s coming from where?
We work really closely with Food Network. In fact, I’m meeting with them in a few hours. What we decided early on was that we didn’t want to take the show[s] and just turn the magazine into a print version of the show[s]. You see [the stars] live and it’s exciting to see them on television, and we didn’t want to flatten that. From the beginning, we said, ‘We’re not going to have a column based on this show and that show. What we want to do is be flexible enough to go where the network goes.’ So as people leave and come, as they build new stars, we build new stars. But we’re kind of on a similar schedule… We’re able to keep in touch with them about, ‘What’s going to be huge this fall?’ so we can plan the magazine around that. But you’ll notice as you flip through that we haven’t boxed ourselves in in any way. You’re not going to see one show appearing in every issue. It’s meant to be that if Bobby [Flay]’s doing a huge [show] on burgers this summer, great, [the magazine is] in, too.

What was it like to launch in such an established category of magazines? You’ve got some real giants like Gourmet, Saveur and Bon Appetit — what is it about Food Network Magazine that brings something new to the group?
That’s the hardest question I had to answer. I worked alone, just in an office with the door shut, thinking, ‘Oh my god, how’s this going to go?’ I had stacks and stacks of magazines — not just U.S. magazines but European and food magazines from all over the world. I was just tearing them apart, saying, ‘What’s common about all of these, what’s different, and how can we stand out?’ What it really comes down to is this cast of stars. It’s what makes Food Network Food Network. It’s about personality, and the fact that these recipes and ideas are coming from people you know and see all the time. We knew that we could leverage that. What’s interesting about that magazine is that when you see TV, the voices change from hour to hour, and yet we were charged [with] trying to find, ‘Okay, what is Food Network’s voice?’ because it’s all in one place. It’s friendly, it’s accessible, and I think that’s the strength of the magazine, but it really comes down to the personalities.

“I love candy corn and cheap chocolate. I’m not a food snob, and neither are these readers. That’s what Food Network is all about.”

In October 2008, you told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that chefs “can do stories with [Food Network Magazine] that they wouldn’t be able to do on the air.” Can you tell me what you meant by that and give me some examples?
It’s a place for them to give you tips and step-by-steps to keep with you. We have a column called “Try This At Home,” where a star really walks you through step by step. Television is fleeting, and this is a way to have the tips right on your counter. Same with the “Star Kitchens”: You might just happen to have seen this kitchen on their show all the time and wonder about the little secrets in there. Ina [Garten], for instance, built this amazing new studio barn right next door to her house in East Hampton. You’ve seen it on the air, but this is a nice way to really get into how she organizes her kitchen.

What have you learned from your experience in culinary school and your chef training that informs the way you run a magazine?
Going [to culinary school] originally gave me confidence in my knowledge about food, but it comes in handy all the time. [We’re] a small staff and I always say that everyone does everything, and it really is true. Everyone pitches in whenever they can, and every once in a while, I run into the studio and slice vegetables for a shoot. And I don’t mean to imply we do that all the time, but… there was a piece of sausage or something, but it needed a clean slice — it’s just little moments like that you feel confident in your knife skills, going in to cut the sausage.

How does it help you identify what will and won’t work as content for the magazine?
I’m sort of a funny mix, because I don’t have necessarily high-end taste. I like a very wide range of food. So while cooking school and my life with a chef and all that… I love that world and I eat in that world often, but I also kind of cook and eat in a simple way, too. I love McDonald’s French fries, and I love candy corn and cheap chocolate. I’m not a food snob, and neither are these readers. That’s what Food Network is all about. It’s about loving food without being a snob about food.

Speaking of your tastes, what’s your favorite dish to cook with your own celebrity chef husband, Wylie Dufresne?
We don’t cook together! (Laughs)

Do you have cook-offs? Is it like a Battle Royale?
No, no, no no. This is a good example of our tastes: When we do eat together and cook together at home, it’s super simple. We made meatloaf and mashed potatoes, and I made the meatloaf and he made the mashed potatoes.

You don’t collaborate on a dish?
No. (Laughs) That keeps the marriage healthy. But honestly, he doesn’t cook when he’s home, either, because he cooks all the time.

Do you have a favorite local haunt?
Well, he will never say it, so I shouldn’t either. He’s like, ‘If I say it, everyone will go!’

I can respect that.
We have a Sunday brunch standard that he will never reveal.

So, you touched on this a little bit before, but given the many ways that Americans are cutting back on spending, how do you incorporate those adjustments and translate it into the magazine, keeping it fun and light and compelling?
That almost wasn’t a problem because it fits so naturally with the brand already. So whereas I think if you were a different type of magazine, you’d have to work hard to make it fit naturally with your identity — that wasn’t the case here. Food Network always thinks about things like value and ease, and it’s just such a natural fit. We have cheap eats, we did weeknight meals for $3 or less in [the August/September 2009] issue. That doesn’t feel like a forced concept.

How do you motivate your staff amid this forecasting of the demise of print?
Wow, jeez! What demise of print?! I am a believer in print. I worked very briefly online, and I just had to get back to print because I really believe in it and the ability to hold something in your hands. Especially something like this, that you’re used to seeing on television, to be able to put it in your hand and feel it and touch it and have it on the counter. I love that. The staff is small. Honestly, what I think keeps everyone motivated is just that: We’re small enough so everyone has their hands in everything. When an issue comes out, unlike a huge staff where you might not have ever seen one of the stories in the magazine, chances are, if you’re on the staff, you had something to do with it. You either designed part of it, or you were on the shoot, or you wrote the headline — that’s how we operate, so I think everyone feels really vested in the final product.

What’s your take on the overall state of the media industry?
There’s more information out there than ever, and your access to information is instant and can be completely overwhelming. In the very beginning of this project, a lot of people said, ‘Well, you can go get recipes online.’ And I said, ‘Well yes, but if you type in ‘chicken parmesan’ — and we can find out exactly how many hits you’ll get, but my guess is upwards of a million hits — for chicken parmesan… To me, that amount of information and the speed at which it’s coming at you is stressful and overwhelming, and I need someone to curate the information and hand it to me, and just tell me what I need to know. And I see [Food Network Magazine] in the food world as that. Like, ‘Here’s a month’s worth.’ We’ve done the work for you, we’ve thought through what you need, it’s cleaned up, it’s photographed, and it’s in your hands. And I see that as a strength and not a weakness, in terms of how much is out there right now.

The magazine is more than doubling its circulation rate base with the October 2009 issue. Are there any particular goals or targets that you guys are looking toward?

That’s a big question. Awareness is one thing. My goal is for more people to be aware of the magazine and know it’s out there. My real goal is to nail it for the Food Network fan, because they know better than anyone what the network feels like and should feel like in magazine form. I want to continue to look at it from both sides, because you know, you can get involved in a project and suddenly become an insider and forget. So I try to pull myself out a little bit, and I put the network on all the time. Sometimes while I’m cooking or cleaning the house, I watch it like a real person and hear little snippets, and try to come up with, ‘Okay, What would I like to do? What do I want to hear more about?

Back to that point about awareness, I want to talk about the interplay of Food Network Magazine and this season of The Next Food Network Star. I understand that part of the prize is an exclusive feature in the magazine…
In our October issue, we’re featuring the winner, but that’s not meant to be a one-time thing. What’s great about the magazine is now that we’ve been around for a few issues, the stars are suddenly realizing that this is all part of being a Food Network star, and they’re excited about doing stories with us. In the very beginning, we had to say, “Okay, here’s what we’re thinking about doing, and here’s what the story might look like,” but they didn’t have a sense of how they’d look and sound in print. Now they do, so it’s been great. It’s about being part of the Food Network family and having the talent realize that the magazine can just extend them even more. The winner will first appear in the October issue, but assuming this winner becomes — you know, Guy Fieri was a winner on that show, and obviously he’s a huge part of the Food Network. He’s done several stories with us and we have more in the works. So I assume that the same will be true of this year’s winner.

---

Blake Gernstetter is mediabistro.com’s editorial assistant.

Alison Adler Matz has been around the magazine block: With two separate stints at Condé Nast — first as an ad salesperson at Self, most recently as publisher of Brides — she’s eked her way up the food chain in multiple magazine categories, at a variety of companies, and over the course of hundreds of sales calls. At Brides for a year this May, she now works in concert with a 15-year veteran of the magazine (editor-in-chief Millie Bratten) at the company where she began more than 23 years ago, strategizing partnerships, positioning the title, and ensuring the waning economy doesn’t take as big a bite out of the advertising market in the bridal category that many in the industry bill as “recession-proof.” While that may not be the case (see: the spate of scaled-down nuptials this year), Matz remains bullish about the spending power of the newly-engaged, and their affinity for Brides‘ “iconic” brand. She recently spoke with mediabistro.com about what it took to climb the ladder on the ad sales side, her greatest professional coups and gaffes, and how previously “small wins” are today’s smashing successes for any magazine salesperson seeking to secure an ad spend.

---

Name: Alison Adler Matz
Position: Publisher, Brides magazine
Resume: Started career at McCann Erickson as an assistant media planner and then worked as a media planner. “I was assigned to the L’Oreal account, where I had a lot of exposure to the print media, particularly beauty/fashion magazines.” After two years working on the agency side, jumped over to first ad sales position at Working Woman magazine. Then held various sales and sales management positions at Self, Mirabella, Country Home, US Weekly, House and Garden, Teen Vogue, and Glamour.
Birthdate: February 9, 1961
Hometown: Spring Valley, NY
Education: BS, Public Communications, advertising major, S.I. Newhouse School of Communications, Syracuse University
Marital status: Married
First section of Sunday Times: “Style section (including the wedding announcements, of course!)”
Favorite TV show: Weeds
Last book read: Breaking Dawn (the last of the Twilight series) by Stephenie Meyer
Guilty pleasure: Getting into bed before 9 p.m.

---

Describe how you got started working in magazines.
I always loved magazines growing up. As a teenager, [I had] incredible passion for magazines in general, and I knew that I wanted to do something to do with them, but I didn’t know in what capacity. I majored in advertising, and found my first job in the media planning department of McCann-Erickson. And I worked on a heavy print account — L’Oreal, which actually bought a lot of women’s magazines. That was the first interaction, and after doing that for about two years, I totally knew what I wanted to do, which was to jump over to the other side of the desk and sell for a magazine. I used all the contacts I made from being on the agency side and got my first job selling magazines for Working Woman magazine in 1985.

You started at Condé Nast in 1988 at Self. Then you left the company in ’93, you worked at other magazines, becoming associate publisher at Us, until you returned to Condé in that capacity. Why did you initially leave Condé?
There was an opportunity for a bigger job outside the company, so I took that bait, did it, and then ended up kind of jumping around to a few other places. Then, the opportunity came to come back at Condé Nast, in 2000. Once I was back I thought, ‘Why did I ever leave?’ because if you love magazine publishing, this is the place.

Did the company feel different when you returned versus when you left?
It had changed over the years, yes. It had grown dramatically, which changed the culture. But there’s an inherent culture here of quality and passion for magazines. Always working with really incredibly smart, passionate people [is something at Condé] that has stayed true for 20 years.

Do you find a different vibe at Condé’s offices on Third Avenue [home of Brides], versus the company headquarters at Four Times Square?
It’s smaller [on Third Avenue]. In the other building, [nearly] the whole elevator bank is Condé. It’s a little different vibe [on Third]. It’s a little less glitzy.

When you started working in sales, what did you learn on the ground in entry-level positions that still informs your day-to-day work now that you’re a publisher?

Time management: My first publisher at Working Woman used to say (because this was the mid-’80s), “always have a pocket full of dimes,” because when you’re between sales calls and there’s no time to come back to the office, you want to hit a pay phone and start making calls to schedule your next appointments. Now, with technology, you can be extremely time-efficient.
Always being out on the street in front of clients as much as possible was a very basic lesson. Thinking about client’s businesses strategically was another invaluable lesson, and building lifelong relationships with clients.

“In the 20-plus years I’ve been doing this, I’ve never seen a tougher [ad] climate. But, I’m very much of a glass-half-full person, and I see it as an opportunity — there are magazine brands that will always be here, and there will always be advertisers who love and believe in and need print to drive their business.”

Do you still work with clients whom you worked with in your early years in magazines?
Yes. Sometimes the assistant media planner from 20 years ago is running an agency now, or a media department, or is a high-level client. And some of the people who were in mid- or even high-level positions back then are still in important roles.

What was it like working on a weekly schedule at Us, versus the monthly schedule of most magazines where you’ve worked?
Weeklies are actually easier in a way, because you’re just always closing. [At] a monthly, there’s that buildup to closing, and then intensity of the close. And with a monthly — and Brides is bimonthly, so one-sixth of our year is riding on each close — a monthly’s close represents one-twelfth of a year. [At] a weekly, if your current issue isn’t that great, there’s always next week to improve, so it’s actually simpler.

The professional trajectory on the sales side: You start out selling ads, you move on to a director role, and you move on to associate publisher. How do the responsibilities deepen?
Generally, if you start out as an advertising salesperson, you’re given an account list, a territory, a category — whatever it might be — and it’s your job to manage that account list, increase the business and so on. Then, oftentimes the next progression is a director capacity, where it’s really more of a senior-level position — you’re given the plum accounts and the category, and sometimes you’re given other responsibilities on a project manager basis. Then, one of the biggest challenges is jumping from sales into management, where you’re then managing others who are managing an account list — you’re no longer managing a list yourself — which is a whole different skill set. Then there’s kind of entry-level manager roles — an ad manager, an ad director kind of role — then the move to associate publisher, which is where you’re really directing overall strategic direction for the ad sales initiative. [That’s] obviously led by a publisher but, in my roles as associate publisher, it was really manning the day-to-day and keeping the machine moving so that the publisher could be working on the marketing, the brand positioning — all of the other elements of running the business side of the magazine.

What’s your take on the advertising climate out there for magazines?
It’s really challenging. In the 20-plus years I’ve been doing this, I’ve never seen a tougher climate, and it is affecting every sector of business. Not only are budgets really tight, but people are personally challenged, so their own personal finances or their whole mindset makes people tentative about their positions and their jobs. But, I’m very much of a glass-half-full person, and I see it as an opportunity — there are magazine brands that will always be here, and there will always be advertisers who love and believe in and need print to drive their business and to drive their communication goals.

How do to the challenges you mention play out within the bridal market? Is it more or less challenging than the market for general-interest consumer titles?
What we hear from many of our advertisers is that their bridal portion of their business is the bright spot. The jewelers tell us thank goodness they have bridal jewelry to sell. The travel destinations tell us thank goodness for honeymooners, because that is the bright spot. Retailers tell us thank goodness for their registry portion of their business, because that’s again what’s driving some volume right now. Where it affects us is if the jewelers’… fashion jewelry business is soft overall, it affects their budgets in a negative way, so there’s just less money to spend [on advertising]. Same thing with travel, same thing with retail. So, it affects us differently, and again, where it becomes an opportunity for us at Brides is that by investing with us now, they can continue to drive some sales immediately. But there’s just less money to spend.

Would you say that for retailers, advertising in the bridal market gives them a way to remain in front of customers, because people get married regardless of the economy?
Absolutely. People get married regardless, and if you are a jeweler or a retailer or whomever, and you’re selling a bride-to-be something today, not only are you ringing your cash register right now, but you’re also building a future customer. The woman who’s walking into a store to register is potentially going to be coming back in a few years to furnish her house, and buy furniture and bigger-ticket items. Or, the person who’s buying your jewelry today may be back for other items in the future from your brand.

That’s a counterpoint to the fact that as readers of bridal magazines, you’ve got people only for however long they’re in the planning phase of getting married, then you’re courting new readers all over again. How do you position the magazine to handle such frequent reader churn?
In terms of readership, the number of people getting married every year is projected to stay constant, so we have a constant, a natural churn of new prospective people coming into our market as well as going out, so it’s just a matter of finding that girl on the newsstand. She gets her ring, she gets her manicure, she buys Brides magazine. [We’re also] soliciting subscribers through places where we know we can find her, through partnerships, through online outreach, et cetera.

