Faith Salie, the host of Public Radio International’s Fair Game, definitely does not have a face for radio. The Harvard-educated Rhodes scholar and one-time Star Trek star took some time out of her hectic media day to answer our pointed questions.

Name: Faith Salie
Position: Actor, comedian, host/co-creator/writer/producer of Fair Game with Faith Salie from Public Radio International
Birthdate: April 14th, a.k.a “the day the Titanic sunk and Lincoln was shot.”
Hometown: Born in Boston; grew up in Atlanta, GA. “But I’ve been living in Santa Monica, CA for the last 11 years before working in NYC. (You know the adage: ‘Home is where most of your clothes are.’)”
Education: Harvard University, B.A. in History and Literature of Modern France and England (1789 to the 20th century); and Oxford University, M.Phil. in Modern English Literature (1880 to 1960). “I include the time periods so you don’t ask me any tough questions about before the French Revolution or after my parents hooked up.”
Marital status: “My stars, that’s more personal than my birthdate!”
Last book(s) read: “Oh god. I have to read so many every week. I just finished Rickle’s Book by, um, Don Rickles, bad-boy chef Marco Pierre White’s The Devil in the Kitchen (apparently ‘bollocking’ your underlings makes food taste better), and am starting Unburnable by Marie-Elena Johns (she appears gorgeous on the back cover, so the book must be good) and am loving the galleys of Jeffrey Frank’s latest, Trudy Hopedale (I like to read galleys with a red pen, as if I can be helpful).”
First section of the Sunday Times: “Which Times? I object to the assumption that everyone reads the New York Times! But okay, it’s Style. I love going to the wedding column to see if any same-sex couples made it in.”
Favorite TV show: “I almost never get to watch TV anymore (that is not at all a point of pride; it is a sad, sad testament to how busy I am). But I can’t wait for Weeds season 3 to start. Yikes, I need to get Showtime in my NY apartment.”
Last 5 songs listened to on your iPod? “Sadly, I can’t remember the last time I listened to my iPod. Probably girly tunes, like ‘The Long Way Around’ and ‘Easy Silence’ by the Dixie Chicks, ‘Perfect Girl’ by Sarah McLachlan are a few. But the last music I listened to at home was a sneak-peek recording of the cast album for Legally Blonde, created by my brilliant friends Nell Benjamin and Larry O’Keefe and Pink Martini’s latest, ‘Hey Eugene!'”
Most interesting media story right now: “I don’t know if ‘interesting’ is the right word, but to me, the so-called ‘honor killing’ story is the most disturbing and worthy of much greater coverage. It recently happened in London and continues to happen all over the world. Women’s rights issues need much more attention. It’s hard for us to cover on Fair Game because there just ain’t nothing remotely risible about it.”
Guilty Pleasure: “On Fridays and Saturdays I read Star and Us Weekly at the gym. But I really don’t feel guilty about that. I need to know how the stars beat cellulite. Let’s see … I put ice in my white wine. I always have to apologize: ‘I swear, I heard a sommelier on public radio say that this is appropriate!’ (I did.)”

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You are a Rhodes scholar and Harvard graduate. Let me try to phrase this nicely — what the hell are you doing on public radio??!?!
Um, I think that’s a compliment, so … thanks. What’s a Rhodes scholar supposed to do? I don’t have sensible hair, so I can’t get elected (yet); I’m not interested in being a lawyer or running a hedge fund. Actually, Fair Game has offered me the best opportunity to use my brain, my comedy, and my curiosity all at once. When I think about it, going to Harvard, winning the Rhodes, and co-creating and hosting this public radio show are commonly linked. That is, I didn’t specifically plan for any of those blessings, but when I look back at how they evolved, they seem somewhat inevitable. As far as public radio goes, all my education, acting, producing, writing, and improvisational experience logically lead me here now.

What was your first experience doing standup like?
Nerve-wracking and intoxicating. I was amazed at the laughter — it was like a tennis game: I’d lob them a joke and they’d laugh it back. I didn’t always have receptions like that, but that first time got me hooked for a while. I did a lot of personal material, including a game I invented for my family called “Gay Brother/Straight Brother” in which the audience has to guess which of my brothers I am describing. My gay brother told me it made his scalp sweat when he watched.

Are there any female comedians out there you emulate? Male comedians?
Emulate, no. Admire, yes. As far as funny women, I bow to Madeline Kahn. I really respect how savvy and smart Sarah Silverman is. I love Kathy Griffin’s balls and Megan Mullally’s acting chops. I love how comfortable David Letterman, Ellen DeGeneres, and Jon Stewart are in their skins — that’s why they’re the best at what they do.

Based on the photo gallery on your Web site, you definitely do not “have a face for radio.” Why radio?
That’s for sure a compliment, so thanks again. I endeavor never to have an ass for radio either. Radio is currently what’s most immediate, challenging, and fulfilling for me right now. I’m also still doing television, as an actor, writer, and producer, so the punim is out there.

How does radio compare with your television and film work?
What I really miss on the radio is doing physical comedy. That’s always been a trademark of mine, and for some reason, it doesn’t work on the radio. As far as tone, I’ve learned to pull back and trust that the microphone picks up the littlest thing. At first that was counterintuitive: I thought that since the audience couldn’t see me, I might have to express more. Not so. There’s power in having the smallest inflection mean a great deal.

Bottom line: radio is harder. Doing an hour-long show every single weekday that has 3 guests and has to be smart, bleeding-edge topical and funny — it’s insanely taxing. I give massive props to my team and executive producer, Kerrie Hillman. The only aspects of doing radio that are easier are that I don’t have to memorize any lines, and I don’t have to factor in time for hair and makeup — though I always apply lip gloss before we begin the show, as a courtesy to my guests.

What was the first time (on the air) like for you?
My heart was racing when I heard the opening music for the show and the whole thing was a bit like an out-of-body experience. I didn’t know some of the things I said until I listened later. It takes practice to be able to read a script like you’re not reading, to conduct an interview with someone while a producer is talking to you in your ear, and to improvise, digress, and be funny — all with a strict clock on you. But it was an extremely cool thing to sit at that mic and say, “From Public Radio International, this is Fair Game. I’m Faith Salie.” I still get a kick out of hearing it when the show airs. Mostly because now people will pronounce my name correctly.

“Q: Have you ever edited your own Wiki?
A: No, gross!”

Do you feel like you can get away with more on radio?
Ha! Are you kidding me?! On Significant Others I did a scene using an electric toothbrush as a “marital aid” during prime time. Or I shave my legs in the sink to get sexy for my gynecologist. Television is so much more fearless than radio, and therefore, I think, funnier. On the radio, a passing reference to bulimia (um, who doesn’t love an eating disorder joke?), race, or anything resembling innuendo pretty much gets left on the radio equivalent of the cutting room floor.

Is there anything that isn’t “fair game”? Is there anywhere you won’t go? Any taboos?
There is nowhere I won’t go, in theory. However, I’m also not interested in being a contentious, “gotcha”-style host. Nor do I want to be snarky in my humor. I take my role as a host quite to heart. If I could send every guest a handwritten thank you note and a Coca-Cola cake, I would. So with that in mind, even as I’m asking the tougher questions or calling people out on their preposterousness, I like to do it with playfulness.

What was doing Star Trek like?
Out of this world. First of all, I was “genetically enhanced,” which meant I didn’t have to spend hours getting prosthetics applied to my face. Secondly, I was part of a quartet of genetically enhanced mutants and our role was to bring some comedy into the show, which was a delight. When the producers brought us back for a second season, I got to break out of the quartet — in song. I had an aria with the camera circling me, Sound of Music-style. Dream come true! And then, as if to gild the Star Trek lily, I got to be beamed up. After the show aired, it was an astonishing thing to become part of this cult community. Trekkers know my character, Serena Douglas, and I’m on a trading card. Between doing Star Trek and Sex & the City, I feel like I got to be a part of two cultural phenomena.

Do you listen to NPR? Or is NPR now a mortal enemy?
The only deep brand loyalty I have is to Coca-Cola. And I’m new to public radio, so the NPR/PRI thing doesn’t really mean that much to me. Obviously, I’m grateful to PRI for getting behind Fair Game, but I learn from listening to all kinds of shows — on the rare occasions I get a chance to listen to the radio at all. And when I do, I don’t just listen to public radio … I love to hear what Dr. Laura and Sean Hannity have to say about what kind of woman and American I am, respectively. I really miss my drive time in L.A. As my carbon footprint has gotten smaller, so has my daily exposure to hilariously infuriating conservative thought.

How would you say you’ve gotten to where you are?
Platitude alert … Luck and hard work. The luck part happened early on … like way early on, because I was lucky enough to be born to the best mother and father in the history of history. Really, everything good in my life can be traced back to their support, encouragement, generosity, and, yes, faith. Then I worked my ass off. When I was young, I followed all the rules. Home before curfew, no drinking, no drugs, no sex, went to church, never cursed, never pulled an all-nighter. I was rewarded academically and professionally for that kind of behavior. And then I think around turning 30, it was, well, not so much breaking the rules, but departing from them. Not trying to fit into a mold but embracing all of who I am: feminist and girly, Yankee and Southern, raised Catholic but now a Very Bad Catholic, educated yet salty-mouthed, pop-cultured obsessed as well as politically and scientifically aware, and an actor who also writes and produces.

Have you ever edited your own Wiki?
No, gross! I don’t know who put that up there. If I had, it would be infinitely more interesting. It would detail my entire oeuvre — including my winning the title of Miss Aphrodite in my high school pageant — display a fetching photo, and include lots of fascinating trivia, like the fact that I can recite the titles of all of Shakespeare’s plays in under 30 seconds.

