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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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William Randolph Hearst III (Chairman: Hearst Corp; Founder & Editor, Alta, more)
THE GOOD CITIZEN—This episode is a special one for us here at Magazeum. We even gave it its own code name: “Project Rosebud” (IYKYK). But if you only know our guest as the grandson of the man who inspired the lead character in the film classic Citizen Kane and the founder of one of the largest publishing empires in the world, you are missing out. Will Hearst could have done the easy thing, but he chose not to. As the current chairman of the Hearst Corporation, Will balances stewardship of a sprawling media empire with a commitment to community and lasting value. Unlike the new breed of media moguls, his leadership is less about compliance and more about the continuing importance of fostering quality journalism rooted in place and purpose.But aside from his role as a suit at the Hearst Corporation, Will’s labor of love is Alta—an indie quarterly that champions a distinct West Coast voice, providing a vital counterpoint to the East Coast lens that still dominates the national discourse.Alta is crafted to be held and savored—he thinks of its subscribers as members more than a mailing list. In an age dominated by volume, speed, and algorithms, Will Hearst would like to remind us to slow down, listen deeply, and consume wisely. In times like these, his vision seems almost Quixotic—to see media as craft, culture as inheritance, and storytelling as something lasting. Nevertheless, he continues to charge, shaping a legacy both ancient and urgently new.—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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Keeley McNamara & Jen Swetzoff (Founders: Anyway)
THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT—While it’s not true that kids don’t read, it may be true that adults aren’t teaching kids to read. It’s also true that today’s children face issues that those of the past didn’t. And the pandemic—there’s that word again—impacted everyone in ways we’re still figuring out, including kids. Perhaps especially kids.There are, amazingly, and encouragingly, many new magazines for children of all ages now. One of them is Anyway, a magazine for tweens founded by two mothers—and long-time friends—who grew up loving magazines and, yes, were worried about their kids’ screen time. They also knew that tween issues weren’t being addressed properly and that a root cause of some of them was a media landscape that pushed consumers, no matter the age, into silos—or communities—where they could go through life unchallenged.Go to the Anyway website and you are confronted with the slogan: “Growing up is hard. You can do it Anyway.“ This speaks to both kids and parents, another reality of a kids magazine that most magazines don’t have to face: you have two very specific markets—kids and their parents—and your readership will eventually age out. Meaning the marketing challenges never end even while reader loyalty does. What does that mean for a media brand?—This episode is made possible by our friends at Freeport Press. A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025
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