Most people know Jodi Applegate as co-host Good Day New York, or perhaps the “that’s not cool” newscaster who was the target of a YouTube-driven practical joke earlier this year. But she’s had a starry career — rising from Phoenix, Arizona morning personality to NBC’s Later Today and Weekend Today. Applegate also holds the distinction of being at the anchor desk for MSNBC’s debut broadcast in 1996. She recently spoke with mediabistro.com about her career.

mediabistro.com: Are you really 42?

Jodi Applegate: Yeah, well, I probably shouldn’t have admitted [my age] in interviews a long time ago, but it’s too late now. On morning TV, with the Internet, that [info] can be grandfathered in [to your next job] very easily.

What’s your media day like?

Hmm, let’s see. I haven’t seen the sun in years. I wake up at 3 a.m. I leave my clothes out the night before. I’ll have some leftover pasta and I’m out the door at 3:50, snarf down some coffee. A car picks me up at my door, and I get to the studio for our 4:00 a.m. story meeting. That’s with our executive producer and line producer and Ron Corning, my co-host. That usually goes until 5:15. Then I’m in makeup for 15 and hair for 20. Then we’re on the air for 3 hours. After that I’ll shoot promos and have a planning meeting with the producers. We might have a shoot, we’ll say ‘Is this a good topic for an interview?’ Then I usually go home. It’s pathetic, but I’ll watch the air-check of that day’s show— I’m never done critiquing.

A nap?

Then I’ll take a nap for a couple hours. I’ll get up in the early afternoon and take my dog for a walk around the reservoir in Central Park. A golden retriever, 5 and a half. Then I’ll come home, log on, check out what stories we’re doing. I have a call with the producers from 4-5PM. Then I’ll watch a little local news, and I’m in bed by 7-7:30, baby.

You were the first anchor of MSNBC for its debut. How was that?

I was working in Phoenix, Arizona for a local morning show. It was like Good Day New York. They ripped off the format. We started getting popular. Then NBC was in town for the 1996 Super Bowl and they saw me and asked if I would be interested in coming to New York. So I was hired.

I went on the air on July 15, 1996. It was like “Applegate, you’re up.” I was nervous, it was the network debut. I had (former GE chairman) Jack Welch standing right in the room there watching. I was probably too young and naïve to be really nervous.

How do you feel about competing with 3 national morning shows in NY?

Well, not to sound too trite, but they can’t do what we can do. They can’t give the local viewers in the metro area what we can— that is, specific local reporting. They have to be general enough to please someone in Ohio or Nebraska. We can cover both, and our ratings in New York prove that. So I don’t think we’re at a disadvantage.

Fox is starting a national morning show next year. You’re obviously not hosting. Did you feel passed over? How will it affect you?

It’s a national show. I did that. I’ve never been happier in my career, being at a local network. I just think it’s a better lifestyle. You’re part of a company. And being in New York, it’s a cliché, but you’re at the center of the universe. So I’ve never felt like that. We’re going to work with them, lead into them. From what I understand it’s going to have a lighter feel to it. A nice way to bridge the morning gap.

Do you have designs on becoming a national show host? Would you like to host the Today Show or GMA?

I never say never, but not at this point, no. I’m having too much fun.

Who do you look up to in terms of inspiration? Anyone you model yourself after?

Well, when I was growing up, it was wall-to-wall Johnny Carson. He was dorky, but in a great way. Everyone of my generation was influenced by him. He had such a deft touch. Then Tom Brokaw and Jane Pauley, of course. They knew when to take a pause.

What about current anchors?

Shep Smith. He’s just effortless.

Last song you listened to on your iPod?

Applegate: It’s whatever my husband has on there. Jackson Browne and the Eagles?

The YouTube bike lock thing. Reactions were mixed as to how you handled it. What’s the fallout been like? Has anything changed? Have you banned YouTube guests on the show?

The “That’s not cool” incident. There hasn’t been much in the way of fallout, believe it or not. I think people had the impression that these guys were trying to hoax us. They had fake blood and stuff. We’re ultimately a news program, and these guys were staging the accidental fake cutting of a guy’s jugular.

What’s your favorite thing about NY? Least favorite?

This is kind of a cliché answer: the expense. There’s not much of a middle class. You open the Times and there’s a $10,000 pair of shoes. Who buys those?

Network anchors, maybe?

No. It just feels like a different planet. I guess it is, in some ways.

Favorite part?

Again, a cliché: the people. It’s like traveling around a parade of humanity. You know those cruise retirees, who never have to live anywhere, they just float around between islands? Living in New York is like that.

Who would be your dream interview at the moment?

Oh, gosh. I don’t know. Donald Rumsfeld? I would like to talk to him.

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

For Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, what should have been a professional high — the publication of her first book Random Family — coincided with personal tragedy. Her father, who had been paralyzed during an operation, was diagnosed with lung cancer. LeBlanc first grappled with the emotions of being both a journalist and a loving daughter.

She and radio producer Sarah Kramer then collaborated for two years to distill 40 hours of audio footage and 70 pages of text into “The Ground We Lived On,” a 12-minute tribute to LeBlanc‘s profound connection with her father.

Did you find yourself trying to insert any distance into how you were experiencing your time with your dad, to cope?
It felt like some weird violation at the time, to tape-record it. For the last section of the audio, when he’s actually leaving, I thought that that conversation was a conversation that I had created in my head, to soothe me. I literally thought I had made up this story that somehow, was a profound comfort to me. And when Sarah played that section of the tape, I literally felt like I could have fallen out of the chair. I’d had no recollection a) that I was taping that or b) that he had actually said that. His literal language, when he says, “You are gentle”– all those things I thought were phrases that were writing phrases, that were coming out for a project I would write. That it was true stunned me. I had no recollection of having the tape on those last days. It amazes me, still, that I could have, but that’s what I’m saying about how I am a journalist — who am I kidding? Somebody put the tape on.

Working on this project over a long period of time — did it feel like it was extending the grieving process in a way that made it more difficult, than if you weren’t working on this?
I think if I wasn’t working on this, yes. In some ways, it’s allowed me to mine the grieving process as opposed to just experiencing it, which is always my preference — to both have the experience and nose around in it, and try to understand it. It’s an intellectual interest, but it’s probably also a survival strategy, for when things feel overwhelming to me, painful to me, or enraging to me.

But it absolutely extends it — think of if somebody sat you down , and every three days had you listen to [a loved one] in their last hour, because you had to figure out how many minutes of tape you could use. It was like structured triggers, scheduled triggers. I was getting really screwed up, saying, “I’m back to where I was after he died.” I felt like everything I felt then had just gotten re-stirred up again.

Sarah Kramer [LeBlanc’s StoryCorps editor] is someone I have to recognize in this. This was a piece that totally stresses the necessity of good editors. [‘Ground’] would not exist without her and it really put her through hell, as well. Because, as much as I had to live with it, Sarah was listening to these tapes for two years. Plus, she had to push me and pull me, and respect me and protect me, and still get me to do what she needed. She cared about every word when I couldn’t care, or carry it anymore.

“If someone asked, ‘Was this cathartic for you?’ I’d say, ‘I probably won’t know that for a decade.'”

She got to know my father. When I was saying to her, “I have to end this, Sarah, I have to get out of this,” she was saying, “I do,too, Adrian. I’ve been living with your family in my head for two years.” Which of course, is like when I was doing [Random Family]. And, she had her professional responsibilities — to her boss, to her co-workers who were picking up the slack for her at work while she was dealing with me, and it was so protracted. It absolutely extended it. It made it happen again, except from a distance and yet, because of the distance, it was also part of the grieving process. If someone said, “Was this cathartic for you?” I’d say, I probably won’t know that for a decade. Part of this was, I had to make something of this experience.

How many hours of tape were there?
40, probably a little bit more than that.

And you edited it down to…
12 minutes. With Sarah, it was absolutely a collaboration — she did all these cuts, and I was just writing. She’d say, “Write about what you remember. ” At one point, we had at least 70 pages of text — she was refining down chunks of text, and then we had certain scenes we could work with. The structuring of a radio piece is very interesting. It was really hard because literally, we took pages and pages and we had one sentence like, ‘Language is the ground we walked on, and we were speaking even as he was leaving me.’ There were all these haphazard thoughts, and it took forever to get down to that sentence.

It’s like poetry.
I think it has a process akin to that, because for me, I had never been refined to that point– down to a few sentences, that’s all that radio can take. It can’t have any extraneous reference so, for example, there’s a sentence: “The house my father built with his own hands.” I first had the sentence as: “The house my father and my uncles built with their own hands,” but [Sarah] was like, “You can’t really bring them in.” We’d have these conversations because I felt I needed to include my uncles, but then the narrative gets distracting, because you’re listening and you’re asking, “Who are the uncles?” My siblings are invisible in this, and that was a huge ongoing issue because, if you mention their names, then you have to characterize them, and then you’re waiting for them to come back in.

How do they feel about this project?
I worry about it. It’s their dad, too, but then again it’s like how I say: I have to reckon with the fact that I am a journalist, because I am telling the story of my story. If they want to tell their stories, they can. It’s a hard thing, though, when your story is also — it is their father. And he is dying on tape, and that’s a pretty heavy thing to ask somebody to have out there in the world, if they don’t want to have it out there.

How long could the program have been?
They can only be six, 12 or 22 minutes.