According to your Wiki entry, your brother worked for the Howard Dean campaign. What are your thoughts on the 2008 race?
Oooh, I like this question because it allows me to brag about my brother David Salie, who was a real pioneer in grassroots fundraising. He created a model for taking online political communities and bringing them together in the flesh — and for making small contributions aggregate into something significant. I think the Dean campaign changed the face of American politics, and my big brother was a part of that. (My other big brother Doug is extraordinary too.) There’s this general eyerolling about how early this presidential campaign has started, a good year and a half before the election. I love it! I can’t get enough of it. It’s like a really important reality show, the kind you feel smart for watching — we get to watch these 18 or so people try to prove to America that they’ve got talent, that they think they can dance, that we should give them the rose. All we’re missing is seeing them in bathing suits. I think Wolf Blitzer should get them drunk in a hot tub for a debate. Actually I’d rather see that Rob Marciano moderating in a hot tub. He’s the CNN weather guy, but he must know a bit about politics, right?

I am excited about watching all the candidates on both sides of the aisle. They’re demonstrating so much energy, and I think it’s infectious and hopeful for the country. It’s also great for comedy. I just interviewed Senator Mike Gravel on the show. This is a 77 year-old man polling at 1 percent, and he is determined to win. That’s so American — I love that!

What do you think about the potential of an XM-Sirius merger?
I don’t think about it. Sounds sexy though.

What’s your media day like? (Be specific as possible — wake up, read The New York Times, watch the Today show, etc.)
I wake up at 7:00 a.m. to the siren call of Morning Edition and keep it on as I check news online. Then I head to the gym for an hour where I am on the treadmill or the elliptical, reading either a book or a series of articles for that day’s guests while I am listening on my headset to CNN and a few of the network morning shows (multiple TV sets in the gym). I perform my ablutions and maquillage while listening to BBC World Service (Robin Lustig’s voice makes me giggle). As much as the height of my heels allows, I dash to the subway and continue reading on my commute — the day’s paper or an article or book by a guest.

Then while I’m writing, editing, and preparing that day’s show, I am checking the news all day long on the Internet and on our closed caption TV. Although sometimes we like to change the channel to Jerry Springer and read the closed captioning: “What do you mean you work at a midget bar? [Laughter. Angry women smackdown.]” After the show tapes, I place a quick call to my dad on the way to the subway — for an update on extremely local family news. Then I read while commuting to whatever I have to do that night — go to a play or a screening or an event for Fair Game. If I get home with any energy left, I might turn on The Daily Show or Colbert to see if/how they covered the same stories we did.

That’s my media diet. I’m sure it could use more fiber.

What’s your dream (onscreen) role?
Well, I began my career (at 13) as an actor and remain an actor at heart. So my dream role is to be in a movie with Meryl Streep, if she’d have me.

Finally, The Sopranos ending — love it or hate it?
Do all “Media People” watch The Sopranos after they read the The Times? I don’t think I’ve ever seen an episode of The Sopranos –maybe just parts of one or two. I did follow the furor over Mr. Chase’s cut to black; and I think it was brilliant — offering mystery to some and closure to others. It’s the premium cable version of the ending of The Turn of the Screw. And please, what’s more genius than the most critically-acclaimed television show in history ending with onion rings and a Journey song?

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

David Rensin’s twelfth book, All for a Few Perfect Waves: The Audacious Life and Legend of Rebel Surfer Miki “Da Cat” Dora (HarperEnt 2008), takes his readers on a four-year journey in search of the life of the late, mid-century surfer king of Malibu.

Along with show business legend Bernie Brillstein, Rensin has also co-written It’s All Lies and That’s the Truth: and 49 More Lessons from Fifty Years of Trying to Make a Living in Hollywood (Gotham 2004) and Where Did I Go Right?: You’re No One in Hollywood Unless Someone Wants You Dead (LittleBrown, 1999), Brillstein’s best-selling memoir. Rensin is the creator and co-author of the cult hit The Bob Book, a hilarious and groundbreaking sociology of men named “Bob.”

Rensin is also a long-time contributing editor for Playboy, for which he’s done more than a hundred interviews with celebrities including Jerry Seinfeld, Marty Scorsese, Chris Rock, Sean Penn, and Julia Roberts. He has written extensively for Rolling Stone, Esquire, TV Guide, and US, among others

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Name: David Rensin
Position: Author
Company: Self-employed
Hometown: Born in Manhattan; Los Angeles since 1964.
Education: BA in Political Science
Family: “Fortunately — a wonderful wife and 17 and a half-year-old son.”
Favorite TV show: Friday Night Lights
Last book read: Wanderer by Sterling Hayden.
Guilty pleasure: “Stealing chocolate from my mother’s nightstand.”

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What is your average media day like?
Read the LA Times over breakfast. Check the Web. Think about commenting in various comment sections; decide not to. Read the New Yorker, Business Week, the Economist at random. Watch the midday news. Check the Web. Watch Brian Williams while thinking about Katie Couric’s suddenly bad makeup. Listen to KPCC or KCRW in the car.

How do you carve out time to write?
Not a problem. I actually start early, and work until I get interrupted or fall asleep. When there’s work, I’m relentless; when there’s none, I noodle. I don’t get writer’s block.

Describe your writing “area” — any rules for yourself? Schedule you try to adhere to? Special pens, paper, pets? Strange routines we would delight in hearing?
I have a nice office at home. I can’t write with a pencil anymore and still hope to read what I scribbled. The dog wanders in at odd times to assure me that someone still loves me. I get a great view out the sliding glass door to the green and forested back yard. My one writing extravagance is a 21″ pivoting monitor, which I put in the vertical position so I can see more on the screen. I keep a notebook of everything I talk about on the phone that I need to remember, as well as occasional revelations about the meaning of life. Of course, written in pencil, I can’t decipher anything later.

How did you decide what to write about?
Sometimes it’s just so obvious; a passion, an interview that screams to be done; someone who needs a book collaborator and has a handful of cash — okay, not cash, but a topic or a life that really interests me, that I think will open new areas of experience and knowledge. I also like to constantly do different types of books so I don’t repeat myself. After an opening run of collaborations with big time comedians, I did a Hollywood mogul, a war hero, a musician, then my own book, The Mailroom (Ballantine 2004) — an oral history covering 65 years of what it’s like to start at the bottom in a talent agency mailroom, dreaming of making it to the top. And my upcoming book, All for a Few Perfect Waves, is about the once and forever charming, charismatic, enigmatic late surfer king of Malibu, Miki “da Cat” Dora. It’s an oral bio that took four years.

How much research did you do for All for a Few Perfect Waves?
More than I thought I could do. I surfed in the mid ’60s and early ’70s, so I knew the subject. Still, I read all the surfing books I could get my hands on, watched DVDs, read everything about Dora, including piles of his letters and faxes, his articles, his travelogues. I then interviewed over 300 people; traveled to his beach haunts in southern France and on the African cape, and called everywhere else in the world where people ride waves. I drove the length of California, Googled incessantly, and tried to make sense of it all. Thank goodness I didn’t have to transcribe all the 300+ tapes! (Oops! There goes the advance.)

What about collaboration — hardest thing about co-writing?
The hardest thing is trying to convince people/readers/reviewers/pundits without protesting too much that it’s not ghostwriting but co-writing. Collaborating. I don’t invent their stories and go off and write on my own. The subject doesn’t get to phone it in. It’s hard work, we’re in it together, and there’s lots of blood and guts on the floor (in a positive sense) to sift through. But that’s what I get for insisting that the book’s subject tell me everything, so that I can pick what I think works — all of this subject to argument and their final judgement, of course. The best thing about collaboration is the chance to go deep into a subject, to find nuances you don’t have room for in a magazine profile. Also, the “subject” always discovers that they don’t have to be so afraid of talking about what they were initially concerned about, that once the words are in their mouth instead of rattling around in their heads, it isn’t so terrible and they see how it all fits together. The trick is to walk a fine line between obvious glad-handing and obvious trash talk. The reader has to believe you’re being honest, so self-effacement is good.

And you’ve worked with show biz folk — harder than we might think? Or easier?
No problem, once you create the proper atmosphere and earn trust. With older “show folk,” it’s like sitting at the Passover table listening to a wonderful story. With comedians, I remember that they told all the jokes, even if they didn’t. Garry Shandling used to compliment something I’d written and ask who’d thought of it: him or I. He did, of course. And even if he didn’t, he still did — and he always made my humor much better. The big thing to remember: listen, listen, listen. Your subjects always ask follow-up questions based on what they said, not your next written question.

Ever tempted by fiction?
Always. Every time I think there’s nothing else out there to write about that is worth a damn (which means that the longer I’m at this, the less it’s about doing anything to get established and more about doing something that might matter to the world or me), I think maybe it’s time for fiction. Maybe it’s a last resort because I have to keep writing. I have some stories. If I live long enough to draw down on my retirement savings, I’ll give it a shot.

What are you working on now or next?
Between 2000 and 2003 I did three books overlapping each other. Then I spent four years on All for a Few Perfect Waves. Unfortunately, I don’t have the luxury of writing “in the seventh year he rested.” Now I’m hard at work on my next book. It answers the question: What really happened to the high school student voted most likely to succeed? And more. To start, I’m looking for people who graduated in 1967. I’m also putting together a chapbook of stories about the transformative effects of doing good works of any sort. How did the decision to leap from positive thinking to positive doing change your life? I’ve also been working with a well-known lawyer on a book about his analysis of the shortcomings of the justice system. We’ll get it done if he ever gets out of the courtroom. I’m waiting to see if a potential celebrity collaboration is in the offing — someone I really want to work with. And I’m always looking for young writers who want to graduate into books and might want to take a crack at some of my long-lingering ideas and help make them a reality — for a piece of the action.

