Best of PID: Stella Bugbee (Editor: The New York Times Styles, more)

A STYLE ALL HER OWN

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Maggie Bullock: Last month, the big, bad headline in the world of women’s media was the shuttering of the groundbreaking feminist website Jezebel. We’ve since learned that Jezebel could be revived, but who even knows what that means? Regardless, the “closure” unleashed a wave of mourning, even among magazine fanatics like us who’ve become a little bit inured to the decimation of the legacy magazines that Jezebel was invented to skewer. Rachel, Jezebel was supposed to be the radical “antidote to the establishment”—and it didn’t have to contend with the print and circulation costs that sink bigger ships. When that topples, you have to ask yourself: What era of women’s media are we in now? 

Rachel Baker: That’s what makes it such an interesting time to talk to Stella Bugbee. Ask any 30- or 40-something today about the one women’s media brand that is absolutely a daily must-read, and she will say New York magazine’s The Cut—the site that, starting in 2012, Stella built. The Cut was not just a women’s magazine re-sized for the internet, but a whole-cloth reinvention of the form. Jezebel (which was founded in 2007) was as much its forebear as the Elles and Vogues of the world: The Cut had the irreverence and voice-yness and political savvy of new media and the high-caliber production value of old media. And it was built to last: While we may have lost Jezebel, The Cut is still operating, more or less, on the blueprint that Stella created—and going strong. 

Maggie Bullock: What we’ve always found fascinating about Bugbee is that she started out as a designer—she worked at a creative agency and on the visual side of a ton of cool indie magazines (like Interview and Topic) and had a stint at The New York Times before becoming the design director of the original Domino. But then when that magazine folded, she somehow totally switched teams, becoming an editor and a really great writer. I can’t think of anybody else who did that, can you? It's no surprise that The New York Times tried for years to get Stella to come to run the Styles desk. Somehow, the middle of the pandemic—when most of the Times was still working remotely, when she was unable to meet her team in person—felt like the right time for her? 

Rachel Baker: Now I think you can really see the Stella touch in the way they package their stories. Like, a couple weeks ago, when the section ran a cover story titled, “Ozempic vs. Thanksgiving.” The idea sounds almost obvious, but I’d argue that it’s a masterclass in headline writing—it demonstrates a specific Bugbee-an ability to survey the culture and zero in on the thing everyone is thinking about—like when Styles spotlighted the “girl dinner” over the summer. My group texts are still full of photos of “cheese plates for one,” how about yours?

Maggie Bullock: Totally. So should we stop yammering so folks can listen to what Stella has to say?

Rachel Baker: Let’s do it.

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