The Art of Making Magazines David E
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The Art of Making Magazines David E. Sumner Journal of Magazine Media, Volume 14, Number 1, Summer 2013, (Review) Published by University of Nebraska Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/jmm.2013.0012 For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/773715/summary [ Access provided at 2 Oct 2021 09:11 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] Art of Making Magazines Book Review: The Art of Making Magazines David E. Sumner, Ball State University [email protected] The Art of Making Magazines: On Being an Editor and Other Views from the Industry. Victor S. Navasky and Evan Cornog, eds. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. 179 pp. paper. The Art of Making Magazines contains essays adapted from lectures given at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism between 2002 and 2012 by a dozen notable magazine writers, editors, and publishers. They were invited to speak at the George Delacorte Lecture Series for students in Columbia’s graduate program in magazine journalism. Some of the contributors’ names, such as Tina Brown and Felix Dennis, are quite familiar. While others are less known, each has made significant achievements as an author, editor, art director, or publisher. I felt the best way to begin this review is by giving the contributors’ names and titles of each of their chapters. 1. “Talking about Writing for Magazines,” John Gregory Dunne, novelist, author, and screenwriter (with his wife Joan Didion). He died in December 2003. 2. “Magazine Editing Then and Now,” Ruth Reichl, author and editor-in-chief of Gourmet from 1999 to 2009. 3. “How to Become an Editor in Chief of Your Favorite Women’s Magazine,” Roberta Myers, editor-in-chief of Elle and former editor-in-chief of Mirabella. 4. “Editing a Thought Leader Magazine,” Michael Kelly, author and former editor of The New Republic, National Journal, and The Atlantic Monthly. He died in 2003 while covering the war in Iraq. 5. “Fact-Checking at The New Yorker,” Peter Canby, senior editor and head of the fact-checking department at The New Yorker. 6. “A Magazine Needs Copyeditors,” Barbara Walraff, author of Word Court, Your Own Words, and Word Fugitives. 7. “How to Talk to the Art Director,” Chris Dixon, design director at Vanity Fair and former art editor at other magazines. David E. Sumner is a professor and coordinator of the magazine journalism program at Ball State University. He has authored or co-authored three books about magazines. He does freelance writing for magazines and is currently working on a screenplay. Journal of Magazine & New Media Research 1 Vol. 14, No. 1 • Summer 2013 Art of Making Magazines 8. “Three Weddings and a Funeral,” Tina Brown, editor-in-chief, Newsweek and The Daily Beast and former editor of The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Talk. 9. “The Simpler the Idea, the Better,” Peter W. Kaplan, editorial director of Fairchild Fashion Group. 10. “The Publisher’s Role: Crusading Defender of the First Amendment or Ad Salesman?” John R. MacArthur, president and publisher of Harper’s. 11. “Editing Books vs. Editing Magazines,” Robert Gottlieb, former editor-in-chief of The New Yorker, Simon & Schuster, and Alfred A. Knopf book publishers. 12. “The Reader is King,” Felix Dennis, owner of Dennis Publishing, which publishes The Week and about 50 U.S. and British magazines. I thought the most interesting chapter was “Three Weddings and a Funeral” by Tina Brown, which was worth the price of the book. Brown reveals behind-the-scenes experiences from her years as a successful editor at Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Talk, and now at Newsweek and The Daily Beast. She talks about crucial decisions she made after arriving at each magazine that helped shape its content and future. She also talks frankly about the short-lived Talk magazine, which she helped launch. This chapter will give students insight into the diverse elements of successful magazines, which include editorial content, design, business considerations, and the changing ethos and social environment of the times. Peter Canby’s chapter “Fact-Checking at The New Yorker” was also revealing and thought-provoking. Canby supervises 16 fact-checkers at the magazine, and he explains in detail how he and his staff do their jobs. He details how the famous Janet Malcolm story and Jeffrey Masson’s libel suit against the magazine changed their fact-checking process. “After the Malcolm case was settled, we began to ask writers to include their notes, their tapes, and their transcripts with their source material, and this gave us a great deal more flexibility in how we approach stories,” he wrote. The primary weakness of a collection of essays is that it lacks the coherency and unity of one book written by one author for one purpose. Each speaker and author had a different purpose in mind. Most of the speakers tell anecdotes and stories from their years of experience and offer a few practical tips to students. The book does not contain specific “how to” information that might be useful in a magazine editing or publishing class. As the editors note in the introduction, “this is not a how-to book, but it is, in many respects, a “how-to-think-about it” book. It could serve as a supplementary text, but I don’t recommend it as a required textbook for classes in magazine publishing or editing. I do recommend it as an excellent resource for professors in preparing lectures and classroom activities. Journal of Magazine & New Media Research 2 Vol. 14, No. 1 • Summer 2013 .