Best of PID: Joanna Coles (Editor: Daily Beast, Cosmo, Marie Claire, more)

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But for the magazines, it felt very much like

you were standing on a train track and you could see the train

and the train was coming straight at you and initially

you'd look at it and you'd thought it was a long way away

and then you suddenly realized that if you didn't get out

of the way you were going to be splattered against the tracks.

This is Prina's Dead, long-lived print, a podcast about magazines

and the people who made and make them.

I'm Debra Vision.

I'm Patrick Mitchell.

I'm Rachel Baker.

I'm Maggie Bullock.

It's 2016.

Rachel and I are sitting at our desks on the 24th floor

of the Hearst Tower working at Elle Magazine

when the glass double doors blow open.

For at least that's how I remember it.

An vision of white blonde hair, metallic pants

and checkerboard platforms breezes into the office,

speaking in a commanding British accent

to two or three minions in her weight.

There are no cameras in sight,

but it's as if we're watching a grand entrance

and a reality TV show.

You can almost feel the wind machines in the air,

which is what it's like pretty much any time

you witness a Joanna Cole's appearance

in the corridors of Hearst.

There's just something cinematic about her.

Joanna started her career as a reporter in London,

moving to New York in the late 1990s

to be the Guardians New York Bureau Chief.

Next she shifted into editing,

first as an article editor at New York Magazine,

then ever to more magazine.

But 2006 she grabbed hold of the editor-in-chief ship

at Marie Claire, part of Hearst,

and in 2012 became the editor-in-chief

of the company's largest title, Cosmopolitan.

By the time she strode into the L offices in 2016,

she was much more than an editor.

She was also a reality TV star,

television producer, an author, a public speaker,

a driving force of the girl boss movement,

best used as Cheryl Sandberg,

and the celebrity in her own right,

who famously ran meetings from the helm

to the original Walking Dust.

The Joker who walked into our office in 2016

had been newly crowned as Chief Content Officer

of Hearst Magazine, the first to hold the title,

and tasked with consolidating the creative side

of the 100-year-old publishing giant

in the new digital first era.

Maggie and I are longtime print editors,

so you can imagine how that sounded to us.

But even through our fear goggles,

we could also see that Joanna was ready

to do the necessary surgery

or she didn't have the stomach for,

so that legacy magazines might live to see another day.

Joanna was certainly the most famous

women's magazine editor at Hearst at that time,

but what wasn't clear back then and is undeniable now

is that she was the last of her brief.

There was a rich history of iconic women's magazine

editors that came before Joanna,

but can you think of an iconic,

larger-than-life one that came after her?

Joanna left Hearst in 2018,

roughly around the same time that both Maggie and I did.

Today, she's a board member for major tech companies,

like Sonos and Snapchat,

and an executive producer for major Hollywood projects,

including an upcoming Amazon series,

starring Priyanka Chopra.

And she is, as ever, a baller.

Setting up our interview to what lesser individuals

might call a personal assistant,

but Joanna has anointed,

she's get it done, officer.

But when we met J. Xavier Zim,

she was without pretense or treadmill dance.

She was disarmingly down to her.

And yet somehow, she still emanated that Hutzpah or Moxie

or maybe we should bring back the word pizzazz to describe it.

The X factor that in a 44-floor media empire,

brimming with big egos and considerable talent,

made her one of media's biggest stars.

Joanna, we're going to go full spread on this podcast.

So we thought we would start off with a question about

you and the world of men.

So from where we sit,

using to be preternaturally comfortable

in male dominated,

traditionally male dominated spheres.

You came from the world of British newspaper reporting.

You've conquered Silicon Valley.

You rose to the height of the Hearst Tower,

which was traditionally run by men.

Do we have this right?

Do you think that's true of you

that you're somebody who has,

I don't know, a special Hutzpah in that realm?

I'm trying to think of an industry

that isn't dominated by men.

I mean, I love the work,

and you go where the work is,

and you want to work with the best possible people you can find.

That's always been my mantra.

And honestly, most of the time

when you're working with really good colleagues,

you don't notice if they're male or female,

unless they do something egregious

and then their gender might become relevant.

But for the most part,

I don't think of it like that at all.

I just think all industries are dominated by men.

And so you have to get on with it, don't you?

Still, it's like you have this reverse imposter syndrome.

We mean that is the compliment.

You have the ability to walk in any room

and claim a seat at the table.

Where did that come from?

Well, I love the version of me that you've created

and that doesn't feel like that.

But look, the ability to ask questions,

the ability to be interested,

and God knows that this stage in my life

I've been in a lot of rooms,

so you get pattern recognition

about how people behave,

who wants to be pandered to,

who wants to be asked questions,

and then you take it from there.

Let's wind it back a little.

You grew up in Yorkshire,

come of the pudding and the bronchets,

which is pretty...

I am so good at making Yorkshire puddings,

by the way.

My Yorkshire puddings are excellent.

I use the Gordon Ramsay recipe

and they're very good.

Glad we worked in the pudding right now.

I'm feeling very happy about this.

Yeah, the secret should anybody be listening

and care about this is animal fat in the pan,

which you heat till it's absolutely smoking.

And then you pour in the batter as fast as you can,

slam the door and then just watch them.

And actually, I don't like the American version,

which is a popover,

which they sort of fetishize somewhat at her,

actually, because they make them very crisp.

A real Yorkshire pudding should be soft at the bottom,

because it's just so much more delicious.

And it should never be cold.

You have to eat them warm,

and you can eat them with gravy,

or my favourite,

you can eat them with golden syrup.

Maggie, I know what we're going to do at our next bread or treat.

I feel like I should explain to the listener that,

in the fancy fancy,

it hurts 44th floor lunchens.

You always had the good housekeeping popover.

That was like the signature.