Why didn’t you go with 22? [‘Ground’ is a 12-minute segment]
I would’ve loved to have, but I think it was too heart-wrenching, I think there wasn’t enough levity, over time, to hold it. We had earlier tape, as he was becomng bed-ridden, but we had sound quality problems so we couldn’t carry it past a point, and there was this big leap, so it was a mix of those things.

So you had to make these editorial decisions to shape the piece.
Yes, they were very editorial, in terms of what [material] you have, what you don’t have, what you missed, and who will talk to you. We couldn’t go back to do anything. With a lot of radio, you can go back and re-record it, but with this it was either there or it wasn’t.

Would you embark on a project like this again?
Definitely. I would really like to write about the elderly. I really enjoyed the time that I spent in the hospital with other older people. My dad I never thought of as elderly, but I would love to do more writing about elderly people. It’s interesting narratively, and interesting because it’s always considered a little bit of a surprise — [covering the elderly] is usually cast as “elderly people doing water aerobics,” or “elderly people dating and having sex.” How about just writing about elderly people like you write about teenagers?

You were recently awarded a Macarthur “genius” grant — congratulations. How does that affect your work? Does it grease the wheels for other projects you want to embark on, does it change things financially? How does it affect your life?
I think there are people, in general, who would persist in doing whatever they’re doing, but who are doing it against many obstacles — that’s a pretty similar trait with [the Macarthur recipients]. They’re going to do their music the way they do it, whatever. So in that way, I don’t feel that it’s changed the course of my work, but it has made me determined to protect the freedom of this time, which is what I was saying with the calendar [LeBlanc had showed us a datebook filled with current engagements that gave way to blank pages — upcoming time off from professional obligations.] All these anonymous people said, “What you’re doing matters to us.” For whatever reason, the external acknowledgement makes me say, “Respect what they’re respecting in you.”

I don’t have to worry about finding the best outlet for minidiscs anymore. It’s just the little things, like taking a taxi versus the subway. The other night, I was out all day reporting. It was raining, I was feeling sick, I’m coming back from a comedy club, it’s 11 at night. I got on the train and took the train. Then I thought, “Oh, I could take a cab tonight.” It was just the feeling like, “Wow, I could’ve.”

What’s your advice or recommendation to journalists interested in taking on subjects like this — personal, family-related, or ones to do with death and loss?
I hate to give this answer, but it really depends on the person and the story. For example, my friend Ann Patchett who’s a novelist, wrote a book about this friend of ours who died, Lucy Grealy, in the white heat of her grief. I think it was immediately, or very quickly after — it just had to come out of her. For me, [‘Ground’] could never have happened without two years, at least, of separating. I can never process it quickly. It takes me a long time.

In terms of the subject matter, I think it’s just a matter of very practical things. If you have an inkling that you want to [write about someone who’s dying] and you can’t right then, timewise, you need to just get information: from your uncle’s address to the name of the nurse. And ask if you can have phone numbers, because people move around a lot. Also, copies of medical records, and descriptions of rooms, the pajamas people wear — things like that can sort of be soothing. There are all the practical things you need.

In a case like this, because perspective is everything in the piece, I really think the editor is crucial — especially the closer you get to your own experience. I think any really good reporting brings you very close to your own experience in one way or another, and a good editor is able to keep combing through that, and help you not compromise your authority, get yourself out of the way, be more vulnerable than you want to be.

How did you and Sarah work together?
I think she got assigned to the piece because Dave sensed that we would be a good team, and I bet he had very clear reasons for that. So, we got assigned and I think she, sadly, has a long email history of these attempts, where she’d say “Are you ready to do this,” and I’d say ‘Yes, yes,” but then I was constantly postponing — really thinking I was ready to do it and now, in retrospect, I see I was nowhere near it. She was in a very sticky situation.

We moved along, she dealt with my resistance, and was incredibly graceful about the frustrations it had to have been causing her, that I can only see now. Because, I was so self-absorbed and narcissistic: This was my father, my family. Then we had this moment, where I was at the precipice of having to really accept what I was doing, and I wasn’t ready to and there was some kind of rupture, for a mix of reasons. From that moment on, it made the whole process completely toxic for me. Very destructive, very negative, very painful, and I realized that the bridge of that trust with her was everything, because I’m not telling the story to some anonymous public. I was telling Sarah the story and I was entrusting her to help me tell it.

That’s when I realized as a journalist, it actually really does matter when you’re covering these kinds of subjects, you really have to be involved in a way that’s decent, because you are the link to someone being able to do this. You literally are. When they have anxiety, and when they have fear and anger, that communication has to be open because if you retreat into some purely professional distance, it doesn’t always work in these circumstances. Sarah was really remarkable in her willingness to stay in there with me. I think you have to see it through.

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

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

For Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, what should have been a professional high in early 2003 coincided with personal tragedy. Her first book, Random Family — now considered a triumph of “immersion journalism” that helped her win a MacArthur “genius” grant in 2006 — was being released. At the same time, LeBlanc was grappling with her 85-year-old father Adrian Leon LeBlanc’s deterioration from late-stage lung cancer. Shuttling between her Manhattan residence and her childhood home in Leominister, Massachusetts, LeBlanc strove to spend as much time as possible with her dying father. With the intention of writing about him someday, she began tape-recording their talks, so she’d be sure to remember him exactly as he sounded and in his own words.

Those conversations have been distilled into “The Ground We Lived On,” an arresting radio documentary that peers into the intimate relationship between LeBlanc and her father. Even as they prepare one another for the inevitable, their conversations — “the ground they lived on,” as LeBlanc describes them in the piece — continue with humor and insight up until his death. In the first installment of a two-part interview, LeBlanc lays bare her ambivalence about documenting her dad’s last days. In Part II, she describes how she and StoryCorps producer Sarah Kramer (interviewed here) distilled 40 hours of audio footage and 70 pages of text into a 12-minute tribute to LeBlanc and her father’s profound connection.

What was it like for you when your father was diagnosed with lung cancer?
He had a sequence of events happen: He had an aortic aneurysm that was longstanding, for years. It finally got to the point where it had to be operated on. During that surgery, he was paralyzed in the torso, and during the neurological testing for that — which now brings us easily six months into this odyssey — that’s when he finds out he has lung cancer. So, we were dealing with his paralysis, which was a stunning kind of devastation, and the lung cancer was just sort of in the background.

It’s not to say we didn’t recognize [the lung cancer] was devastating, but he was trying to deal with becoming paralyzed. So then, this doctor said to us, “Look, you don’t have time on this.” So, the lung cancer diagnosis really collapsed into just a pure crisis feeling in my life. I was incredibly close with him — I went into high alarm. I was very stricken, and anxious, and terrified.

How did it occur to you to do this project?
Dave Isay, who’s the head of Sound Portraits and StoryCorps, was an acquaintance of mine, not a close friend, and we met for lunch, I think — we’d sort of crossed paths in journalism, prior to this. I was in the throes of this grieving and [Random Family] was coming out. I was just really devastated, and a friend of his had just lost a parent to lung cancer, so Dave said “Tape your dad. Just tape him, Adrian.” I said, “No, why?” He said, “Just tape him. Get down the info about his life. You think you’ll remember all these details but you really won’t.” Which I know from journalism — you think you will [remember every detail], but you never do. So he gave me a tape recorder and said, “Just do it.”

I brought it home and did one interview with my dad. It was very stiff, like” “Where were you born? Blah, blah blah.” The taping got screwed up, so I got some consultation from StoryCorps, and then that’s how it happened. It was never with a plan to do anything with [the material] except have it. It was this idea that I would get [my dad’s] bio down, because I knew I would forget the name of his high school, that stuff. And I know I will write about my dad someday, but [I was] definitely not thinking it was for a project.

In “The Ground We Lived On,” you say of your father: “His keen joy in observing people and the world is the reason I became a journalist.” Can you elaborate on that?
We thought a lot about the use of the word ‘keen,’ because it wasn’t just this sort of vague thing — he really was a bird watcher, he’d always called himself a bird watcher, and he was the kind of person that would watch people very carefully. He was a very loveable guy, a gentle nice guy — he wasn’t a person you’d feel uncomfortable with, but he was absorbing people and would often have a very astute take on them. Not a critical one, but, kind of like these characterizations. He would think about it, and he would enjoy it. I guess it was observing, then characterizing.

And, he also was a person who was incredibly curious about people and the world. He would always ask questions like, “What’s your day like?” It’s the question he always asked people: “What do you do during the day?” I think partly because of his union stuff [LeBlanc’s father had been a labor activist], he was always trying to place that — things that were good, or things that were working and things that weren’t. And in [‘Ground’] it says he would call us to the window. He was always pointing things out — my mom did it, too. It was a way of looking at the world.

What was your dad’s take on being taped during all this? Did you have to convince him?
No, no, no. I think he always secretly wanted me to devote myself to writing about him at some point. We always thought we’d get around to it — it was never spoken, but we both sort of knew it. He was totally game. I think he would’ve done anything for me, in general — he was supportive. When we started, he never even said, “Why?” I think he understood that I needed to do it, I wanted to do it — he sort of wanted to do it. I think he liked to think about his life in our conversations. When I used to go home and visit, we would always get up really early and go out to breakfast. I would always ask questions, and he would talk.

My mother didn’t want it to happen — she was like, “Adrian Nicole, if you have to do this, [do it], but I don’t want to be in it.” Of course, the great irony is, she’s the only one [besides LeBlanc and her father] really in it, because of both the way the documentary went and the quality of the recording — only certain recordings have useable quality. So, my father was trying to say, “Respect that your mom doesn’t want to be in it.” So, sometimes, I’d shut it off when she’d come in the room. And sometimes I wouldn’t, because I just forgot that it was running.

