The Cheeky Girl
Discover more from The Magazine Diaries from Grub Street
Hello Grubbo!
Work is very much underway for The Grub Street Journal #2, and the building adrenaline is making me quite audacious.
This week, I emailed Deborah Joseph, European Editorial Director of Glamour (hi, Deborah!) asking her to be in an upcoming issue – see actual footage below. She said she would. I also asked the creator of HBO’s Minx – about a 1970s feminist who wants to launch her own publication – for comments on my ‘Erotic magazines’ feature: she also agreed. WHOOP!
Heady with delight, I bit the bullet and got in touch with a third hero of mine, Charlie Brooker. (Before he became known for Black Mirror, he co-wrote a squirmy little comedy called Nathan Barley, about a classic Shoreditch tw*t who used magazine ‘Sugarape’ as his bible. Sugarape was unofficially a parody of both Vice and Dazed and Confused, but naturally I wanted to hear more from the horse’s mouth.)
As yet, Mr Brooker hasn't replied, and I don’t expect he will. But getting in touch with people whose work I admire, who I consider Big Deals, gives me a total thrill.
Interestingly – to me at least – this “don’t ask, don’t get” attitude to interviewing began not by hanging out with ol’ Sasspants himself, Peter Houston, but in my previous life as Deputy Editor of The Analytical Scientist. Maybe it helped I knew nothing about analytical chemistry, so wasn’t intimidated by the key players. Maybe it was my particularly laid-back Content Director. Either way, I now have a “screw it, I’ll just ask” philosophy that can only benefit our beloved Grub Street.
Grub Street in the wild
We don’t just publish this brilliant mag, you know.
Every wondered how to pitch a podcast to a client with unrealistic expectations of ‘reach’? PH has written a corking piece about this very topic for the International Magazine Centre. Is it a good idea to tell them to “get real”? You’ll have to read it to find out…
I wrote an article at this year’s FIPP Congress about how National Geographic Historia was founded…and how they continue to compress history “into a drinkable juice”. A genuinely heartwarming tale.
Life in plastic
Less than two weeks before the mega-hyped Barbie movie is released, here are three of our favourite covers…
Don’t miss Issue #2!