Maybe it still is,

the signature.

Oh, come to me.

That's right.

You always got one on your plate instead of a bread roll.

And everybody would be fascinated by them,

because they were huge.

They were the size of a baby's head.

They may have reduced them now with inflation,

but they were the most enormous things.

And they were almost impossible not to eat

and not to eat the whole thing.

But actually, it always felt to me very much like a popover

and not a Yorkshire pudding,

because Yorkshire pudding would be warm.

It would be soft at the bottom, not crisp.

And it would be a third of a size of a baby's head,

not the whole head.

Okay.

We won't spend the whole hour talking about popovers,

but I always thought it was an interesting litmus test,

like which of the female editors were actually eating the popover?

Well, in the horse pudding.

I would often not eat it,

only because it would make me homesick for a proper Yorkshire pudding.

Look at my childhood.

Did you have?

And how did it lead you to decide to leave,

to get out of there?

Well, if you grew up in Yorkshire in the 1970s,

believe you me, you wanted to leave.

I mean, partly there were constant brownouts at one point

and blackouts with minus strikes.

But the North of England at that time,

and I've spoken to lots of people who left Yorkshire at that time,

it really wasn't what it is now.

You know, at the time it really felt like the UK was very much

a city state and that city was London

and all the sort of sensors of the industries that I was interested in,

which was media and politics and the arts were all really focused in London.

There's been a huge effort to disperse those industries now

and you've got Channel 4 has now got a big,

I think it's even a headquartered in Leeds, which is enormous,

and the BBC has enormous facilities now in Sulford and Manchester.

But at the time, that wasn't the case you had to get to London,

if you wanted to do something in the industries that I did.

And so I've got mixed feelings about it.

I'm always fascinated when I hear Kevin Plank,

the founder of Under Armour talking about Baltimore

and how he went back to Baltimore and really rejuvenated and worked on it.

And I sometimes think, gosh, perhaps I should have done that.

But it's been fun to move to America, and I'm an American now.

My kids are Americans, so they...

You wanted to be in the newspaper business really early on.

Is that true?

You started writing as a child.

So I started writing for The Yorkshire Post when I was 10.

They had a brilliant section that I used to read doggedly every Saturday

and their evening Saturday, The Yorkshire Post called Junior Post,

which was about kids and what other kids were doing and things for kids.

And I just thought, well, I could write for this.

And so I used to send in unsolicited things,

which amazingly they would pay me two pounds for.

And I got very excited about that and thought, this is fantastic.

I can earn a living doing what I love.

And my hobby at the time was making dolls clothes.

And I had a series of dolls and a series of trolls.

And I made all sorts of clothes for them.

I love doing it.

So actually, when I ended up editing a fashion magazine,

it was a sort of weird combination of things I really had always enjoyed as a child.

And I think sometimes, and I know I felt like this,

if you're looking for clues as to what you should be doing in your life.

Going back to your early childhood years,

it's very helpful to find the things that you were just naturally gravitating towards

before having to think about how to make a mortgage payment

or whether or not you could get into the right college to get the right training.

What actually blew your skirt up, as they say.

Who was supporting you?

Who was your champion and helping you mail out your writing to the...

My parents, like most English parents,

just really believed in sort of benign neglect.

So I just had a lot of time on my own.

So what do you do?

You fill it with the things you enjoy doing that bring you satisfaction.

And I had a neighbour who was my age.

We were born within 21 days of each other.

And she helped me.

We would work on things together, which was really fun.

She was called Anna.

And her mum was a professor at the local polytechnic.

And the she would get involved.

All my parents would read things.

But essentially kids were left to their own devices in most days.

You got on with it.

I remember Anna's father helping us make photo copies of our first magazine.

And we just posted it to our neighbours.

You just sort of got on with it then.

So in 1997, after being a reporter at the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian in London,

you made the leap to the US to be the Guardian's bureau chief.

What was your beat and what did you love about being a reporter?

Well, often my beat was British people in America who were doing bad things.

My beat was really anything in America that I thought British people would be interested in.

And British people, for the most part, are pretty interested in almost anything in America.

So we had two big stories while I was at the Guardian.

The first was Louise Woodwood, the British nanny, who was an opair.

Unfortunately under whose care baby Matthew Epen died.

And it was a terrible story to cover because there were absolutely no redeeming features of anything to do with the story.

The parents got hammered for both working.

They were a mixed race couple.

So they came in for a lot of racism.

Louise Woodwood herself was an relatively unsophisticated girl who'd got absorbed by this American family.

But clearly wasn't enjoying looking after two children because it's really hard looking after two children, especially if they're not your own.

So it was a very complicated story with the brilliant Barry Shek from the Innocence project who was running the defense team.

And it was a very long and dramatic court case.

And there are a couple of elements I'll never forget.

One when they came in with the guilty verdict and you had 12 security guards standing between the public gallery and Louise and the lawyers.

Because I think they were terrified something was going to happen.

And you had Louise breaking down in court on the hyperventilating and weeping and saying why are they doing this to me?

And it was the most extraordinary human drama.

So one of the most amazing things I've actually covered.

And then you had amazingly about six weeks later the judge coming back and giving her a sentence of time served, which I had never seen before.

And was a very provocative and I think really humane sentencing.

And she left and then went and went back to the UK.

So I covered that story and then of course there was the Monica Lewinsky story that broke to another young woman, not much older.

And so I spent a lot of time covering both those stories and thinking how vulnerable young women can be.

In America or in general, did you find anything about that to be specific to this country?

I think the enormity of the press coverage, this was all pre-social media.

So this was 97, 98, the Lewinsky story.

It was just the extraordinary coverage and fascination that people had in those stories.

And when they happen to you in America, they're just bigger than when they happen elsewhere because the audience is bigger and then the international audience is bigger.