Who’s the biggest influence on your work?
Oral histories: Jean Stein and George Plimpton’s Edie. Studs Terkel. Whoever I read last who has a real voice. My brother-in-words Bill Zehme. My wife.

If you weren’t a writer, what would you do?
Iron shirts, vacuum rugs, pull weeds, eat, read — all things that lead to immediate gratification. But that still leaves many hours. So I guess I’d write. To be perfectly frank, I’m a writer by accident, a guy who wanted to meet women and go to rock shows for free in college, way back in the late ’60s. One thing leads to another. About seven years into it, I realized I better take it seriously. That paid off in pieces for many major mags, a contributing editorship to Playboy since 1981, hundreds of interviews, and twelve books. Or, as I like to put on my high school reunion questionaire when it asks, “What is your greatest achievement?” “Never had a job.”

As a follow-up, what would you love to do?
Keep traveling the world with my wife. Pass along my knowledge and experience. And I’d like to retire — so I can write.

Work’s over, kitchen’s clean, the kid is occupied — how do you kick back? Music, book, DVD — what’s your relaxation preference? (And please don’t tell me you go for a nice five-mile run.)
I do a nice five miles — maybe more — on my rear-end satiating my addiction to mindless television viewing, while also checking emails, snacking on fresh fruit, and playing games on my Treo. No wonder I sometimes feel I’m out of the loop and need to get out and meet more LA writers! Then my wife and I wander off, and leave the rest to your imagination.

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[Kate Coe is the co-editor of FishbowlLA.]

Known for her saucy language and pioneering role in turning the average diner into a well-versed foodie, Gael Greene has been covering all things edible since she became New York magazine’s “Insatiable Critic” in 1968. She wrote the column through 2000, before she relinquished the weekly deadline to have more time to travel. Her
current commitment to New York has her writing a weekly column in the
food pages, where she offers up-to-minute critiques. Along the way, she also wrote two bestselling erotic novels, Blue Skies, No Candy and Dr. Love, as well as the nonfiction guide Delicious Sex. Her latest book, Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess (Warner Books), chronicles her own culinary, erotic (she bedded Elvis, Clint Eastwood, and Burt Reynolds, to name a few), and travel exploits, was recently released in paperback. Greene also just launched Insatiablecritic.com, which promises to feature behind-the-scenes info, “golden oldie” columns and articles and dining secrets from Greene and her peers.

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Name: Gael Greene
Position: Contributing editor, New York magazine
Education: University of Michigan, BA in Literature, Science and the Arts
Hometown: Detroit
First job: “In college, I worked for my father in his dress shop. I made the tags for the dresses.”
Birthdate: “I can’t remember; I guess it wasn’t memorable.”
Marital status: Single
Favorite TV show: Weeds
Last book read: “Marco Pierre White’s memoir The Devil in the Kitchen. He’s one of the original bad boy chefs of England.”
Most interesting media story right now: “The eminent global crisis is fascinating and terrifying.”
Guilty pleasure: “I suppose juje fruits.”
First section you read in the Sunday Times: “I’m so shallow — the Style section.”

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How did you get started doing food writing? Had you done any previous journalism?

I was a newspaper reporter. I worked for UPI in Detroit and came to The New York Post for a one-week tryout.

Did you apply for that?

I came to New York every three-day weekend, and I only took [the UPI job] because I couldn’t get a job in New York. I was stunned to discover nobody wanted me since I had been the stringer in Ann Arbor, Mich. for Time and Life and the Detroit Free Press. I thought it would be a cinch. Finally, somebody offered me a one-week tryout at the Post — a very different Post from today’s. I got a second week, then they gave me a month, then they wanted to give me three months, and I said, “Hire me, or I’m going to Italy, where the men are so wonderful,” so they said, “Okay, you’re hired.”

What were you doing at the Post?

I was a general assignment reporter. I did a lot of features, but I also covered murders. I actually covered Elvis when he passed through in a train on the way to Germany.

How long were you at the Post?

I was there three years.

What did you do after that?

I freelanced. I started a novel that was totally impenetrable — not even I could understand it. I freelanced for Cosmopolitan, Ladies Home Journal, and McCall’s.

How did you transition from freelancing to becoming a food critic?

One day I got a phone call from [original New York editor] Clay Felker asking if I’d be the restaurant critic for New York magazine. I was shocked; I don’t know where he got the idea except that I had written one piece on the re-opening of La Cote Basque.

I said to Clay, “I can’t afford to work for you, I hear you’re not paying very much until the magazine starts making money, and I’m making so much money writing.” He said, “People are begging for this job so they can charge all their meals to us.” Before he could change his mind, I said yes.

Did you get to pick the places you covered?

Mostly I decided what I wanted to cover. Once in a while, Clay would come up with an idea such as an article on how to beat the menu rap. He’d say, “Why don’t you go to the most expensive, great restaurants and see what happens when you order a soup for lunch, or a salad?”

Did you continue to freelance?

Yes, I did.

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“It seemed like everyone [who] read New York magazine turned first to the food page and loved my writing. It was very heady stuff.”

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Was there a point when that became your primary job?

At some point my then-husband [Don Forst] said, “Why don’t you stop doing all this freelance stuff. Write for New York and write your book.” I’d been talking about writing a novel since I was 18. I started working on Blue Skies, No Candy and pretty much stopped doing a lot of the freelancing, and just worked for New York magazine.

Is food writing your true love?

I always felt I was just earning pocket money until the point when I would write my bestselling novels [laughs]. I was so sure that if I ever sat down and wrote a novel, that would be it. But there’s no question that there’s so much instant gratification in writing the restaurant reviews — especially in the beginning when most people were just learning about food and beginning to fall in love with eating out, and the whole restaurant revolution was in its infancy. There I was in the major spotlight of New York magazine. The timing was great; every day brought some incredibly new discovery, and people really looked to me to tell them where to go.

Today, everyone’s a critic and so much has happened, people take it for granted. I remember when the first great bread came to New York; today, we have 100 great breads. Back then there was just cotton fluff. There was one sorbet: cassis sorbet at Lutece. People think sorbet came with the pilgrims, but it didn’t. That was intensely gratifying. It seemed like everyone [who] read New York magazine turned first to the food page and loved my writing. It was very heady stuff.

Do you still feel that excitement about it?

I do always expect something wonderful to happen every time I sit down at a table. I’m always hoping and expecting to discover some really talented new chef or have a dish that is just beyond anything I’ve ever tasted like it before. I think everyone expects at some point that a restaurant critic is going to become jaded because it’s [eating out] every single night, but in fact, I can’t say I’m jaded. I did get tired of that Monday morning deadline and reaching a point where editors were telling me what to do. There were some editors along the way who were extraordinarily brilliant and made everything smarter and funnier, but one or two of them were killers, and that was horrible too. One, especially, was so mean — that’s when I decided I should stop being the weekly critic.

Interestingly, most of my travel pieces are focused on food, partly because that’s what people expect of me.

Do you have a weekly schedule? How often do you eat out?

I go out to eat, as my guy says, “eight nights a week.” We eat out six to seven nights a week, and if I have some business to do, there might be a lunch or two. I don’t need to do that for the columns that I’m writing, but I love it and it’s a chance to see my friends, to get out after a day at the computer, and just be social. There are lot of New Yorkers going out at least five to six nights a week just to be social, to see their friends, or for romantic reasons. Not a lot of people I know are still cooking.

I can go to dinners at people’s homes now. I have to let people know I’m available; all those years, I turned down all these dinner invitations because I had to work.

Do you expense all your meals?

Not anymore. Some of them are New York magazine meals, but mostly they’re not.

Where do you look to stay current about food and restaurants?

Besides the press releases — which often talk about restaurants that aren’t opening for months — columns in New York magazine and The New York Times, which cover what’s happening and what’s about to happen. I have a couple of folders in my computer that are nothing but [lists of] restaurants that are opening or have opened to remind me. Then when I want to go someplace in a particular neighborhood, I can see what’s new and exciting.

I have other lists, too. We go to a lot of places that are affordable for people who are going out seven nights a week, who are paying for their own meals. I have a list in my head, for my Web site. There’ll be lists of my favorite places in the neighborhood; favorites when you’re pinching pennies; favorite places worth a major splurge where I don’t mind paying $150 for dinner for two. Maybe I will ask some of the chefs or restaurateurs I know, “Where do you eat out when you’re just the two of you [out] in your neighborhood? Somewhere reliable when you’re not catching up with what’s new and hot?”

Do you have any particular favorite columns?

The column on my visit to the Troisgras, “The Gourmaniacal Detour.” The nice thing about New York magazine is they let me make up words like that. I think that is so hilarious and wonderful, and it really helped my memory to have all those
old articles in my files and all the old magazines on the shelf. It helped me remember specific meals that I ate, and it brought back the thrill of discovery. It reminded me about times that we cried because it was so beautiful that we could hardly stand it. That’s one of the articles that I love.

How did you decide the time was right to write a memoir?

I’d thought about it for a while, and in fact it was suggested by Michael Korda: “Why don’t you tell the story of the revolution in dining and tie it into your own story?” Which is what I did: What happened in the four decades when America was falling in love with restaurants. I love the title: Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess. The actual writing took four years and a year of the editing process — going back and forth, cutting, changing, adding and copy-editing, un-copy-editing the copy editor who didn’t quite understand some of my style.

How was that process different from the other writing you’ve done?