Condé Nast has multiple bridal books: Brides, Elegant Bride, Modern Bride. How do you ensure that brides-to-be buy them all?
There are some alternating schedules, just from a real estate perspective, so sometimes we are alternating on sale/off sale with our sister publication, Modern Bride. But basically, it’s up to the editors-in-chief to have the right cover looks and the right cover lines to grab that reader. I’m thrilled to say Brides is the one that seems to be grabbing the most readers. We are hands-down leading the charge when it comes to newsstand performance. More brides-to-be are buying Brides when they’re going out there to that sea of magazines and making their choices.

To what do you attribute that?
The power of Brides — that sort of trusted, tried and true brand, the authority that we have, that [readers] know they’re going to get the most of what they need from Brides — seems to be showing up in terms of that behavior at the newsstand.

How do you sustain your own interest over time in all things bridal?
I mean I’ve been at the magazine since May [2008], and I’ve been married for over 20 years, so I don’t have friends that are getting married and it hasn’t really been a part of my life. But it’s a really happy subject, and it’s really been fun to see the evolution of how things have changed from back from the day when my friends and I were getting married and what goes on now — how weddings have changed.

Also, being out, talking to advertisers, talking to agencies, people who are getting married, and just the excitement that people who are in the market have — it’s really contagious. No matter where you go, you meet people who want to talk about it. I was in a taxi in another city [with] a female driver. She asked me what I did, I told her and she [asked], “I bought my dress at Priscilla of Boston 35 years ago — are they still in business?” I’m like, “Yes, they are.” People love to talk about it.

You mentioned things have changed in weddings of 20 years ago versus right now. How?

The biggest change is the personalization and individualization. Twenty years ago, I was a relatively young bride. A lot of my friends were getting married at the same time, and our weddings were kind of cookie-cutter. The only thing different was the date, the place and the dress. The invitations all looked the same — very traditional. [Now], people are really using this moment [of getting married] to make it their special day and customize, and use it as another way to express who they are to their family and friends.

“A couple of years ago, you could be raking in new business on a constant basis. Now, you look for measures of success in terms of long-term account building, as well.”

What about the advent of the Internet and online media, and the speed with which people can get lots of specialized information?
The way that you can gather information — you can get ideas from magazines or online — all of that has changed everything in terms of [wedding planning]. I started working at Condé Nast five weeks before my wedding, and pretty much everything was done, but at that point I had four weeks to get the job started, then I was taking off for a couple of weeks. I remember saying to my mother, “Whatever is not done yet, I can’t care. I can’t go meet you to look at flowers. I’ve got to focus on this job, and then I’ll show up [at my wedding].” But if I had access to technology, she could have sent me pictures. But I kind of had to cut off the planning.

Now that we’re talking about the Internet, what’s the thinking on that here at Brides? What are you striving to offer readers online? What’s the strategy?
Brides is such a strong, iconic brand, the communication with the bride-to-be really starts with the [newsstand] title. That’s the trusted authority and the place she’s going to first. There’s an experience that she’s going to get with the magazine that is irreplaceable. Particularly when it comes to fashion and beauty, there’s nothing that replaces the printed page in terms of that experience of luxuriating, fantasizing — you know, the glossy images. We know [our reader] is reliant on the Internet for a lot of her planning. In fact in the current issue we have a cover line, “75 Web Sites We Swear By.” What Millie [Bratten], our editor-in-chief, says is that it is the world wide Web — it is vast, and people need it edited for them.

With Brides.com, it’s there to provide another interface for the bride-to-be, and the experience she gets there is very different than what she gets in the magazine. We might do an article on great hairstyles, but we’ll [say], go to Brides.com to get even more great looks, more dress looks, interactive planning tools — things that can’t work in print. So it is really a very strong inter-relationship between how the two media work together.

Given Brides‘ status in the marketplace, do you find yourself having to say no thank you a lot to prospective partners? And what’s the ratio of those who come to Brides and say, “We want to do something with you,” and those to whom you and your team go out to, saying, “We have an idea …”?
I can’t really speak to a specific ratio of yeas or nays. It’s all about whether we feel that it’s going to be something that’s going to be on brand, that the alliance is right, that Brides the brand will be represented properly. If that’s the case, we’re pretty much open to anything. We have to make sure it doesn’t cannibalize other businesses.

What would be your advice to those starting out in sales within magazines?

Persevere. For someone young starting out in the ad sales business, right now is really challenging. Those of us who have been successful in this business are competitive by nature and like to win. And the measures of winning and of success are a little bit different than they were a couple of years ago. The smallest win is the biggest right now. [My team and I are] celebrating those successes, and having both a short view and a long view — you may not break a new piece of business every day. A couple of years ago, you could be raking in new business on a constant basis. Now, you look for measures of success in terms of long-term account building, as well. It takes a lot of inner strength to muddle through [in sales] right now. At the end of the day, it’s still a really fun business.

What makes it so fun?
You work with creative people. You get to represent a product that is fun and brings joy to people. You are aligning marketers with consumers that can help grow their business. You get to get inside the strategy of so many different kinds of companies and understand their businesses, which is fascinating. If you love to learn, you can learn something every day when you’re selling ad space, because if you’re inquisitive — which I think is a requirement for being a good salesperson — you get to know so much about the inner workings of so many different companies and brands. And it’s a social business, too, which is great.

To what do you attribute your own professional success?

Part of it is having incredible passion. For every magazine I’ve ever worked for, even if they weren’t [my] personal reads, I developed a great passion and respect for the editorial product and truly believed that its readers had a strong relationship [to it], and that could make a difference for marketers. You have to have passion — you have to believe, or else it shows. Aligning myself with really smart people — I would attribute a lot of my success to that, just being a sponge, learning as much as I can [from them] every day.

Specifically, who really had an impact?

I worked very closely with Gina Sanders, who was an amazing mentor. Bill Wackerman, who I currently work with, is another terrific mentor. Larry Burstein is someone who I worked closely with twice in my career, another great person who I learned enormous amounts from.

[Bratten] has this lengthy tenure at Brides of 15 years as editor-in-chief. What was it like for you to come in just last year and work with someone who has such a longstanding relationship with this magazine?
While I was new to Brides — and [Bratten’s] certainly the expert on Brides — I certainly have great knowledge of how Condé Nast works, having been here for so long, and working at Glamour, working at Teen Vogue, House and Garden. I had really an understanding and respect for those iconic brands and the role that the editor-in-chief plays. That gave me insight.

[Bratten’s] the expert — she knows this market better than anybody, and I respect that. I think she respects my abilities as a marketer to figure out how to best navigate this brand to the advertising community, while always staying true to who we are and being respectful of her role as the editor.

Many who work in magazines say editors are increasingly taking on some of the thinking and tasks that traditionally fell to publishers, particularly as times get tougher. Do you ever find that as a publisher you’re called upon to put on more of an editor’s hat?
Not necessarily, but I do think that sometimes a great editorial idea could come from someone from the business side and sometimes a great marketing idea can come from someone on the editorial side. But no, I’m not editing the magazine. Trust me.

What’s the professional accomplishment of which you’re proudest?

Being a part of the launch team of Teen Vogue. That was an unbelievable experience that is up there on the list of history-making accomplishments: What we did in the teen magazine category, taking over a 60-year category leader in three years of existence — it was pretty awesome.

What about your biggest mistake on the job?
Recently I was leaving a message, and I had the phone on speaker, and then we [thought we had] hung up the phone and there were pieces of the conversation that were not meant to be recorded on voicemail. There were two of us in the room, and we were having minor coronaries when that happened.

So how’d you defuse the situation?

We got the voicemail erased.

---

Rebecca L. Fox is mediabistro.com’s managing editor.

In advertising, the role of assistant account executive is about as low on the totem pole as you can get. That’s where former Ogilvy & Mather CEO Ken Roman began his career back in 1962, but unlike his 20-something counterparts, Roman was 32 when he started. “I was probably the world’s oldest assistant account executive,” recalls Roman, now retired and focusing on writing. “A couple of lessons come out of this… never take a job for money or title. Never. You take a job that has two things: It’s a great company or a great brand, and it gives you great training.”

Rising to the top of Ogilvy & Mather was never in Roman’s plans. He studied English at Dartmouth, and hoped to become a newspaper man. “The newspapers were going out of business,” he says. “This was in the ’50s.” The best reporting job he could get at the time paid $35 per week, so when he got an offer to write advertising materials for a chemical company at $60 a week, he took it. “I spent 10 years succeeding at dumb jobs,” he says of the roles he held in his 20s. “So I quit my job and started over at the very bottom.” After working his way up the ladder, Roman retired in 1989, exiting as chairman and CEO of the agency. He spoke with mediabistro.com recently about the impact his game-changing boss David Ogilvy had on his professional development, writing Ogilvy’s first-ever biography, and the need to direct the advertising industry away from holding companies during these economically challenging times.

---

Name: Mr. Kenneth Roman (Ken)
Position: “Chairman and CEO of Free Range Chicken.”
Birthdate: September 6, 1930
Hometown: Boston, Mass.
Education: Dartmouth, B.A. in English, class of 1952
Resume: International Printing Ink Co., RCA, Allied Chem. Corp.
Marital status: Yes
Favorite TV show: This Week with George Stephanopoulos, 60 Minutes, Masterpiece Theater
First section of the Sunday Times: Sports section
Last book read: The Age of Heretics, by Art Kleiner
Guilty pleasure: Squash, gardening

---

You’ve written the first-ever biography of advertising legend David Ogilvy. Were you always a writer or, like Ogilvy, did you pick up the skill some other way?

I was always a writer. That is, I was a newspaper writer. I wrote for my high school paper, I was the editor of the daily newspaper at Dartmouth — six day a week paper, pretty big deal. At the time I was editor-in-chief of this thing, the head of Young & Rubicam… sent his personnel director to see me. He said, “If you ever want to go into advertising, let me know and I’ll make it happen for you at Y&R.” I said, “Well, thank you very much, ah, but I’m not sure what I want to do with my life. I think I want to be a newspaper man. But there’s one thing I’m certain I don’t wanna do, and that’s go into advertising.” So much for career planning. I think of myself as a journalist, not a creative writer; so writing a book comes fairly natural to me.

You spent 26 years working with legendary ad mogul David Ogilvy, and later took over his agency, Ogilvy & Mather (pronounced MAY-ther). What are the most important things Ogilvy taught you?

The most important thing he taught me was not about advertising. He did some great ads, which were at the time [a] real breakthrough in print advertising. What he taught me about was leadership. That was the real message. Some people believe that the best ad he ever wrote was not the Hathaway shirt; or Schweppes; or Rolls Royce: It was a house advertisement called, “How to Run an Advertising Agency.” Ten years after that ad ran, people were requesting reprints. And it laid out the principles of, ‘How do you run a great services organization?’ He was an instinctive business leader. He didn’t go to any business schools; he didn’t use mission and values statements the way corporate America does. He had memorable ways to inculcate principles which really, more than any other single things, involved people. How do you take care of people? A quick example: When Shelly Lazarus took over the agency, they had lost a piece of the American Express account, which was our largest account in the world. So David called her up and said, “How are you?” and she said, “Well it’s tough, we lost a piece of business, and here’s what we’re going to do to fix the situation.” He said, “No no, I didn’t ask that. Clients come and go, there’s nothing you can do about that. Are you okay? Because if you’re okay, the organization is okay.” With clients, it was about business: He became friends with them, he charmed them. He insisted his employees use their products.

“[Ogilvy’s] central concept for the clients was, ‘We sell. Or else.’ If we don’t sell, the client’s not going to be healthy, and we’re not going to be healthy.”

“360 Degree Brand Stewardship” is the modus operandi at Ogilvy & Mather, essentially meaning the agency will use all the tools at its disposal to foster relationships between consumers and the brand. How did you arrive at this principle originally? Also, since many agencies observe it, how should they balance the clients’ needs during these economically difficult times when an agency may need to conserve resources in order to survive?

That’s not a line he wrote, and probably wouldn’t have written, but the heart of it is right. He was the “Apostle of the Brand Image”; in 1955 he brought the whole concepts of brands into the business. He didn’t write it, he took it out of an academic journal. Every ad is part of the investment in the brand. People later came and said, “360 degree means it uses all media, brand stewardship means the agency has to take care of the brand.” His central concept for the clients was, “We sell. Or else.” If we don’t sell, the client’s not going to be healthy, and we’re not going to be healthy. And that came out of his days selling stoves door-to-door in Scotland, and in studying the great direct mail writers — John Caples, copywriter Claude Hopkins.

Ogilvy’s longest standing clients are Nestle (since 1956), Unilever (since 1954), and American Express (since 1962). What do you think is responsible for the longevity of these relationships, since few clients stayed with an agency for more than a year prior to O&M?

It’s a misconception in the business that accounts jump around from year to year. The fact is that the advertising business is different than any other in one respect. It’s the only business that runs its trade paper news in the daily newspapers. There’s an advertising column every day in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times. There’s no accountants column, lawyers or bankers either. People like to read about advertising, and so it’s often filled with non-news — Rogers Carpet Company in New Jersey changed its account. Well, have you ever seen a story in the newspaper about McKinsey winning or losing an account? Never, ever. So you have this impression of all these accounts moving around and in fact, most of the major agencies have had their clients a long time. From time to time you do lose them. You don’t lose them because the creative gets bad — you lose them because the relationship gets broken down. When you win new business, it’s the total opposite. “We have some ideas that will build your business.” That’s central. You win business on creative, and you lose it on relationships.

“Today the business is much more complex — there are so many media. At the same time, clients are squeezing the agency because they’re under pressure. So the agencies are getting less money to do more work, and the luxury, if you will, to make sure an ad is perfect isn’t there. “

“Big ideas” are central to Ogilvy’s thinking on the ad industry. How would you define them, and do they occupy the same role in the agency’s business these days?

The most important thing about a big idea beyond the fact that it is successful in building business over a period of time is that it lasts a long time. Ogilvy says a big idea has to last 20 years or more before you’re going to consider it a really big idea. Somebody who has a great commercial or a print campaign that lasts a year or two and earns money, that’s a good idea. And you’ll take it every time. But a big idea is, well, Dove. It’s what, 40 years, 50 years old now. That’s an incredible length of time — to have an idea that’s so big that you can add line extensions [and] new products all under the umbrella of Dove. So it’s not a limiting idea.

All because Dove contains 25 percent lotion?

That’s right, one-quarter cleansing cream. Doesn’t dry your skin the way soap does.

Are there any big ideas today?

You know I’ve thought about that. I’ve tried to come up with them. It’s very hard unless you know the business. But let me show you the problem with the absence of big ideas — and that’s a real issue. You have an example right straight staring you in the nose: It’s called Detroit; there are no big ideas in Detroit advertising today. You look at the commercials, you look at the print ads and they’re talking about engineering and prices and there’s no identity, as opposed to the introduction of Volkswagen in this country, by the Doyle Dane Bernbach agency [now known as DDB]. God, that was an idea. Volvo, which stood for safety for years, that was an idea. The Rolls Royce and its engineering. Mercedes. You always saw a Mercedes on a test track, doing impossible things on the open road. You never saw Mercedes on a driveway; that was Cadillac. So those were ideas, “engineered like no other car in the world.” You look at Detroit advertising and I challenge you to find me a campaign which has an idea; furthermore, the cars don’t look like big ideas.

In the book, you mention how Ogilvy had exceptionally high standards, due in part to his parents’ Scottish upbringing and his time as a sous chef in a premier restaurant in France. To what extent is advertising still a standards-driven industry? Should it be? Why or why not?

There used to be a saying that you could write a media plan on the back of an envelope. It was that simple. Today the business is much more complex — there are so many media. At the same time, clients are squeezing the agency because they’re under pressure. So the agencies are getting less money to do more work, and the luxury, if you will, to make sure an ad is perfect isn’t there.