I mean, if those stories that happened in Leon in France, really no one would have been interested.

Certainly no, to be interested in a French premiere having an affair with a young woman because they all seem to do that.

Although Macron might be the exception because his wife is fascinatingly 25 years older, but it wouldn't have been a story in France.

And I know pair in that situation in France, similarly, wouldn't have had the media attention that the Louise Woodwood story had.

Right. So I went to grad school in London and I interned at the Times London.

And it's such a particular culture, London newspaper culture, British newspaper culture, I should say.

So can you put that into your own words?

Like what is so particular about that energy?

Because I'm wondering if you brought some of that with you here when you landed stateside?

Well, there are two very distinct kinds of energy.

There's the British tabloid energy, which is really a monster, if you like.

And people say, you know, they're going to monster him or we're going to monster them, which means that you just throw every single resource you have at a particular story and just squeeze every last drop out of it.

And then you have the broadsheets who pretend that they are superior to the tabloids that really suck a lot of the tabloid energy and just cover things with longer words.

And I loved working for, I worked for the Guardian, I worked for the Daily Telegram of the Guardian, then I worked for the Times.

I loved all of them. You had really smart, interesting people.

And what was fun about the job was that you had this permission to challenge, to challenge the powers that be regardless of whatever they were doing.

So it could be the police, it could be politicians, it could be writers, it could be people in television, it could be actors, it could be celebrities.

But the British culture is less respectful than the American culture in many ways, too authority.

And obviously one of the biggest differences is that when the American president walks into the media room, the media stand up.

When the British Prime Minister walks into a room with the British media, the British media basically recline as if to say, okay, you know, what do you got for us? Because we know it's bullshit.

So it's an enormously fun environment to work in. You're obviously under enormous pressure deadline wise.

It's incredibly competitive because every morning, if you are a reporter in Britain, or certainly when I was working, you knew that there will be nine other versions of your story that would be out there in the world.

So yours had better be the best.

So whatever you were covering, you knew there would be nine other newspapers that would have covered it.

And it's not often that you get that in a job and I often used to think if a doctor carries out an operation and it goes wrong, the team around him might know it goes wrong.

The family of the victim will know it's gone wrong, the victim of the survivor if they survive.

But if you get something wrong as a reporter or as a columnist in a newspaper, everybody knows because everybody complains.

And so you have to be accurate. And it was always astonishing to me when I moved to America that writers would hand in features with TK, TK, which means to come, which meant the fact checker was going to fill in the facts.

And I was always fascinated that writers wouldn't want to take responsibility for their own facts, because that way at least you know your source and you know you were trying to get it right.

Even if it turns out to be wrong, and of course it's wonderful to have a fact checker run underneath you, catching anything you get wrong.

But the idea of letting someone else put a fact in your story always worried me.

Thank you about swashbuckling British journalists and editors, you know Tina Brown comes to mind and you've often been compared to her.

Who are your media heroes and influences and is Tina Brown?

Yeah, of course Tina Brown would be one of the most fantastic editor her versions of the New Yorker and Vanity Fair were terrific Helen Gurley Brown, the other brown that doesn't get mentioned as much as Tina was also an extraordinary editor who really picks up Cosmo in 1963.

She just did it down from this little old literary magazine that it was and understood what was coming down the pike with the evolution of the pill and created this extraordinary blockbuster of a magazine that really created the modern template for all magazines.

Vanity Fair couldn't have happened without what Helen did to Cosmo and her ability to understand that the tides were shifting for women was I think absolutely extraordinary.

It was a very strong, thrilled to be thrown into any sentence with either of them because they're extraordinarily powerful successful editors who had a very strong vision and created a product that was just delicious.

I mean the fun of magazines at their height was they were just this combustible mix of ingredients that was almost as good as the Yorkshire pudding.

Back there.

Okay, so after the Guardian, he's been a couple of years as articles editor at New York Magazine, we read an anecdote about he took that job despite it being significantly more junior and it being a huge pay cut exchange for sponsorship.

Can you tell us that story?

I've been here for the times of London for nearly four years and the editor called me up and said, hey, we want you to come back.

We have a job for you.

What was known as parliamentary speech writer which meant that I would be following Tony Blair and writing every day a sort of funny sketch and that's a sort of a specific column in every British newspaper and it's a prestigious thing to do actually and on the one hand I was excited but on the other.

I didn't want to go back to Britain.

I didn't feel my tour of duty in New York was yet done and I knew there was more for me to do and I was also pregnant with my second son and I have an absolute premonition that he would not sleep and I would be exhausted and I was really anxious about taking a job where I would have to write.

And musingly every single day and there would be quite a lot of travel involved if you are following the prime minister around and so I decided not to go back or we decided as a family not to go back to London and to look for a job in New York.

Michael Wolf actually who at the time had a media column at New York magazine said why don't you come and join New York magazine you'll really enjoy it be really fun.

And I was looking for a job I needed sponsorship because I didn't have a visa and I didn't have a passport and Caroline Miller who was then the editor of New York magazine.

I really offered me a job and I was all at the time a fantastic foreign correspondent package which was reduced in half actually to take that job but I did it for three years I had my second son I had the pleasure of working for Adam Moss when Caroline left and so it was actually a very good investment in my American career.

And ideally I would have done what Tina Brown did which was come and go straight into editing something but actually I didn't have the experience and it was fun New York magazine was a really fun place to be at the time.

I mean the willingness to take that big of a pay cut obviously you had all these other factors going on and that made it make sense for you at the time but is there some bigger picture point about being willing to take a pay cut.

I guess what we're curious about when we read that story and talked about it with each other is how much is Joanna driven by money, by achievement, by getting a bigger platform.

What do you think has motivated you through the many moves of your career.