I found that writing the memoir was the least painful writing that I have ever done, and I think part of that was remembering in some cases terrible sadness, and in other cases, remembering incredible love and lovemaking. So for a while, I was just wallowing in some mostly wonderful memories, and it seemed to flow onto the page in a way that the daily stuff doesn’t. The daily stuff really has to be shaped, especially now that it’s short. When you’re writing 1,200 words on one restaurant, it’s easier than when you’re writing 246 [words].

You said earlier that now everyone’s a critic…

It’s amazing. That was Zagat’s brilliance — to figure out that people would like to be a critic and were ready to be critics. And people do eat out a lot now and they’ve been exposed in travel and in the sophistication of restaurants that are available… Everybody has an opinion.

Do you think that’s a good thing?

It’s not a bad thing. Of course, some people have no taste, but they have a lot of opinions. And certainly in some of the blogs, people don’t have a lot of knowledge, but they maybe have good taste and an opinion.

One of the things that’s not too good — and I’m guilty of being a really naughty critic along with the rest of them — is the big rush to be first. It doesn’t give restaurants a chance to find out what they’re doing. Craig Claiborne, the great critic at The New York Times, had a rule: He’d never go to a restaurant [until after it had been open] three to six weeks, and he would taste their food a minimum of three to four times before he’d finally write the piece. I was always first because he took his time.

As a weekly critic for 30 years, I made it a policy never to go into a restaurant until it had been open three weeks. Now for my column, “Insatiable Critic,” I may go very early to do a “First Tasting,” or I may even attend a “Friends and Family” tasting to report on what a new spot will be like when it opens. The final judgment comes from New York magazine’s critic, Adam Platt, although with my new journal “Bite” on InsatiableCritic.com, I will have a few last words myself again.

If someone wanted to become a food critic, what advice would you give them?

I would say if you’ve got a restaurant dining column in your high school or college paper, that’d be a great way to start. And also cooking: I think it’s important to cook. I was definitely a foodie for many, many years before I became a restaurant critic. I took cooking classes, and my friends and I who were early foodies were competitive cooks. I would read a lot of what’s been written, and some of the old collections of the earlier critics, so you have some sense of history. Probably much of it is online now. One of the most important things, certainly for New York magazine, is writing. I think they spent two and a half or three years looking for someone to take my place after I said I wanted to stop being the weekly critic. They read dozens of columns and stories submitted by people who were dying for the job, and they chose Adam Platt, who was a writer who really loved food and had written enough food and travel pieces.

Eat, cook, read, travel. If there are too many things you don’t like, I can’t imagine that you could really be a restaurant critic. There was one New York Times critic who didn’t eat dessert, and he’d say, “and my wife thought dessert was wonderful.”

What do you read to stay current?

I couldn’t miss the Times and I’ve started reading the blogs. I thought I didn’t have time, but I wanted to see what everyone was doing on their Web sites. I read Gourmet and Food and Wine and Bon Appétit. I read Food Arts, a magazine for professionals basically aimed at chefs and restaurateurs. It’s full of inside industry things that are good to know. I read nation’s Restaurant News, not for reviews but for trends and business stories. I read the dining section of The New York Times. It’s fabulous, it’s like a magazine every week. I read the business section of The New York Times because I’m always looking for who’s doing well and might become a donor to Citymeals-on-Wheels. I used to just throw it away with the sports section.

How did your novel Blue Skies, No Candy come about?

A man that I was mad about challenged me to write the novel. He said, “You’re 40 years old, you can’t be a childhood wonder anymore, so if you’re not gonna write it, why don’t you stop talking about it?” And so I thought, “Oh my God, he’s right.” I took some time off and started working on the novel. I went to The MacDowell Colony, wrote the first hundred pages and sold it to William Morrow. I should’ve just taken a leave of absence and written the book, but I was having too much fun, going dancing every night after dinner and having the gratification of being in the middle of so much happening in the food world. I took summers off and finished the novel mostly in the Hamptons in different little houses that I rented.

How did the novel-writing compare to what you expected?

First of all, I was very lucky. I had a contract with William Morrow to do a biography and was way behind, and then I didn’t like the guy I was writing about. It wasn’t going anywhere, so I asked if they’d take the novel instead. They read the first hundred pages and changed the contract. A lot of people at that time were curious about what kind of a novel Gael Greene, that restaurant critic, would write. It was pretty shocking to them that it was very erotic, very graphic. I thought it was erotic, they thought it was over-the-top sexy; some people thought it was obscene. I was really shocked. I thought it was just wonderfully revealing, and if it would let you know what a woman felt sexually in bed, a lot of women would be excited to read it. The very negative reviews very quickly got everybody rushing to the stores to buy it. It was on the bestseller lists.

It took me four years to do the first novel and five years to do the second [Dr. Love], which was briefly a bestseller in hardcover, and then also a bestseller in paperback. I got a lot of money for it based on the success of Blue Skies, so I was pretty spoiled. Then I immediately started on the third novel, which I wrote and rewrote and rewrote and rewrote, and nobody liked it, so that was a shock.

Do you have a favorite out of the various kinds of writing you’ve done?

I’m proud of Blue Skies, No Candy. It’s not as well-written as Dr. Love, but it’s more compelling. I read it myself and I enjoy it as if I hadn’t written it. Sometimes I wonder, “Did I write that?” Once in a while, I think the reason it was so hard for me to write the column was me thinking, “How I am I going to be as good as I was last week or last year?”

Probably the best thing I’ve done is Citymeals-on-Wheels, which does take advantage of my being a writer. It began from feeling that I couldn’t live the way I live and spend so much time and money eating when people on my block might not have anything to eat on the weekends. At that time [1981], it was clear that the government funds were not adequate to bring weekend or holiday meals to the homebound elderly. I called James Beard, he called a few friends, and we started raising money. It just felt wonderful to be able to do something like that, and what our money bought was a Christmas meal for several thousand people who would not have one otherwise. It’s been 25 years now, we’ve raised a couple hundred million dollars, and Citymeals delivered its 32nd millionth meal last Christmas Day. That’s really a very worthwhile thing.

Maybe I changed the way people talk about food or write about food. People never used to say, “Oh I can’t believe what I have in my mouth,” when they’re sitting at a sushi bar and they taste some extraordinary texture or contrast of texture. We didn’t talk like that in the 70’s, we didn’t think like that in the early 70’s. It wasn’t considered proper to carry on about food in many homes, so I think that the sensuality of food was really something that I was among the first to talk about; James Beard expressed it, as well, in his columns. But maybe I used the words of the bedroom more. People said I confused sex and food, but in fact, I have never confused sex and food. I like keeping them separate; they’re just two great pleasures.

Rachel Kramer Bussel is a writer, editor and blogger.

[NOTE: This interview contains excerpts, and has been edited for clarity.]

No matter where your media interests lie, it’s probably safe to assume that at one time or another, Merrill Brown has had your dream job. Reporter at a big-name paper? Check. (He covered
finance for the Washington Post.) Magazine editor-in-chief? Of course.
(He was nominated for a National Magazine Award when helming Channels.)
TV executive? You bet. (He was one of the original founders of CourtTV.)
Publishing strategist? Sure thing. (He was a consulting editor at both
Money and Time, as well as several other media companies, and now
runs his own consulting firm.) New media visionary? Been there, doing that. (He
was the founding editor of MSNBC.com, the launch director for DesktopVideo,
and is the chairman of Now Public, a Vancouver-based Web company that could
change the face of news reporting. “It wants to be the premium acquirer and
distributor of citizen journalism around the world,” he says).

So is there a method to Brown’s resumé madness? “My career switches are more
based on exciting opportunities that were presented than on some clearly well-developed plan,” he says.

Brown’s also looking toward journalism’s future by helping to train
tomorrow’s reporting superstars. He’s editorial director of News21, a news
initiative sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation and the Knight Foundation. In
that role he ensures that student journalists from five journalism programs —
Columbia, Northwestern, Berkeley, USC, and Harvard — have the tools they need
to produce investigative content on issues relevant to American democracy in
principle and application.

---

Position: National editorial director of News21; Chairman of
NowPublic.com; founder and principal of his own consulting business, MMB Media
LLC
Education: BA in political science from Washington University, St.
Louis, 1974
Hometown: Born in Philadelphia, grew up in Silver Spring
Maryland
First full time job: Newspaper reporter at the Winston Salem
NC Sentinel
Resume: Senior vice president of RealNetworks; founding
editor-in-chief of MSNBC.com; SVP of Court TV
Marital status:
Married
What’s your favorite TV show: Curb Your
Enthusiasm
Last book read: The Greatest Story Ever Sold, by
Frank Rich
Most interesting media story right now: The accelerating
decline of the American newspaper
Guilty pleasure: New York
restaurants
First section you read in your Sunday paper: “The reality
of reading the Sunday paper is that it begins on Saturday with the inserts, so I
guess Arts and Leisure.”

---

You’ve moved back and forth between reporting and publishing — you were a
finance reporter for the Washington Post, then the director of business
development for the Washington Post Co., and then went on to being the
editor-in-chief of Channels. Why and how did you make the switch back to
editorial?
I’ve gone back and forth as interesting opportunities
presented themselves, because I’m passionate about both media products and the
business components that make them successful. The other part of it is I
consciously decided that I wanted to leave the business of daily reporting
because I wanted to be more of a participant in making things happen than acting
as just an observer. I wanted to be one of the people pushing the boulder up the
cliff and solving hard problems, rather than observing other people doing so and
reporting on it in journalism.

You helped create Court TV.
How did that network come about, and what was your role in creating
it?
In the late 80s, I was quite exited about the opportunity to develop
new things in cable TV because the industry was booming. I wanted to be part of
the early stages of an exciting cable opportunity. I got to know, socially, the
guy whose idea it was, Steve Brill. He called me with the idea and said, “What
you do think?” It sounded like a great idea, and I went off to do it. I had
covered antitrust litigation as a business reporter, and I was comfortable in a
courtroom, even if I didn’t have any real legal training.