Advertising is an industry that often favors youthful inspiration over the wisdom that comes with age and experience. In what ways was this notion true during your tenure at O&M?
Age is a state of mind. Advertising has always been a business of young people, historically, all the way back. There’s something about people coming in fresh. But there are a lot of very talented writers and art directors who go on well into their senior years, still doing great work. I think [Ogilvy] was going for the energy. It was not the age. It was the mental age, and the phrase he would use, “We’re looking for people with fire in their bellies.” I mean, think about that, “fire in their bellies.” Well, a 22-year-old might have fire in his belly, but finding a 52-year-old with fire in his belly is going to be harder. [Ogilvy] wanted young people, in their attitudes.

What did you do to keep the agency focused on creativity?
I put two creative people on the board. And David said, “Well, what are you doing? What are those guys on the board for, they don’t know how to read a financial statement!” I said, “Well, I don’t know David, but it was supposed to be a creative agency.” I just felt better with them here. They made enormous contributions. One of them came to a meeting, Hal Riney. Very talented guy [from] San Francisco — a curmudgeon, a contrarian, strange guy, enormously talented. And he came to the first couple of meetings, then he didn’t come to the next meeting. He sent a video tape of these two little puppets, and these two little puppets are visiting this thing called Ogilvy & Mather and they kept on talking about cash flows and margins and they said, “This must be a bank.” Well, we looked at that, and he said, “You know, he’s right.” So we changed our board meetings, literally changed the agenda. The first thing we did… was look at the ads. Why isn’t it better? Then we discussed the other things. That was a way that really helped us become much more creative.

Ogilvy & Mather has had its share of memorable campaigns. Which spots or campaigns do you consider major accomplishments of your career, and why?

American Express (“Don’t leave home without it”) has to be one of the great case histories. There’s a message here. Advertising agencies don’t take their ideas and go to clients and shove them down their throats to sell them. Agencies react to clients who give them big questions. The best advertising we’ve done is because a client asked us a big question or gave us a big challenge. When Lou Gerstner showed up with American Express as our client, he was told that the American Express card was kind of a mature business and that it wasn’t going to grow. He was told that the travelers cheque business was a vestigial business that was dying, and the travel business, forget it. When he [took his business out of O&M] after 10 years, that business was growing 25 to 26 percent a year. He had added new products, new promotions, but he also got us to create campaigns for each of these and he gave us the funds to invest in building a worldwide business. In a few years, American Express was our largest client in the world, the most profitable client, our best creative showcase, our best way of recruiting attractive people. But it was a client who saw beyond the numbers to the big idea.

How did you get your start at Ogilvy & Mather? What was your exact role, and how did you progress to assume larger responsibilities?

I had this offer at Young & Rubicam, and I turned it down. At that time, the newspapers were going out of business. Have you ever heard that before? This was in the ’50s. The newspapers were merging, and the best job I got offered was $35 dollars a week. And somebody offered me a job for a medium-sized chemical company for $60 a week writing their employee and customer magazines. I moved to an RCA distributor in Philadelphia. Ugh. I came back and worked for a big chemical company, I was the manager of corporate advertising. I spent 10 years succeeding at dumb jobs. At the age of 32, I said, “I’m on the fringe of the advertising business,” — corporate, industrial. So I quit my job and started over at the very bottom as an assistant account executive at the only agency in Manhattan that would hire me which was [then called] Ogilvy Benson & Mather. I was probably the world’s oldest assistant account executive. And a couple of lessons come out of this. The first is never take a job for money or title. Never. You take a job that has two things: It’s a great company or a great brand, and it gives you great training. All of these jobs I had were for companies nobody had ever heard of, and I knew more than the people there — I was teaching them out of college. Nobody was teaching me. The other thing that happened, there were these people younger than me with bigger jobs, and that can make a person go crazy. So I didn’t look left or right, I made a list of the 10 things I wanted to accomplish that year that would make a difference either in my own personal development or in my contributions to the agency, the client. And I worked at them all year, and at the end of the year I’d give myself a grade — I never gave myself better than 70 percent. It enabled me to focus on what I could do to accomplish something. I did that for almost my entire career.

What did you enjoy most/least about leading O&M?

I guess winning a new piece of business is a great thrill. It shows you’re a winner; people like working for a winner. You want to win new business in competition. It’s very simple. What do you enjoy the least? Losing clients, or losing key people. Those are the things that just ripped me apart.

Would you take it personally?

Yeah, yeah I did. Which is why you want to pay attention to good people.

Today’s economy is hurting many within the media world, including the ad industry. What advice would you give concerned Ogilvy employees if you were still leading them?

I’d probably say, we’ve been through this before, it doesn’t last forever. We’re going to try not to cut people too hard. The thing you try is to keep your costs down so you can hold people. In an ad agency business, there are only two major costs. One is people, one is rent. I moved Ogilvy from Fifth Ave. to Eighth Ave., to Hells Kitchen – -the first major building west of Eighth Avenue.

What would you tell Ogilvy & Mather Chairman Shelly Lazarus if she came to you for advice on where to take the company?

Shelly doesn’t need me for advice. She knows how to handle WPP, and knows what David Ogilvy told her.

Why did you pursue a career in advertising, and would you today if you were starting over as a 23-year-old? Why or why not?

Because as I observed it, it appeared to be a business that used my skills: writing, leadership. College paper editors were good at dealing with a creative product and working with peers. You have to be a good leader early. Yes, I would do it again. It was a fun, exciting field — and it still is.

---

Matt Van Hoven is editor of AgencySpy.

While Howard Bragman fashions himself an outsider (he often cites growing up fat, Jewish and gay in Flint, Michigan), he has been operating on the inside for a long time — at least when it comes to the peculiar vagaries of entertainment publicity.

After graduating from the University of Michigan, Bragman started out in journalism but turned to PR when it looked like his only option was working for a magazine about guns. He worked for a smaller PR firm in Chicago before joining Burson-Marsteller, which was then in its heyday as the most influential PR firm in the world. He transferred with Burson to Los Angeles, ultimately striking out on his own and founding Bragman Nyman Cafarelli in 1989.

After growing BNC to the largest entertainment PR firm in the world, he sold it in 2000. In 2003, he started anew with Fifteen Minutes, a boutique firm that specializes in not only crisis management but celebrity representation (for Paula Abdul, Ed McMahon and Mischa Barton, among others), media training and brand management.

Bragman also writes a regular column for The Huffington Post and serves as a go-to guy for media outlets looking for an expert’s take on the dish du jour (Sarah Palin, bidding wars for celebrity baby pictures). His upcoming book, Where’s My Fifteen Minutes?, details how anyone can use PR to their own advantage.

---

Name: Howard Bragman
Position: Chairman and CEO, Fifteen Minutes Public Relations
Resume: Author; media pundit; adjunct rofessor at the Annenberg School for Communications and The University of Southern California; crisis counselor; publicist; mentor
Birthday: February 24, 1956
Hometown: Flint, Michigan
Education: B.A, The University of Michigan, School of Literature, Science and the Arts, 1978
Marital status: Married (Unless or until the courts or the voters of California try to take it away)
First section of the Sunday Times: Style
Favorite TV show: Unscripted, Project Runway; Scripted, Weeds
Guilty pleasure: Weeds (not the TV show)
Last book read: Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence — and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process by Irene M. Pepperbert

---

Describe how you originally got into PR.
I was lucky to get into it; I didn’t know what it was when I graduated college, really. I got a job at Rogers Park Publisher in Chicago and this guy put out a magazine called Chicago Elite, and it was society and culture and arts. I’m this young gay guy who’s just graduated college and I’m thinking, “This is a pretty good place.” He basically put out a gun magazine for gun dealers, and his wife wanted to go to a better caliber of parties, so they started this society magazine. [But] they’re closing after a year; they’re losing their shirt. So they said, “Do you want to work at the gun magazine?” And I’m like, “I’m a nice Jewish boy, I’m not working at a gun magazine.” So I said I’m going to try to go into PR — these people pitch me stories and they don’t even read the magazine. It can’t be that hard.

I got a PR job with this small firm in Chicago, it was probably 25 people. Right after I got there, they got the Anheuser-Busch account — the Budweiser account for 10 states, the whole Midwest. There was this senior woman working on [the account] and it didn’t work out, and I’m this kid with less than a year in PR doing the Anheuser Busch account for 10 states. I’m doing events and celebrities and news — it was just like an MBA in PR.

After three years of that, I was at the snowmobile races in Rice Lake, Wisconsin, it was 25 below zero, and I was like, “OK, I get it — next!” I went to work for Burson-Marsteller — at the time it was the biggest firm in the world. I was there in Chicago, and they moved me to LA. I didn’t feel like Burson was well-branded in the LA marketplace, and I was frustrated. I saved up enough money, went in the back of my house, and opened a PR firm. I figured if I didn’t make it in six months, I’d get a job. And it took off. I brought in multiple partners and it became Bragman Nyman Cafarelli.

I sold it in the end of 2000, worked there for a year, and I realized it wasn’t really a good idea for me to be an employee. There’s a lot of things I do in a business that publicly traded companies don’t do. I’m better as an entrepreneur.

What is it about your personality that makes you well-suited to PR?
You know what, I say “15 Minutes” and people think it has to do with Andy Warhol and fame and all that — it’s my attention span. [laughs] No, not really. When I used to do standardized tests as a kid, I would flatline it. I could do well in a lot of different subjects. The thing that I feel I’m an idiot savant about is doing PR; it was the perfect gig for me.

“If you don’t define yourself to the world, somebody else is going to define you — and you’re probably not going to like it as much as if you did it yourself.”

So it’s being well-rounded in a sense?
My mantra, and the essence of the book, is really that we all have images — whether we think we do or not. You don’t have to be Angelina Jolie to have an image. You’ve got a Facebook page, or you’re the president of the PTA, you’re trying to clean up a river or run a dry cleaners; we all have something that we want to get out there. If you don’t define yourself to the world, somebody else is going to define you — and you’re probably not going to like it as much as if you did it yourself.

Did you see that recent study that the MacArthur Foundation did about teenagers and the Internet? It said that one of the skills that kids are learning is to deal with their own public image. And in this millennium, and certainly the first part of this millennium, a public image is a very, very, very big thing. And you can’t just manage a public image, you have to communicate with your fans and buyers, and you have a different responsibility. Just because you don’t want to become Internet savvy and deal with the world that way doesn’t mean you get to. The rest of the world is, and they’re going to pass you by.

How you think your role and public relations’ role has changed since you started, in terms of the 24-hour news cycle and the Internet?
The metabolism of the media has gone berserk, meaning the speed at which things happen. You used to have time to take a breath, see what was going on, get the big picture. Now you barely have time to do that — then the video’s on TV. They’re digging this hole for you so quickly. I’ve never seen reputations shattered so quickly in this world. Did you see how stunningly quick the governor of New York went down? A very powerful man — did you see how quickly that happened?

I have a story in the book about Howard Dean, and I talk about what the media did to his presidential campaign. What happened was he was at an event and he was screaming, and they made it look like he was a crazy man. But they were playing the ISO mic. If you played the same sounds you heard as if you were in the room, you couldn’t even hear the man it was so loud in there. It’s like altering a photograph. I felt it was really offensive. Howard’s probably one of the most rational people you’ll ever meet in your whole life, and for them to portray him as something other than that — I thought the media screwed up there. The media can screw up very quickly because it seems to me many media outlets are more interested in speed than they are in accuracy.

I like journalistic standards. I’d rather take a breath and get the story right rather than get it out quickly. This is the way the world is now. I can’t bury my head in the sand. And the Internet has great value because, trust me, there ain’t a lot of print space left, you know? When you’ve got to get publicity for a client, and they’re paying you because they want to get their image out there, you don’t have the same opportunities you did 10 years ago.

“There’s a lot of PR people in this town who seem to be proud that they’re inaccessible. I’m sort of proud of the opposite.”

What have you learned in dealing with the media, in terms of the best approach to meet your goals and also help journalists meet their goals?
Number one is have a sense of humor. I used to represent LA Gear when they were having a spate of bad publicity, before they got into real trouble. A story in Business Week appeared, and it was a bad story, and I’m like, “Oh shit, this is not pretty.” My business was less than a year old, and I thought, “My business is going to go down, and I’m going to be unemployed.” I was telling a friend and he said, “Howard, it’s tennis shoes.” Most of the time, it’s tennis shoes. Sometimes it’s not; sometimes it’s a client who’s dying from a disease, or a client who’s losing a house, or a client who’s been accused of something. I know what’s really serious, and I know what needs to be done.

In terms of dealing with the media, I believe integrity is very important, and I’m pretty proud of my reputation. I’m in the communications business. There’s a lot of PR people in this town who seem to be proud that they’re inaccessible. You can’t talk to them and they don’t return emails, and I’m sort of proud of the opposite. If a journalist approaches me, even if it’s a “Sorry, we’re going to pass on that,” they’ll generally get a communication from me.

You’ve represented a few celebrities in some tough situations, like Isaiah Washington through the homophobic slur flap and Mischa Barton and her DUI. In crisis PR, what is it absolutely essential not to do?
Not to do what I did with Isaiah Washington. [laughs] We had just found out that ABC was not renewing his contract, and I needed to make a statement to the media. And I’m saying right here what I said on the record and what I stand by today. I’m very good friends with the PR people at ABC, but I didn’t appreciate the way that was handled.

We were told he wasn’t getting renewed, and then we were told there was a call coming from People magazine within 15 minutes. It wasn’t even like, “Isaiah, we’re not renewing your contract, let’s come up with a statement.” We weren’t given that opportunity; we had literally 15 minutes. And I wanted to say something about the irony of the situation, and all I could think of was the movie Network: Peter Finch out the window screaming, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it!” And there were so many reasons he shouldn’t have lost his job, okay? And if they wanted to fire the guy, he had offered to quit when everything happened. He said, “I don’t want to be a distraction to the show. I’m happy to leave.” And they wouldn’t do it then, it was just — I felt bad for him.

I think my client is not perfect, but I know in my heart of hearts — I know this man pretty well, we spent a lot of time [together] — he may be a lot of things, but he’s not homophobic. If I truly thought he was homophobic, I wouldn’t have represented him. His mother used to be a cleaning lady for a Jewish family in Houston, and I was at a dinner party at his house, and his gay decorator was there and I’m there, you know — and the next day we had a breakfast meeting and he said, “I told you I know more gay people than you and I speak better Yiddish than you.” And it’s true.

So I made the statement, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it!” Unfortunately, it reinforced the angry black man stereotype — and I played into it, and it worked against me. Ultimately, I think Isaiah came out pretty well, and he got work right after… [The experience] could have been an episode of a TV series on PR.

“We used to talk about crisis control. Now it’s crisis management. You can’t control the blogosphere and the Internet. I could maybe corral it.”

There is sometimes tension between journalists and PR people. In your experience how does that play out? What should PR people do to avoid or thwart that?
Listen, I still come from a time where PR people need media people. I’m not a bully PR person, and I think those times are gone. I think there was a few years when if you were a big celebrity publicist you could use the bully pulpit to rule. You could say, “If you write something bad about my clients…” Well, guess what?

We used to talk about crisis control. Now it’s crisis management. You can’t control the blogosphere and the Internet. I could maybe corral it. I could maybe get it to flow into the ocean like lava to a place where it’s not going to do too much damage. But I can’t stop it. There’s ways to bury it once it’s out there. There’s tricks of the trade, but it’s a different world.

I’ve never looked at it as a contentious relationship. Some of my dearest friends are journalists. I think we’re all communicators. All I’ve got to do is figure out what you’re trying to do and make your life easy. One of my friends calls me “Quotetron” — “I saw you in The New York Times today, Quotetron.” I think I’m like a character out of Network because I speak in sound bites. I think I just watched a little bit too much TV as a kid and that’s what happened. But I have a face for radio, that’s the problem. I’ve enjoyed the concept of putting a face on PR and telling people how it works.

Your book aims to teach readers how they can make public relations work for them in their own lives.
Whether they want to do it for their own career, if they have a skill or something they want to promote — it’s for people who want to go to the next level. PR no longer stands for public relations. It stands for perception and reality. And the job of the PR person is always, always, always to manage the relationship between perception and reality. The concept is like the scales of justice, and you’ve got perception on one side and reality on the other — you want them in balance. Because if perception exceeds reality, we call that hype — or Dr. Phil. And that means the wind’s going to come under your balloon and the balloon’s going to pop. As I always say, you want a career made in a crock pot, not a microwave.