How does your mom feel about it now?
Well, she just listened — I was just calling her [LeBlanc was finishing a cell phone call when we arrived for the interview]. She seemed to think it was very beautiful. She was nervous about listening, but I think she sees it as something very separate from her. I think she just hopes it will help me process this a little bit better than I’ve been able to. But, it is pretty intimate in terms of them, and I feel respectful of the fact that I still made the decision to do it despite what she wanted, and despite that, in fact, it was a very private moment between them. Which is sort of sobering, but I still have to face that I did do it. I don’t think that she has a problem with it, but she had no way of knowing what was on it. I didn’t share it earlier because I wasn’t going to let anybody change it, and I didn’t really want to know if she hated it, because then I never would have had the guts to do it.

In what way did your father’s illness impact your relationship? You say you’d always been close, but did you feel that was ratcheted up while he was sick?
[While he was sick], we were still talking, and then he was talking less, then he was not talking at all. So, it didn’t change our relationship at all — [‘Ground’] is really representative of our relationship. I just spent every minute I could with him. I mean, the sad thing was that [Random Family] was coming out, and he was like, “Get out there, honey — you jumped in the water, now you’re gonna swim. You don’t just let this thing die.” So, I was doing readings and it was horrible. I was so dissociated from that. I have no recollection of most of those events; I could’ve cared less, really — not because I didn’t respect what I had done and the fact that people cared. I just wanted to be [with him] all the time, and I was scared I would get a cell phone call… I hated being away from him. Any available minute, I gave to him.

He was being cared for at home — that must’ve been a huge thing for you, your mom…
And my siblings. He was in a hospital a lot, prior to that because he’d had major surgery, so getting him home was great. Then, hospice was amazing. Hospice allowed us to take care of him the way we needed to, and we were lucky that we had the comfort level, financially, to not have to worry about sustaining that. I’m in a career that, even though money was never the thing it generated, I could just be home that much. It’s one of the things that makes us most happy and proud.

“I don’t think you should ever shelve your introspection about your own motivation. I think it’s really crucial.”

As a journalist, the impulse to chronicle or document what’s going on — even if you’re not thinking of it as anything official — how did you negotiate that?
I have to credit Dave Isay with that. Even had I had the impulse, I would’ve repressed it because I would’ve been very uncomfortable about it — reckoning with that impulse we have as journalists. I think it’s good to reckon with it, because I don’t think you should ever shelve your introspection about your own motivation. I think it’s really crucial.

It helped me feel much more at peace and confident about what I do. It’s not about preserving my dad. It’s not even about the death: There’s just 12 minutes [of the program] where people, friends — maybe strangers — just get to know my dad. I do really believe that about writing about people: You get to know them and you get to see things, and it’s really valuable. I think it sort of matters that you get to know the way someone else is living. Dave Isay really does believe that regular people need to be known and I think it’s true.

“Immersion journalism” is a term that’s been used to describe your work. Does this project fit into that category?
I understand what people mean by that. I guess part of it is the luxury of time, because [journalism] is really a hard business to make any kind of time in. I think of it as time, where the immersion comes in, the willingness to let your [work] dominate, or be a very, very large part of what you’re doing. [‘Ground’] was implicitly immersed, because obviously it is my family life.

My other projects are my life, but this made me aware of the journalism. When I was doing Random Family, my reporting was my life. Whereas [with ‘Ground’], I was aware that there was a footbridge between my life and the reporting. I thought, “Oh, I am reporting.” Not to say that I don’t intellectually know that I’m reporting…

But you were more conscious of it?
Yes, of my own agency and intention. Because, no matter what, even if I didn’t know this was going to be a documentary — I mean, come on! I set up a tape recorder on the hospital bed.

You say in ‘Ground’ that there are moments when caring for your dad feels “spiritual,” and you describe the reverence you feel toward his flesh, even as he’s physically deteriorating. Those sentiments may sound familiar to those who’ve experienced loss like this, but in the media you don’t tend to find them outside the purview of self-help books, or articles specifically about grief. So, how would you place this project in the larger journalistic landscape?
I never thought of that part of it. I wonder, how would one cover that stuff journalistically, as opposed to more personally — like self-help. It’s a really good question: I don’t know how you would cover it journalistically. I don’t know how people would report about this. It’s clear that since I don’t know, and you’re clearly wondering, we need to cover it. Personal essays get the closest, I think.

In the piece, you say: “Serious loss brings you into one of the world’s silent fraternities.” And sooner or later, if one lives long enough, we’ll all go through an experience like this. So, why is that fraternity silent?
A total inability to deal with mortality, a refusal to deal with aging: I think that’s thoroughly American. I was in Eastern Europe this summer, and it’s really different there. We don’t know how to deal with it and we willfully don’t deal with it. Just the very fact that when some loved one gets sick or is dying, it’s like everyone else’s life is continuing — if you bring it up, people don’t really want to hear about it.

In the second half of this interview, Editing Through Loss — Part II, LeBlanc describes the grueling editing process that had her reliving her father’s final moments to create “The Ground We Lived On.”

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

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

As the CEO of Playboy Enterprises, one of Forbes‘ 100 Most Powerful Women In The World — and, oh yeah, daughter of Hugh — Christie Hefner’s perspective on the media industry — and life, really — is unlike yours, ours or anyone else’s. Mediabistro.com managing editor, media news Dylan Stableford chatted with Christie during the 2006 American Magazine Conference in Phoenix, Arizona (she was the chair of that, too) about magazines, Playboy, Penthouse, the venerable Playboy brand and what it’s like to hang out at the Mansion with Dad and all of his robes.

mediabistro.com: What is your average media day like?

Christie Hefner: I read four newspapers — the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times. I read Financial Times online. I don’t read blogs regularly, unless someone directs me to them. But I do blog for the Huffington Post.

A big part of this conference is based on the theme of magazines “going beyond the page” and Playboy has clearly been adept at this, with all of its brand extensions. But is it realistic to think other publishers, particularly smaller magazines, can emulate what you do?

Online — absolutely. It’s not realistic to think they can emulate what we do in other areas, at least in scale. We have a $700 million retail business — that’s not the template for most publishers. But I think connecting your magazine brand to other mediums — that’s extremely important.

What is Playboy‘s next brand extension?

We’re looking at London and Macao to do the same thing we’ve done in Las Vegas. We’ve already launched a Sirius channel. And we have a casino club. It’s the basic idea of bringing the brand experience, and lifestyle experience, to new territories.

Under its new ownership, Penthouse appears to be transforming itself into more of a competitor to Playboy than they’ve been in the recent past. They hired away Diane Silberstein from Playboy, they just threw a “Meet the Media” party in New York. Do you feel any pressure?

No. If you look at history, five years, 10 years decade to decade, there’s no comparison. The breadth of what Playboy does just isn’t comparable. I’ve been at this business far too long to feel that pressure. We just move ahead.

How often do you get to the Mansion?

Hmm. Well, I’d say every few months. Maybe something like eight times a year. We were at the Mansion for Halloween last year, and I must say, it is the party. There’s nothing else that compares to it. You should try to go if you can.

How much has been expressed to you about the chain of succession if your father retires?
The company’s his. We went through that process. Our roles are well defined. Creatively, he’s training [all of] us to understand what the brand is, how it should be represented.

Will he ever retire?

He’s said, basically, he loves what he does, and he’s going to do it as long as he’s able to. So, no, I don’t think so.

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

Following a summer of rumors, an ownership change and a
subsequent housecleaning that included the exodus of popular editor Mimi Valdes
that has kept the fire of speculation fueled, Valdes’ replacement, Danyel Smith,
who was Vibe‘s editor in the late 1990s — inherited a lot of blingy
baggage. We spoke with Smith recently about managing morale, the relative soul
of American Idol and why “you want me backstage at Diddy.”

You’ve a history with Vibe. How did you wind up back
here?

It seems like I’ve always been with Vibe. It feels like I never
left. In 1993 I moved to New York from Oakland to be the R&B editor at
Bilboard — just as I was offered the job of West Coast editor of
Vibe. I was a stringer for Spin, the New York Times,
and then was appointed editor in 1997. I became Vibe‘s editor-in-chief
for 21 issues. Then I got a job as Time Inc.’s editor-at-large — it was a sexy
offer. I dropped out of the magazine game for awhile to write and get my MFA,
but then [the new ownership] got me back, so here I am.

How do you manage morale after a housecleaning?

It’s been a whirlwind. Anytime you have to let anyone go, it’s like a family.
I didn’t hide the fact that it is a tense time. It’s not easy. I’ve been through
that experience. A few years ago I would’ve run crying, but we’re deep here, we
have forward-thinking editors. It makes us stronger. You lead by example, but I
don’t pretend to act other than the way I feel.

What was the first thing you said to your staff?

‘It’s a very tumultuous time, but we’re going to get through it.’ That, and
‘I’m back, folks.’

How would you describe your sensibility as an editor?

I’m tough. I have really high expectations. I love Vibe. I breathe it. I had
some great teachers like Joe Levy and Robert Christgau along the way — they were
very principled, tough, editor — just because [the subject matter] is music and
culture doesn’t mean it’s any less important to be that way.

Is Vibe as influential as it was, say, three years
ago?

I hate to sound corny, but it’s been the same, best music
magazine in the entire world. We have relentless, thorough, excellent writing. I
think there are some music stories that have been criminally undocumented — some
really beautiful music, and it’s of service to our audience to find it. I view
that as my job.