You seem to be involved in almost all aspects of media — from Web sites
to magazines to newspapers to television. Which medium is doing the best job
evolving?
That’s pretty easy. The Internet was a blank screen in the mid-90s, now it’s evolved in a short period of time to a very specialized delivery
mechanism for news, and it’s the best delivery platform for news that’s ever
been invented.

But has it found a way to make money?
The New York Times
continues to report rising and significant amounts of revenue on their digital
operations. The MSNBC and CNN sites are significantly profitable; evaluating the
profitability of a lot of newspaper Web sites is hard. When you see the revenue
of the Philadelphia Inquirer or the Boston Globe‘s site, you see
their revenue number and the cost of operations of the Web site, but you don’t
see the payroll that involves hundreds of journalists who write the
content. But the biggest standalone kind of news sites are showing good revenue
growth and margin. Internet news is making significant amounts of money in many
places.

Do you think your career path is an anomaly, or do you think future media
players are going to have to do it all — whether it’s editorial, programming or
business development?
I don’t hold myself up as an example of anything in
particular. However, in helping journalism schools develop curriculum, I’ve
realized that it’s important that journalists think of themselves not just as
people creating content but as entrepreneurs. In the brave new world, the
opportunity to start things and create business models exists for journalists.
People in journalism need to have serious knowledge about how the business works
and what the entrepreneurial opportunities are that the business presents. It’s
really important for today’s future journalists and young journalists to
understand.

Where has your diverse background better served you: does your business
knowledge better help your journalism skills, or does your journalism background
make you a more creative businessman?
I guess my journalism skills have
made me a fast study and have given me the ability to understand the art of
analyzing challenging issues in a very helpful way. On the flip side, in helping
develop MSNBC.com as editor-in-chief, the fact that I could assess the business
opportunities of starting from scratch on the Web was enormously helpful in
making MSNBC.com successful.

I don’t think it’s inappropriate for ad sales people and editors and reporters to intermingle, as long as they know where the lines are. One of the failures of media today is the way “church and state” is implemented.

Is there danger in crossing over from business to editorial and back
again? Did you ever feel undue influence from one sector over the other, or that
your loyalties to either the news or the bottom line were affect your ability to
do your job?
No, because job definitions are just that, and when you play
one role, your commitment is to precisely that role. Although when you’re the
EIC of a media property these days, especially on the Web, you need to both
influence the business process and figure out how to adapt to the changing
nature of the newsroom in ways that didn’t exist in the past. I don’t believe in
the traditional interpretation of what church and state means. I don’t think
it’s inappropriate for ad sales people and editors and reporters to
intermingle, as long as they know where the lines are. I think one of the
failures of media today is the way “church and state” is implemented. Journalists
with good ideas and sales staff with good ideas should be able to collaborate in
a creative process. I’m for a complete breakdown of what church and state means,
as long as ethics remain. I’ve walked that line, and I’d like to think that I
haven’t crossed it. Editors need to understand the right place to draw that
line, especially in the current environment.

You were the first editor-in-chief at MSNBC.com. What was the site like
then? Was it a very planned out, focused-group effort, or like the Wild,
Wild West?
Much closer to Wild, Wild West. We did research about users’
interests and how they were using the site and so forth, but the challenge of
getting pictures and words on an Internet page in 1996 was not insignificant.
The mere act of publishing had challenges in itself. Think about how easy it is
to start a blog today compared to what it took to start a Web page in 1996. One
of the challenges was to create work that took advantage of the capacity of the
Internet as a medium. It was really important to turn stories around as quickly
as possible — to be really good at breaking news. So if you hear something
happen, you come to the Web site and get the story, and your experience is
satisfying. Something happens in Congress, a plane goes down, war breaks out —
it was with those situations as a premise, creating materials for the medium was
important, and with those premises we set off.

Back then, mainstream media thought that Internet news was trivial, and
thought it was a passing fancy and would never be a major competitive platform.
Lots of friends couldn’t believe I moved my life from New York to engage in this
odd thing of delivering news to a machine on a desk. The public was curious but
not engaged. We had real small number of people in 1995 and ’96 using the stuff,
but there was already a community of early adopters into it, and their
communications with us helped the whole category develop.

In your career, you’ve done a lot of consulting. Is there a common problem
in media environments that arises from the same team working together for too
long, and which can be easily solved with a fresh pair of eyes?
The print
business in general has moved way too slowly to embrace and implement the
cultural change that the digital era requires. Only now with profit and loss
issues so dramatic are they waking up to the reality of the changes that are
required. Across a lot of my work, one of the things they talk to me about, and
I try to help them with, is how you can rapidly change the old culture of print
and turn it into more of a digital environment. People have a lot at stake; it’s
hard, but the process of doing it is accelerating and managements need to do it
more aggressively and add more resources to it.

Why are they so slow in embracing it? Is it a sense of superiority, that
print and old media is better than print? Or just unfamiliarity with the
medium?
There are a number of issues: one is the fact that for lots of
media companies, the bulk of revenue produced comes from print and that needs to
be protected and developed and not ignored. This is issue number one — the
traditional media business remains very large and can’t be ignored. Number two
is that there are still many executives and editorial people in key positions
who are not yet comfortable with new technology. There are executives who rarely
look at video online, and who certainly don’t have a strong engagement with Web
2.0 issues, like social networks, and who still see the Internet function as
being about distributing conventional programming rather than developing new
content. If you go to any number of newspaper and magazine Web sites for large
publications around the country, basically what you get is re-edited and
republished work from another platform put on the Web. That is totally wrong.

How did you come to work for News21?
I developed a project with the
Carnegie Corporation of New York to do a research paper on young people and how
they use the news. So I started working with them to develop that paper, which
got a lot of attention when it was completed. In engaging with Carnegie and in
the context of my relationship with them, I learned they were part of developing
this initiative with a bunch of journalism schools, and they asked me to sit in
on some meetings and participate in thinking about the initiative. When it
finally came together, I had a relationship with them, had been an adviser, and
had been networking for both the Carnegie and Knight Foundations. The initiative
came along, and the opportunity to run the program was part of the grant, and
they asked me to help put it together, and I was happy to. It was a natural
extension of the work I’d been doing.

My role is to help the universities and the faculty and the fellows to set up
a summer program — we have four newsrooms that allow the fellows to create
important stories around a given topic. The program starts with a course in the
spring or winter semester on the topic of the summer program. Students then go
out and report for ten weeks over the summer and with a goal of creating high
caliber content about those topics. I make sure that they get what they need to
create those newsrooms and the accompanying Web sites — the appropriation of
resources like cameras and Web application software. I do what I can to help
pull that together.

Obviously, the students get a lot out of the experience, but what do they
bring to the project that more seasoned journalists don’t have?
They
bring a sense of what digital media can do to improve storytelling that
certainly many of their older colleagues don’t have, because digital tools —
whether it’s flash or Internet video or animated applications — a lot of that
is second nature to many journalism grad students. They understand the world of
the Web, and have a somewhat different approach to conventional storytelling.
They see the world through a completely different perspective. That’s really
helpful in seeing and creating stories that work across multiple platforms.

What are some of the projects that have come out of News21 that have
impressed you?
Last year, the first summer, the project was on liberty
and security, the tension between the traditional American view of civil
liberties and the need for national security. We broke it down into topics and
products. We developed a deep relationship with the Associated Press, got seven
or eight stories on the AP A wire, one of which won awards and got lots of
attention. It was about the education department improperly going through
college funding reports and taking out data about students. When we revealed the
program, they discontinued it.

We did great investigative reporting, doing work about topics like that, or
like how outsourcing worked in military intelligence. I mean, really terrific
investigative stories that got a lot of attention. We did an hour-long
documentary for CNN on the lives of U.S. military men and women abroad. They
reported on immigration in Southern California, what immigration is like there,
the drama and the challenges people face. We had stories in many major
publications and TV shows — we did a series of stories on immigration on
California public television. We broke stories. It was precisely the kind of
media opportunity we were trying to create for them, and we hope to repeat that
success this summer.

Many journalists struggle with going back to school and learning
journalism versus just jumping in the mix, pitching and writing and reporting.
What benefits to journalists come from a formal education in
journalism?
The benefits of journalism grad school include access to the
best teaching they could possibly have. Journalism organizations are rarely
known for their ability to mentor people. Students are getting training from
world-class experts. There’s also value in allowing journalists to expand the
nature of their skills, and expand the level of those skills, whether it’s in TV
production or writing or new media. Journalism school can also give students
exposure to lots of different media opportunities. They get to engage in these
opportunities and mediums while they’re in school, which is valuable in shaping
career decisions. World-class teaching, skill development, and exposure to media
— all of this can do a world of good for the right kind of students in
journalism school.

Traditional media is at risk in part because younger people don’t consume
news the same way their parents did. How is the media industry going to have to
change as a result — and will the face of the media industry change when it’s
Yahoo and Google who provide people with most of their information?
There
is no evidence that Yahoo and Google are going to be major original sources of
news content. They remain distinct vehicles for the work of mainstream media
organizations. No matter how many people go to Yahoo and Google for their news,
their work is going to come from someone else. Yahoo News has a few dozen people
on staff, and most are in producer roles, not fact gatherers. Readers still
depend on wires and newspapers and TV networks for content, and that’s why it’s
so important that the business models evolve quickly. They remain the principle
source for what people read every day. The blogosphere is healthy and getting
healthier, and citizen journalism, like the site I’m involved in, Now Public, is really taking
off. But the news that we get from sites like Google and Yahoo comes from old
line, organized, mainstream media organizations, and that’s not going to change.

