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Charles Emmerson (Founder: Translator)
LOST IN TRANSLATOR—There are more than 7,000 languages in the world and there’s a good chance that you don’t speak or read most of them. Being an English-language speaker is, among other things, a huge privilege in this multilingual world because while it may not be the most widely spoken first language, English is the language that is most widely spoken.There’s a chance that you can get by in English almost everywhere. And so English speakers tend not to learn other languages. To their detriment. (And to the resentment of others. But that’s another story.)Not all of the world’s 7,000 languages are robust enough to support their own media. But guess what—there’s a lot of media in this world that isn’t created in English. Enter Translator, a magazine of translated journalism and reportage from around the world for, “the open-minded and the language-curious.”And in a world where much of our media is controlled by fewer and fewer people, this kind of wider view of what others are saying and thinking is, perhaps, more necessary than ever. Maybe the only surprising thing about Translator is that it wasn’t created … sooner.”—This episode is made possible by our friends at Freeport Press. A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025
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Michael Grynbaum (Author, Empire of the Elite: Inside Condé Nast: The Media Dynasty that Reshaped America)
AN ELEGY FOR THE ELITE—Michael Grynbaum is a correspondent for The New York Times, where he has covered media, politics, and culture for 18 years. He’s reported on three presidential campaigns, two New York City mayors—they're always so boring—and the transformation of the media world in the Trump era. He lives in Manhattan and he’s a graduate of Harvard.His first book, Empire of the Elite: Inside Condé Nast, the Media Dynasty that Reshaped America, was published by Simon & Schuster in June, 2025. In the book, Michael chronicles the origins of the company, its go-go boom days in the eighties and nineties, and its more recent post-print transformation into whatever Condé Nast is these days. We’ll figure that out later.Michael’s bestseller captured a lot of attention when it was published—it’s a bestseller and it’s the latest in the line of books by and about Condé Nast magazine makers—full of great anecdotes and good stories. The kind of stuff we love here on Print Is Dead (Long Live Print!), and it’s extremely readable.—This episode is made possible by our friends at Commercial Type and Freeport Press. A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025
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Greg Grigorian & Vicson Guevara (Creators: Playground)
POP GOES PRINT—“Today, creativity feels like it’s being squeezed into smaller and smaller boxes. Content is designed to chase likes, rack up views, serve a clear function—a purpose….we’re here—to celebrate creativity for creativity’s sake, no strings attached. Analog isn’t dead; it’s the new rebellion.”This manifesto is a part of a striking editorial in the first issue of Playground, a new magazine created out of Singapore by Pop Mart, the maker of the Labubu. I honestly never thought I would a) write that kind of sentence in my life, and b) understand it, but here we are. It’s 2025! If you’re unfamiliar with PopMart you are unfamiliar with one of the largest creative companies in the world, one valued almost as much as Disney or Nintendo. Playground is an extraordinary editorial project, championed by creatives and executives in a company that claims its mission is to “light up passion” so that its brand can promote a “galaxy of creative possibilities.” Got all that? So by now you might be asking yourself a fundamental question: Why? Why this thing? And why print? Well, that same editorial anticipates this exact question:“So, why print? Because print makes you pause. You can’t swipe past a paragraph in a magazine. You can’t multitask while turning a page. Print demands your attention and invites you to linger, to savor, to think…So here it is: our first issue. Take your time with it. Flip through the pages, spill some coffee on it if you must. Just don’t try to scroll.” Amen—This episode is made possible by our friends at Freeport Press. A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025
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Sarah Ball (Editor: WSJ. Magazine, Vanity Fair, GQ, more)
SHE LOVES HER WORK—The word ‘unicorn’ gets thrown around a lot these days. But in our book, Sarah Ball is the Real Deal. The editor of WSJ. Magazine is a student of old-guard, in-the-trenches, work-on-a-story-for-years magazine making, which has earned her cred among the Jim Nelsons and David Grangers of the biz.She’s also a digital native with a flare for experimentation and a new media scrappiness. Sarah spent her career bridging those divides predominantly at Vanity Fair and GQ where she helped those titles join the digital revolution—much more stylishly and convincingly than many of her competitors.Arguably more than any other editor of her generation, she brings print-era rigor, and also the romance of the whole magazine-making endeavor to digital-era reality. That's why when the Vanity Fair editor-in-chief job came open last spring, Sarah was right at the top of The Spread’s list for who should get the gig.The wind blew a different way, as we all know by now, and she’s happy at WSJ. But when you listen to our chat, we think you'll get why our money is on her.There’s a lot of pessimism in journalism these days for good reason, but we challenge you to listen to this conversation without getting just as swept up as we did in Sarah’s passion for magazines. It's almost enough to make us believe that print is not in fact dead. Not yet, at least..—This episode is made possible by our friends at Commercial Type and Freeport Press. A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025
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Yannic Moeken, Sandra von Mayer-Myrtenhain, and Junshen Wu (Founders: Famous for My Dinner Parties)
A NEW RECIPE FOR FOOD MAGAZINES—You may think a magazine called Famous for My Dinner Parties would be about food or entertaining—and I wouldn’t blame you if you did. You wouldn’t be wrong, but you also wouldn’t be right.Taking its name from Robert Altman’s film, 3 Women, Famous for My Dinner Parties started as a pandemic-inspired digital project among three friends (Junshen Wu, Sandra von Mayer-Myrtenheim and Yannic Moeken) in Berlin and has evolved into a proper magazine and media brand, and along the way has won an engaged and broad audience far beyond Berlin. Something that continues to surprise the founders.The magazine is slightly odd, if I’m being honest, idiosyncratic, thoroughly compelling, and undeniably beautiful. It’s also almost entirely done in house, including all the design, photography and writing. And despite this, or maybe because of it, the thing works. Whether or not this method—or lack of one—is sustainable is another question.And just to be clear, there is not a single recipe in the magazine. Just a whole lot of ideas. This is a magazine then, editorially and conceptually, built around vibes. Fuel for a discussion, perhaps, at your next really great dinner party. Whether or not you aspire to any sort of fame.—This episode is made possible by our friends at Freeport Press. A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025
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