How do you balance covering hip-hop culture while being a
part of it? Is there a downside?

We’re all a part of what we write about, not just hip-hop. If you cover
business for the New York Times, you’re part of it in some way. We live the
culture. In some ways it makes us biased, in some ways it doesn’t. I love pop
culture. I live it. If you’re a reader, you want me backstage at Mariah. You
want me backstage at Diddy, so I can tell you what’s really happening. I’m the
girl for the gig.

What is your typical media day like?

I’m in the office at 9:00-9:30. I’m everywhere. I’m reading everything all
the time — the Times, the Washington Post arts section, all
the alt weeklies, the San Francisco Bay Guardian — all of them online
except for Billboard. Then we have an internal blog that interns post
to. When I came in here, we were still making interns get us clips, and they
were spread out with scissors — I was like, no, ‘This is Little House On The
Prairie.’

Is Vibe changing direction?

If anything we’re expanding what we do to have a broader spectrum. We’re
doing 300-400 words on TV on the Radio. We just did a big piece on American
Idol winner Taylor Hicks. People might be like, “What’s this guy doing in
Vibe?” But he’s really soulful. He’s into the blues.

What’s encouraging in terms of magazines you compete against? What’s
discouraging?

I think we compete against everybody — Rolling Stone, Spin,
the Times. It’s hard to speak for them, but what’s discouraging [in
general] is the idea of what’s “urban” and “mainstream” and that line in
between. When we put people of color on our covers, we’re always dealing with
that issue. Once you think it’s over, we’re past it — it seems to be coming back
to mattering again. People want to use it against you. ‘If a there’s a star
who’s white on our cover, does it mean less or is it worth less?’ That’s why you
get forward-thinking editors to guide you through all of that.

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

Charles Glasser started as a reporter in his teens and ended up reporting in Nicaragua, El Salvador, England and Spain. Today, he travels the world training reporters and editors of Bloomberg News how to responsibly exercise freedom of speech.

In his new book, the International Libel and Privacy Handbook, Glasser attempts to demystify the world’s libel laws in an era when all media is global. Fresh from a trip to Japan, Glasser took time to speak to Aileen Gallagher of mediabistro.com. Excerpts:

Mediabistro: What do you do?

Charles Glasser: One of my responsibilities here is media law training around the world. With 125 bureaus and almost 2,000 reporters, that’s a lot of stuff. Bloomberg journalists are required to take media law training every two years. It’s kind of a rolling thing. Primarily, giving classes in Japan and India. While I’m there, other things — meeting with outside council, reviewing changes in general law, perhaps supervising some litigation matter. I wear a number of different hats here.

Mediabistro: (As a young lawyer, Glasser argued a case in the First Circuit Court of Appeals.) What happened in that case?

Charles Glasser: The case is called Levinsky’s Inc. v. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., where I won a reversal of a jury verdict on defamatory meaning. Does the word “trashy” defame you? If I said your store was trashy, have I defamed you? The trial court said yeah, trashy. I wouldn’t go to a store that was trashy. The holding was that when a word is capable of so many different meanings, and most of them are just opinion or not defamatory, then the word can’t be defamatory. Trashy is one of those words. The word is capable of so many different meanings.

I did a lot of access work and really got into the public interest work. I got to do a great case Doe vs. Department of Mental Health. It’s a tragic story but a great example of how the press can be everything it’s supposed to be. Pardon my proselytizing, but it is a religion. A mildly retarded young lady was in a state home and she was murdered by another patient, both in the state care. The facts seemed to indicate that her murder was largely due to incompetence and negligence of the caretaking staff.

“If you teach people to get it right, if you teach people to be fair, be responsible, most of all, be clear.… More often than not, libel cases occur because something wasn’t well thought out and it wasn’t well supported.”

Mediabistro: But she’s a column and that’s protected, right?

Charles Glasser: Remember, it’s not marked as an opinion column. She was just a reporter. She’s a columnist. That’s part of how I won the case. Their argument was “Wait a minute, this is in a news page, not on the op-ed page.” I convinced the court — I know I’m bragging, but it’s a good case — that there are things in a newspaper that are the indicia of opinion. One of them is the fact that she’s got a standing sig with her picture and that indicates to the reasonable reader, column. Readers are smart enough to know that a column has that flavor of opinion. Opinions are not wholesale protected. Opinions can be defamatory. I like to think it was my experience as a journalist that I was able to flesh out what the facts were that you could then present to a judge.

Mediabistro: How does media law training work at Bloomberg?

Charles Glasser: If you teach people to get it right, if you teach people to be fair, be responsible, most of all, be clear. Most libel cases come from a well-founded, well-intended mistake. There are not all that many cases where a reporter acted with knowing falsity and reckless disregard for the truth. More often than not, libel cases occur because something wasn’t well thought out and it wasn’t well supported. The research wasn’t as clean and clear as it should have been.

The amount of pre-publication review varies wildly across news organizations. I can tell you at Bloomberg our general approach. I could never read everything. We move 5,000 stories a day and it’s just not going to happen. My driving principle is not to put on the brakes. My driving principle is break the news, beat the competition. That’s my first job. How can I facilitate breaking the news?

What we have here is sort of a red-flag system. We train editors and train reporters how to get it right, how to be fair, how to be clear, how to be cognizant of certain issues. If one of those libel-y things comes up, take a good look at it and then call me. We train them to reach out to me. Long, investigative pieces I always read. Bloomberg publishes a magazine, Bloomberg Markets, and because it’s a monthly, it only makes sense for me to read it ahead of time.

“The defenses to libel are similar the world over if you reach for the highest standards.”

Judges, at least thoughtful judges, are cognizant of the drive to publish quickly. Indeed, if a judge really believes, wait a minute, maybe Gallagher got it wrong but my gosh, she was writing about toxic water in the baby food and if she didn’t write about it right now, who knows what could have happened? There you have a public interests that demands what Justice Brennan called the “exigencies of the deadline.” On the other hand, what if Gallagher was working on a story that was much more enterprising… Six years ago, a famous politician was charged with drunk driving. Does the public need to know that right now, and so much at the expense of fact-checking a little more?

One thing that, in the Bloomberg way, we emphasize here a lot, is we must remember, that driving force is the public interest. Not, NOT competitive disadvantage with other news organizations. The London Telegraph was accused of rushing a story to print and, at trial, when pressed about why the rush, the editor had to admit that, “Well, we were afraid the other newspapers were going to get the story.” What are we here for? What are reporters here for? We’re not here to simply beat the competition, we’re here to serve the public interest. I honestly believe that, naive as it sounds. Unfortunately, we lose sight of that. And when we do, we get into trouble.

Mediabistro: In the book, you’re examining the libel laws of several different countries. Who has the toughest?

Charles Glasser: There’s the toughest law and the toughest atmosphere. China is tough because the legal system is the most impenetrable. India is one of the few countries, and the only one in Asia, that will read American law. The former attorney general there told me in a conversation that we’ll look at law anywhere and if we think it comports to our constitution, we’ll cite it. India has cited Times v. Sullivan. China’s legal system is the scariest and most impenetrable, and they have criminal penalties so that raises the stakes. In terms of the most difficult, right now England is still the worst because the burden of proof — the burden of truth — as in most of the world, the story is assumed false until you prove it true.

What we teach here is, knowing that as a reporter you’ve got this responsibility of proving the truth, doesn’t it makes sense that when you’re preparing a story, you dot every I and cross every T, save every document and really do a great job? You can look anyone in the eye and say “No, here it is, boom, boom, boom.”

The defenses to libel are similar the world over if you reach for the highest standards. You grew up believing that truth is a defense. In Germany, truth is not an absolute defense. If a story makes a defamatory — we’ll say unflattering — statement about somebody, the fact that it’s true is not enough to justify its publication. It must serve the public interest. The famous illustration is one of the German papers published a story referring to Gerhard Schroeder’s dyed hair. You’ve seen a picture of the guy. It’s total shoe polish. He sued and won. It may have been true, said the judge, but where’s the public interest in that? How does that serve the public? A judge is going to say, “You’ve clearly damaged somebody’s reputation. The question is, can you justify it?” True isn’t enough, you have justify it by dint of service to the public. That’s just an interesting difference that people don’t think about.

“It’s not just so much where the article is available, but where the impact of the article can be felt.”

The most difficult problem with England is that the judges, unfortunately, are insanely generous to people that we would consider scoundrels. I’m not kidding. It’s shameless. We’ve been threatened by people who are notorious — Russian mobsters, Arab oil sheiks with ties to terrorist funding — who can still bring claims in England. If you have enough money in England, just go to down to Savile Row and get the right suit and the right lawyer and it’s just remarkable.

Mediabistro: What does the global nature of the web mean for libel?

Charles Glasser: Because of the Internet, your article can arrive in France and Germany with a few mouse clicks. In England, judges have said, “Enough with the libel tourism.” The fact that the article was available in England isn’t enough. If the plaintiff (they call them a claimant) has a reputation in England and has interests in England and the article and be said to have impacted those things, then they’re going to take jurisdiction. So it’s not just so much where the article is available, but where the impact of the article can be felt.

Mediabistro: What’s stopping online writers, like bloggers, from getting sued?

