Too many bananas to juggle
The soul-sucking guilt associated with not sending this newsletter as regularly as we promised is somewhat assuaged by the fact that we’ve had a properly mad couple of months. Of course we regret not keeping up our correspondence with The Grub Street Gang, but sometimes there are just too many bananas to juggle.
Seriously, here’s what what’s been going on with us since we sent our last newsletter…
Magculture Live: 16th November
Peter went to his first Magculture Live event for a very long time and from the whistlestop tour of Neville Brody’s visual rule breaking to the unbridled joy of Debra Bishop’s work at The New York Times Kids, it was a half day packed with magazine inspiration.
BSME awards: 21st November
Joanna was in London for the ‘The Oscars of the magazine world’, nominated for Editor’s Editor and Best B2B cover. Grub Street, sadly, came away empty handed, but losing to the editor of The Times Magazine and Campaign made the loss much easier to take.
PPA Scotland Roundtable - Using AI with confidence: 29th November
Peter was in Glasgow talking about how to put the existential threat of AI to the back of your mind and take advantage of the tech to make magazines faster, cheaper, better. He managed to persent an award at the PPA Scotland Magazine Awards too.
The Stack Magazines podcast: November 30th
We came together again to speak to the most excellent Steve Watson for the Stack Magazines podcast about Grub Street. Steve doesn’t have many B2B titles on his show so we were overjoyed to be able to talk about how and why we’re making a magazine about the magazine business.
‘That Big London’ extravaganza: 4th - 6th December
We headed back to the Capital early in December. We met Benita and Rob from the International Magazine Centre (thanks for the rum and Tonic). Then we headed off to Midori house to talk to Fernando for Monocle’s The Stack podcast.
We visited Shreeji News while we were in Marleybone and then made the pilgrimage to the Magculture shop on Farringdon for the full-on magazine retail experience.
Roehampton University student magazine pitches: December 6th
Joanna jumped on a Zoom call as soon as she got back from London to judge the student magazine pitches for Roehampton’s magazine programme. She came away hopeful for the future and with lots of ideas for our ‘Star Trek issue - The next generation of magazine readers and leaders’, out in February.
MX3AI - 7th December
Peter stayed on in London for the one day MX3AI conference, an intimate gathering of 100 publishing people sharing their insights into AI and listening to presentations from some of the smartest people in the space. Listen to the podcast of the day or download the report.
Media Moments 2023 - 12th December
Media Moments is the annual industry report from Media Voices and both Joanna and Peter wrote chapters this year. We also recorded some podcast episodes to accompany the report, including one where we both talked about what kind of idiots still make magazines. The full report is free to download.
FIPP Global Media DEI Tracker - 14th December
Joanna also wrote her end-of-year round up for FIPP’s DEI tracker, a monthly update on diversity, equality and inclusion efforts across global publishing. The round up, supported by the Google News Initiative, includes an interview Joanna did for Media Voices with Project 23 co-founder Elaine dela Cruz.
Work experience placement - 11th though 21st December
Rounding out the year we have hosted Peter’s granddaughter for two weeks of work experience. On her first morning, we asked her what she wanted to learn from her time with us and she said: “What makes a magazine successful?”. We’re still working on imparting that particular knowledge, but her focus and our first TikTok have made the whole experience fabulous.
* Through November and December, we also managed to write a bunch of stuff including a piece on why print is not like vinyl and an interview with Esquire editor in chief Michael Sebastian. We put the bins out on time most weeks, too.
There’s no need to call us a WAMBULANCE! This delicious list isn’t an excuse, a whinge or a plea for sympathy. We work in a business that we really, really love with people that are smart and funny and caring. We just didn’t have time to sit down and write this newsletter the way we promised.
We’re so grateful for the support we’ve had from our growing Grub Street community, from those of you that have bought the magazine and subscribed (Yep, you can subscribe now), to those of you who have shared our the story of what we’re trying to do and also, for simply allowing us into your inbox.
Luckily, a brand new year is only a couple of weeks away and we will do better with this newsletter in 2024, pinky promise. Until then, we wish you everything you wish for yourself this Christmas and New Year.
See you in the first week of January.
Slàinte Mhath!
Joanna & Peter
Grub Street