If your reality exceeds your perception — that’s what most people come to me and say, “I’m a great doctor and nobody knows it.” Or “I have a business and my competitor keeps getting quoted. Why?” When they’re not in stasis, you get cognitive dissonance. That little feeling in the pit of your stomach that things don’t always match up the way they’re supposed to. It’s important to understand because if you’re working on someone’s image, you have to start with the perception of where it’s at, even if it’s not accurate. If I’ve got a client that’s got a perception challenge or they want to change the perception or modify it, I’ve got to start where we’re starting. I’ve got a baseline I have to work from.

Along with the speed of the media, that’s one of the most important things that’s out there. People have got to use the Internet, they’ve got to read a lot of things. We all tend to get [lost] in our little wormy worlds. So if you’re a Democrat, you read The New York Times and you go to the Daily Kos and you read The Huffington Post, but you don’t go to Drudge Report, you don’t go to the right-wing places. And it’s silly. Because I don’t [care] how right- or left-wing you are, you might as well read what the enemy’s saying about you.

I think the gay community just lost Prop 8 because they ran a horrible campaign. I don’t want to say we deserved to lose because we don’t deserve to lose our civil rights, but we could have won if we’d run a smarter campaign.

What would you have done differently if you were running it?
It’s been well-documented and I’m no expert, but it was a top-down campaign, meaning, “Donate money and we’ll make all the decisions and basically buy advertising,” as opposed to a bottom-up campaign, which is what Obama ran. [A bottom-up campaign] is one that motivates people, getting them to knock on doors and make phone calls. The gay community didn’t do a good job. They did a good job of fundraising.

We had mediocre advertising. We were always on the defensive, and we were too busy being politically correct to protect our civil rights in the right way. I’ve been involved in the gay and lesbian issue in the media for 20-something years. My first client sued the Naval Academy because he was gay. It was pro-bono and the first client I took when I started my first company, and I’ve always been involved. I just know this is another speed bump.

What I do think Prop 8 did was, I think there’s a whole group of people, probably under 35, who didn’t see the worst of the AIDS ravages and don’t remember a time when gays were invisible or all depictions of gays were homophobic. Well, I do. And all of the sudden they said, “The world’s not perfect, and there’s homophobes out there.” When I went to some of the marches, I saw a lot of the young people, and I thought that was really cool.

But it’s just bullshit. I’ve paid many millions of taxes to the government. I’m happy to take less civil rights, just tax me less. [laughs]

You do a lot of different PR, and part of your portfolio is helping well-known people come out, like WNBA player Sheryl Swoopes and Bewitched‘s Dick Sergeant. What are the particular PR challenges that you face when you take on these?
In this day and age, coming out is a metaphor. It’s a metaphor for Patrick Swayze coming out that he has cancer, Arthur Ashe coming out with the fact that he has AIDS, or somebody coming out that they got married or divorced, or a life-changing situation. It’s just a metaphor for getting ahead of the information curve, but putting it out there in a controlled way before it gets out there in an uncontrolled way. What’s most interesting about coming out is it’s non-formulaic, I promise you, because every situation’s different. One’s got a book to sell, one’s got a message to get out, one’s doing it for an endorsement, one’s a diva, you know — they[‘ve] all got different reasons.

I’ve always made sure that I do mainstream and gay media when I do it. There’s people who come out in the mainstream media and have not given the gay media their due, and I think that’s sort of wrong. I’ve done it different ways. When [former NBA player] John Amaechi came out two years ago, we did a week of interviews and then [former NBA player] Tim Hardaway made his homophobic comment, and we went nuclear with this thing. It was huge — for a guy who was a journeyman basketball player but wasn’t a superstar by any stretch, and he’ll be the first to admit it. With Rosie Jones, the golfer, we did it in an op-ed piece.

After being in the business for over 25 years, is there anything that still shocks you?
Just humanity. Humanity is pretty interesting. I’m at a point where I can see irony in a lot of things. If you grow up fat, Jewish and gay in Flint, Michigan, and were born when I was born, and you don’t see irony in the world, you’re going to have a lot of problems, okay? I can find the humor in things, but truly shocked? My grandmother had a saying for it: We do things to ourselves that our worst enemies wouldn’t do. I think there’s a lot of truth to that; usually our worst enemy is ourselves. There’s been phone calls that have truly shocked — I will admit it, and I’m not going to say which ones, but I admit it.

So it’s still possible.
It’s still possible. I’m not that hardened. I’m still a kid from the Midwest — albeit a twisted one.

---

Julie Haire is a freelance writer living in Los Angeles.

With President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration just six days away, Jake Tapper’s new role as ABC News’ White House correspondent is sure to be a high-profile one. But as he transitions to this major position at the network in 2009, he leaves a beat in which he was just as busy: spending 2008 on the campaign trail. His path to the White House may not have been the most traditional (he’s hosted shows on Sundance Channel, VH1 and moderated a WWE debate), but his political obsession certainly helps with the job. His writing at the Political Punch, his highly-active, well-read blog, may make him one of the most accessible White House correspondents to those that follow political happenings as much as he does.

Three hours before we talked to Tapper last Thursday, Jan. 8, he was on the air on ABC reporting from an Obama news conference. A few hours after the interview, he was on ABC World News with a report. In between what were just a couple of the countless appearances he has had on the air recently and is sure to have in the future, Tapper talked about life on the campaign trail, media bias and how a Seinfeld episode can teach a young journalist about watching what you write.

---

Name: Jake Tapper
Position: ABC News’ senior White House correspondent
Resume: Senior writer at Washington City Paper, Washington correspondent for Salon.com, host of CNN’s Take Five, correspondent for VH1, freelance writer for GQ, NPR, and the Weekly Standard, freelance cartoonist for Roll Call and the Los Angeles Times, host on Sundance Channel. Hired as correspondent by ABC News in 2003, named senior national/political correspondent in 2005, named senior White House correspondent in November 2008.
Birthdate: March 12, 1969
Hometown: Philadelphia, PA
Education: Graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 1991 with a degree in history modified by art.
Marital status: Married to Jennifer Tapper with one daughter, Alice Paul Tapper. Two cats, Pink and Walter.
First section of the Sunday Times: Section A
Favorite television shows: Mad Men, Lost
Last book read: Bangkok Haunts by John Burdett
Guilty pleasure: Facebook.

---

You’re now ABC’s senior White House correspondent, covering a historic person occupying the White House. What are your feelings about the new job?

The response I get from a lot of college classmates is ‘what a cool opportunity, you’ll get to see all of this from the front row,’ and that’s true. But I also think that everything is so precarious right now in terms of war and peace and the economy that there’s an extra burden on the White House press corps to be especially vigilant and professional. It’s daunting. I’m honored to have been given this job by ABC News, to be entrusted with this, but it’s also intimidating.

You’ve taken an unusual path to the White House correspondent role and in the world of broadcast journalism. You started as co-host of Take 5 on CNN, an issues show aimed at a younger audience, were a correspondent on VH1 news specials in 2002, and host of The Sundance Channel’s 24 Frame News in 2003. You hosted a WWE debate. What do take from all these different positions you’ve had, and what do you draw from as you start your new role?

It wasn’t a traditional path because I was relatively late in coming to journalism. I didn’t start full-time as a journalist until I was in my late 20s, as opposed to right out of college. I always loved politics, but the openings for jobs in broadcast came not just about politics but also about pop culture. But I was always at least writing freelance stories about politics, even when I was doing a lot of the entertainment stuff. A lot of that work was about developing broadcasting skills, or trying to develop them. There’s no doubt that part of that is just the process of storytelling as well as how to speak on camera, how to track, how to interview somebody. But as a side note, I will say that the special I did for VH1 on Lynyrd Skynyrd definitely won me some Republican sources.

“Everything is so precarious right now in terms of war, peace and the economy that there’s an extra burden on the White House press corps to be especially vigilant and professional.”

Let’s talk about the campaign trail. You described covering the election this year like “[your] SportsCenter”, in that this was the pinnacle for someone who’s interested in politics, to be on the campaign trail during this election.

It’s grueling in a lot of ways, the schedule and the way that the experience just beats you up physically, in terms of sleep deprivation and time away from your family. On a professional level, there’s nothing like it because you’re not just sitting in a room watching cable and getting your wisdom from what you read in the paper or see on TV. You’re actually there with voters and in cities and rural areas across the country. It beats you up, but it’s worth it.

You talk about the long hours. According to the Tyndall Report, you went from the No. 19 most-used reporter in 2006, to No. 1 in 2007 and No. 2 in 2008. That’s a lot of airtime, but also a lot of time spent reporting it all out. How do you handle the long hours and the massive workload?

The tough part about it is being away from my family, my wife and daughter. In terms of professional curiosity, I probably would be spending almost as much time even if I were a doctor or an account executive or something else. I probably would be spending as much time trying to find out stuff, trying to report things, either by reading other publications or making phone calls, just because I’m really interested in news and current events. It’s just one of these things that’s in my DNA. I love to find out what’s going on. So obviously I’m channeling the energies in a slightly different way, but I’m the kind of person that reads the newspaper on vacation.

“Nobody likes to be lied to, but it’s just part of the process. It would be like a designer complaining that all the models are anorexic. It’s unfortunate, but this is just how it is.”

Can you turn off the Blackberry?

I can turn off the Blackberry, but I can’t turn off wanting to know what’s going on.

World News EP Jon Banner said “no one is more obsessed with politics” than you. And when thinking about how much you love politics and want to know about it, you must be dealt a lot of spin, especially in your new job. So how do you negotiate that? Does it frustrate you as a journalist, what you have to cut through?
Nobody likes to be lied to, but it’s kind of just part of the process. I guess it would be like a designer complaining that all the models are anorexic. It’s unfortunate, but this is just how it is.

But how do you do that, as a news consumer, but also as part of the group putting the news out there? What kind of responsibility do you think you have being someone who is such a fan of news, from the outside looking in?
It’s an incredible responsibility and when you get something wrong or it’s not as accurate as you wish it had been, for any number or reasons including spin, it’s a horrible feeling. So I don’t think there’s any reporter worth anything who doesn’t try their best to get it right as often as they can, to shoot for 100 percent. But it’s an awesome responsibility, of course.

During the ’08 campaign, the media was sometimes accused of favoring Barack Obama. Do you think it was a fair accusation?
I don’t think it’s fair to say ‘The Media was in favor of Barack Obama,’ the media writ large, capital T, capital M. I think there were a lot of people in the press who were tougher on Hillary Clinton and tougher on John McCain than they were on President-elect Obama. I can’t understand anybody who would disagree with that. It’s not to say that everyone in the media was [biased] or that even that most members of the media were. But I think that the coverage in general was not balanced because there were some people and organizations that were so caught up in the story of Obama — or the narrative or his policies or the fact that he sold magazines or got eyeballs to the TV. Whatever the reason, there were enough people that the playing field was not even. That’s not to say that he wouldn’t have won anyway.

Do you think it’ll change once Obama is in office?
He thinks it will change. He said to John Harwood that he thought the media would change. It’s different selling a product than it is delivering a product. Once you’ve made the sale, that product better work. I think there’s a certain patience that the American people will have just because everything’s so messed up right now. He will be held to a higher standard as a President by the press and the public than he was as a candidate, just because it’s much more consequential making a promise when you actually have responsibility. Anybody can say ‘I’m going to do so-and-so’ when they don’t have the job yet.

A lot of TV news personalities now have a blog, but you’ve really been blogging on the Political Punch for a longer time and more frequently than pretty much anyone else in the field. What draws you to the medium?
I am at heart a print reporter, and I think that that’s where it comes from. A lot of the stuff I blog is either stuff I’m reporting anyway for ABC News internally and figure I might as well put it up on the blog. Or it’s stuff I’m just interested in, or I read about it, or I hear about it, and I’m just curious. In trying to satisfy that curiosity, I end up writing something, and I put it on the blog. So it’s time-consuming, but a lot of it I would be doing anyway.

It does seem like the tone of the blog has changed a little bit over the years, maybe gotten a little more serious. Do you agree with that?
The tone has definitely changed, but so has my role at ABC News and so, more importantly, has the country. I have to say, a lot of it was experimental — I used to do things that didn’t seem to work or didn’t seem to attract that many readers. I used to have a lot more pop culture on it. But it’s tough when — especially in the last year and a half — when you’re covering a very important election and very consequential issues and an economy that’s tanking, to work up the will to then do a blog post about whether I side with Jennifer Aniston or Angelina Jolie. It’s also that there are big important things going on, and I’ve been entrusted with an important job at ABC News. While sometimes the blog is still lighthearted, keeping that stuff to a minimum is probably appropriate given the times.

Yeah, it seems there are fewer poems and cartoons.
I actually have a stack of cartoons that I did during vacation that I just haven’t scanned, so that I will change. The haikus — it’s kind of like that muscle’s out of shape. I don’t philosophically have a problem with it, I just haven’t thought about it much lately.

Your writing at Salon was more opinionated in tone. Was it an adjustment to move to your quote-unquote unbiased role at ABC?
No, because I’m not a particularly dogmatic person. I have not found it difficult. In fact, I’ve found it much easier — even when I was at Salon, but certainly much more so since, — to try to be as politically agnostic as possible. It’s much more interesting anyway if you don’t think you know the answer to what is right or wrong in politics. And that’s not to say there are not rights and wrongs, but just that they are not dictated by any one particular point of view. So no, actually it suits me much better. I never felt completely comfortable; I never fit in perfectly at Salon, as much as I loved writing for Salon. I never fit in perfectly because I didn’t have an established point of view, and I didn’t view the world as automatically ‘so-and-so should be elected and such-and-such a view is wrong.’

Talking about views, you were asked in August about some negative comments you had written about George Stephanopoulos, who is now your colleague, and you said you wouldn’t sign your name to it now. What do you think the lesson is for journalists?
That’s a great question, as much as I hate talking about this because George is a friend and somebody whom I respect a great deal. The lesson is, for any young journalist, that generally speaking, things don’t vanish after you write them, and you’re not going to be 28 forever. It’s not a particularly unique story — I think most journalists have something they’ve written they wish they could go back and erase. But especially those people who start off in the quote-unquote alternative media might feel that way. Seinfeld had this great routine about people who get drunk and go out and live all night and they think that “Sunday Jerry” is a different person. Like, ‘Oh, Sunday Jerry will have to deal with this hangover or get up at seven in the morning,’ as if it’s an entirely other entity. And in a broader way, younger journalists just have to remember that eventually they’ll become Sunday Jerry.

And the “Saturday Night Jerry” still exists.
Right. A lesson that at least one former president would have done well to absorb.

Unlike most journalists, your career actually started in publicity. What does that experience bring to your work as a journalist?
I was really bad at that job, so I don’t know that there was any great lesson. I don’t know if I learned anything from that job. I wasn’t particularly good at spinning. So I think the only thing I really learned from it personally was I wasn’t very good at it.

It almost seems like the opposite of journalism.
It is the opposite of journalism, and I wasn’t good at it.

Another area you’ve gotten into is the publishing world. You’ve written books on subjects ranging from Jesse Ventura to the 2000 presidential election. Are there any projects on the horizon, or anything under consideration?
Not right now. All my energy that isn’t devoted toward this job is devoted toward my family. It’s a lot easier to write a book if you don’t have a wife and baby. Eventually I’d like to write another one. There are about 3,000 Barack Obama books that are coming out right now, and we’ll have to see. The recount was an amazing thing, and I just happened to be there covering it. It was just a rare opportunity. It’s better to wait for an opportunity like that, where I’m in the right place at the right time, and not just write a book because somebody offered me money and I could sell a few.