Charles Glasser: If Mrs. Smith has her web page and she’s living in Florida, she’s got no assets in Italy. She doesn’t have an office in France. She doesn’t have a bank account in Germany. Let’s say she writes about a German guy and the German guy sues her in Germany. Even if the court in Germany takes jurisdiction and even if the German court rules against her by default or otherwise, American jurisprudence will not enforce foreign judgments that do not comport with the First Amendment. I cannot sue you in France under French libel law and then take my judgment to a U.S. court and then say give me all your money. That doesn’t stop other shenanigans from happening. If Mrs. Smith was in the EU, she’s got problems. The treaties require full faith and credit across countries. A judgment in France will be enforceable in Germany.

The other problem with this isn’t so much Mrs. Smith and her weblog, but let’s say that a corporation publishes a website where they do comparative advertising where they say our widgets are better than Brand X’s widgets and Brand X is in Germany. If the publisher of the statement that’s sued upon has assets in Germany, has an office, has employees, has a bank account — like Bloomberg does, like AP does, like NBC does — then you can’t just thumb your nose at it. CNN can be sued anywhere and CNN can have assets seized everywhere. And much more importantly, from a human standpoint, remember that most of these countries have a criminal libel law. That puts at risk not just the money and the stuff, but people — the most important asset that any company’s got. Many countries, for instance, France, can actually imprison the director of publications even though that person had nothing to do with the publication. They’re responsible. Companies and news organizations need to be aware of their global impact.

Mediabistro: How does Bloomberg deal with that?

Charles Glasser: We do not change our stories for their venue. A story that is good enough for Bloomberg is good enough for Bloomberg globally. Some organizations do. Some organizations will publish a scathing editorial about Singapore and that same story will not appear in their Asian edition. We have a more practical and more ethical approach: If we meet the highest standards of good journalism, we will take our shot in court anywhere. Good journalists really get that. If I can show you that my story is accurate, clearly written, fair, not motivated by an agenda, it is transparent with regard to my sources, it is transparent with regard to how I obtained material, if my article most of all serves the public interest, is clearly written so there is not ambiguity about who did what bad thing, then I will stand up in any court and defend that. You have to. Any less, then why bother? Does that mean we will win every case? Probably not.

Mediabistro: How does your journalism training work?

Charles Glasser: Good journalism is the best legal defense there is. As a journalist I know the techniques. As I lawyer I know where the weak points are. Then we’ll highlight the little quirks in local law. Defamatory meaning in Japan is very different from here. If I say someone here files for bankruptcy, there’s nothing bad about that. In Japan it’s very shameful. Also in Japan, the dead can be libeled. If libel law is culturally reflective, then look at Confucian and Buddhist influences in society. The family can bring the claim. We emphasize the techniques of good journalism.

Mediabistro: How often are these international libel suits filed?

Charles Glasser: Global publishers are forced to defend collectively at least a hundred international lawsuits a year. They are very expensive and they are very, very damaging. Being sued for libel is one of the most unpleasant, emotionally exhausting, emotionally expensive experiences that I wouldn’t wish on a dog. Nobody likes getting accused of getting it wrong. Reporters may best be served by thinking of what they do as a craft rather than a profession. And to have one’s craftsmanship challenged is a necessarily unpleasant and disturbing thing. Any reporter who tells you no big deal, let ’em sue me for libel, that’s the kind of guy I worry about.

There are two kinds of reporters in this world: There’s the woman who lies awake at night and goes, “Gosh did I get it right, did I miss something.” I’ll take that person every day of the week. The guy who says, “Aw, I couldn’t be wrong. Prove it,” that sort of hubris. Those are the kinds who keep me awake at night.

Come see Sebastian Junger and others talk about their transition from writing articles to books in mediabistro’s June 28 panel discussion, “From Journo to Big Book.”

mediabistro: What were your criteria for choosing which of your stories went into Crime Beat?

Michael Connelly: I was looking for stories that had what I was calling an echo—a connection that would go from that story to something I’ve written in my fiction, and whether it’s the plot in some of these stories, some have obvious plot connections. But, there are also some more subtle things, like a character theme. But, I was looking for stories that connected to the [novels] because I thought the audience, largely, would be people who are familiar with my fiction work.

mb: Considering you started on the crime beat while in Fort Lauderdale, during the height of South Florida’s “cocaine wars,” how much of your experience reporting on that shows up in your fiction?

Connelly: Well, I think my days on the crime beat obviously influenced me. [Otherwise], we wouldn’t be having this conversation, I’m sure. I wouldn’t have been able to write the book I did, if I hadn’t been on the crime beat. But the kinds of crime, how they affected this, I’m not really sure how to place that.

I was drawn, as any police reporter would be, to the more intriguing cases. I mean, with the Fort Lauderdale stuff, there are a couple stories in Crime Beat where I’m with the homicide squad. That story was very influential—I spent a week with them back in, I believe, ’87 or ’86 (I don’t have the date in front of me). That one week has influenced all 16 novels I’ve written. You know, with a full immersion into that world, it was very influential.

mb: Are any of the articles you wrote during that time in Crime Beat? If so, why did choose those stories, in particular?

Connelly: Yes, the first one, called “The Call.” I wanted that to be first because
I think, if someone has read my [novels], they’ll immediately see the
connection between the character I write about most often, Harry
Bosch, and a couple of the detectives in that story.

Also, the stories on Christopher Wilder (in Crime Beat chapter “Killer on the Run”) were back
then. The serial killer started in South Florida,
then went out to L.A., then went back to the northeast.

mb: Which incident from the book that you reported on took you most by surprise, and why?

Connelly: Probably one from the story called “The Stalker.” It took me by surprise because I was asked to cover the trial of this man named Jonathon Lundh, who was charged with murder. What’s surprising about it is that he started calling me pretty regularly from the jail. He had convinced the judge of his skills and he was allowed to defend himself. In his charge of murder, he was his own lawyer, and even though he was not a lawyer he was allowed to defend himself. And as such, he got greater access to things in jail, including the phone, so he was pretty free to call.

So he called me quite a bit, and there was kind of an obvious manipulation going on. Then, he ended up subpoenaing me to be a witness. It was a kind of surprising twist in covering that case, because I was never really sure what he hoped to get out of putting me on the stand—nothing more than probably embarrassing me or something. I knew nothing about the case other than what I had reported on. And he was trying to use me to get to the police, to get me to tell what the police had told me about him that never got into the newspaper story. So, it involved the whole legal morass of the Los Angeles Times attorneys saying I didn’t have to testify, and so on and so forth. And that was something I didn’t see coming.

mb: So did you actually end up testifying?

Connelly: No, ultimately I didn’t have to testify. Actually, you know, I did testify, but I didn’t say anything. Basically, the Los Angeles Times gave me a rehearsal-answer thing, I can’t remember exactly what it was. It was something along the lines of, “I choose not to have to answer that,” under whatever reporting protective laws there were at the time.

mb: How did you navigate the emotions called up by the cases you cover—for example, in the Kanan murder? How did you keep the feelings elicited by the crimes from coloring your reporting of those incidents? Did writing crime fiction help provide an outlet for that?

Connelly: Well, the more you [covered crime], the thicker the shield was around you. Like cops, the crime beat reporter can seek outlets that help maintain mental health or numb the difficult feelings. In my case, I had my fiction. I would come home from a day of telling it like it is to spend a couple hours in an alternate universe, where I got to make it up and tie up all the loose ends. It was very therapeutic. But, as I said, I still could become cynical.

You asked specifically about the Kanan case. Well, I can’t remember any particularly difficult feeling overtaking me from that case. To me, it was a big story and I was all about advancing it ahead of the competition. I remember when I got ahold of a search warrant that named a suspect, I was elated because I knew the competition didn’t have it. I didn’t really slow down to think about who that suspect was and how sordid the story was turning out to be.

mb: You say that one of the cases you recall most from your life as a reporter involves a “woman who killed her kids, the family dog, and then turned the gun on herself.” You also say your biggest regret is not going back to that house to find out why she did it—what stopped you?

Connelly: Probably because at the time I didn’t care. I didn’t care enough to go back. I was caught up in the routine of the job, the momentum of moving on to the next story, and the next day. I was sort of a crime reporter du jour. If you do that long enough, you kind of wrap yourself in a cold cynicism. You become inured to the content of what you are writing about, you lose sight of the human element.

Frankly, back then I didn’t care why she had killed her family and herself. All I knew was that it wasn’t going to be a big story, so I moved on. My regrets are formed in hindsight. It’s not something I regretted in the moment. I probably didn’t think too much about it.

mb: Do you still rely on the contacts you made while covering crime for newspapers when writing novels?

Connelly: I do use a lot of contacts within the LAPD and other law-enforcement agencies, but I’m pretty sure there’s not a single person who I work with now that I used as a source when I was a reporter. One story that’s kind of funny is that an LAPD detective, who helps me quite a bit now, never returned my calls when I was a reporter. This sort of underlines the difference between journalism and writing fiction.

When I was calling on him as the reporter, he perceived me as a possible threat because I might question how he was handling the case, or I might report facts he wanted to keep out of public knowledge. But, when I call on him now as a novelist, he’s happy to help me because I write fiction, and there is no threat to him.

“When I was working the beat, I often had to lobby and fight for space for my stories. I really wonder if that would be the case now.”

mb: While crimes don’t seem to change much over time, technology certainly does. Describe your reporting methods behind the stories in Crime Beat, prior to cell phones and the Internet.

