Yesterday I was like, “Oh, hmm, there’s a new Santigold record out.” Then I realized, wait, that’s the Santigold record that, when I worked at Paste, we thought was going to come out in 2010, which prompted us to put her on the cover of our 2010 preview issue, which at first in-house we were calling “the Great Expectations issue,” which prompted me to joke to our managing editor that we should dress up the cover subjects (Vampire Weekend frontdude Ezra Koenig was the other one) like Dickensian urchins, which actually happened? Kind of? The “urchin” part wound up getting lost in the shuffle somehow and Ezra wound up looking a bit like he got eaten by a rec-room couch. Oh well. Also, remember Lost and how at one point in time it had not yet ended?! Memories!

"

“You know, there’s nothing that says advertisers for ties and mens’ cologne are more interested in being near journalism than people who advertise mascara,” Friedman said. “I feel like it really is a historical problem. You’d have to start a whole new thing separate from that paradigm, and in order to do such a thing you basically would need an amazing rich angel donor to just float it.”

As far as the ASME awards go, women are unlikely to see a huge jump in nominations unless editors either start changing the process through which they assign out pieces, or more outlets exist for general interest long-form journalism targeted at women.

“If you are a wealthy lady who would like to read such a magazine, please get in touch,” Friedman said.

"

The Awl | How 25 National Magazine Award Nominations Went To 25 Male Writers

Be still my heart. Dream magazine!

"When people ask me to explain the South, I usually don’t have an answer beyond saying it’s too big, complex, and varied to pin down easily—or at all. If I’m asked about our editorial mission, I say it is to “explore the South,” which is meant to convey a few things, including that we don’t expect or claim to know everything about the South. Who can know everything about it? The South keeps changing and surprising even as it’s studied. … If Garden & Gun just stuck to its, well, Pistils & Pistols, and merely revealed, with freshened-up accuracy, which elite group it is that they serve (versus claiming that they speak for all), even my snarkiness would dissipate. Such directness on their part wouldn’t even have to be costly—or sweeping. It could be achieved with a tweaking of the motto that appears on every G&G cover. This motto debuted in 2007 as “21st Century Southern America.” Then it was changed to: “Soul of the New South.” Then it was changed to: “Soul of the South.” Change it one last time and the truth shall set us free. Change it to: “The Soul of the Old South."

Oxford American editor Marc Smirnoff’s dismantling of Garden & Gun is totally cutting, totally smart and totally overdue. It makes me proud to be a Southerner as well as an OA contributor.

GUYS IS THERE ANYTHING MORE EXCITING THAN GETTING THE FIRST PHYSICAL COPIES OF THE MAGAZINE YOU HELPED REDESIGN

PROBABLY YES, LIKE GIVING BIRTH TO AN ACTUAL HUMAN OR SOMETHING

BUT WHATEVER I’M PRETTY PUMPED

"I know that there are amazing and talented editors at these magazines who would love to publish an expose on palm oil, or a profile of a 27-year-old breast cancer survivor who doesn’t look like a supermodel. But often their hands are tied—whether by advertisers or the institutional structure or the status quo. I think women who shell out hard-earned money to buy these magazines deserve better. They at least need to know that much of what they’re reading isn’t entirely true."

Their So-Called Journalism, or What I Saw at the Women’s Mags (via thisisareallybadidea, via maura)

Have I ever told you that I work on Georgia Tech’s alumni magazine? I don’t know if I have. But I do! I have since last June but haven’t really written about it here, mostly because there hasn’t been a whole lot of excitement to report, although now there is, because we just wrapped up the first issue of our entirely redesigned book, and it’s fantastic. Metaleap did the whole thing and I basically just love it. (This might be my favorite spread BUT I REALLY CAN’T CHOOSE!) There’s more here if you’re a designhead and would like to nerd out about it (that post doesn’t include any “before” shots, though, which I think is totally crucial; here’s what we started with). I would also like to brag about the fact that the magazine’s editorial staff numbers exactly two and that my EIC and I wrote pretty much all of the copy except for the one feature (on SPACE TRAVEL!) we farmed out to a more-qualified freelancer. So. Yes. Quite pumped about this, god I love magazines, writing about nerds is so great, etc.

"Sliced white bread as we know it today is the product of early twentieth-century streamlined design. It is the Zephyr train of food. But, in the American imagination, industrial loaves are more typically associated with the late ’50s and early ’60s—the Beaver Cleaver days of Baby Boomer nostalgia, the Golden Age of Wonder Bread. This is not without justification: during the late ’50s and early ’60s, Americans ate a lot of it. Across race, class, and generational divides, Americans consumed an average of a pound and a half of white bread per person, every week. Indeed, until the late ’60s, Americans got from 25 to 30 percent of their daily calories from the stuff, more than from any other single item in their diet (and far more than any single item contributes to the American diet today—even high-fructose corn syrup)."

The Believer | Atomic Bread Baking at Home

This is not just an article about the history of white bread in America; it is an excerpt from a whole entire book about the history of white bread in America. America!

Atlanta magazine, November 1991

“Close encounter of the weird kind”

Ooh, PRETTY.