In addition to Now Public, you’re also an adviser to BackFence, which is a
Web-based, community journalism project. Leasing out news coverage to citizen
journalists is almost the opposite of the work being done at News21, where
students are given very specific training and guidance. Can both models
co-exist?
It’s critical that the two coexist and work as collaborative
enterprises. In order to make the newspaper model work, newspapers have to,
because of their declining resource base, use citizens to help cover large
metropolitan areas and communities. Around the world, Now Public has 90,000
registered contributors in 150 countries. NowPublic has the opportunity to fill
some of the void left by some of the major media organizations who are feeling
like they have to close down bureaus around the world. Now Public can be eyes
and ears in lots of places around the world not covered.

Figuring out how to make the old and new work together is critically
important, so I’m excited about Now Public. Now Public is a great opportunity
and a great enterprise. Now Public takes material in real time, whether it’s
from a camera phone or notepad or digital camera or computer and brings it into
public consciousness in ways conventional media isn’t and can’t. In the
presentation we just gave to investors recently, we showed pictures from
Heathrow Airport when Heathrow was closed after the liquid scare. The airport
was closed off, and media couldn’t get in, but we had pictures from citizen
journalists who could get there when the media couldn’t.

All of that needs to be put into a journalism and news content that makes
sense for those of us surrounded by a cacophony of stuff, and we now have a
public forum that is going to make that happen. It’s very important that the
journalism community get this right.

Before editor Daniel Peres was summoned to Details from Paris (he was Fairchild’s European bureau chief), the magazine had gone through five editors in 10 years, failed numerous relaunches, and carried a voice that seemed to change with every issue. Critics were many. Seven years later, Peres is still at Details, having solidified the masthead and aligned the magazine’s style sensibilities with his own. But, like every print magazine editor, Peres is faced with a tumultuous landscape and traversing the “Wild West” mentality of the Internet, while maintaining his own sanity.

Name: Daniel Peres
Position: Editor, Details
Birthdate: October 14, 1971
Hometown: Baltimore
Education: B.A., NYU, double major, Journalism and History
Marital status: Married actress Sarah Wynter in 2005
Favorite television show: Real Desperate Housewives of Orange County — “It’s spectacular, you have to check it out. It’s amazing how regular people allow cameras into their lives thinking they’ll become famous.”
Last book read: Yiddish Policeman’s Union, Michael Chabon
Last song heard on your iPod: “More Than A Feeling,” Boston
Guilty pleasure: Also Real Desperate Housewives of Orange County
First section of the Sunday Times: Styles

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What is the most interesting media news story out there right now?
New York magazine’s piece on Time magazine was very well done. As a magazine editor, I think we’re all looking at what is going on at Time with great interest. That story has gotten, frankly, very interesting — the competition between newsweeklies. Terrifically interesting story to watch.

What’s a typical day for you?
I’m up at 7:00AM. I catch the beginning of the Today show. Outside my apartment door are copies of The New York Times, New York Post and Women’s Wear Daily. I do a quick scan of the papers, then, at 8:00AM, I begin breakfast meetings in lieu of the “business lunch,” which I try to avoid at all costs. When you do [business lunches] you end up being out of the office for two hours, minimum, and so many people are depending on me for projects to move forward I can’t afford it.

In my office waiting for me are the Washington Post, L.A. Times, Wall Street Journal, Variety, and USA Today. I scan those papers. Then, in the office, the day is anything but typical. It’s a series of meetings with my staff — it could be talking about upcoming covers, story ideas, fashion coverage — it’s like a revolving door of various departments. My homepage is a newsmap that updates every 5-10 minutes. Right now, I’m reading about Halliburton. I tend not to look at the popular media blogs (Gawker, Jossip, Fishbowl) unless someone tells me to.

How would you characterize the state of the industry?
It’s a bit tenuous. The close of Premiere recently, the third or fourth magazine to fold. It’s certainly not seeing a boom. But, on the whole, I actually think it’s healthy. I take issue with people who say the print medium is an endangered species. Technology means you have to adapt to the times, get stronger. I’m not a fatalist. Smart editors need to react and adapt to the online space.

I’m editing a magazine for men like me, with my interests. I know what my interests are. And, if I can do that online, we’ll draw more readers to it.

What’s the toughest thing about being a magazine editor in 2007?
It’s no secret that the magazine industry is going through a tremendous period of change, and a number of big magazines have folded.

Do you feel added pressure?
That added pressure is met with excitement. I think I have a tremendous advantage in that I’m editing a magazine for men like me, with my interests. I know what my interests are. And, if I can do that online, we’ll draw more readers to it. So, I’m embracing the challenge with excitement and enthusiasm.

What is Details doing online?
Details and GQ — our homepages have been at men.style.com. It’s what people in the company call a “destination” site. But, we’re rethinking that. I had to reconfigure my masthead, and now two people are solely dedicated to the Web. And, they are constantly online, thinking about the Web. In 2008, we’re going to be breaking away from men.style.com, and we’ll be standalone sites.

For years, people have referred to Details as a magazine for gay men. How do you respond to that?
I think it’s something that lives in the press, the media. It’s not something our readers dwell on. My job is to create a great magazine that appeals to our audience — straight men, gay men, everybody. Like I said, I’m editing a magazine for men like me, with my interests. To be honest, I don’t think about it much, except when the media — like you — asks.

In the past you’ve had — at least superficially — an adversarial relationship with Maer Roshan. So, what do you think of the new Radar?
We tweak each other, but [we’ve become] great friends. I think Radar looks good, and I think Maer is incredibly smart, even stubbornly so. And, he’s gotten a tremendous amount of press and created this buzz around his launches. He’s better at PR than most of the PR people I know. I know if I were ever to have a fall from grace in the press, the first person I’d call for advice would be Maer.

What’s next for you?
You know, I’m incredibly happy creating this magazine. I’d never say never, but right now, I feel great about my job, and am excited about the future here.

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

[NOTE: This interview contains excerpts, and has been edited for clarity.]

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

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

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Name: Cindi Leive
Position: Editor, Glamour
Resumé: Editor of Self from ’99 to ’01 prior to coming to Glamour
Birthdate: Jan 21, 1967
Hometown: McLean, Virginia
Education: Swarthmore College
Marital status: Married to film producer Howard Bernstein
First section of the Sunday Times: The magazine
Favorite television show: 30 Rock
Guilty pleasure: American Idol. Go, Jordin!
Last book read: Fish: The Basics, by Shirley King. I was looking for a recipe. Before that, Lawrence Wright’s Looming Tower.
2007 Nominations: Two (Personal Service and General Excellence)

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The last time Glamour won an Ellie was for General Excellence in 2005. As editor-in-chief, what was that experience like, and how is being nominated this year different so far, if at all?
That experience was completely surreal, because it was the first time
Glamour had been nominated for any Ellie in almost a decade. Also, I was
about 10 months pregnant and not expecting to be up on stage. To be
nominated again is an enormous thrill. I’m incredibly proud of our staff.

What do you think of your chances for Glamour‘s two Ellie
nominations this year? How does being recognized in these categories reflect Glamour‘s objectives as a magazine, and your goals as its editor?

Well, our chances are obviously slim because it’s a pretty stellar roster of nominees. But, I love that we’re nominated for being excellent and personal — it sums up the combination we’re going for every month.

You’ve been president of ASME for almost a year now. What have you been trying to accomplish in that capacity, and what has that role afforded you the opportunity to do that other editors may not have a crack at doing/ trying?

Working with ASME has been an honor. This is a time of intense change for
our industry, so our focus has been on positioning ASME to respond to
that — from recognizing online journalism at the National Magazine Awards, to
creating updated new ASME guidelines for digital media. I do think ASME has
a unique role to play right now, because editors more than ever want to
learn from one another. Everyone I know is asking each other, “What’s working for you?”

What challenges do you face as ASME president? How does your ASME position intersect your role with Glamour?

I¹m lucky that once a month, at our board meetings, I get to learn from my
most accomplished peers. I feel like I walk out of the room a better editor
every time.

You actually began your magazine career at Glamour as an editorial assistant. When did you know you wanted to become an editor-in-chief? How did your move to Self as editor-in-chief fit into your progression towards your role at Glamour today, and what does it mean to you to be back where you started?
Self was a blast to edit. And, I was never as in shape in my life as when I
worked there! But, Glamour‘s my dream job. I think young women are just about
the most interesting audience you can edit for, and I love that we can find
the Glamour angle — of empowering women — in basically any story, from beauty
trends to the Don Imus thing.

---

“Magazines are some of the strongest brand names in the country, and people trust us. A lot of industries would kill to be able to say that.”

---

Take us through a typical day in your life. (Please be specific as you can — “Wake up @ 8:30, watch the Today show,” etc….)
I get up really early to run. I’m not naturally a morning person, but it’s
the only time I can find to exercise. Then, I read the news online, do the
headless-chicken routine of getting my kids up and dressed, go to work, and
spend the day with my staff. Editing happens
mostly at night, at home — I don’t like closing my door to edit during the day. I always feel like I’m missing something!

How do you feel about the state of the industry, and what are the greatest challenges it faces?
The explosion of digital media and the need for magazines to expand beyond
pure print are the big issues, of course, but I believe many magazine
companies will come out of this period more successful than ever. Magazines
are some of the strongest brand names in the country, and people trust us. A
lot of industries would kill to be able to say that.

What steps are you and the Glamour staff taking to adjust to the current media landscape and the growing role of the Web? How are you guiding ASME through the challenges posed by online media?
At Glamour, we’ve rejiggered our staff and reassigned positions to the Web
and other multimedia projects. At ASME, we’re launching programs to help
editors figure out how to do 12 jobs at once without ever neglecting what is
still usually the mothership — the print magazine.