Alright, last thing. In your first newspaper job, your editor was New York Times media guru David Carr. Can you close us out with a good Carr story from that era?
If you’ve ever met David Carr you know he’s not just a columnist and reporter, he is a force of nature. Even calling him a force of nature does a disservice to him, because there are some very minor hurricanes that are forces of nature and Carr is certainly beyond that. You become enveloped in his dialogue, his world view, his enthusiasm for journalism. I’d never met anyone like him. It was our first meeting after I had written a few stories for the Washington City Paper on a freelance basis, he basically convinced me to do what I wanted to do but hadn’t had the guts to do — to take a substantial pay cut and become a journalist. And then for that year-plus I worked for him, he was a one man J-school. I often tell young people seeking to break into the business, ‘Before you go to journalism school, I recommend you start at a small local newspaper.’ That probably overestimates editors in general out there, but I was really lucky that I had this guy who was in the process of becoming a legend as my first editor. I remember the triumphs we shared and I remember the times he yelled at me. I remember what he yelled at me about. It’s all there. And I’m a lucky guy that I fell into his world when I did, because he wasn’t really at City Paper all that long, and neither was I. But I invited him to my wedding. He’s a very important figure in my life.

---

Steve Krakauer is associate editor of TVNewser and a contributing editor of WebNewser.

This Beijing-based correspondent reported for The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and NPR from Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Burma, and covered Ethiopia, the Western Sahara, and Bangladesh for a number of other outlets. She was NPR’s Southeast Asia correspondent and their first China correspondent before landing a gig at BBC/Public Radio International’s “The World” in 2003. Here, Mary Kay Magistad tell us how she writes stories about the 2008 Olympic Games, earthquakes and government crackdowns, despite government censorship and limited Internet access, and gives us her take on what a New China could mean for aspiring journalists.

---

Describe your role as a correspondent for “The World.” How did you land that gig, what were you doing prior to that, and how long have you been based in Beijing and why?
“The World” is a co-production of Public Radio International and the BBC, an international news and current affairs program that broadcasts weekdays throughout the United States. It started in 1996, the same year I opened NPR’s Beijing Bureau, after years reporting for NPR in Southeast Asia. The NPR “Morning Edition” editor with whom I’d worked, Bob Ferrante, eventually went over to become executive editor of “The World,” and asked if I was interested in joining. I first took a breather, doing the Nieman and Radcliffe fellowships at Harvard, and joined The World as China correspondent in early 2003.

It’s been a big year, covering Tibet, earthquakes and the 2008 Olympic Games. What tactics do you use to report on such extreme topics, in a vast country known for its distrust of foreign press?
I’ve now reported in China for three and a half years for NPR and almost six for “The World,” and I think the difficulties of reporting in China are sometimes overstated. Yes, the Tibet crackdown posed unusual challenges in terms of access, and yes, foreign journalists are from time to time monitored or followed, and sometimes even detained. But the vast majority of the time, we’re able to do our reporting with very little government interference. This has been especially true since a new set of reporting regulations came into effect in January 2007. Before that, it was technically illegal for foreign journalists to talk to anyone or go anywhere without first asking permission from the “appropriate authorities” — whomever they might be — if you’re, say, interviewing a cab driver, or a street vendor, or a farmer. By contrast, the new regulations say foreign journalists can interview anyone who agrees to be interviewed, and can travel anywhere where there are not specific restrictions. Of course, those “specific restrictions” were called into play during the Tibet crackdown; the government said that as a matter of national security, it could not allow foreign journalists into Tibetan areas.

The ‘new’ regulations — which are now almost two years old — were created for the period leading up to and during the Beijing Olympics. They’re due to expire in mid-October. The foreign correspondent community in China has been urging the government to make these or similar regulations permanent, as a sign that China has the confidence to adopt international best practices. We’re waiting to see what happens.

Meanwhile, there’s been a trend — that’s concerned many of us — that while public security officials can no longer go after us as much as they used to, they have taken to intimidating or threatening or even detaining people we talk to, particularly on sensitive stories. The Foreign Correspondents Club of China has been vocal about speaking out against this and for a more open media environment in China. If you’re interested, you can read FCCC reports on press freedom in China.

How has Beijing changed (in attitudes towards foreign journalists, and other) since you’ve lived there? How were the Olympics a catalyst for that change?
It’s much easier now to do substantive interviews with ordinary Chinese people than it was when I opened NPR’s Beijing bureau in 1996. Back then, I remember a lot of wariness and nervousness, and if I was doing “vox” — people on the street interviews — particularly on a sensitive subject, I’d have to be prepared to approach half a dozen or more people to get one of them to talk on tape. Now, I would say two out of three are happy to give an opinion on most things.

Why the change? Part of it is that China has steadily opened up. People have more access to information, and are more used to interacting with foreigners. Also importantly, there’s less direct government oversight of people’s day-to-day lives, and as a result less fear of retribution for saying the wrong thing. That’s especially true of the younger generation — those under 30, who have grown up in a stable and prosperous time, with no personal experience of political upheaval. Many of them feel they have a right to have an opinion and have it heard. It’s refreshing.

“The instinct to stand up for one’s rights is there, and growing, and comes out on such issues as property, and the environment and health. It comes out as citizen journalism.”

I don’t think the Olympics were the catalyst for this change. It’s something that’s been happening gradually over the past decade. If anything, in the run-up to the Olympics the government stressed “social harmony” — code for people not criticizing the government, not demonstrating, not doing anything other than presenting a united and happy face for the world’s Olympics fans to see.

But there is a growing feeling, especially among educated, urban Chinese, that they deserve to have a say, and to hold the government accountable. The government tries to limit how much civil society can organize, particularly on a national level, lest such organization transform itself into a political movement. A case in point is the current tainted milk scandal. Lawyers around the country have organized to help families whose kids have been poisoned by melamine, a toxic chemical added to watered-down milk to make it look like it has more protein. Some of those lawyers say they’ve received calls from their local governments, telling them to stop helping the families, or being part of this lawyers’ coalition, or risk losing their licenses to practice.

The milk scandal is the kind of issue people could rally around, nationally, and it seems government doesn’t want to let such a movement take off. Even so, the instinct to stand up for one’s rights is there, and growing, and comes out on such issues as property, and the environment and health. It comes out as citizen journalism and online postings, as street demonstrations, and even as lawsuits against government officials. It’s gradually changing the rules of the game, and the government has had to at least partially change with it, even as it tries to contain such efforts. It’s a fascinating dynamic to watch, and in the long-term, I think, a positive trend for China.

Does the Great Firewall of China really exist, and how do you access information that hasn’t been filtered by the government? How has said information become more or less accessible post-Olympics?
Ah, the Great Firewall. Yes, it exists. And it’s annoying, but not insurmountable. Foreign correspondents, and many Chinese citizens, use proxy servers to get around the censorship. That is, you get onto a Web site that then lets you surf anonymously from that Web site. The censors see only the address of the proxy Web site, and not the addresses of the Web sites you’re going to from there. The censors do try to keep up with what proxies are out there, and block them as well. But it can’t get to all of them, so there’s always a way to access what you need, as long as you’re willing to be resourceful.

“You’ve got to leave your assumptions and generalizations at the door, or be prepared to test them, rigorously, on a daily basis.”

During the Olympics, the government was barraged with criticism for continuing to block sites like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, so it lifted those blocks even as it continued others. Many thousands of supposedly “sensitive” sites are blocked. The best way to deal with it is to circumvent it through a proxy server or something similar.

There’s also something of an attempted “Great Firewall” when it comes to satellite television. If a report or an image the censors don’t like comes up on CNN, or BBC, or even Discovery, viewers will suddenly find that their screens have gone black. And they’ll stay black for as long as the ‘offending’ part of the report is on. The funny part of this is, I have young Chinese friends who just buy their own black market satellite dish and watch whatever they like. It’s the foreigners in hotels and apartment blocks who see their screens go black. And since they have access to the information through other means anyway, the impact is not, as the Chinese government presumably hopes, that people retain a positive view of China, but that foreigners know what the Chinese government is feeling sensitive about and is too insecure to let people within China see.

Besides government censorship, what other challenges do you face in your reporting that are specific to China?
China is an extremely complex, multifaceted country, where some things change with lightening speed while others endure — often in surprising combinations. You’ve got to leave your assumptions and generalizations at the door, or be prepared to test them, rigorously, on a daily basis.

I spent two weeks in Beijing this February, and the city didn’t seem prepared to host the games six months later (lots of buildings in progress, including the Bird’s Nest, as well as heavy pollution). How well do you think Beijing pulled off the games, relative to its intended levels of success? Any telling anecdotes?
When China’s leaders throw their political will behind something, it generally gets done. You can question the way it gets done, the human cost of tearing down many neighborhoods and moving hundreds of thousands of people, the physical assaults on demonstrators and the journalists covering them during the Olympics, the fact that Beijing’s day-to-day pollution is so bad it took nothing less than taking half the cars off the roads and shutting down factories in and around the city to reduce the smog during the Olympics. But by the time the Olympics opened in August, the buildings were built, the red carpet was rolled out, and coaches and athletes and others involved in previous Olympics whom I interviewed said they were extremely impressed with the host’s level of organization and efficiency.

As I look out my window, while I’m typing this, I see that the smog has returned — there’s a gray haze making buildings just a couple of blocks away look out of focus. But Beijing never promised to permanently clean up its air. It just said it would deliver breathable air for the Olympics, and it did. Of course, as a Beijing resident (now also wondering how much melamine I’ve unwittingly ingested over the past few years) I really wish they would clean up the air — as do most Chinese I’ve talked to — but some of the same people are aghast at the idea that they should be part of the solution by leaving their cars at home and taking public transportation. This is one thing in China that’s not changing as quickly as it could.

In June, Madeleine Albright joked that China would win all the medals, because no one else would be able to breathe. As China did actually win more gold medals than any other country, do you think Beijing’s poor quality did actually give the home team an advantage?
Nah, although the Cambodian marathon runner did say that he trained by running on the streets of Phnom Penh, behind cars, so he could get used to exhaust fumes. I think there are a few reasons why Chinese athletes did so well. First, they trained extremely hard for years in state-run sports schools. Second, they had a home-court advantage, in that most of the fans in the stands were Chinese. Third, there were times when the announcers would let fans chatter and make noise while a non-Chinese athlete was competing in a sport that required concentration, but told fans to be quiet when the Chinese athletes took their turns. And fourth, there’s the still unanswered question about whether several of the Chinese female gymnasts who medalled were underage.

In China, do you find sources to be more tight-lipped, mistrusting of foreign press and/or afraid of government persecution?
As mentioned in an earlier answer, I think that used to be much more the case than it is now.

Greenpeace’s Olympic Report, issued early August 2008, says, “China has launched impressive green policies in the run up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics but has also missed crucial opportunities to kick start ambitious environmental initiatives across the city.” As far as you can tell, are there plans to continue these initiatives, or were they temporary measures to prepare the city for the international spotlight?
China’s leaders have said repeatedly that it’s time to adopt a more environmentally-friendly approach to development. But old habits die hard, especially for local officials who personally profit from polluting industries, and whose promotions and raises depend in part on how much GDP growth their area has. The central government has said it will start judging local officials on “Green GDP growth” — in other words, subtracting the cost of environmental damage from total economic growth — but it’s not been very rigorous about putting this new policy into practice. It says these things take time, and that’s no doubt true. But a strong signal from the top could have a decisive effect on how local officials make decisions from here on out. We saw it during the SARS epidemic, and in the run-up to the Olympics. If the central government makes it clear that something is at the top of its list of priorities, the provinces generally fall in line.

Have you ever felt unsafe working as a foreign correspondent in China? As a female? Describe the situation when you felt least safe while reporting.
I personally have never felt physically threatened while working in China, and it’s generally quite safe to work and travel as a woman here. Some of my colleagues have been roughed up by plainclothes thugs when covering sensitive stories, sometimes even roughed up by uniformed security officials. Cameramen and photographers tend to have the hardest time, because they’re the ones who have to get closest. But reporters do occasionally get shoved around too.

How is your Mandarin? Do you conduct interviews in Mandarin, or in English through a translator? If you’re able to do both, how do you decide when to use a translator and when not to?
My Mandarin is conversational, and an enjoyable work in progress. When it comes to language, there are two kinds of foreign correspondents who come to China. The first did Chinese language and/or Chinese studies in college and/or studied Chinese intensively for a year or two in China before becoming a journalist here. The second — myself included — were journalists first, with no prior Chinese studies, and were given a limited time by one’s editors to come up to speed. In my case, NPR gave me one summer to learn Chinese. Even an intensive boot-camp program like Princeton in Beijing, which I did, that gives you a basic foundation, not fluency. The New York Times is the most generous — it gives a full year of language training — but that’s still only half the amount of time the State Department gives foreign service officers who are going to work in China. Those of us who didn’t start out as China scholars do what we can, taking lessons and practicing and building on what we have, but it takes time to reach true fluency. At this point, I can do my own interviews on simple subjects, but I use a translator for anything complicated or where a regional accent is involved. Even though I understand most or sometimes all of what’s being said, ‘close’ counts only in horseshoes, not in reporting. If I’m out talking to a farmer in Sichuan province, and then I get back to my office in Beijing and find that I seriously misunderstood some phrase he used, and that changed the meaning of an important point in a story, it’s not like I can go back and re-ask him. I need to get it right on the spot, where I can ask the right follow-up questions and do whatever additional reporting is needed.

Working overseas for a major news organization is a dream job for many journalists. Describe the best and worst things about your job.
It really is a dream job, working with the creative, cohesive, supportive team at “The World.” I have great freedom to report on one of the most interesting places in the world, and I get to indulge on a daily basis my long-standing loves of writing, travel and learning. To be in China at this historic moment, when the world’s political and economic center of gravity appears to be shifting East, but when it’s by no means clear how well China will be able to navigate its own internal challenges and contradictions, is a fascinating challenge and opportunity. The drama and complexity is played out in many an individual’s life, from a Tibetan nomad to a young dot-com multimillionaire. I talk to them, and get to know them, and tell their stories, and through their stories, tell the story of modern China. There’s many a day when this is so interesting and enjoyable, I kind of chuckle to myself and think, “Wow, I’m actually getting paid for doing this.”

The worst thing about the job? It’s got to be the late nights. Beijing is 12 hours ahead of Boston, where “The World” is based, 13 hours ahead once Daylight Savings Time ends. That means when my editors are in a position to edit my stories, it’s already 9 p.m. or 10 p.m. here, and I might end up working until midnight or after to get all the sound sent. Luckily, I’m more of a night owl than a morning person, but it would still be nice to have a few more evenings free after already working a full day. Still, it must be said, as ‘worst things’ about jobs go, this one is certainly manageable.

Do you pitch ideas to “The World,” or receive assignments? How does that process work, and what is the ratio of stories you do that are pitched versus assigned? How do you generate ideas for stories you pitch?
I pitch almost all of the stories I do. I’d say less than 10 percent of my stories start with suggestions from editors at “The World.” Mostly, they rely on me to come up with interesting, original and timely story ideas. To do that, I keep my eyes and ears open at all times. I read widely. I talk with Chinese friends and acquaintances. I use my own decade’s worth of experience in China to spot subtle new trends that could otherwise escape notice in day-to-day reporting.

One of the pleasures of reporting for “The World” is that we don’t do a lot of straight news along the lines of, “This is what happened today, this is what this person said.” By the time we go to air in the afternoon, NPR and the wire services have already done that. What we try to do is take a step back and say, “Okay, but what does it mean?” and “What are the ripple effects?” and “What else might we want to think about related to this story?” Sometimes, such stories are turned around on the same day, and sometimes, a news event one day might spark an idea for a longer analysis or feature piece or even a series down the line. For instance, early this year, I read a short news piece in a Chinese newspaper about how the percentage of Chinese living in cities had increased from something like 20 percent three decades ago to close to 50 percent now. That dramatic population shift has a massive impact on the economy, the environment, on culture and on politics. It’s a shift Europe experienced in the 19th century, and the United States in the 20th. From mulling over that small newspaper article, I decided to do a six-part series, which aired in July (and is still available as a podcast) on how the urbanization experience is affecting China, and how that in turn could affect the world.

What is the best way for an unknown writer to get an assignment doing foreign reporting (at “The World” or in general)? How did you land your first non-U.S. assignment?
What I tell young aspiring freelance foreign correspondents is to put themselves in a situation that is inherently interesting, but not so interesting that major news organizations have already put their own staff correspondents there. There are freelancers here in China who are trying to break in but are having a hard time, because there are already hundreds of staff foreign correspondents based in China. Freelancers might do better, at this point, in Seoul, or Islamabad or Jakarta.