Connelly: I had an editor who used to call out to me as I left the newsroom, “Got quarters?” Well, I doubt there is a reporter in the country now who relies on pay phones for calling in to rewrite. They carry cell phones, not quarters for pay phones. So advances in technology have changed reporting as well as policing. I think more shoe leather was involved back then, more face-to-face relationships.

mb: How did cutting your teeth as a journalist using those methods affect your writing? Also, how does current technology play into your work now?

Connelly: I think because of my years as a reporter, I am blessed with the ability to write almost anywhere: planes, trains, cars, airports, hotels, etc. So to do that, I always have a computer with me. I have Internet access, I have my BlackBerry, I have any piece of technology that makes [writing] easier to do.

Conversely, in the writing itself, I use technology as window dressing. It usually is not an important part of the story. Most of the time, I write about a detective who doesn’t trust the advances of technology, who’s not sure [technology is] improving the world, and has a difficult time when put into a position where he must confront or use technology.

mb: What are some trends you’ve noticed in crime reporting and writing over the past 25 years? Do you think newspapers’ treatment of crime stories varies from how they were handled when you were reporting? How?

Connelly: I think media access to law enforcement has increased tremendously through things like Court TV and the proliferation of live trials and car chases, and the Internet, too. I think this has educated the public, but also whetted the appetite for the reading and viewing public. This, in turn, has pushed the crime beat to the forefront in a lot of media venues. When I was working the beat, I often had to lobby and fight for space for my stories. I really wonder if that would be the case now. I kind of doubt it.

mb: “If you want to know the facts, read a newspaper, but if you want to know the truth, read a novel.” You’ve said you agree with this sentiment: How do your novels get to truth behind the facts in a different way than your newspaper crime stories?

Connelly: With fiction you can tell “true” stories by creating characters and situations that explore an issue or an incident or whatever you want to its full extent. It’s a perfect setup for this exploration, because there are no boundaries. You can move the pieces anywhere on the board to truly make your case.

In a piece of journalism, there are always boundaries. You are bound by the known facts and what people are willing to tell you. Just because someone told you how something happened, it doesn’t mean that is how it truly happened. It is only their version. You can’t go inside that person’s head to get the truth. In a novel you can.

mb: Your police detective friend describes what you do as “faction,” or “the blending or bending of fact into fiction.” How does that play into your own work, both in reported crime stories and crime novels?

Connelly: When it comes to journalism it plays no part—you don’t blend fact and fiction. When it comes to my novels, I try to cast the stuff I make up against a backdrop of reality. I want as many truthful details as possible, because it makes the fiction more realistic. I want the line between what is real and what is made up to be unnoticeable.

mb: Having been a journalist covering the crime beat gives you an advantage as a fiction crime writer. Got any advice for writers who don’t share your background, but want to tackle crime fiction?

Connelly: You mean when they go to write crime novels? I think these books live
and die with the characters you create. And they have to be real,
credible characters… [Maybe] you don’t have the kind of [experience] I had, where
I actually dealt with dozens and dozens of detectives almost on a
daily basis. Then, you’ve got to get that somewhere else. I don’t think
you can watch TV or read other books, or watch movies and write about
detectives and the crime beat as you will, credibly.

You’ve got to do
your research. If you don’t spend years as a newspaper reporter,
that’s not required, that’s fine. But I think you should go and visit
the police station, and try to spend time with some of the people who
are doing the work that you want to write about.

**

Want to hear from other journalists who’ve made the move to writing books? Come to mediabistro’s June 28 panel discussion, From Journo to Big Book: How Five Journalists Became Authors, featuring The Perfect Storm author Sebastian Junger, Vanity Fair‘s David Margolick, and more.

Nicole Haddad is an aspiring freelancer with a Master’s degree in publishing. This is her first piece for mediabistro.

Come see Sebastian Junger and others talk about their transition from writing articles to books in mediabistro’s June 28 panel discussion, “From Journo to Big Book.”

For nearly two years in the early 1960s, Boston lived in fear of a serial killer dubbed the Boston Strangler—so named for his habit of garroting his female victims with their undergarments after he’d sexually brutalized them. At the same time, then-infant Sebastian Junger’s parents commissioned the addition of an art studio to their suburban Boston property. Staying home with her new baby, Mrs. Junger oversaw the construction, much of which was done by Al DeSalvo, the man who would later confess—and then recant—to being the Boston Strangler.

A Death in Belmont is Junger’s investigation into the unsolved mystery surrounding the Strangler. In his book’s opening, an older woman lies raped and strangled in her home—all signs that the Strangler has struck again. Within 24 hours, a black man named Roy Smith who’d cleaned the dead woman’s house is arrested and charged with her murder. After Smith gets convicted by an all-white jury, more women are raped and strangled around Boston, yet Smith’s proclamations go unheeded. Junger leads the reader through evidence and circumstance that asks: Did Roy Smith go to jail simply because he was a black man in wrong place at the wrong time? Or did his petty criminal behavior escalate to a dark, heinous murder? Was Al DeSalvo, a convicted rapist, really the Boston Strangler? And if so, did Junger’s own mother somehow skirt a violent death at the hands of a serial killer?

mediabistro: What motivated you to turn this story—which no doubt has been told many times in your family—into a book?

Junger: I don’t remember any of it [happening] because I was too young, but I thought the story was interesting. It was 40 years ago, and I assumed that a lot of the people involved were starting to die.

I came to this project not really knowing anything about the Boston Strangler. It was important for me to be objective, and separate myth from reality. Initially, I wanted to exonerate the black guy and then, very quickly, I realized I couldn’t do that. In fact, he might possibly be guilty. I had to make ambiguity interesting because, ultimately, the truth is ambiguous and there is no way to know what happened.

mediabistro: How did you approach the research; where did you begin?

Junger: I went to the library and looked at old news articles about the case. From there, the research goes off into a million different directions. I started tracking down old witnesses, and trying to understand criminal law.

mediabistro: What about getting the court transcripts?

Junger: They were hard to get. I think they had to be xeroxed by hand, so someone did me a big favor. I don’t know who it was, but I eventually got [the transcripts]. They knew who I was, and I think someone must have liked The Perfect Storm because they did me a huge favor.

But, if an aspect of my researched was stalled, I just switched to another. So while I waiting for documents to come through and for people to turn up, I pushed ahead on many fronts at the same time.

mediabistro: Was there a method to your reporting?

Junger: You just track down everyone you possibly can and every document that could possibly be useful. There were so many things to pursue that I didn’t try to pursue everything at once. I blocked out the areas of knowledge I needed to have and then I pursued those. I also hired a researcher to help me.

mediabistro: When did you decide you’d finished your research?

Junger: I didn’t—I was simultaneously writing and reporting up until the end. I never closed myself off to the possibility of doing more research or getting more information.

mediabistro: How long did you conduct research before you began writing?

Junger: I started in 1999, and got enough for a book proposal. From 2003 to 2005, I was writing and reporting.

mediabistro: When investigating this story, what aspects of it made you the angriest?

Junger: I was disappointed in Roy. He did things that pointed to his guilt. Pardon the pun, but if Roy’s story were more black-and-white, it would have been easier, and probably less interesting. I felt like at first I was out to exonerate him, and then I found out that he did some very bad things in his life that disappointed me. I thought I was trying to help him and he was making that job harder for me. He did some suspicious things that day, and I kept getting disappointed in him. Then I gave up having any investment in him.

I realized you can’t be rooting for one team when you’re a journalist—you have to be totally impartial. I really shouldn’t care about the outcome of whether he’s guilty or innocent. And in the end I really didn’t, because I had very serious doubts about his innocence.

mediabistro: The book has a lot of detailed information—probably constituting just a fraction of your reporting. How did you decide what would go into the book and what wouldn’t?

Junger: Information has to be accurate, and the way you assemble it has to have veracity. You can assemble true facts in a way that is actually misleading, and you have to be very careful about that. I actually showed my book to a lot of people in the criminal justice system in Massachusetts, some of whom had also had read the trial transcripts. That was my attempt to make sure it had veracity, as well as being accurate.

Then, you take those things that you have, those building blocks, and you try to build something that has some narrative structure and some narrative tension, with an ear for what it’s like to be a reader. You want to inform [readers] and not bore them, and you have to be very sensitive as to when you cross that line.

“Information has to be accurate, and the way you assemble it has to have veracity. You can assemble true facts in a way that is actually misleading, and you have to be very careful about that.”

mediabistro: Was there anything that your editor or other readers advised you to cut but you kept in the book anyway?

Junger: The mechanics of criminal law. My agent was pretty skeptical about including the legal stuff, but I had to put it in there. It’s like meteorology in The Perfect Storm. I tried to boil it down to basic, layman’s terms. One reviewer said it was like a high school civics class but then, a defense lawyer told me that my explanation was better than some judges’ instructions to jurors. You can’t please everyone.

mediabistro: Why do you think A Death in Belmont was an important story to tell?

Junger: The justice system is always important in any country. It [the 1960’s] was an era in America of terrible social upheaval and racial conflict, and I was curious about it. You don’t have to always think it’s important to feel it’s worth doing. It doesn’t necessarily have to have a wider importance—it might—but you can’t know that until the book comes out.

mediabistro: Tackling race, class, and injustice is quite an undertaking. If you didn’t have some personal attachment to this story, would you have been the right person for this job?

Junger: Yes. I wasn’t that close to it; if I had been, it would have clouded my vision and reporting. It was a story that I’d heard, but I had no memory of it. In a sense I could have been any reporter.