What will you be wearing to the Ellies?
God only knows… ask me Tuesday morning!

---

[Rebecca L. Fox is mediabistro.com’s managing editor, service and features. She can be reached at rebecca AT mediabistro DOT com. Emily Million is a freelance writer in New York City.]

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

Um no. Do you?

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

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

What do you think of your Ellies chances?

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

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“In deference to Anna Wintour, I’m trying not to say ‘blog.'”

---

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

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

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

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

How do you feel about the state of the industry?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally, what will you be wearing to the Ellies?

Whatever still fits. Which most definitely limits my options.

---

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

Leading up to the May 1 2007 National Magazine Awards, mediabistro.com is publishing a special package of our popular interview series, “So What Do You Do?,” with daily interviews of selected nominees, ranging from well-known to obscure. Today we chat with Mark Strauss, editor of possibly the year’s most obscure nominee, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

See our other interviews with Ellie 2007 nominees:
Joyce Rutter Kaye, Editor, Print; David Granger, Editor, Esquire?; Moisés Naím, Editor, Foreign Policy; Jay Stowe, Editor, Cincinnati; Ted Genoways, Editor, Virginia Quarterly Review;

---

Name: Mark Strauss
Position: Editor, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Resumé: Before becoming editor of the Bulletin in 2005, Strauss was a senior editor at Foreign Policy magazine. Before that, Strauss was a researcher at the Brookings Institution, a reporter at Discover magazine and an editorial intern at SPY magazine. He has written articles for Slate, New Republic, Washington Monthly and the Washington Post.
Birthdate: November 8, 1966
Hometown: Ridgewood, NJ
Education: B.A., Macalester College; M.S., Columbia School of Journalism; M.A., School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University
Marital status: Married
First Section of the Sunday Times: The New York Times Magazine
Favorite television show: Lost. But if they don’t start answering some questions soon, I’m going to pull an Elvis and shoot the TV set.
Guilty pleasure: Video games (A lifetime addiction ever since I first played Pong as a nine-year-old.)
Last book read: Fahrenheit 451 (I re-read it every year.)
Nominated For: General Excellence, Under 100,000 circulation (alongside I.D., Metropolis, Print and Virginia Quarterly Review)

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So, what the hell is the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists anyway?
We’re the best magazine with the worst title. In its earliest days, the Bulletin was a newsletter. It was founded in 1945 by former Manhattan Project scientists who wanted to inform the public about the dangers of the escalating nuclear arms race.

Our title is deceptive for two reasons: First, it implies that we’re an academic journal — which we’re not. We’re a glossy, full-color magazine targeted towards a mainstream readership. We tend to describe ourselves as a magazine with the credibility of a peer-reviewed journal. Second, we don’t devote our coverage exclusively to nuclear weapons and arms control. Our mandate is to provide readers with non-partisan, non-technical, but scientifically sound information that is critical to the debate on global security. So, we cover a broad range of topics, including terrorism, climate change, global health and the implications of emerging technologies such as nanotechnology and synthetic biology.

And, of course, the Bulletin is famous worldwide for its iconic “Doomsday Clock,” which since 1947 has periodically moved back and forth to indicate how close we are to global catastrophe. [The Bulletin‘s Board of Directors reset the clock to “Five Minutes to Midnight” in January 2007.] In fact, the Bulletin was the inspiration for the title of Linkin Park‘s forthcoming album, Minutes to Midnight. Eat your heart out, New Yorker.

Which outlets does the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists compete with?
Well, unless there’s a Bulletin of the Subatomic Scientists, I believe that we’re a niche unto ourselves. Certainly you can find some similar content in science magazines and current affairs publications, but I think the Bulletin stands alone in how it effectively merges these issues. Moreover, our tremendous credibility in the scientific and academic community gives us unique access to the top experts in their fields. My Rolodex is packed with Nobel Prize winners.

When did you know you wanted to be editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists?
Given my interests in both science and international security, the Bulletin was always part of my regular reading list. When I heard the magazine was hiring a new editor, I immediately applied. I felt it was a very good magazine that had the potential to be much better. The editors, the art director, and I spent the last two years reworking the publication. We did a cover-to-cover redesign, introduced new sections, reimagined old sections — and we committed ourselves to diversifying the editorial content and publishing more reader-friendly articles. I guess the nomination suggests that our efforts have not gone unnoticed.

---

“The Bulletin was the inspiration for the title of Linkin Park’s forthcoming album, Minutes to Midnight. Eat your heart out, New Yorker.”

---

What do you think of your Ellies chances?
The Bulletin won the Ellie in 1987 for best single-topic issue, beating out Esquire and Texas Monthly. So, who’s to say that lightning can’t strike twice? I’m quite proud of the content that we submitted, with articles ranging from a debate over the likelihood of a nuclear terrorist attack five years after 9/11 to a reported account of the worsening AIDS pandemic in Burma. [In fact, that article just won a merit award from the Society of Publication Designers.]

Take us through a typical day in the life of Bulletin‘s editor.
When you have a magazine with a staff as small as ours, everyone is multi-tasking — so there’s no such thing as a “typical” day at the Bulletin. But, generally speaking, I arrive at work at 8:30AM. I spend my first 20 minutes deleting spam and reading emails from some guy in Montana who claims to have invented a time machine. My typical day is devoted to editing and top-editing articles, consulting with my editors and art director, and scouting for article ideas. In between, I drink a lot of coffee. Although we’re a bimonthly, the daily pace is pretty brisk. We’ve got a lot of content to publish, and not many people to get the work done, so we need to keep to a very rigid editorial and production schedule.

How do you feel about the state of the industry?
For 20 years, I’ve been hearing apocalyptic predictions about the decline and fall of magazine publishing — so I’m not losing much sleep. Yes, we have to come to terms with the digital age and the new media landscape. But, the magazine industry continues to attract a high percentage of extremely talented, smart people who constantly revitalize the medium. As always, some magazines will adapt and thrive, and others will close shop. But, the industry as a whole continually finds a way to muddle through.

What’s the biggest challenge of your job as an editor?
Translating complex scientific and technical concepts into accessible, readable prose. I mean, when’s the last time you found yourself having to explain to your friends the mechanics of uranium enrichment?

A lot of magazines are currently trying to figure out the Web. Is this a problem for you?
No, it’s not a problem for us. We relaunched our Web site in January, and we’ve been very pleased with the results. Many of the issues we cover are so fluid from day to day that we recognized the need to provide expert analysis in real time. So, we’ve recruited a roster of top-notch scientists and columnists to provide exclusive online coverage around the clock. And, in doing so, we’re also building a community of experts and voices that we can use across all of our media platforms — whether as contributors to the magazine, or as speakers at conferences that we periodically sponsor.

What’s the next step for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists?
The next step is our first step. Our mission hasn’t changed. The key challenge for us is to continue developing innovative ways to act as a bridge between the scientific community and the general public. A magazine is a wonderful thing — a unique medium for delivering information in an engaging format. And we want to keep thinking of ways to make the most of that. Fortunately, I work alongside a very creative, hardworking staff who have zero tolerance for mediocrity.

Finally, what will you be wearing to the Ellies?
Whatever tuxedo my wife picks out for me.

---

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

Leading up to the May 1 2007 National Magazine Awards, mediabistro.com is publishing a special package of our popular interview series, “So What Do You Do?,” with daily interviews of selected nominees, ranging from well-known to obscure. Today we chat with Ted Genoways, editor of last year’s dark horse, The Virginia Quarterly Review.

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

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Name: Ted Genoways
Position: Editor, Virginia Quarterly Review
Resumé: Genoways worked at several literary magazines (Prarie Schooner, Callaloo, Merdian [which I founded], and Iowa Review) and small presses (Texas Tech University Press, Coffee House Press, and the Minnesota Historical Society Press). He has also edited a number of books — though “they are mostly poetry titles for academic presses.”
Birthdate: April 13, 1972
Hometown: Born in Lubbock, Texas. “All my family is in Lincoln, Nebraska.”
Education: B.A. in English, Nebraska Wesleyan University, 1994; MA in English, Texas Tech University, 1996; MFA in Creative Writing, University of Virginia, 1999; completing a PhD in English at University of Iowa
Marital status: Married
First Section of the Sunday Times: The Book Review. “I’m usually reading it online some time on Saturday.”
Favorite television show: Deadwood
Guilty pleasure: “I’m a voracious consumer of bad television. MTV’s The Hills and I’m from Rolling Stone, especially amuse me because they seem like some alternate reality. They show the publishing world, but on another planet than mine. I also love watching Fox News. It’s akin to the trash-talking interviews with opposing players that football coaches pin to their team bulletin boards. If my resolve ever flags, I just turn on Fox.”
Last book read: “I read a lot — but the last two poetry books that really knocked me out were Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard (which just won the Pulitzer) and Kevin Young’s For The Confederate Dead. Both amazing books — and Trethewey and Young are colleagues at Emory. There’s a faculty lounge I’d like to hang out in.”
2007 Nominations: 2 (General Excellence, Fiction)

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Last year your nominations came as a surprise — a shock, really — to the magazine-watching media in New York. What was that experience like, and how is it different — if at all — this year?
It came as something of a shock to us, too. We’d gotten two nominations in 2005, so we were all hoping that we wouldn’t come up empty in ’06. Then, we got six nominations. Everyone took notice, and it did a lot to boost our profile — but also upped the ante for this year. A lot of media watchers seemed to expect that we’d be disappointed with two nominations this year, but I was delighted. It was our third straight nomination in general excellence, our fourth nomination in three years in fiction. If there’s any big difference, it’s that we’re a bit more philosophical this year. Win or lose, we’re glad to be considered again. And, I think we may have another big year next year — not because the work is better, but because it seems to fit some of the categories better. We’re more philosophical in that way, too — recognizing that we publish what matters to us, then worry about awards later.