I started as a freelance foreign correspondent in Bangkok in 1988. Before that, I’d been living in London, and did a few reporting trips, to places like Ethiopia, the Western Sahara, Bangladesh and Cambodia. For the first couple such trips, I paid my own expenses and just about broke even, by offering articles to newspapers, magazines and radio outlets. It turned out to be worth the investment — because this gave me valuable experience, decent clips, and the beginnings of working relationships with a number of editors. By the time I moved to Bangkok, the Boston Globe agreed to take me on as a stringer, and gave me a letter to get me accredited in Thailand. The Globe already had a staff correspondent in Tokyo, but he was covering a huge area, including Afghanistan, and wasn’t able to get to Southeast Asia often. Still, there were interesting things happening. The Burmese junta had just cracked down, and killed a couple thousand pro-democracy demonstrators, prompting thousands more to flee as refugees to the Thai-Burma border, Vietnamese troops were still occupying Cambodia, where a war with the Khmer Rouge continued, and hundreds of thousands of Cambodian refugees were parked in camps on the Cambodian-Thai border. Thailand was just beginning its fight with AIDS, and the US-Vietnamese relations remained frosty, but with signs of thawing. I ended up doing all these stories and more, and had a great time doing them. Once editors saw the stories I was doing for The Boston Globe, I also became a stringer for The Washington Post, NPR, CBC in Canada and other outlets, until NPR eventually offered me a full-time position.

“It’s more important than ever that Americans develop a better understanding of the world and their place in it. As long as I, as a foreign correspondent, can help in that process, that’s what I want to do.”

The key point here is, I set myself up in a place from which there was demand for stories, but not many correspondents supplying them. Also — and this is important for a freelancer just starting out – living expenses were low enough that I could afford a start-up period of a few months when I wasn’t flush. If you’re going to do this, try to have three to six months worth of savings to get you over that initial hump.

Many newspapers and other media organizations are now reducing the number of staff foreign correspondents they have overseas, and this actually opens up opportunities for aspiring freelancers. Just think strategically about where to base yourself, and plunge in.

Would you report in the States again, or elsewhere? Or is it Beijing or Bust, so to speak? Why?
I’ve never actually reported in the United States, except on internships when I was a journalism/history student at Northwestern University. I went to the UK to do my MA in international relations, and stayed overseas from that point onward, aside from a couple of fellowships at Harvard. I’ve reported from dozens of countries, primarily in Asia but also in Africa and Europe, so it’s by no means Beijing or Bust. I just happen to think that China is one of the world’s most interesting stories at the moment, and I’m enjoying the ride. When that’s no longer the case, or when another story seems even more interesting to me, I’ll make the change. Might it be to the United States? At some point, sure. But for now, I think it’s more important than ever that Americans develop a better understanding of the world and their place in it, and of how others in the world see them. As long as I, as a foreign correspondent, can in some small way help in that process, that’s what I want to do.

Any advice for aspiring foreign correspondents, or ones who are just starting their careers?
Tenacity is a virtue. So is patience. It takes time to build up your credibility, and your expertise as a foreign correspondent. And to do that, there’s no substitute for getting out in the field and doing your own hard work. Don’t try to match what everyone else is doing. Look for stories that should be done, but that others aren’t doing. Those are the stories that, if done well, will catch an editor’s attention and make him or her receptive to using more of your work. Editors get calls from would-be freelancers all the time. What will set you apart is that you show an editor, over time, that s/he can trust you and your reporting, that you’re reliable, that you work hard and report rigorously, and that your stories show creativity and depth. Those are also the qualities that will eventually get a freelancer hired.

Professionally, what do you hope to do next?
I especially enjoy doing longer projects, including the number of radio series I’ve done for “The World,” on subjects ranging from how China’s younger generation is changing China to how China’s rise is affecting traditional US allies in the region. I look forward to doing more such projects, in China and in the region. Casting forward beyond that — possibilities abound. But no rush; I already have one of the best jobs in journalism.

Magistad’s Tips For Aspiring Foreign Correspondents.
1. Don’t follow the crowd. Put yourself in a situation that is inherently interesting, but not so interesting that major news organizations have already put their own staff correspondents there.
2. Just go. Many newspapers and other media organizations are now reducing the number of staff foreign correspondents they have overseas, and this actually opens up opportunities for aspiring freelancers. Just think strategically about where to base yourself, and plunge in.
3. Be patient. Tenacity is a virtue. So is patience. It takes time to build up your credibility, and your expertise as a foreign correspondent. And to do that, there’s no substitute for getting out in the field and doing your own hard work.
4. Look for the stories that haven’t yet been told. “Don’t try to match what everyone else is doing. Look for stories that should be done, but that others aren’t doing. Those are the stories that, if done well, will catch an editor’s attention and make him or her receptive to using more of your work.”
5. Show an editor s/he can trust you. Editors get calls from would-be freelancers all the time. What will set you apart is that you show an editor, over time, that s/he can trust you and your reporting, that you’re reliable, that you work hard and report rigorously, and that your stories show creativity and depth. Those are also the qualities that will eventually get a freelancer hired.

---

Jen Swanson is a freelance writer based in New York City. Her work has appeared in Transitions Abroad, Weissmann Travel Reports, and Star Service Online.

During his action-packed rise from graduate school playwright to television producer, Chad Gervich has worked in nearly every genre the boob tube has to offer. In fact, this Los Angeles-based producer and author literally wrote the book on breaking into television — boiling down years of television wisdom into his new book, Small Screen, Big Picture.

During his industrious career, Gervich has worked on countless classic shows — Love, Inc. (UPN), Malcolm in the Middle (FOX), Like Family (WB), Time Tunnel (FOX), Star Search (CBS), and Do Over (WB). In addition to those scripted shows, he’s done reality television and talk shows: developing and producing Foody Call for the Style Network and executive producing the pilot Celebrity Drive-By for E! Entertainment Network.

He’s also carved out a name as a writer: His columns have appeared in Daily Variety, Fade In, Moving Pictures, Writer’s Digest, and Orange Coast, and he has written a number of plays that were produced at theaters around the country. In recent years, Gervich has moved into the Internet realms of television production, joining the writing staff for Warner Brother’s Web show, The Daily Grind, and developing FOX’s Web soap opera, Dirty Laundry.

Earlier this week, Gervich sat down for an exclusive telephone chat with mediabistro.com to give readers a sneak peek at his new book and some practical advice about the television business.

How did you break into the television business?
I actually moved out to Los Angeles right after college, in 1996. I went to graduate school at UCLA’s graduate playwriting program. It was a two-year program. In the second year, they had a mentor program for theater and television students. They would hook up graduate students with working professionals. I ended up with Warren Littlefield, who at the time was president of NBC Entertainment. He was president for all of the ’90s — he put on classic shows like Friends, Frasier, and Seinfeld. He worked his way up the ladder with shows like The Cosby Show and Cheers. He was the best mentor you could ask for. Shortly after that he started his own production company, the Littlefield Company. He gave me a job as an assistant. I got incredibly, incredibly lucky.

How has the television industry changed since you first arrived on the scene? What challenges do aspiring television folks face today? What advantages do they have?
I think the industry has changed in massive, cataclysmic, and unimaginable ways. One change was the advent and explosion of reality TV — it totally changed the landscape of television. There was this format that was very cheap to make that was just as entertaining (or just as popular) as regular shows — all of a sudden it was hugely, hugely popular. The three shows that broke the mold were: Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, Survivor, and American Idol.

“Developing and actually producing is like the difference between a military executive sitting back in his office helping to strategize a war, rather than a general actually fighting in the trenches.”

Another massive change was the rise of cable. Cable was always the redheaded stepchild, but now, thanks in a large part to reality TV, it is nipping at the heels of mainstream channels. There’s literally a channel for every interest. In a short time there won’t be any differentiation between cable and broadcast television. There will simply be 500 channels.

The other massive change, which is still happening, is the rise of the Internet — not only as a distribution mechanism, but also as a creative and artistic format. Nobody knows how this going to pan out. This is a marathon, and we are only at mile three.

So you’ve written a book of practical advice for breaking into the television business. What will your book offer to the uninitiated reader?
When I wrote the book, I wanted to begin at first giving readers a bird’s-eye view of the entire industry. There are six or seven media conglomerates that control everything. They are making the financial and commercial decisions that affect the shows that get on television. I begin by explaining life in television at the top of the food chain, and I slowly go deeper and deeper into the system.

We talk about how networks function, then studios, then production companies, and finally, how production companies and writers create shows. After that, we literally follow a show from the moment it’s pitched through production. We follow it from doing the deal to developing the show as a pilot; through the pilot pickup to shooting the pilot. We watch that show get picked up, as the show runner hires his crew, what happens in the writers’ room, how the show is physically produced every week, and how the show is marketed.

“Many executives think that Internet shows are just shrunken television shows. I think that couldn’t be farther from the truth.”

After, we bring all that to life, showing how the aspiring writers take all that information and use that to break into the business.

You produced and developed Foody Call for the Style Network. That’s a big job — can you describe that experience, from the early days of development to the time when the show actually aired? What would you do differently?
That was a big step. I wasn’t the show-runner, but I worked hand and hand with the show-runner. I developed that show as an executive at Littlefield, and I left to work on the show. It was a huge learning experience. Developing and actually producing is like the difference between a military executive sitting back in his office helping to strategize a war, rather than a general actually fighting in the trenches.

Looking back at it, I made tons and tons mistakes. For example, I had to do my first firing on that show. It was one of the most horrible things I ever did, and I did the worst job of it. In my head I kept thinking, ‘I want this to be gentle, I want to maintain a relationship,’ but this firing should have been a swift dropping of the axe. It became a long drawn out 45-minute experience. It was the worst firing ever.

You were working on Internet soap for FOX. How is this kind of work different or related to straight-up television work?
The thing that makes an Internet show so different from a television show — this is why television executives haven’t been able to crack it yet — is that it is an entirely different medium. People go to the Internet for a totally different experience than television. It’s a highly interactive medium.

Many executives think that Internet shows are just shrunken television shows. I think that couldn’t be farther from the truth. People go to the Internet because they want to interact and chat with other people. You have to build some interactive component into the fabric of the program. That might be allowing audience members to chat and interact with characters or allowing the audience to connect with other viewers.

When you look at the tiny handful of successful Internet shows, the ones that put themselves on the map — they all had some sort of interactivity. LonelyGirl15 was so thrilling because the producers made it feel like it was interactive. In her videos, LonelyGirl15 would supposedly respond to readers. It was all fake, but it felt very real — that’s what made the story so compelling.

You’ve worked with numerous pilots. What’s that nerve-wracking process like?
Working on pilots is simultaneously nerve-wracking, anxiety-inducing, and a complete blast. First of all, you are creating something from scratch. It’s not like you’re coming on the third season of Scrubs. You are experimenting with jokes and styles, that’s what makes it so fun. You’re thinking this could be the next Seinfeld, but you also know everything you are doing could all be for naught. You could be crushed, heartbroken, and out of a job.

How did your playwriting experience help or hinder your work in television? Any advice for playwrights looking to move into television?
I don’t think having an MFA in playwriting impressed anybody. Having said that, being a playwright can help. The other day, my boss told me that my background in playwriting gave me stronger storytelling skills. Telling a story is a craft. You work hard to get better at it. My skills of being a playwright have been helpful, but I don’t think the degree itself was helpful. At the end of the day it’s all about storytelling and writing.

What differentiates Small Screen, Big Picture from other TV-related books on the market?
I think there are a lot of good books that focus on the actual writing of television. But there aren’t any books that explain how the business of television works. At the end of the day, television is a business with very unique corporate structures. I meet so many aspiring writers who don’t have the first clue about how television works as a business.

The unique way the television industry works affects how you create develop and write a television show. In order to be successful, you need a roadmap to navigate the maze that you are entering. However, the roadmaps are all in flux now; they are changing in massive ways — thanks to Internet, cable and the economy.

How is the economy affecting the TV business? In light of contraction across a number of industries, what would aspiring TV writers do well to pitch/keep in mind as they’re striving to enter the industry?
Advertising is down; product placement is down — especially at the broadcast networks. When there’s not as much money coming in, the companies can’t spend much money on new shows. Fewer new shows will be bought, and fewer riskier shows will be bought. Networks are going to buy less from new writers, and buy more from proven veterans. NBC has already told all their shows that they have to cut their budgets by 10 percent. The good news is no matter how bad the economy is, people will still be watching television. Cable, because it’s cheaper for advertisers, I think may be less affected by the recession than the broadcast networks.

---

How to break into the television business:

1. Move to LA.
2. Get a job in the industry, whether it’s a PA job or an assistant job. Use that job to move to the next job.
3. Meet everybody you can and forge really strong relationships. The industry is based on relationships.
4. Never, ever under any circumstances, stop writing. The real writers get up at five in the morning and write and then go to work.

---

Jason Boog is editor of GalleyCat.

In 2006, World Wrestling Entertainment (formerly the World Wrestling Federation) had a problem. Despite a booming business on television and an audience of 14 million, its two magazines couldn’t seem to hold on to their readers. So WWE‘s brass turned to men’s magazine veterans Tony Romando and Rob Bernstein to help them turn the publications around. Romando and Bernstein merged the two magazines into a single publication, ditched the fanzine approach, and instead turned WWE into a lifestyle publication more along the lines of Maxim or FHM.

Two years later, the new strategy is showing results. Not only was WWE profitable within its first year, but during the first half of 2008, when many consumer publications watched their circulation flatten out or continue to plummet, WWE grew 13 percent, and their ad revenue is up 22 percent. In the meantime, WWE now has seven international editions, and this year, it launched a new publication, WWE Kids, aimed at younger fans.

We caught up with WWE editor Rob Bernstein, who previously worked at Maxim, Yahoo! Internet Life, and Ziff Davis’ short-lived Sync, to give us the inside scoop on how they did it.

---

What did you do when you first got to WWE?
We came in and thought it would make more sense to combine the two magazines, since the two audiences overlapped so much, and give them one publication that covered the entire world of wrestling. We also wanted to take that men’s lifestyle vibe and apply it to the WWE magazine product. A large portion of the WWE magazine audience is male. Although there are female readers, we’re really targeting that male audience. When we arrived here, the magazines were really like fanzines, with low production values.

Why did they have two magazines to begin with?
There were two shows on TV — Raw on the USA network and Smackdown on MyNetworkTV. [WWE has since added a third show, ECW (Extreme Championship Wrestling), on the SCI FI channel.] The brands are very different. They have different Superstars (male wrestlers) and Divas (female wrestlers). But there’s a large crossover. Some fans like wrestling so much they watch both shows. So those fans had to purchase both magazines in order to get their wrestling news. We decided to increase the newsstand price for the single publication to $6.99. I believe it was $3.99 or $4.99, but for two publications. So it’s now a little bit cheaper for fans.

What have you heard from your readers about the new approach?
They love it. Before, the magazine only had dated wrestling information. They just regurgitated matches the fans had seen maybe two months before. We transformed it into a highly polished magazine that not only celebrates the world of wrestling but reaches outside the ring and tackles issues of health, grooming, cars, video games, music, movies, DVDs — you name it. It’s now like some of the celebrity magazines that allow readers to enter the world of the Hollywood elite. What we’re doing is allowing readers to spend quality time with the Superstars and the Divas.

“Tapping into a global brand does at least half the work for you.”

Why is the lifestyle angle so important to the readers in a way that that the other approach wasn’t?
It allows the reader to identify with these individuals they see on TV. It allows them to say, “Hey, I like that film too,” or “Hey, I agree with them, that’s an awesome band.” It allows us to connect the readers with the wrestlers on the show, the same way that section in US Weekly, “Stars are Just Like Us,” helps the fans connect with celebrities.

Did WWE know they wanted you to do this? Or did you and Tony come in and say, “Here’s what we think we should do”?
The corporate brass here realized their magazines were broken. They didn’t know how to fix them, but they definitely knew they were broken. Readership was on the decline, as was advertising. So they contacted Tony, with whom I had worked at Ziff Davis, and brought him in as vice president of publishing. Under his supervision and game plan, we turned it into a lifestyle publication. He thought that would allow us to reach a wider audience.