I feel that journalism is the same set of rules and standards and objectives, whether you’re writing a memoir—which is just journalism about yourself—or war reporting, or writing about a criminal trial. It’s all the same process, and you just apply it to whatever subject you’re working on. It doesn’t really matter if you know about something. If you know about something that you have strong emotions about, that’s different. I didn’t have strong emotions about this story at all.

mediabistro: The style of your writing in A Death in Belmont is part history lesson, part magazine feature, part novel. Was there a conscious decision on your part to write it like that?

Junger: Yes and no. A good paragraph is a good paragraph. You have to go back and forth. Too much drama is shallow, and too much history can be boring. Powerful journalistic writing simply uses facts in the same dramatic way that novelists use fiction. Dramatic structure is dramatic structure, and whether you build it out of verified facts or things that you think of, it’s the same. The plot can follow the rise and fall of dramatic action in nonfiction, too

If you want people to read your journalism, you have to give some thought to how you’re going to assemble all these facts. But, you can assemble them artfully and compellingly, and that’s the job of someone who wants the public to read his work.

mediabistro: Personally, who do you think was the Boston Strangler?

Junger: I don’t know or I would have said in the book. Gut feeling can’t be relied on—you need logic and fact. The Goldberg family feels that Roy Smith did it. Roy Smith’s family feels that he didn’t do it. Their feelings are totally understandable, but they’re not more reliable than the facts are—they don’t illuminate the truth at all. It just reflects the reality of their situation, which is that both families lost somebody in one way or another, and their feelings about who did what reflects that.

mediabistro: Will we ever know who the Boston Strangler was?

Junger: All the evidence in the Roy Smith case has been destroyed. The state of Massachusetts has the stuff to test against Al De Salvo, but they don’t seem interested in doing it. Without that test, it will never be proved definitively if he was or wasn’t the Boston Strangler.

Want to hear from other journalists who’ve made the move to writing books? Come to mediabistro’s June 28 panel discussion, From Journo to Big Book: How Five Journalists Became Authors, featuring The Perfect Storm author Sebastian Junger, Vanity Fair‘s David Margolick, and more.

Heather Marie Graham writes magazine and Web features that run the topical gamut, on top of being an associate editor at EverydayHealth.com. This is her first piece for mediabistro.

Named as National Magazine Award finalist in five categories, New York magazine under newish EIC Adam Moss has earned the attention and admiration of readers even outside of the metro area. The magazine’s “Strategist” department, which serves as a swanky service guide to its high-end (or aspirational) readers, was recognized with its own honors as one of five finalists for the “Magazine Section” award. Strategist editor Janet Ozzard took the time to answer our questions mid-close.

Mediabistro: So, is it REALLY an honor just to be nominated? What was your reaction?

Janet Ozzard: It’s incredibly flattering to have our peers acknowledge our work. But the Strategist is the result of many people — writers, editors, art, photo, copy — working very hard every week to make it great. The nomination recognizes them, which makes me very happy.

Mediabistro: The Strategist has recurring sections — food, best bets, Look Book, etc. — but always seems fresh. How do you keep up that kind of momentum with a weekly magazine?

Janet Ozzard: We’re fluid with the format. I have the great good fortune to work with Adam Moss, who loves change, and who encourages us to experiment with new ways to communicate information. So there are the weekly rubrics (Shopclerk, Lookbook, Best Bets) and regularly appearing ones like the Everything Guides, Neighborhood Maps, and so on. But sometimes we have an idea for something we want to write about, and we make up the format to fit it. I’m also always encouraging — well, hounding — the staff to go deeper with information. New Yorkers are extremely specific and opinionated; you’re talking to a population that knows precisely which subway car lets you off closest to the stairwell that isn’t under construction. A lot of service stories feel very soft and predictable, but New Yorkers won’t stand for that.

Mediabistro: Design is a big part of the section’s appeal. What is your role in the design of Strategist?

Janet Ozzard: Not to harp on the “team” thing, but it is the truth. I have my ideas about what the pages should look like, but the photo and art departments have theirs, too — and those are generally better. With so much information on the page, clear design is incredibly important.

Mediabistro: Where does Amy Larocca find her subjects for Look Book? And why does that feature “work” for the magazine?

Janet Ozzard: I get asked this question all the time, and here is the god’s honest truth: All the subjects of the Lookbook are RANDOMLY FOUND ON THE STREET. Every few weeks, Amy and the photographer, Jake Chessum, set up a white seamless on a street corner and then just stand there and…wait. For hours. They always come back with at least ten or 12 amazing characters.

It works for the magazine because we’re actually doing something every New Yorker thinks about. Everyone walks down the street and looks at other people and thinks, “That person looks so cool/crazy/interesting, I wonder what he/she does.” We answer the question. And it’s very funny.

Mediabistro: As an editor, how do stay on top of all the new and current stuff that’s featured in The Strategist? How important are your staff and writers in keeping you abreast of stuff that should go in the section? What role do publicists play?

Janet Ozzard: Like every editor, I read as much as I can; newspapers, magazines, online. But the staff and writers are very important, of course. They’re the critical filter. One of the good things about working on a city magazine is that we are the reader. We’re not writing about someplace we’ve never been, or some experience we’ve never had.

Publicists, I’m sorry to say, generally don’t get the Strategist. I get a lot of pitches for stuff that’s already been somewhere else, or a trend that’s come and gone, or a product whose main claim to fame is that it’s new. Just because it’s new doesn’t make it better.

Mediabistro: There are so many outlets in New York City for info about restaurants and new stores and real estate etc. What do you do editorially do differentiate yourself? How do you stay on top of your competitors?

Janet Ozzard: We’re selective. Again, we won’t write about something just because it’s new. There has to be a compelling reason, or reasons. Our food writers Robin Raisfeld and Rob Patronite, for example, are incredibly diligent, skeptical reporters. If they say they’re going to do a food map of Red Hook, they’ll go out and spend three days in Red Hook, walking around, eating, interviewing people. Then they’ll come back and do research. And they’re great writers. Who can beat that?

Mediabistro: What’s your daily/weekly routine like? What’s the lead time for Strategist?

Janet Ozzard: The early part of the week is hectic, of course, so we tend to do a lot of catching up and planning on Thursday and Friday. Lead time is at least a couple of weeks; for visual stuff like The Best Bet, it’s a month.

Mediabistro: What’s your editorial background? How did you end up at New York?

Janet Ozzard: I started at Women’s Wear Daily and worked there for 9 years, gradually becoming a deputy editor; I also wrote for W as well. I spent two of my Fairchild years in Paris as a beauty editor, running a publication that’s produced out of the Paris office in three languages. I left Fairchild in 2001, freelanced for all of two months, and then became executive editor of Style.com, which was tremendous fun, for three years. Jamie Pallot, the editorial director, is a fantastic boss. I’d been wanting to branch out from fashion, but wasn’t sure where I was going next. I was thinking about grad school. I’d been reading New York magazine forever, and I found Adam’s changes really exciting. Then I heard about this job and just jumped.

Michael Ausiello loves television. As a senior writer for the print and online versions of TV Guide, Ausiello delivers news items and spoilers on hot shows including Lost, Grey’s Anatomy, and Gilmore Girls.

A 1995 graduate of the University of Southern California, New Jersey native worked PR jobs for Entertainment Tonight and a non-profit before turning to the more creative field of entertainment writing. He freelanced for TVGuide.com for six months before joining the site permanently in 2000.

His personality shone through early in the site’s “Entertainment News” column, where catty throwaway lines at the end of each item soon helped drive traffic and increase reader feedback. His signature column, “Ask Ausiello”, not only provides juicy scoops, but gives Ausiello a chance to tell readers about his obsession with his favorite shows, his still-simmering Felicity fixation, and his love of Smurfs, Snapple, and Mariska Hargitay.

Mediabistro: So when you started working for TVGuide.com, did the magazine and the website have separate staffs?

Ausiello: When I first came on board, the staffs couldn’t have been more separate; they were just like almost completely different brands. Over the course of the six years I’ve been here, the two platforms have merged more, and you see a lot of people working for both.

Mediabistro: How your star rose at TV Guide, as far as I’ve seen, is that your writing style came through a lot in the “Entertainment News.” Is that your natural humor coming through or is this something your editors told you to play up?

Ausiello: All that seemed to come naturally to me over time, and I became more comfortable with the column, and I developed my own voice. It just all happened very naturally.

Mediabistro: Did your editors tell you to cut back on the humor or were they encouraging all the way?

Ausiello: No, they were encouraging, you know? Because I think they saw the response was really good, and the traffic for that particular column seemed to trend upward, the more personal voice I injected into it. It’s really all about the traffic and the hits; that’s really what counts. There were times when they asked me to pull it back, when I just took something too far. I’m the first person to admit there are times when I take things too far (laughs), so it’s good to have sort of a watchdog there, but for the most part they’re really supportive and encouraging.

Mediabistro: How did the “Ask Ausiello” column come about?

Ausiello: About two years after I started doing “Entertainment News”, they gave me a feedback box, which enabled readers to write in to me and comment on my stuff. The more I read the emails from readers, and as the volume of emails increased, I decided there’s an opportunity here, because some of the emails were so funny and intelligent and wacky, I was like, “there’s something I could use here.” So I pitched them an idea. For a while I knew I wanted to do a Q&A column, but my workload was just so intense it was adding something else just seemed daunting. But for whatever reason, I was like, “I’m ready to do this.” But that’s really how it was born; I knew I wanted to do it, and for whatever reason I felt like it was a good time to tackle it.