As a quarterly, you are competing against monthlies for awards like this. What’s the biggest challenge?
The biggest challenge for us is timeliness. We can’t cover news in the way that weeklies or monthlies do. But, that’s also our advantage. We afford the stories that we select a great deal more length. I think that helps us select our topics and focus in many cases, because we know that we have to be publishing on subjects that warrant 8,000-10,000 words of reporting and analysis.

Since your breakout of sorts last year, have you been approached by bigger media companies for bigger media jobs?
Yes, I have. And, one must always be weighing the options, but I’m extremely happy with my situation here. I’ve got excellent support from the University of Virginia and unfettered freedom in determining the content of the magazine. The larger magazines are tempting, because they reach so many people. But, I want to reach people with the kind of writing that matters to me. If that means reaching a more select audience, then I can live with that.

What do you think of your Ellies chances?
I think they’re probably slim. We won in these two categories last year, and I think it’s pretty tough to repeat — especially in general excellence. I’m planning to go and cheer on the other little magazines like Georgia Review and New Letters.

What’s the biggest challenge of your job as an editor?
Our small staff. We have four full-time employees, so we rely a great deal on freelancers and student assistants. But when crunch time arrives, all of the editorial work falls to me and my managing editor Kevin Morrissey.

Take us through a typical day in the life of VQR‘s editor.
I usually wake up at 8 or so, when my four-year-old son starts demanding cereal and that someone switch on Dragon Tails. I realize that’s a late start for most people, but I do a lot of my work — especially reading unsolicited manuscripts, line editing accepted manuscripts, etc. — between 11PM and 2-3AM. Anyway, I usually talk my wife into taking my son to school, while I answer e-mails and read Google News and the New York Times online. When I hit the office by mid morning, every semblance of a “typical” day disappears. As I said, we’re a staff of four, so it may be that I can steal time to read manuscripts, or it may be that I have to be in regular touch with our copy editor in Denver or our designers in Minneapolis. I may be corresponding with authors in South America or photographers in Iraq. What I like about my day is that it’s never typical. I also like the fact that my wife picks me up at 5, we get our son from school, and we’re all home or out to dinner by 5:30 or 6.

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“We’re pretty happy with our quarterly status. What I would like is a lot more readers.”

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How do you feel about the state of the industry?
I think there’s a lot of logical concern about how print will continue to compete against TV and Internet media outlets. For me, the simple solution is that magazines have to place more focus on storytelling and analysis. Television never slows down, never corrects itself, and the Internet [at-large] is a bewildering forest of misinformation. Online magazines like Slate and Salon have achieved a permanent place for themselves online by providing cogent and insightful pieces. Print magazines will survive by doing the same — and they certainly are. Vanity Fair, New Yorker, Harper’s, and the Atlantic are obvious examples. But, there’s also remarkable work being published by mid-sized magazines like Mother Jones and Foreign Policy, and small magazines like Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and Paris Review.

I thought the best reporting of the year was done by Matthew Teague for Philadelphia Magazine (as well as a remarkable piece that he wrote for The Atlantic), the best special issues appeared from Tin House and New Orleans Review, and the best poetry appeared in New England Review and Kenyon Review. What that suggests to me is that print is alive and well. I think these smaller magazines could use an infusion of marketing dollars, but the work is better than ever.

A lot of magazines are currently trying to figure out the Web. Is this a problem for you? Are you, as a “quarterly” insulated by this at all?
The web is a topic of constant discussion in our offices. We’re trying to use it to our fullest advantage — because there are so many more online readers than readers of small quarterlies. So, we put a lot of our current content online, we’re expanding our already extensive online archive, and we’re developing all kinds of web-exclusive content [interviews, audio, manuscripts from our archives]. The biggest challenge is trying to bring our measured approach to a Web environment. We’re still figuring that out, as is everyone else.

What’s the next step for VQR? Go monthly?
God, I hope not. We’d go crazy. We’re pretty happy with our quarterly status. What I would like is a lot more readers — especially paid subscribers. I think that building our readership will be a central focus in the coming years. There’s no money to be made in it, of course, but we see our readership as a measure of our relevance — and that’s what we’re really after. We want our writers to reach more people.

What will you be wearing to the Ellies?
I’ll be wearing some miserable, last-minute tuxedo, as always. Some have suggested that I buy a tux — but that seems like inviting bad luck. So, I wait each year for the list of nominees, then hope the Men’s Wearhouse will have a surplus of tuxes after the prom season. I figure I can’t possibly be as nervous as the last guy who inhabited those clothes.

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

Leading up to the May 1, 2007 National Magazine Awards, mediabistro.com is publishing a special package of our popular interview series, “So What Do You Do?,” with daily interviews of selected nominees, ranging from well-known to obscure. Today, we chat with Esquire editor David Granger.

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

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Name: David Granger
Position: Editor, Esquire
Resume: “In reverse order: Esquire, GQ, Adweek/Mediaweek, National Sports Daily, SportsInc., Sport, Family Weekly, Muppet Magazine, various stints of unemployment and consulting at various points.”
Birthdate: October 31, 1956
Hometown: Several places in the United States
Education: Masters in English, University of Virginia; Bachelor of Arts, University of Tennessee
Marital status: Married
First Section of the Sunday Times: Real Estate, “which I read on Saturday.”
Favorite television show: Friday Night Lights
Guilty pleasure: [No comment.]
Last book read: “MVP, by James Boice. No wait, Everyman, by Philip Roth.”

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Getting an Ellie nomination is fairly common for you at this point. Has the excitement of being nominated dulled at all?
Nah. When people do stellar work, it remains rewarding to see that work recognized. Who doesn’t like to be told they’re doing good work?

What do you think of your Ellies chances?
No way to predict. Last year, I assumed we’d be sitting in our chairs all night, politely applauding all our friends. We got two.

You are up against GQ for general excellence. How would you characterize your rivalry with GQ? Do you pay attention to what they do, or ignore them?
For a long time now, I’ve believed that our competition for consumers is not limited to other magazines. We try to create a magazine that can compete with the Web and everything on cable and DVD, as well as other magazines. I don’t think people are deciding between one magazine and another — they’ve got a whole menu of entertainment options and it’s all those outlets that I have to keep abreast of. Plus, I always root for Alan Richman to win a National Magazine Award.

Who’d you rather, ScarJo or Sienna Miller? Also, how has the “Women We Love” franchise grown for the magazine?
That’s an impossible choice and one that’s entirely irrelevant to the possibilities inherent in my life. I can imagine, though, that each would offer distinct delights and complications. As for “Women We Love,” we just have fun with it. A couple years ago, we started doing this long, slow, six-month reveal of who we would be naming the sexiest woman alive in our November issue. It’s been funny and well-received. Against all expectations, men continue to be interested in women, and we try to offer some insight in various places in the magazine in amusing ways.

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“I can imagine, though, that [ScarJo and Sienna] would offer distinct delights and complications.”

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What’s the biggest challenge of your job as an editor?
Well, the editorial part is the most rewarding part of the challenge — working with the staff to find ways to push the print medium forward. The more complicated part, though intensely rewarding in its own way, is working with my publisher to move the business of Esquire forward by launching extensions of the Esquire idea and maximizing all the parts of the business — circ, ad sales, manufacturing — that contribute to our success. And, of course, both sides of that equation affect each other in intimate ways.

Take us through a typical day in the life of Esquire‘s editor.
If I’m in New York, wake up at 5:00 a.m. or so, get to the office at 7, read the Times and browse a couple sites. The TV on my computer is on to provide background noise and to alert me if the world blows up. Then, who knows? Some days, I spend the day reacting to the needs of the staff and the corporation. Other days, I’m more proactive and plot out the next issues or the next year, depending on how smart I’m feeling. The key to a good day is getting to talk with the people on my staff. All our good ideas come out of conversation. We’re not big on meetings, unless they have a specific, limited purpose. If it’s a really good day, I get to work on a story on work with [design director David] Curcurito on our cover and have a meal with someone interesting I don’t know well.

How do you feel about the state of the industry?
I feel good. We’re saddled with a few challenges, primarily in the area of how we distribute magazines and how we reach a new potential audience. And, we may be feeling the first effects of advertisers spending more online. But, I think that will pass as everyone learns how to use the Web most effectively. Right now, a lot of advertisers are feeling pressure not to miss out on the Web and are buying ads in a scattershot way. But that will even out.

Creatively, the magazine industry has more potential than it’s ever had and I think one huge advantage we will continue to have in the era of digital and mobile devices is simply our tangibility. Magazines can be beautiful objects as well as providers of information and perspective — and beauty is not a word that often gets associated with consuming content on your phone.

A lot of magazines are currently trying to figure out the Web. Has Esquire figured it out?
Yes.

What’s the next step for Esquire? What’s the next step for you personally?
We have a massive 2008 well along in the planning stages. And it’s amazing how quickly the brand is expanding internationally — this year Esquires from two countries, U.S. and Russia, are each finalists for the magazine of the year at SPD. We also will continue to refine and expand what we’re doing online. And I’m looking forward to the growth of the publication launched last year — Esquire‘s Big Black Book. We’re also in the midst of rolling out some cool little things like five lines of greeting cards based on some of our regular features. Personally? I’m hoping to keep my job a little while longer.

Finally, what will you be wearing to the Ellies?
Dunno. Either something made by Frank Shattuck, a friend of mine who is a master tailor, or a tux I inherited a long time ago. Or, something I just bought from Dunhill.

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