How do these things fit together in your mind?

Well I don't spend very much time thinking about it honestly so they don't necessarily fit together but at the time New York could offer me what I needed most which was an entry into the American market.

I had spent three and a half four years here traveling around America covering American stories realizing the American marketplace was much bigger than the British marketplace and thinking when I looked out at the spread of magazines on the new stand at that time.

I could do that and it would be fun and I would enjoy it and I would like to have a go and so that's why I took the cut and I started in New York magazine on $150,000 and I had been earning just over $300,000 as the bureau chief of the times.

So it was a significant drop in income but I started writing a freelance column in London to make up for some of the difference and I just knew it would be a good investment.

I knew that it would be a different network of people and that it would pay off.

We'll be right back.

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Okay in 2004 he left New York to become executive editor of War magazine which for our young listeners is a dearly departed magazine for women 40 and up which Maggie and I loved even though we were not then 40 and up.

Living New York magazine to dive into women's media for the first time is a pretty major pivot. I did the same thing but here is scale. What was your thinking behind that?

My thinking when I went to the interview was this will be good practice. I haven't had a job interview for a bit and one of the problems when you moved from one country to another and especially when I've been here as a foreign correspondent was nobody in the American medium knew I was here and nobody seen any of my work because it had all appeared in the UK.

And now that would feel different because of social media and you could post it and people would see it here but that was yet to be invented and it makes me sound very old and I'm not that old but this was sort of pre the ability to post your work and get an audience.

So I went and then what happened was I had a fantastically interesting conversation with Peggy Northrup who was the editor of more and I said to her what I think I might do because I was.

Running out of patients at New York magazine slightly and I was also finding a exhausting it was one of those places where I felt there was an extra layer of work that I didn't always feel was necessary and I was often staying at the office until 10 or 11 at night probably three nights a week which with two young children really wasn't much fun so I was tired I looked terrible and I go back and look at my photos of myself at that stage I look absolutely wiped out and I was.

And so I said to Peggy in the interview what I really want to do is probably work full time as an editor and do some writing on the side and spend more time with my kids and she fixed me with a look she said you are never going to do that.

She said look at you so driven that's never going to happen and then she said to me I want you to come and be my ex if editor the problem is I just offered the job to someone else.

So then I thought well and then weirdly and this is going to sound very strange she pushed a bowl of fruit across the table at me and there were all these sticks of fruit and there was a stick of hick in it which I had never had before.

And a bit down on it and it was this extraordinary sort of texture and flavor and it was completely new to me and I had this that thunderbolt of you need something new in your life this will be new for you.

And so I said all right well look I'd love to come and figure this out I think the other person didn't accept the job or whatever and so I moved in as her executive editor and learned a ton from her and she said to me if you give me 18 months I'll make sure you go on and edit a magazine and that's exactly what she did so I moved from more to Mary Claire with a really good set of skills that Peggy had shown me and one from Adam Moss because when Adam Moss joined New York magazine he literally stripped it down.

Completely to its sort of bare bones and we spent a lot of time talking about what should this magazine be was a very useful exercise which I then did again at Mary Claire and Cosme.

So by the time I got to Mary Claire I felt really well equipped to take on a women's magazine and try and do something new with it.

Joanna what is it that you really love about the magazine business you mentioned earlier about Tina Brown and how it's so combustible and exciting.

I think about for me I love magazines because of the collaboration and like the magazine theater and battling with the art department and all just kind of the guts of magazines of what is it for you then and now looking back.

It's a matter of ideas of short fun ideas and longer thought flight years I love the journalism in it the long narrative pieces you can't find anywhere else which change someone's life or change in a gender or change a political direction.

I love the fact you can really change the agenda around something with a really thoughtful piece I like the fact that you can have really thoughtful interesting conversations with celebrities and so different sides of them.

And I like when you pick up a good magazine that you feel well equipped to face the next month we used to spend enormous amounts of time thinking about what will be the subjects that people are interested in in three months and six months and nine months what are the things that are going to be in the culture that we're all going to be talking about.

You know like the last of us how would you know about that well you would have heard about it from HBO you would have watched early visions of it someone would have read a script on it you would have talked to the director.

So you can say in three months time this is worth spending your time on this isn't and I think the tragedy of what's happened to the media now is the so much information out there but so little of it is curated is very hard to know what to watch what to read.

And more than ever a magazine is needed now but the cadence of them doesn't make any sense for our modern life and you can't really compete with the cell phone the cell phone is so exciting it's one person versus you know half a million engineers there's no way you're ever going to be able to compete against that as a humble collection of paper put together we have to think of different ways keeping that value alive.

Do you have the answer I'm definitely working on something which I'm very excited about I've spent a lot of times thinking about this I spent a lot of time with a couple of really senior people in the news business and we kicks the tires on a few news ideas and the struggle there is really just revenue and not being beholden to advertisers.

And then I've sort of pivoted slightly and I don't want to talk about it yet because it involves other people and be we're not quite ready to at some point I will but I'm very excited about what I think could be a solution.

