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toby young
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toby young
great moments in journalism
Megan Fox: "Who Gives Hand Jobs? Who's Given A Hand Job Since Seventh Grade?"
Back story: I'm lurking around one of the low-rent haunts of the highbrow magazine elite Wednesday and come upon a friend of mine, Jess, who introduces me to Donavan Hohn, a brilliant writer whose recent piece on a Hong Kong toy fair had inspired me to write a handjobby post about how much I love 'Harper's.' Anyway, like pretty much all journalists under 40 who bother with the whole "crafting exquisite paragraphs" thing anymore, Hohn has cash flow issues. So Jess suggests — naively, I'm assuming — he get into the celebrity profile racket. Her friend Mark Kirby does it! He just wrote a profile of Megan Fox for 'GQ' that was really actually a rewarding effort! And I'm thinking, "Oh Jess, guys like Donovan Hohn are just not wired to hustle celebrity profile assignments. Not least because guys like Donovan Hohn probably didn't know who Megan Fox even was when he saw her at a comic book convention at which he was busy jotting down the philosophies of some enchanting small-time hucksterpreneur, and plus, everyone knows celebrity profiles are the lowest form of hackery." Well shit, was I so totally wrong. Jess had just tipped me off to the best celebrity profile in years. Seriously, you know how the celebrity profile is totally dead? This profile could do for the genre what…Megan Fox does for impotence or something!
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magazines
Vogue Finally Did Something Right! (No Thanks To Anna Wintour.)
"Forget Anna Wintour, famed editrix of Vogue," begins a story in Forbes today. Why, we'd love to but she runs the most profitable print publication in U.S. America! But not forever, Forbes warns, in a story about Vogue's sorry internet presence and uncertain future that makes a pretty good case for the notion that Wintour's influence at her boring fashion magazine is receding. Which is good for anyone who still gets Vogue, because the magazine reached a new level of inanity in its October issue, come look! More »
jacob weisberg
The Price Of A Fashionable Wife
Somewhere out there is a budding female public intellectual destined to marry an embarrassingly oversharey lifestyle magazine editor1 who dribbles out in monthly editor's letters the grotesquely bourgeois details of their life, providing endless gossip fodder to media workers frustrated in their own loveless (if not as literal!) marriages to the consumerism bankrolling their profession. Until then, however, we will have to be satisfied with the likes former Business 2.0 editor Josh Quittner, whose wife shares their home life with the readers of the New York Times—and smartypants Jacob Weisberg. The Slate group editor sleeps on a horsehair mattress covered in "beautiful heavy linen" and sheets from a special shop in London, all of which we know because his wife, Domino editor-in-chief Deborah Needleman, told Fashion Week Daily in excruciating detail (click thumb for a closeup) about the marital bed. By the way, New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell introduced the couple! (Hey Gladwell, anyone ever tell you you were a "connector"?)
media
WWD Staff In Uproar Over Being Made To Write Advertorial Fluff
"Fashion Rocks" is Conde Nast's big advertorial extravaganza pegged to Fashion Week, when the magazine company can sell extra ad space to all its fashion advertisers in a fluffy, profile-heavy special supplements. But we hear that the staff of the Conde-owned WWD is currently embroiled in a mini-revolt, after they were ordered to write the copy for the 48-page Fashion Rocks supplement that went out with yesterday's issue. There's no reason an editorial staff should ever be made to write advertorial copy. The most egregious line-crossing of all: a full-page interview in the supplement with Richard Beckman, Conde Nast's own head of marketing. More »
memos
Way To Get Us In The Mood, Lifeskills@Nytimes!
Employee benefits are perking decidedly down all over medialand, as we found out last night Conde Nast sent out that memo limiting employees to five (5!) expensed lunches a month. So we were soothed to hear that the New York Times, whose ad sales have in the words of one analyst "fallen off a cliff" this year,* remains committed to the healing power of complimentary backrubs. Massages on the house in the two days leading up to September 11! But then we got the memo announcing said benefit. And it was sort of the opposite of a "happy ending"… More »
request for information
Are Things At Vogue As Bad As Keira Knightley Is Trying To Tell Us?
We are certainly probably not the first bloggers to point out that Anna Wintour is (until November anyway; yes, Scorpio, duh) the same age Grace Mirabella was when she got canned. Of course, Grace hadn't built herself an entire stable of Vogue-branded titles! Of course, said stable is looking a liiiitle bit sickly: Teen Vogue lost its role on The Hills, Men's Vogue just lost a managing editor to the Journal glossy, and Mothership Vogue is looking thin in the only possible bad sense of that term this September, with the month's ad pages down 7% from last year — following on the the heels of four consecutive months being beaten out for ad pages by ELLE. (And many consecutive months of progressively more creepily Photoshopped covers.) Even the latest Vogue India looks less luscious than just a few months ago, though I am pretty sure Anna is not to blame for that! Any information that might enhance our Wintour Kremlinology? Email me.
scandals
Conde Nast Environmental Hypocrisy Exposed!
The magazine industry cares about the environment. They promise. For example, did you know that magazines can be recycled? Just put them right there in the recycling bins and feel the satisfaction! The industry is even running a campaign to urge you all to "Please Recycle This Magazine" after you read it (though I choose to recycle Entertainment Weekly before I read it). But are the biggest publishing companies themselves living up to these lofty recycling standards? One possibly soon-to-be-fired Conde Nast insider says hell no! More »
conde nast