Mediabistro: It’s not like a Q&A column like Matt Roush’s, where he answers questions like a critic; there’s a lot of you in it.

Ausiello: Yeah, “Ask Ausiello” is more me than anything I’ve done in my entire career. I think initially it was more personality than news and scoops. Initially, I wasn’t really sure what it was going to be; I just knew they were asking questions and I had answers to some of them. It would be a mix of personal and TV stuff, and then it sort of evolved to where I think it’s more scoopy than personal, but I think the mix is what’s important.

Mediabistro: Did you have any kind of trepidation openly fawning for people in the entertainment industry? Did you think this was just something natural for you or were you afraid to do it at first?

Ausiello: No, I wasn’t really afraid to do it. I feel part of what makes “Ask Ausiello” work and what people like about is, at the core, I’m a TV fan, and I get obsessed with certain shows and certain actors and actresses. I didn’t feel like I wanted to stifle that. And it came naturally, and the thing is, I think that’s what really bonds me with my readers is that we like the same stuff. We like Felicity, we like Gilmore Girls, we like Veronica Mars, Lost, it goes on and on, and we like a lot of the actors, too. I just think it’s fun.

Mediabistro: Do you think this is something that’s allowable in entertainment journalism?

Ausiello: If I worked for The New York Times, I think it would be a more of a conflict and more of something that would be scrutinized. But because most of my stuff is web-based, I feel like I’m given a little more leeway with that. I feel like I’m given more leeway, because I don’t really look at myself as this hard news journalist, you know, although I can be that and I can do that. I think I’m sort of like a TV-fan-slash-journalist.

Mediabistro: When did you start with the print column, “The Ausiello Report”?

Ausiello: I’ve probably been doing that for about three years. They saw I had a nose for news and they liked the tone of my column, so the magazine came to me and said, “We’d be interested in having you write a weekly column, do you want to write up a test?” And I did it and they really liked it. Initially it was called just “TV News by Michael Ausiello,” but it sort of evolved into “The Ausiello Report.”

Mediabistro: How is it different from “Ask Ausiello?”

Ausiello: It’s a lot less me, and it’s really all about the news. It’s got a little personality in terms of my sense of humor, but it’s not me talking about what I did the night before, or how I got an office at TV Guide. It’s just news with a fun sort of edgy slant to it.

Mediabistro: Is the subject matter different in the magazine column? I would imagine that the demographics for the website are different than for the magazine.

Ausiello: Definitely. I just did a little item on Out of Practice, about how Henry Winkler and Marion Ross are going to reunite in an episode. Those are stories � Out of Practice and the Happy Days reunion � that’s a story I’d only put in the magazine. I’d never put that in either of my online columns, because I don’t think my readers really care about that. The online folks are more into the cult shows and the serialized shows like Lost, Gilmore Girls, and Veronica Mars, and I feel like the magazine readers are a little broader audience.

Mediabistro: How have things changed with the change of format (TV Guide changed from a digest with local listings to a standard trim size with national listings in October)?

Ausiello: I have more space, for one; my column is bigger, so I have more room. I actually feel like there’s more personality in my column now than there was before. The whole magazine I feel like is a little looser since it’s gone larger. So with that, I feel like I’ve been given more leeway. A lot of my jokes got cut out when we were in the smaller digest, and now rarely if ever does stuff get deleted or changed.

Mediabistro: How did you feel when a joke got cut out?

Ausiello: I wasn’t happy about it. But also, that was a different regime at the time. My jokes almost always got cut out and I hated it. You take out the jokes, you take out the personality, then what’s different or unique about the column?

Mediabistro: Where do you think this new format’s going the next few years? Is it going to develop and form and change?

Ausiello: I don’t know. Personally, I love it. Every week, I love the new magazine more. I think we’ve struck on a successful formula. It’s doing really well, it’s selling, people like it. I don’t know if it’s going to be drastically different than the magazine we’re putting out now.

Mediabistro: Where do you see the magazine in the whole entertainment space of People, Life & Style, Entertainment Weekly, and In Touch? Where does it fit in?

Ausiello: I think it’s probably more toward an Entertainment Weekly than it is to a People, but somewhere in the middle of the two. I don’t think it’s a tabloid; it’s not like Us Weekly, it’s not like it at all. I feel that the best comparison is that it’s like Entertainment Weekly, but just focusing on TV, and maybe a little bit more photo-driven.

Mediabistro: What do you say to people like my parents, who were getting the magazine for the local listings, but now they can’t see what’s on Ch. 2, Ch.4, or Ch.11?

Ausiello: I would tell them if they liked the editorial section of the small TV Guide before than they’ll love the new magazine because there’s 10 times more of it. Yes, there’s much fewer listings, but the editorial side of it is like 80 percent of the magazine now, and if you’re a TV fan, there’s a lot in that magazine to love.

Some people complain, well, “How can you call it TV Guide if there are no listings?” But I feel like it is still TV Guide; even more so, because we’re recommending and pointing you in the direction of what you should watch and what we think is worth watching. Because there’s obviously six million options every night. So now more than ever you need more than just a listing, you need guidance.

Mediabistro: When did you start putting in the spoilers and scoops in “Ask Ausiello”?

Ausiello: Probably about six months after I started, I got a little bit more into the spoiler side of things. It was what people were asking for.

Mediabistro: How did you get your spoilers in the beginning as opposed to how you get them now?

Ausiello: In the same place … in the alley outside of our office (laughs). I’m in a trenchcoat, and I’m walking in the alley and there’s a trade-off (laughs).

How is it different? I have more sources now, for one. I mean, when I started it was tough; it’s really just what I heard, and if I was interviewing someone, an actor or a producer would let a spoiler drop out. That’s really where I would rely on stuff. Now I have more covert means of acquiring spoilers. In addition to obviously getting stuff from producers and sources at networks, I’ve had to do more work and I’ve had to do more digging, because it’s really hard; the competition with spoilers is insane, there are a million sites on the web where you can get spoiler information, so it’s all about timing.

Mediabistro: Is it all primary sources like producers and actors or do you have secondary sources, like someone who has a spoiler that they’re willing to give to you for some credit?

Ausiello: It’s a combination. I think it’s still more about sources, it’s about who you know, it’s about people being in the right place — as I call them, “my moles” — that’s a lot of it. Also, here working at TV Guide there’s a lot of access to information, so I always try to talk to other people see what they’re doing, what they’re working on, see if they’ve uncovered anything. So there’s obviously a good infrastructure here.

Mediabistro: Where did you think the hunger for spoilers came about? Because it’s still a big no-no, in some circles.

Ausiello: Yeah, and that circle’s called Grey’s Anatomy (laughs). That’s the main circle where it’s a big no-no. But how did it start? I don’t know how it started. Why do people enjoy it? I think people are impatient — I know that’s why I enjoy them. I’m impatient; more times than not I want to know ahead of time what’s going to happen. And most times it doesn’t really ruin the enjoyment of the show. Sometimes it does, but most of the time it doesn’t.

Mediabistro: Do you think the value of a shocking moment gets ruined by a spoiler? Like if some major character dies in a surprising way on a show?

Ausiello: Yes, I feel that does take probably some of the enjoyment out knowing, instead of being surprised. But my feeling is, if you have the info and you sit on it, the network themselves are going to promo the hell out of it anyway, so if you don’t put the information out there, the network’s going to do it in the promos. A couple of times I’ve been asked to not report things, and then I turn on the TV and I see the network pretty much giving away the entire secret in one of their promos. And I’m like, “Why am I not giving it away? The point is to not ruin it for the viewers and you’re going ahead and ruining it for them.”

The difference with what I do and what some other people do is that I try to make it fun. I don’t come out and say, “This is what’s going to happen.” I try to make it fun and tease it so it’s more of a game. One thing I’ve been playing around with more and more is I sort of have a little Hangman game going in “Ask Ausiello” where I have this big spoiler and I’ll make it sort of like a Wheel of Fortune thing, and you’ll have to fill in the blanks and figure it out yourself. I try to make it fun, sort of the thrill of the chase.

Mediabistro: What do you think about the role of blogs — entertainment blogs, gossip blogs — that are around today? What do think their role is and what do you think it’s going to be? Do you think that they do different things than you do at TVGuide.com?

Ausiello: We’re going to start doing blogging very soon, in a major, major way. I can’t really speak to the frequency, but I will have a blog on TVGuide.com in probably less than a month. I think blogging is huge. It’s changed entertainment journalism; it’s changed TV journalism and I think it’s only going to get bigger.

Mediabistro: Do you think some of the mainstream media or even TV Guide are scared of the approach of blogs?

Ausiello: I think the more traditional media types are scared of anything new and revolutionary. Just doing the press tour, I think people were very resistant to doing blogging themselves because it’s just so different than what they normally did.

Mediabistro: Where do you think entertainment journalism is going? Your own magazine, for instance, from the 1960s through the 1980s, was harder-hitting than it is now. Do you think entertainment journalism is still going down that fluffy path or will it go back?

Ausiello: I think that trend we’re seeing now is going to continue. I can’t imagine we’re going to go back to the days when you open up TV Guide and see an 8-page feature with one picture. Just the popularity of the celebrity weeklies — it’s sort of almost a cliché to talk about it now — that’s indicative of where we’re headed. Articles are going to continue to get smaller and pictures are going to continue to get bigger. I do think it’s all about the scoops and TV news than big investigative pieces.

Joel Keller is a freelance writer from New Jersey. His writing has appeared in Salon, The New York Times and The Washington Post, among other publications and websites.