So that is please you have our number I will definitely be calling you because it's going to require people with that magazine skill set and when I was growing up I always felt like when I got my weekly magazine as a child and then as they got older and I was getting

monthly magazines as well as weekly's that it felt like a finger from the future beckoning you towards it and that was what was exciting but you knew there was something bigger than your own life and you could be a part of it and this was a window into how you would be part of it and then I would throw whatever magazine

it was across the room and be full of energy and excitement about embracing the months I had and you don't feel like that when you've scrolled through TikTok you don't feel like that when you've sorted

yourself with insta reals you feel listless and insecure and bubbling over with FOMA yeah 100% okay we're going to go back because where we left you in the timeline of the story is that you had become an editor-in-chief at Marie Claire that was your first editor-in-chief role and in 2012

while Cosmo came knocking the biggest magazine in the Hurst Tower at the time then possibly still the biggest women's brand in the world and a magazine that also at the time was best known for set-ups

first of all how did that happen did they come to you did you go to them did you seek out Cosmo and know because it was this big giant brand that it was the golden what is the golden thing rocker I had lunch with David Carey

and the president of the magazine division and he said we'd love you to take on Cosmo and I immediately said oh no no I'm completely wrong person for Cosmo and I immediately suggested three other people that I thought would be better qualified to do it

and then I thought about it for a bit and then realized that it was by far the biggest magazine in the stable and that it would be mad not to try and it stood for a lot of the things that I was excited about

and it had had a fantastic run obviously under Helen it had been crazily successful and really contributed to that glorious Hurst Tower on the corner of 57th and 8th Avenue and then Bonnie Fuller had had a very brief run at it

and then Kate White had given it 14 great years where it had been commercially incredibly strong and by the time I got to it 2012 the world was beginning to change

and the sort of second or third or fourth wave of feminism was clearly bubbling under and so it felt like a new opportunity to create a different kind of empowerment with Cosmo

I mean there was so much more sex available online and yet women were still underpaid and they were still underconfident and they still weren't negotiating in the ways that they should

now feel much more confident to do but that wasn't the conversation in 2012 that was still bubbling under so I felt we were able to ignite that conversation and it felt really fun to have that audience

So you have money and negotiation you're so candid a minute ago about your money situation at near magazine going from executive editor at more to editor achievement Marie Claire and then Cosmo

what was that like like your first editor and chief Sally was it life changing with double the salary was it crazy perks to your life totally changed once and then changed dramatically again

The biggest perk being to marry Claire the biggest life changing perk being to marry Claire probably was getting my own full time assistant because that just meant that you didn't have to sweat a lot of the small stuff which weirdly takes up a lot of brain power and also feel like me

I was listening the other day to an interview with a comedian who said how much he enjoyed going to the post office and he said he loves filling his days with going to the post office in small errands

Right and I thought I the kind of person that wants to go to the post office and so actually for working mother having a full time assistant was unbelievably liberating really changed everything having someone give me a clothing allowance was fantastic for the first time I was able to go and really buy some nice clothes which I was so excited about

And also as a journalist I'd always dressed in essentially the same thing which was a navy blazer and navy pants and a white shirt because you just want to blend in and now I have the opportunity to explore fashion and figure out what should I wear what expresses me which I loved and I'll never forget my first trip to Paris and going into Prada on recent on event and by a suit that was all very exciting but what was really exciting was just the opportunity to create

something in your own image that you felt would feel relevant to readers and it was a bit up and down my first year but then we hit our stride and the increase in salary was very nice and say it was entirely life changing but what it made me feel was secure which was very life changing because then you're not worried and you're not scrambling with a side hustle to fill in the gaps you can relax into it a bit

I remember so vividly in 2013 Maggie and I were both at L and Joanna calls a ticket over Cosmo and then there was a 20 page excerpt in Cosmo of lean in by Cheryl Sandberg who was not a household name at that point it seemed like kind of an unlikely partnership what was that like

well I had read a very early edition of lean in that Cheryl had given me and I'd gone to see her at the Facebook offices because I had gotten to know her

and she slightly shyly pushed this thing across the table and said look I'm writing this book do you want to take a look I'd really appreciate your comment

so I went off and I thought God is going to be some tedious business book about Silicon Valley I really don't want to read this

and I'd gone to the Palo Alto mall to buy a Michael Cores ribbed sweater that I had been tracking and had found in this mall anyway I got there and tried it and didn't like it went off to have a cappuccino and started reading this book

and I couldn't put it down and when I looked up the mall had closed around me and I just thought this book speaks to me it speaks to my generation

what she really did I know there's been some ups and downs about lean in since but the real things she did which nobody crazily had done

was to put all the data together and show that men and women were going to college at the same time and the same numbers and the minute they came out

there was a disparity in what they got paid and the first management drops would go to men not to women and women were one step behind them

they were three steps behind then they had a baby and then there were five steps behind and they couldn't catch up

and the research was extraordinary I still think it's an excellent book for young women to read there's a brilliant chapter about negotiating in it

and about the differences that men and women feel and are judged by when they ask for things

and the thing that it's taught me which was really depressing but a very valuable lesson is that actually nobody really likes women

women don't like women and men don't like women in the workplace and you often hear women saying the worst bosses they've ever had have been female bosses

which was so not my experience but that's part of the culture now that we sort of derived women in the workplace

and it's something which really worries me and part of why we wanted to do the bold type the five seasons show that came out of editing cosmo was to show women that you can like each other and still disagree in the workplace

you can have conflict in the workplace as a drama but it doesn't have to be between the women it can be outside and the women support each other

and that was based on my experience you know Kathy Black was running her when I got there and was a fantastic supporter she hired me

and she wasn't easy to deal with cos sometimes she was right sometimes I fucked up and she told me in very direct terms and that was fine you're much better off with someone telling you

