Hasta La Ideas

In the wake of Erin Gloria Ryan transitioning from her Vocativ deputy editor position to The Daily Beast and Jessica Coen vacating the VP/editor in chief slot, chief content officer Susie Susie Banikarim this week has provided more details about their successors. Here’s the Oct. 5 memo:

Hi all-

As we start a new month – and new year for many of you! – I wanted to take an opportunity to follow up on some recent developments in the newsroom.

As we previously announced, Ben Reininga and Kelly Bourdet are now jointly leading the newsroom as editorial directors. They are dividing up their responsibilities as follows:

Ben will oversee our National Security, News and Culture coverage, taking the lead during breaking news. He will also work closely with the video team to better integrate newsroom workflows and processes.

Kelly will oversee all of our Technology, Science and Sex coverage. She will also develop big editorial packages and work closely with the visual storytelling team on our data science and visual efforts.

Ben and Kelly both bring true intellectual rigor, organizational skill and great enthusiasm to their new roles and I am confident that their leadership will will benefit Vocativ enormously. I’ve so enjoyed getting to know them in the last year and working closely with them in recent weeks. I am certain that those of you who haven’t thus far had a chance to do so will too.

I also wanted to share another piece of good news…. As many of you know, we are in the process of developing and launching a new sports blog led by Tomas Rios. Tomas and his team have developed a unique and bold editorial voice in the past year, proving that there is an audience looking for unconventional and challenging sports coverage. The site will be called False Start and [VP of product] Jishai [Evers] & his team are working very hard to get it launched by end of month.

Finally, I want to take a moment to thank each of you for all your hard work. Between this highly *unusual* campaign season and the often violent breaking news events we now see all too frequently, we are in the midst of an extraordinarily busy news cycle – one that isn’t likely to slow down any time soon. I know how hard each of you works to ensure that Vocativ’s coverage is sharp, insightful and distinctive, despite the pressures that such events place on everyone. It is because of your efforts that our work stands out and continues to get noticed.

I am very much looking forward to all that comes next…

Reininga, previously managing editor, started his career at nerve.com and has worked also at The Huffington Post, Now This News and Refinery29. Bourdet, who was already serving as an editorial director, also has worked previously at Nerve Media and Refinery29, as well contributed to Vice’s Motherboard.

Time Inc.’s People has promoted Sara Nathan to executive editor of digital.

Nathan most recently served as news director for People.com.

“In her expanded role, Sara will lead news and programming for the site,” wrote Will Lee, digital director of Time Inc.’s Celebrity, Entertainment, Style and Sports Group, in a note. “She will work closely with the audience growth and development teams to accelerate growth across digital platforms. And she will collaborate with product and technology teams to create the best experiences for our users and our producers.”

CBS Radio has named J.D. Crowley executive vp of digital, a new role at the company.

Crowley most recently worked for CBS Television Distribution, where he served as senior vp and general manager of digital media.

“As we continue to evolve and reshape the future of CBS Radio, the digital properties within our portfolio—both existing and forthcoming—play an increasingly important role in how we reach and engage consumers, provide value to advertisers and grow revenue,” said CBS Radio president Andre Fernandez, in a statement. “With J.D.’s appointment we are better poised than ever to harness the joint power and reach of our local and national digital properties.”

I was reading a Chris Schwarz blog entry on his favorite woodworking writer, Mag Ruffman. It reminded me that I have been planning to write an entry about the first woman woodworking writer that I know of. The Handbook of Turning was first published anonymously in 1842, but it is generally considered the work of one Miss Gascoigne of Parlington Park, near Leeds. A very rich woman from a powerful family, when she married, her husband took her last name.

Ornamental turning was apparently her hobby. The book contains all the basics of ornamental turning, was a popular resource, and was both reprinted and pirated for many years. (You can download it for free here, courtesy of the Getty Research Institute.)

You might be wondering how a woman in 19th-Century England not only found herself in front of a lathe, but learned enough about turning to write a book on it. So here’s the short answer: Because she was rich.

Here’s the long answer: In the 1840s, furniture making was emerging as a hobby for the upper class. (The middle class didn’t yet have enough free time to become do-it-yourselfers.) Ornamental turning was one of the few craft hobbies of royalty and the gentry of the 19th century and earlier. Companies like Holtzapffel & Co. made incredible foot-powered lathes for the purpose. It would have been uncommon, but not unheard of, for a woman of means to turn. The real impediment would have been the considerable cost of the lathe, which is why ornamental turning was the hobby of very rich people.

Which is not to say that the only women involved with furniture building or woodworking were upper class. It’s true that down at the trades level, almost any woman who owned, say, a cabinet-making shop would have inherited the business from their husbands or fathers–and would mostly have been relegated to the administrative side of the business. However, at the time there was at least one woman sawyer in London (source: Henry Mayhew), and for all the modern talk about women staying home and raising children in Victorian times, women worked in all the craft industries, usually in jobs that required dexterity but not huge amounts of strength.

Women were typically paid less than men, which was a big incentive for factory owners to hire women, and a reason why the jobs were so segregated. The subject of women in the woodworking trades really requires a detailed study, which I haven’t done. But certainly when you research 19th-century industry, it’s actually a lot closer to today where most women are in the workplace, as opposed to say, 50 years ago when they weren’t.

By the way,  according to the caption that accompanied the picture of the author (up at the top of this entry) was made on the lathe, which is kind of cool. 

Below are some more images from within the book. 

Poise is a collection of Laser Sintered Titanium dining utensils. The Knife, Fork, Spoon and Chopsticks are results are an exploration of the freedom allowed by 3D printing to create dining-ware designed for beauty, elegance and ritual.

View the full project here