How long did you think it would take to turn around?
We were hoping to get an increase of about 25 percent in readership early on. We didn’t expect to break a profit in the first year. We were investing in photography, editors, and writers. But in the first year, we were profitable, which is pretty unheard of in the magazine world. Most publishing houses have three-to-five-year plans where they hope to break even. We broke even in year one. We more than doubled our audience in the two years we’ve been here.

This year, Wal-Mart, which has more than a thousand magazines on its news racks, wanted to increase profitability, so they started cutting back on titles. One of the publications they cut was Sports Illustrated for Kids. But when we added a new publication, called WWE Kids, we were able to get it on the newsstand to replace SI for Kids. SI is a strong brand. That Wal-Mart would drop them and replace them with WWE Kids is an awesome win for our team.

“We encourage readers to call us any night of the week. When the phone rings, the editor has to pick up the phone and respond to feedback. We can take that information and incorporate it back into the magazine. Fans love it.”

How do you explain the growth in readership? What are you delivering that readers want, that other pubs aren’t giving them?
There are two different things there. First, we’re providing content that the readers were starved for and not getting before — interviews with the talent at WWE and a level of access they never had before with the old publications.

Beyond that, we leveraged the resources of what’s really a global brand. Specifically, its national television exposure. You can’t get better advertising. Other publications, they don’t have that outlet. But three nights a week, we’re reaching over 14 million fans and putting the product in front of them. The producers find ways to expose the magazines to fans in the shows. Sometimes, it’s the Superstars carrying the magazines and reading them on the shows. Sometimes it’s an advertisement that pops up during the show. It’s a level of direct contact with the fans that other magazines just don’t have.

A couple of other things we do that are really cool that I haven’t seen at other magazines: We actively reach out to our fans. We actually ask them what they think about the magazine and what they want to see in the magazine. We publish a phone number in every issue, and we encourage readers to call us between the hours of 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. EST any night of the week, seven days a week. There’s an editor who’s actually carrying the phone with them everywhere they go, and when the phone rings during those hours, the editor has to pick up the phone and respond to feedback, field questions, address criticisms, take detailed notes of whatever is on the reader’s mind, and report back to me and Tony so we can take that information and incorporate it back into the magazine. Fans love it. They feel like they have an active role in the magazine, that they’re helping guide its direction. That’s key. They’re a part of the process.

Really? You have your readers call you at night?
Yeah, that helps get rid of all the young kids who just call up to see if they can get an autograph. It allows us to get a more adult response. When we first started that phone line, we did it between 2 and 3 a.m. The phone would ring off the hook. That’s how badly fans wanted to get in touch with the company to provide their feedback. The point of doing it that late at night was to get the really dedicated fans. If you’re willing to stay up between 2 and 3 a.m., you deserve to be heard. But it became impossible after a while to get editors to stay awake during those hours, so we moved the hours up.

What else do you to get to know your audience?
Every day, editors scour the message boards, we Google ourselves, we read hundreds of letters that land in our magazine inbox, and we read what our dedicated readers are saying about us.

If you were to go back to a more mainstream magazine tomorrow, what would you take from what you’ve learned in this niche?
If I were to go back to a publishing company, I would probably say, “Listen, one thing that seems to be working really on newsstands now” — and it’s pretty obvious to say, but it’s worth repeating — “is that global brands seem to translate really well into the magazine world.” Oprah. Martha Stewart. ESPN. Rachel Ray. Brands that people believe in and feel comfortable with.

There are probably some pretty strong untapped brands out there that publishing houses could tap into. Ellen DeGeneres, maybe? Women seem to love her. My wife loves her. Would people be willing to read a magazine spearheaded by her? Yeah, I think so. I think it would be wildly successful.

The other thing about global brands is that they have other mediums in which they can leverage the product. WWE has national television exposure and a really successful Web site. We can take those really strong arms of the company and use them to promote the magazine and drive subscriptions and readership — and just let fans know that we exist. That’s half the battle. The newsstand is so cluttered; how do you stand out? Tapping into a global brand does at least half the work for you.

That sounds like it would be bad news for unaffiliated magazines.
It’s certainly a challenge for magazines that are just trying to break into the newsstand. Publishing houses are trying to launch titles all the time and figure out ways to build mass audiences and excite Madison Avenue. It’s pretty hard to do when you can’t tap into an existing brand.

So at WWE, is the Web site totally its own thing, not a mirror of the magazine, as Web sites are for many other publications?
You have to remember that WWEis a television company and a television brand. So the Web site provides up-to-date results and breaking stories. The magazine provides something that a Web site can’t. That tactile feel. Those glossy photos. There’s a poster in every magazine that we print. That’s part of the value we offer.

What kind of writer does well at the magazine?
You have to have a good sense of humor. It’s a men’s lifestyle magazine. It’s filled with fun captions and pop culture references. You need to be able to entertain and make people laugh. WWE is all about entertainment. You need to able to come up with great ideas that wow the reader, both visually and editorially. We tapped editors that we’ve worked with before because sports entertainment is foreign to a lot of people in the publishing world. People from Rolling Stone, FHM, and Maxim — they just get it.

Where does WWE go from here? How do you grow further?
We already have seven international editions, and we hope to add another 11 by the end of 2009. That would give us 18 international editions of WWE magazine. Wrestling is an international phenomenon. You think it’s a U.S. thing, but it is so popular abroad. They do shows in Europe and South America all the time. Wrestling translates. People get it.

So which Superstar or Diva should we be keeping an eye on?
John Cena. He’s probably among WWE’s top three. You may know him from Gillette or Subway commercials. He’s an incredible entertainer. He really connects with fans. He has a top-selling rap album, and he’s broken into film. He has a new movie coming out next year — an action movie called 12 Rounds, directed by Renny Harlan, who directed Die Hard 2. Cena is poised for mega-stardom.

---

How to create a successful magazine on top of a successful brand:

1. Add value: Use the magazine to give readers something they aren’t getting on the show, rather than just a regurgitation of what they’ve already seen.
2. Get vain: Seek out what your readers are writing about you — on your forums or elsewhere on the Internet — and read it.
3. Pass out your number: Give the brand’s fans a way to get in touch with you. Then listen to them, and make them feel like they’re helping shape the magazine.
4. Get symbiotic: Use the television show, and its Web site, to promote the magazine. Reader awareness is half the battle in a world of crowded newsstands.

---

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

He’s interviewed Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama. He’s reported from both the DNC and RNC and each of the presidential debates for NBC News. And six months ago, he was graduating from college. Luke Russert is one of NBC News’ newest, and certainly youngest, correspondents. Russert is assigned to cover youth issues, and with youth registration up significantly this year, he has had no shortage of material. But in political terms, just as some on the right and left have questioned Gov. Sarah Palin or Obama’s experience, similar questions have been raised of the 23-year-old.

Of course, Russert is also a, well, Russert. When journalism icon Tim Russert died suddenly at the age of 58 on June 13, his son Luke was on the air paying tribute to his dad less than 72 hours later. He certainly looks like him, and with the NBC News job, he’s headed down the same career path. But there’s more to Russert than just the name. Luke has more than two years of experience as a radio host on XM, and, as he tells us, “This is a business I was raised around.”

When we interviewed Russert in a conference room at 30 Rock, it was another busy day: That morning he had been a guest on The Martha Stewart Show, and in the afternoon, he was appearing via satellite on The Oprah Winfrey Show and on MSNBC. In between, mediabistro.com talked to Russert about how networks can gain youth viewers, the future of Meet the Press, and more.

---

Name: Luke Russert
Position: NBC News correspondent
Resume: Interned at ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption and Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Has co-hosted 60/20 Sports with James Carville on XM Radio (now Sirius XM) since March 2006. Joined NBC News in August.
Birthday: August 22, 1985
Hometown: Washington, D.C.
Education: Double major in history and communications from Boston College
Marital status: Declined to comment
First section of Sunday Times: Week in Review
Favorite television show: Sportscenter
Last book read: Children of Jihad by Jared Cohen
Guilty pleasure: Chipotle

---

It seems that every election storyline is always, “young people will be coming out in record numbers,” and it never seems to happen. Do you think this year will be any different?

I do. From what I’ve seen on the ground, it certainly looks like kids will turn up in bigger numbers this year. But if you just look at the trajectory of the numbers, if we go from 2000 to 2004, there was a nine point increase in the number of kids who came out to vote. [For] the midterm elections in 2002 to 2006, there was a substantial increase as well, I believe in the range of eight to 10 points. At the primaries, 6.6 million young folks turned out to participate. So, given all of those statistics and those numbers, on paper it certainly looks like the youth vote will come this election.

That being said, no one really knows for sure. There [are] massive new voter registration numbers. If you look at the state of Virginia, there’s been since January, I think, about four or five hundred thousand people who have been registered to vote. Of those hundreds of thousands, people under 34 make up 62 percent of that new number. So if those folks come out to vote in a place like Virginia, it could really sway things. And I think they will. I mean, if they don’t come out in this election, I don’t know when they ever will come.

Let’s talk about Virginia. After a Today show segment, you seemed to imply smarter kids went to UVA, and favored Obama. On your blog you described the comment as “dumb” and called the experience one of your first lessons with the “perils of live television.” What did you learn from that?

Yeah, it was dumb, it was an absolutely dumb comment. I learned that when you’re going to go on live TV, you have to really, really prep yourself, and be prepared for anything. We were originally going to talk about the fact that there were some questions about young folks being able to register to vote in the town where their college is. If you remember, there was a story that came out, I think it was at Virginia Tech, where some election officials told kids, “If you vote here, it affects your tax status back at home,” and that sort of thing. That’s what I was prepared to talk about. And then we sort of switched it up — to, if you could say that UVA was an adequate microcosm of the state. And Matt [Lauer] said there were a lot of smart kids there, and he said smart and I went off of that. What I was really trying to say was that kids that go to UVA come from very, sort of, affluent educated households, who statistically support Obama. That being said, I took a lot of flak for it from Newsbusters, from kids who went to William & Mary, got a lot of emails from them. They actually sent me this thing that said the SAT scores at William & Mary are higher than those at UVA.

To prove they’re smarter?

To prove they’re smarter. And I learned to never really wing it to a degree. You obviously always have to be prepared to think about different things that you could be asked or that you could say. And avoid being very blunt like that. I think that’s something I stepped in, just saying, “Oh, of course smart kids do that,” and that’s something you kind of have to draw out. You have to learn that your audience is not thinking the same way you are, and you really have to explain yourself. I made the mistake of assuming people would understand what I meant and just forgetting that at face value, that looked really bad. And that’s why it was dumb, and that’s why it was stupid. And hopefully I won’t make another mistake like that again, but who knows. We all wish we’d never make mistakes again.

“Did my name get my foot in the door? Absolutely, I’ll be the first to admit that. But has my performance and ability got my butt through the door? Yes.”

You have been out there covering youth issues for months now. What do you see as something the mainstream media is missing when trying to connect with these potential viewers?

I think what they’re missing is they don’t necessarily provide a forum for young kids to speak out themselves. I really like what MTV did recently; they had a forum where you have a panelist and young folks grabbing the microphone. But I would take one hour of primetime and make it sort of a debate format, where you have a debate for young folks. Where the candidates have to answer young folks’ questions, have the networks cover it for an hour and young people would be engaged — they would tune in to that.

This isn’t about mainstream media in general, but I think that a lot of stories stereotype young people as being apathetic, or smoking pot, watching Entourage, playing XBOX all day. Just not caring. And then you have these stories where so-and-so did something in the community or someone who’s really politically active, and it’s sort of this novel concept, when in reality I think if you were actually on the ground, it’s widespread. I mean, kids are involved in all different facets of this democracy. Whether it be through community service, whether it be through political participation, and the one thing I would like to see is that it’s normal to see a young person contributing. Young people are productive members of society; they’re not just leeching on the government and their parents.

NBC News president Steve Capus called you one of the rookies of the year during the 2008 election. How does that make you feel?

It makes me feel really good. On top of that, it’s humbling to hear that from someone like Steve. He is a tremendous boss to work for. It’s rare in the news business to have someone who is understanding, who listens, who is willing to hear out new ideas. And he is someone who encompasses all that’s good in the business. I had someone come up to me once and was like, “What do you think of Capus?” And I said, “He’s a great guy,” and they go, “He just seems way too nice to be in that type of position for broadcast news.” And it’s a credit to what he’s been able to do. It shows that you can run a news division and not be, shall we say, a hardcore… I’m not going to say the curse word. [It shows] that you can run a news division and not be an overzealous micromanaging individual — that you can actually listen to people.

At the same time, it begs the question: Should a “rookie” be reporting for NBC during this election in the first place?

I agree that I have a very unique position. And I think I’m an interesting case study because I come from radio. I’ve been doing the radio show with James Carville for two and half years, so it’s not like I’m just being plucked from the ocean and thrown in front of a camera and they’re saying “Oh, what do you think about youth issues?” I was actually going to do a lot of stuff for a channel called POTUS for Sirius/XM doing much of the same stuff — talking about youth issues, young people’s concerns, engaging their reaction. I was approached by NBC News to bring that perspective to television. I understand people who say it’s a big jump, but I also think its territory that’s never really been explored before. It’s an area where news divisions and news networks definitely want to get involved because we are the future. In many cases we are future viewers and media consumers, but we are also future members of this democracy and this country. And for that reason, I think they were sort of trying to get in at the ground level with the new demographic. I think I’ve been able to do that.

“If I didn’t want [this], I could be in a log cabin right now, blogging.”

Is it the kind of thing where you think having someone who is technically “youth” cover youth issues is important, rather than having another correspondent assigned to youth issues?

Without a doubt, and studies prove that when you have peer-to-peer communication, people view it as a lot more authentic. We’re roughly the same age, when we’re talking to each other, we have sort of our own types of language because we’re young and you sort of view me as being more authentic because we’re in the same age range. When I’ve gone to college campuses, a lot of kids have come up to me and said, “We like that you’re here, a lot of times we’ll have some 35-year-old that comes up to us and says, ‘So, what is it really like to be young?'” And you know I’m only a few months removed from school — I know what kids are going through, and I try to bring that perspective. Look, in news, 35 is very young, without a doubt. And I think people in positions of power look at 35 as being very young. College kids don’t see 35 as being young. 35 is old to a lot of people. And I think that’s where I’ve been able to come in and say “Here’s someone who’s 23, here’s someone who’s learning almost with the demographics he’s covering.” That’s an interesting perspective. I’m right there with them trying to absorb information on the same scale that they are.

The other side of it is also the nepotism thing. Can you talk a little about that?

Sure. A lot of people have said that if he is not Luke Russert, he doesn’t get where he is. I respect their opinion. But in regard to that, I did have a radio show, for over two-and-a-half years, that was re-upped with a contract recently for two more. I don’t think that people in power at Sirius/XM, at NBC, would throw money at someone simply for the reason that their last name is Russert. Or is Zucker, or is Capus, or is Brokaw. If you are going to be in a position where you are representing the network, you have to know what you’re doing. Did my name get my foot in the door? Absolutely, I’ll be the first to admit that. But has my performance and ability got my butt through the door? Yes.

And one thing that I think is very important is we hear about self-made individuals and I think it’s a wonderful story. But nowhere in the course of human history — maybe the guy who invented the pet rock is an exception — has anyone made it from the bottom to the top without any help at all. There’s always been some sort of connection, some mentor that has brought them along the way. And so I understand the nepotism charges, and I know it’s something that will always be a part of any article that’s written about me for probably a long time, probably if I’m still doing this 20 years down the line, it’ll still be there. But it’s important to understand: this is a business I was raised around. Something I know in many ways like the back of my hand. I think if you look at other examples in media, Chris Wallace is a perfect example, who was raised in a media household who has done extraordinary things. If you look at the sports world, Joe Buck was getting one of the Games of the Week at FOX at age 25. And look at Jeff Zucker, 26, being the executive producer of the Today show, albeit not by name, but I think if there’s younger folks that have a certain talent, it’s not a disservice, especially if they do have a name, to put them forward.