Ellen Levine who died recently but who was the editorial director at her when I was there was a fantastic mentor super supportive and frequently critical of what I was doing

but in the nicest possible way and I really learned a lot from her my best friends have all come from work

and so I felt that lean in pointed out that it's much harder for women and I just don't think we'd ever acknowledge it until that point

we knew it but we didn't know the empirical evidence that pointed to it we didn't have a solution and her chapter on negotiating is excellent

was it aimed at wealthier educated white women yes of course it was have been revisions since then yes they have

but it's hard to think of a better book to give a young woman to prepare her for what it's like in the working world

you really elevated Cosmo by marrying together with the sex positivity of Cosmo and the girl boss era

right that seemed to be the formula maybe I'm wrong that seemed to be the two major components of the Venn diagram that became your Cosmo

you had said earlier when you set out like what should this magazine be that process of ideating and putting it all on your interest board or whatever

was that your vision that I think what I was doing was trying to sniff the culture and understand where it was going

and I was talking to lots and lots of young women and I would go out to campuses and I would talk to young women in the workplace

and I would hear they didn't know how to ask for a raise they didn't know how to ask for an orgasm

they didn't know how to ask for what they wanted

and the explosion of internet porn had really impacted the behaviors that they were experiencing in the bedroom

from violence, choking, spitting, slapping, hair pulling, anal sex when they didn't necessarily wanted

had all become conversations among young women that weren't really being addressed

and the explosion of internet porn is still something that we haven't really addressed in our culture

and I think it does a lot of damage to men and to women that's not actually what real sex is like

and it's not the benefit of real sex and we don't talk about the benefit of real sex why not

because there's no money in it I think in American culture you always follow the money

and there's no one telling you that if you make love to your partner and your married three times a week

or stand a better chance of surviving as a couple then if you don't and that the physical act of having sex

is incredibly empowering in a relationship assuming you both like each other

and you may not always feel like doing it but usually feel much better after you do an orgasm

for either a partner is a great release emotionally and physically

and these were things that I didn't feel were getting quite enough attention

and in the grandiose scheme of things when we weren't just simply hustling whatever celebrity we could

to do the cover that month because someone had just left us down or they've showered got

postponed or something was that sense of encouraging women to ask for what they want

and feel confident in that conversation so wouldn't necessarily say we elevated it

I would just say we broadened it to encompass other things

we'll be right back

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Okay so you reimagine Cosmo I need promoted it as a nearly feminist enterprise

and your own brand grew at the same time

it was not since Helen Groley Brown herself had an editor at Cosmo

been considered a media star and then suddenly you're being talked about

and the same breath is a great and harder and a win tour you were so famous and

respected at least within the media bubble what was that like?

I'm hoping I have not the face of events

you know you don't really think about it in those terms you're just like

you're going to be on the cover next month what can I do what's the next

leaning where am I going next how is Cosmo going to show up

we did a TV show called So Cosmo that took a year to get us off the ground

we did the Voltaic that took three years to get off the ground

you're always working on things so my thinking about myself

or my own relative celebrity took very little of my consciousness really

and the odd thing is funnily enough I was having lunch the other day

with someone and during the lunch three people came up to me

they were all young women forced women in their 20th year

came up and said how much the work I had done had impacted them

and that felt pretty good so when it comes back at you in ways like that

or when you see people that you've had who've gone on to great careers

that sort of exciting but the celebrity of it didn't really interest me

and that's not what energizes me what energizes me is doing the really

really fun work and working with really good people and talent spotting

and the thing that was good about magazines where they were great laboratories

for imaginative people who needed some structure perhaps

but when I think about a lot of the people I've had who've gone on to good things

that's how you feel that you've had some kind of impact

but suddenly cameras are focused on you a lot more than they used to be

in your prior life you talked a little bit about coming to Marie Claire

and having the freedom to develop a personal style

but I also think when you're in the public eye you need a kind of armor

right you need either an armor or like a system for how you present yourself

did you feel like you needed to develop that for I don't know like

your clothes your hair just the you that has taken out into the world

where now there's going to be probably some cameras

and a lot more people looking than there were previously

I think honestly I was always because my initial training was as a journalist

I was always interested to be looking at other people

so people were looking at me I was trying to figure out who are they

what are they thinking where are they from I wasn't thinking about me

it's not interesting to think about oneself it's much more interesting to

sort of observe what's going on in the larger space

I'm also going to fashion shows or I would go out to things

and I would just be looking for clues for the next issue really

but there was no question that Hearst wanted me to have a bigger

public profile and they told me that which is partly why

I was very much encouraged with all the support system from

Hearst because they could see that it was good for the business

and it was definitely better for advertisers and sponsors

if you've got an editor who's got a higher profile because they're more

interesting in talking to you and it gets you into bigger rooms

it gets you invited to better things more interesting things

so from that point of view it's a very useful thing to have

but I wouldn't say it's impacted me as a person either way

because I got it fairly late in life

you do see younger people getting a certain degree of celebrity

and behaving really badly with it

and I saw a lot of editors behaving badly and stamping

where I thought literally saying do you know who I am

when they didn't get the seat at the fashion show they wanted

and I always thought God I never want to be that idiot

I never want to be that person

I would so be fine sitting on the sick throw

and it's much nicer to fly business class than it is economy

but I will tell you when I do fly economy

and I do from time to time if I can't use miles

or I'm not going on someone else's time

you always end up talking and having a great conversation

with a person next to you which you never do in business

I'm just thinking about you mentioned so cars now

and you mentioned the ball type

I watch every episode of the ball type

I loved it

but when you were working on those shows

you often made the leaptigs that you didn't produce there

you were a business person on those shows

what was your instinct on being a producer

what does that mean

and did you sense that maybe that would be your next life

outside of Maggie

yes I think so

and if COVID hadn't been so dramatic

I hope I would have had a few more shows done at this point

I've managed to get one on air

and I'm working on another at the moment with Amazon

which I'm incredibly excited about which is a version of

Tania Salverette and on this book

Assume Nothing

which I'm executive producing with

Priyanka Chopra who's going to star as Tania

it was just an interesting new way of storytelling for me

and my role in it was to invite the writers

and Dave Benad the executive producer

who's since gone on to do the White Lotus series

to come into the office to spend some time with the star

who absorb my diaries and my anecdotes

and turn it into something which is what we ended up doing

and it just spoke to people

it's had a great afterlife

it's been huge in odd places like India

in fact oddly

someone told me all the countries with I

India which has an enormous population of young business women

who don't have anything to look at in terms of role models

Italy and Israel

I was told it's very popular in

as well as the UK which has been great

and obviously here

and it's on Hindu here

and it's on Netflix

internationally

but I think it hit a vein

it hit the vein that lean in

which was a group of ambitious women

who really weren't addressed in popular culture

by anyone acknowledging that ambition

in a way that wasn't just horrifying

and oh my god she's the most ambitious person

who love immune sheets the night

it was very different

that had a different feel

so it was partly the project I was excited about

and then having a slightly different creative role in it

and it definitely made me understand the power of television more

which is fairly obvious

and I understood from having done a couple of seasons of project

around where it all starts

but it's fun to create a project from scratch

and put it out into the world

and television has such a big impact when you do it well

you've created shows

and you've produced shows

but you've also been portrayed

in various on screen

iterations including

till the Swenton's editor-in-chief

in TrainRack

so we wanted to know what you think of that character

well I mean it was pretty hilarious actually

so Judd Aperta

came into the office

to talk about this disability

it was a fantastic role for Leslie Mann

and I loved that movie

and I feel like that movie didn't get enough attention actually

and I know he's working on this as 50

which I'm dying to see

but she was so good

and the bit where she is told she's pregnant

and she's not expecting to be told she's pregnant

is I think one of the great women acting

being pregnant scenes of all time

so I'm assuming he sort of picked it up from there

and he was working with Lena Dunham

and Jenny Kono

who I spent some time with

until the Swenton and I

actually we don't look like I have a picture

of the two of us standing together

we really don't look like

but our hair is similar

so I think people put one together

and there's the wonderful scene where she says

you know it's something to do with

can you give someone a blowjob and find out

if they're seamen aces of garlic

or something

which was a sort of mad thing

that we would occasionally come up with

Cosmetic

I thought the movie was hilarious

anything with Amy Schumer bow down

and I was thrilled

so in 2016

you were promoted to chief content officer of hers

I think that was not a pre-existing

condition and it's right

condition is exactly right

position I should say

and so this being about print

and whether or not it's dead

it seems to me that at that time

you were tasked with

diving off that

can you talk about what the media

landscape was at that moment

and what your mandate was

in that room

in magazines

it felt very much like

you were standing on a train track

you could see the train

and the train was coming straight at you

and initially looks at it

and you thought it was a long way away

and then you suddenly realised

that if you didn't get out of the way

you were going to be splattered

against the tracks

so part of my job was

to try and think of new creative projects

and we did think of some

and part of my job was to

begin to consolidate departments

because we couldn't afford to carry on

as we had been

and certain magazines

were declining faster

than others

and obviously digital was growing

but it couldn't grow

and make the same amount

as money

as fast as the legacy brand

were declining

so it was a very frustrating time

and first is a fantastic company

to work with

we had really small

interesting people there

but ultimately

it's very hard to fight

all the new media

that's available on your cellphone

and I stopped reading magazines

and didn't find them

as interesting anymore

because the phone is

just like this extraordinary

box of magic tricks

in your hand

as is your laptop

or your iPad

or whatever device

you carry around

and the magazine felt

less and less relevant

right?

So then

two years

after being named

Chief Content Officer of Hearst

you were up for the job of

President

which actually seems like

a job that not everybody

would want at this point

and that would have been

a fully executive role

in taking you out

of the creative

magazine-making

piece of it

mostly

beyond just

ascending the ladder

what about that job

appealed to you?