Have you seen any pushback to your rise at NBC from people within the network?

Not overtly. As there is at any company, I’m sure there’s people speaking behind my back, but I’m sure there’s people speaking behind your back at TVNewser. There’s people speaking behind people’s backs at Wal-Mart, at Goldman Sachs, wherever. So no, has anyone ever come up to me and said anything snotty or rude? No. But is it being said? Absolutely. But that’s going on everywhere.

You signed a one-year contract with NBC just before the conventions. What do you see as your role with the network after the election, and also beyond this current contract?

My role, first and foremost, is to see if whoever is president keeps a lot of the promises being made to young folks. In the case of Obama, I think this $4,000 to use towards college in exchange for community service, I want to see if that program actually gets passed and gets put into place. You know, a lot of young folks are voting on that issue, solely. Apart from that I definitely want to try my hand at some different types of reporting. There’s a possibility of doing a Dateline piece, possibility of having more presence on the Internet, maybe MSNBC, and just see if I’m comfortable in television. But I really am going to try to learn more about TV and learn if I want to be a part of it. And I’ve said before, radio is my first love, my true love, it’s what I enjoy doing the most. At the end of the year, if I don’t necessarily see myself in television, I have no problem walking away. Obviously, I’d like to stay here for 50 years, but if I don’t think I’m doing a good job or I’m not happy, I’ll go to radio and be more than pleased to settle down.

MSNBC and NBC have become a focal point for those who charge liberal bias in the media during this election. Do you think that’s a fair point?

I don’t necessarily know if it’s fair to categorize the entire network as having a liberal bias. I think what you have, much like you have at FOX, is MSNBC has opinionated journalism in time slots. [Keith] Olbermann is opinionated journalism. Rachel Maddow is opinionated journalism. And they’ll be the first to admit, they take on the current administration, and there’s definitely a left-lean there. Do I think they speak for the whole network? No. And I think that when you have folks from the right that say “MSNBC has become the liberal version of FOX,” I don’t think that charge is accurate when describing NBC News, and I don’t think it’s accurate when describing MSNBC during the day — nor do I think it’s accurate when describing Fox a lot during the day, because I think during the day a lot of the stuff is just news. Sure, there’s some commentators on, but we’re talking about prime time hours. And prime time hours are there to attract viewers. There’s a lot of conservatives in the United States, there’s a lot of liberals in the United States, and I think what MSNBC has done, which is brilliant, is bring those people into the fold. I don’t think in any way do Olbermann and Maddow speak for the whole network at all.

Well a difference between Fox News and MSNBC is that Fox doesn’t have this other outlet, which is a network. Do you think that some of what people charge about MSNBC ultimately hurts the NBC brand, or do you see it as separate?

To some people, possibly. I don’t necessarily think the general public sees them as intertwined. I mean, the people on the right will make the case that what’s happening on MSNBC bleeds over into the network, but if you can find me an example of Brian Williams, Chuck Todd or Tom Brokaw or any stapleholds actually on the network broadcast, or Lee Cowan, Kelly O’Donnell, as being biased or even showing any hint of bias, send me the tape — I’d like to see it.

What do you see as the future of Meet the Press?

I think it’s entering a different time. My dad was a real staplehold there for 17 years, and I think it’s a show that is probably, most likely, going to change in format, whether they have two people asking questions, whether or not they bring in more panelists. But I see it as a show with a very successful formula, a blueprint that if someone goes in there and works hard, they can without a doubt achieve ratings success.

How closely have you been monitoring the program that is most directly associated with your father?

I don’t watch it as much as I watched when he was on, obviously. It’s still tough, to some degree, to watch it all the way through. I see who they have as guests, and I tune in. I think Brokaw’s been doing an absolutely outstanding job. Honestly I think, given the situation being dealt, it was so nice of him to essentially come out of retirement and lend his veteran presence. So yeah, I pay close attention to it. I care about what happens to it. I think it really is — and all the Sunday morning shows are — really the last frontier in terms of a format that is watched by millions, in which people can actually have a conversation. I just hope it stays in that realm.

We live in a culture now where a public person’s privacy is fairly nonexistent. If you look back to 2005, Gawker and other sites picked up on your Facebook page, the hot tub picture. Do you think its fair that you have to combat these private things in your life being on display?

In 2005, when Gawker did that, I don’t necessarily think it was fair, because I wasn’t involved in any sort of public media. I was just “son of, going to college.” And they’ve done other things where they’ve taken pictures of Caroline Kennedy’s daughter having a glass of wine in high school and putting that out there, and we remember the stuff with Judge Alito’s son and sort of tearing down the kids of celebrities, and I don’t like that. Now, you know, post-radio, post-TV, I’m totally willing to accept them writing anything and them saying anything, because I’m a public figure, I’ve put myself in that position and I chose to live that life. If I didn’t want it, I could be in a log cabin right now, blogging. But I chose to put myself out there, so by all means. If they feel inclined to take shots, I can accept them. I’m a big boy. If you spend your time reading sites like Gawker, and Jossip, and letting them get to you, you’re not going to go very far in this business.

---

Steve Krakauer is associate editor of TVNewser.

“Queen of the Internet.” That’s how Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour described Candy Pratts Price, executive fashion director of Style.com, in the tribute video shown before the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) presented Price with its 2008 Eugenia Sheppard Award. The award is traditionally given to either “a writer, photographer, or editor who has used his or her craft to further the profession of fashion reporting and coverage, or to a creative director, fashion editor, stylist, or artist whose exceptional creativity has shaped fashion visually.” Pratts Price fits both categories for a recipient, having championed and shaped fashion from her early career as a window designer at Bloomingdale’s to her tenure at Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue and, after a stint at Ralph Lauren, jumping into the online world as executive fashion director of Style.com (Vogue‘s online home), a position she has held since 2001. Pratts Price took time out of her busy New York Fashion Week to talk with us about what the accelerated global news cycle means for the fashion and media worlds, how she honed her own global vision, and why brevity is the soul of blogging. It’s good to be the queen.

---

Name: Candy Pratts Price
Position: Executive fashion director of Style.com
Resume: Designed award-winning store windows and displays for Bloomingdale’s; fashion director at Harper’s Bazaar; fashion director of accessories at Vogue; vice president and creative director for Ralph Lauren; creative director, VH1/Vogue Fashion Awards; executive fashion director, Style.com
Birthday: February 18
Hometown: Manhattan
Education: Graduate of FIT
First section of the Sunday Times: Book Review
Currently reading: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski, on her Kindle
Favorite television shows: “My favorite network is NBC, but I love CNN and I also love cooking channels and Turner Classic Movies. I’m a TV girl, so I don’t just watch one thing. I’ll tell you what I don’t watch: reality shows. Dancing stars, none of that stuff interests me.”
Guilty pleasure: “I’ve got very little guilt. I love food: pork, chicken, meat, wine. Fancy cars. I love glamour. I don’t have a lot of guilt.”

---

Thanks for taking time out of your New York Fashion Week to talk with us. What’s your take on the media presence at the tents this year? Are you encountering a lot of bloggers? Have you seen a change in recent seasons?
There’s no doubt that the market has gotten larger in attendance and in distribution — with more blogs, a lot of little boutiques — but basically it’s part of the process. If you’re taking a central forum to do anything, you’re going to have that. And isn’t that what we all want — to call attention to fashion and call attention to the small people and the big people?

How do you think the economic situation is affecting the fashion world — are you seeing the effects of the slowdown in the spring collections?
My point of view is that the designers are looking at satisfying many eyes. Not so much the financial eye, but they’re looking at satisfying all the global eyes that are paying attention. They are very aware that information is distributed very quickly and that information is very global. And now you’re addressing it for a crowd that’s looking at it from either Japan eyes or Russian eyes or Middle Eastern eyes or Canadian eyes, American eyes — you have a very global platform. So that make designers — I think it has made designers — pay attention to that, and maybe when they’re designing they’re trying to please more than others.

“More attention means more brand awareness. There are three monitors in this world: your cell phone, your television, and your computer. You’ve got to deliver that message.”

You’re known for your great eye and what designer Bruno Frisoni calls “a global vision.” What experiences, jobs, or influences helped you to develop this talent? When were you challenged to find your own vision?
Well, it’s curiosity first. You have to start somewhere, when you were a little girl, and that’s about curiosity, but I think my tenure with Marvin Traub at Bloomingdale’s when I went to different countries to do those promotions I saw how that works, and I think also because when working for a magazine, you have a lead of three to four months, so you get to see information very quickly. You’re in a meeting with a book editor or you’re in a meeting with the arts editor. You’re planning four months in advance so you know what exhibition is going to be somewhere. So I think that kind of magazine training just activates your curiosity more and more, and if you have an appetite for it, you go for it. Certainly, I have an appetite — not to know more necessarily, but I really want to know. I’ve got to find out.

The long lead time of magazines is a little bit of a luxury — to look ahead three or four months. The Internet has really changed the pace at which the public gains exposure to collections and trends. How does this new sense of immediacy affect fashion and media?
If you had four months to look at it, and you were getting information, it was being distilled or filtered or whatever word you want to use by a certain group of people. Now you’re getting information unfiltered and at a rapid pace, so you have — as a viewer and as a reader — choices, so many more choices. It’s going to be up to you now. You’re getting a lot of what you wanted; now make up your mind.

I think it’s healthy both ways. Obviously, you realize that I’ve given this a lot of thought because I’m on both sides of the coin. For example, I love miniatures — you know furniture sellers used to walk around with little miniature [versions of the furniture they were selling] and it took them days to get to someone’s home to tell the ladies what the new furniture was, and then you ordered it and you had to wait. Today, if you want a sofa that sits eight you can find it on the Internet and get it, but is that it? No, there’s still value in the option of going to look at it and in customizing it. I don’t think we lose what people are. People are still very important in all of this. It’s the human aspect.

In a panel last spring at FIT, Vogue editor Sally Singer said that this accelerated pace is challenging publications like Vogue to be better curators and focus on more special things. Do you agree?
Yes, but I would say that Vogue has always, always sought to be the standard. I think that the pride I have in Condé Nast is that you can get it first, you can get it fast, and you can get it exclusive[ly]. We have that power. We have that access. I think that if you talk to any fashion designer today, what are their wishes and dreams? Their wishes and dreams are to be in Vogue, and after they are in Vogue, they’ll say, “If I could only have a cover.” It’s what he or she can take home, either to the Midwest or to Japan and China and show, “I’m in Vogue.” There is that, and I think [the accelerated pace] is going to make for great magazines, because you are going to sharpen your point now. You’re going to be able to demand different things and you’re going to look at it a lot more, because you know five people have talked about the same thing as you. If you talk about something, I talk about something, and three other people talk about it too, one of us is going to try to make the story a lot more interesting or edgy or colorful. It challenges us.

Describe the career path that led you to your current position as executive fashion director of Style.com.
Went to FIT, worked for a photographer, worked at Bergdorf Goodman… Then designed windows and went to Bloomingdale’s, where Marvin Traub took me, had a fantastic career at Bloomingdale’s with all of their branch stores and the New York stores, basically reinvented windows with Bob Currie, then went to Harper’s Bazaar. When I was at Bazaar, Anna [Wintour] asked me to join Vogue as the accessories editor, and then I became the accessories director, did four or five years there, and then it was sort of, “Am I really good, or am I just comfortable?” Many offers came, and I had great admiration for Ralph [Lauren] because I thought that no one could have their signature about what they were doing in an American house as well, so when he called, I answered. I did a year there, did a movie [executive produced, in conjunction with E! Networks, a documentary about the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Jacqueline Kennedy exhibit]. Then, the Internet was in its infancy. Some [early Internet companies] won, some of them lost. Style.com happened to have been one of the winners, and eventually Anna said, “I think you should go there,” but in the meantime, I was doing all of the VH1/Vogue Fashion Awards, and I still am the executive in charge of programming for anything that’s Vogue, but Anna [Wintour] said, “You should go to Style.com,” and here I am.

What do you see as the role/editorial mission of Style.com?
To be editorial. Our role is to be a magazine on the Web. We are definitely not just a pick-up page, and we are not just dropping information at random. We do have content. We have an editorial staff. We do generate our own portfolios. We shoot. We have holiday portfolios, shopping portfolios. We run it like a magazine. We do have the [coverage of fashion] shows, which are basically how Style.com began, but we’ve added so many things, and we’ve changed the format, but I think if you were to say, “What site has an editorial point of view?” We certainly do. And we are the online home of Vogue, so we have the amazing access that Vogue has. I think that that’s why I’m there. I’m a Vogue girl that gives Style.com the Vogue access.

And it’s a testament to the authority of Style.com that WWD routinely indexes the popularity of designer collections based on the number of hits received on Style.com. What do you think are the key drivers of Internet traffic to certain collections? Sometimes the numbers don’t square with what I would expect in terms of the popularity of certain collections or designers.
Well, I think that culture plays a big part of that. For example, Marc Jacobs’ show is always going to up there, but it’s a phenomenon with Marc Jacobs. Whatever he does, his hits are phenomenal. It can be whatever he’s doing [in his Marc Jacobs line] or the Marc by Marc Jacobs line. He has a fan base, and even before he was at Vuitton, Marc had that kind of iconic, music/pop star value. And today, when you consider the Internet, it’s a very key thing that designers either want to or need to have. Marc has been everywhere, in music and different areas, so he’s kind of built himself a history and his own Web search in a way. There are times when you see things that are at the pulse of culture. Take politics today, look what’s happening. How does popularity in two days go from here to there? How can one person change the beat in minutes? That’s what it is, and it certainly has a lot to do with exactly what you and I are doing right now, bloggers, publicity.

Do you think that online popularity is correlated to commercial success for fashion lines or designers?

Basically, what I think that everybody who is designing fundamentally wants is attention. More attention means more brand awareness. More brand awareness means more people who go to the store and says, “Oh, that’s by Thakoon, I read all about him.” I think that there are lots of ways that this works. It’s maybe not as ching-ching right away, but it definitely builds an awareness, a familiarity. It’s a TV commercial. It’s television. You know, there are three monitors in this world right now: on your cell phone, your television, and your computer. You’ve got to deliver that message. People are walking around, plugging in, and sharing. And sharing is a great thing, because it’s word of mouth. So fashion as word of mouth. We’re making it in the electronic world sound like it’s the newest thing since cream cheese, but it isn’t, that’s word of mouth!

“If I could have 64 television monitors in front of me at all times and know what’s happening around the world, that would be thrilling.”

Do you read fashion blogs (other than those on Style.com)?
I read PopSugar, Fashionista, PopMatters, and The Huffington Post.

What do you think makes a good fashion blog?

Short and to the point. Not just wanting to hear yourself speak in print, and I think there’s a lot of that. We need writers.

What’s your advice to aspiring fashion journalists? What should they know about this field as they strive to progress within it?
You’ve got to love it, and you’ve got to want it. You’ve got to have passion. I always love someone who is not sitting there seeing the same thing as others, that thought to look beyond that, to find an angle to make their mark or to report something, and say, “Gotcha. Hey, those weren’t buttons, they were snaps!” That is a good fashion journalist.

Do you think that there are any jobs or organizations that serve as particularly good training grounds for aspiring fashion journalists?
Well, I think magazines, just because you see a little bit of everything. You see the clothes, you see the books, you see the art, you see the meetings, you see the traffic, you see the changes that occur within hours. You see editors editing words, you see the sense of urgency. The hours are long, the glamour is big. The demand is large. Also I think that any newsroom is good. I think [of] young interns in an NBC production suite. I think that anywhere news is being created is a fantastic arena to be in if you have that personality — that you can turn on a dime. For me, if I could have 64 television monitors in front of me at all times and know what’s happening around the world, that would be thrilling. I love breaking news. My major thing is, “What’s breaking now?” And if I can find that out and I can hang my hat on that and run, I can turn that into something interesting for you. You have to like that kind of stuff. Breaking news can affect fashion very quickly. The world is looking at fashion, and that’s great.

---

Stephanie Murg is co-editor of UnBeige.