Well, I wasn't

really up for it

I suppose

it's fair to say that

I felt I had to

kick the tires of it

because if you don't

then it looks like

you're not

taking me seriously

or you're not taking

the company seriously

but the truth is

I would have been terrible

at it

and it wasn't

a nice strength

delay

so I never seriously

thought about it

and I don't think

they seriously

thought of me for it

because it was obvious

my real abilities

lie in content

and that's not what the job is

the job is about

trying to make sense

of the changing

media landscape

and balanced budgets

and figure out ways

of holding on

to a media business

which is being attacked

from every direction

but I think that

when you left

first it was perceived

that that was

because that job

had gone to Troy

young using to be

saying that's not

the reason

to be fair to Troy

who

as you probably

know left a couple

of years later

I had been at

her for 12 years

at that point

I'd done two years

as chief content officer

it wasn't clear to me

that I could have

as much impact

as I'd already had

and by this point

I was on the board

of Snapchat

I'd written a book

I had a TV show

and I felt like

being more entrepreneurial

and my kids actually

and this is a really

important stage

in any working

woman's life

my kids were basically

done with school

my older son

was a college

my younger son was

about to go to college

so I didn't feel

I needed a

stable job

in quite the way

that I'd had before

and so it felt

like a really good

time to make a move

and there was

no secret

I didn't get on

with Troy

and he didn't

particularly get on

with me

so it wouldn't have been

a fun proposition

to work with him

and so it was

a very nice

mutual parting

of the way

I had a fantastic 12 years

I really had a great

time

What was it like

to be like

I've been at this company

for 12 years

now I'm

now with the company

what's next

re-evaluating

and now you do

so many things

suddenly

the Silicon Valley

Hollywood

the world is

fun actually

it's fun not

having to get up

and go to the same

place every day

and it's fun

having different people

to talk to

and time to

at that point

go to the gym

in the middle of the day

and it felt nice

it was the first time

in my life

I'd not worked

or it was the first

times 20 years

when I hadn't

really worked

incredibly hard

all the time

I'd had a period

in my early 30s

where I was writing a

column

for the Guardian

and I was doing a

program for the BBC

that felt like a very

nice lifestyle

so actually it felt

pretty good

and I wanted to spend

more time on the

West Coast

I'm really interested

in the West Coast

I've never lived there

and so I certainly

done that

I joined a series

of boards

I joined the

SONOS board

I joined a couple of

private tech company

boards

I joined a private

equity company

so I just had more

opportunities

to be more

entrepreneurial

and I found that

really interesting

so when you're a producer

on all these projects

what does that

mean your role is

exactly

and I know a producer

can mean like a bunch

of different things

but like in the

Pranka Chopra project

for Amazon

and then you also

mentioned that

you're even

producing a Broadway play

that's so interesting

What I like doing

and what I've

been able to do

is identify projects

often early

in their process

so you asked about

assuming nothing

the Pranka Chopra project

so I left her

I did a development deal

with ABC Signature

which is a terrific

producer of

really creative

TV shows

and I had run

into Tarnia

Silverettman

at Noia House

and she said,

oh I'm just finishing

a book I'd love to send you

a draft so she sent me

a draft

that afternoon

I read it that night

I couldn't put it down

and I thought this is

an amazing story

and it's her story

about going out

with the attorney general

of New York

Eric Schneiderman

who at the same time

as he was trying to

bring charges

against Harvey Weinstein

for

sexual assault

was actually

sexually assaulting

Tarnia

in their private

relationship

and it was such an

extraordinary story

she's a very good writer

she's the sort of woman

that in the book

is very relatable

you know she went

to Harvard

she's been very successful

and she said

and the kind of woman

that if someone had told me

what would you do

if a man hit you?

I would say

I would leave immediately

well she didn't leave

she stayed with him

a year

and she became

essentially co-opted

almost

in his violence

against her

and it was an extraordinary

story of intimate violence

some of which we'd

actually

written about

in Cosmo

and actually I remember

going to talk to Valerie

Jarrett at the White House

about it

and saying this is a really

important subject

that we need to get

politicians

much more focused on

because it's much

more common than we think

and in fact

at the time they were

dealing a lot

with unwanted

sexual violence

on college campuses

and consent

which we'd also

spend a lot of time

thinking about

and writing about it

both Mary Claire

and Cosmo

so I read Tarnia's

book and I just thought

this is extraordinary

we need to option this book

I want to option this book

I want to turn it into

something

and then it became clear

if we did that

we needed a really

strong actor

Tarnia is from Sri Lanka

we definitely needed

an Indian or a Sri Lanka

and actress

and obviously

you know

Priyanka Chopra

we had met

when I was editing

both Mary Claire

and Cosmo

and I had stayed in touch

so I reached out to

Priyanka

she read it

she has a production

company

purple pebble

run by it

Mary Relic

and they came on board

they were like

this story is extraordinary

there's something

in that story

that speaks to so many women

many of whom

have not gone

through the extent

of the horror

that Tarnia went through

but have certainly

gone through

degrees of it

and so we then

with the support

of ABC

we went to Amazon

Amazon bought it

and we're now

in the process

of writing the script

and it's been a long

process because

COVID intervened

but we kept it going

and I think it's going

to be a very powerful project

so how involved are you

in the script

protest

and like the hands-on

work of making

story

and the galley

I bought the option

or ABC bought it

on my behalf

I pulled in Priyanka

and then

we went through a series

of interviewing writers

which is an incredibly

long and laborious process

we talked to probably

eight to ten

really serious

successful female writers

and then we finally found

the one that

we all agreed on

Mimi one

and she is now writing

on it so I'm very

involved in it

I've read the initial outline

talked to Mimi

obviously talked to Priyanka

so I'm very engaged in it

and then

you get great executives

from both ABC

and from Amazon

who have much

more experience

of television

shows than I do

and so we're all

in the room

we're all on Zoom

screens together

talking about

where we wanted to go

and so if you're working

on the scripts now

just give us a sense

of do you expect

to shoot it

in 2023

and then we might see it

in 2024

or is that just

pretty too fast

it will all come down

to Priyanka schedule

of what she can figure

out

and when the scripts

get delivered

but I would hope

that you would have watched

it by the end of 2024

these things take a long

time to make well

and we also have

to cast Eric

and we want the scripts

before that

but I think it's going

to be a really powerful

interesting

you know

it's a dark

psychological thriller

and if you think of the

dirty bronze series

it has a version

of that but it's

a much more

elevated level

in that he was

the most powerful

law enforcement officer

in New York

and he's threatening

to have a followed

and they met

at the DNC

and he seemed

this charming, incredibly

sophisticated man

and they were hanging

out in the hamptons

with the Clintons

and yet

she was dealing

with this secret

violence

and this private shame

that as an intelligent woman

with her own means

she was being swallowed

into his madness

and actually

what was fascinating

was there were times

when he was struggling

with alcohol

and he was struggling

with ambient

according to Tanya

in the book at least

and there were one

or two times

when I remember

actually seeing him

at press conference

and he had a cut

above his eye

and the story was

he'd fallen

when he'd gone

jogging but that's

not the story

that's in her book

so it's fascinating

when you watch

the juxtaposition

of what he was doing

over Harvey Weinstein

and then battling

his own private demons

yeah

okay are you ready

for the print

and then

let's see what happens

okay

if Lorraine Powell jobs

gave you a billion dollars

to start a new

media venture

what would you do with it?

what would I do?

it's a great question

I would definitely

want to do something

in the news arena

because I think we are ill-served

by our news

I think we are made

anxious by it

I think it depresses people

it

it focuses entirely on

conflict

and gives us a completely

different sense

of the world

than the world

it is

and yes of course

there's bad things going on

and conflicts going on

but we shouldn't

have to

feel like that

every day

and I think it's one of the

reason people feel so anxious

and so depressed

and so out of control

and so we have to

free it

from the pressures

of advertising

otherwise we will

drive ourselves crazy

we are in the

spiral

around news

of despair

and it has to end

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