Hasta La Ideas

“We don’t have pressure to publish anything, or to satisfy a million subscribers. We have the luxury of being able to follow our own sensibility, wherever it takes us, at whatever length, with whatever kind of content. We can publish things that are risqué, or would put some people off. Until recently a clothing chain was carrying the Review. They complained that there was too much nudity in our last issue; they said they trusted that it would never happen again. We sent them the proof for the next issue, which sure enough had some nude photos from Francesca Woodman and they cancelled their order forever. And no one shed a tear. That’s a luxury not every magazine has.”

–Lorin Stein, editor of The Paris Review, in an interview with Svbscription.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

In the latest installment of Mediabistro’s So What Do You Do series, we interviewed Livingly Media’s VP of content, John Newlin. Newlin is in charge of three sites: Zimbio (pop culture), StyleBistro (fashion), and Lonny (interior design).

Lonny launched in October 2009 as a lifestyle and home decor online magazine. It includes DIY tips (one recent article: How To Make Your Own Throw Pillows), interviews with designers, and plenty of gorgeous photos for inspiration. And soon, Newlin revealed, readers can expect a major upgrade:

Right now, we’re redesigning Lonny. It was one of the first so-called “digital shelter” sites, offering PDFs of print publications. We’ve since moved away from that format of replicating magazine pages. Because of mobile, we’ve decided to change direction and build the next thing in this shelter category. On mobile phones, Lonny is hard to read. The new Lonny will launch this spring.

To learn more about Livingly Media, including how the company acquired more than 10 million photos for its archives, read: So What Do You Do, John Newlin, VP of Content at Livingly Media?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

How do you luxe up a windowless room in the bowels of Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre? Architectural Digest poses this question to one designer each year as it creates a backstage lounge for the Oscars. The task of creating the AD Greenroom (the 12th!) for the 2014 Academy Awards (the 86th!) went to David Rockwell. Having perhaps exhausted his interest in Hollywood Regency and cinema magic through his work on the on-stage proceedings, Rockwell looked to New York City loft living as inspiration.

Faced with the equivalent of a basement studio, he focused on “urban simplicity, but married with film glamour.” The latter came in part from actress Susan Sarandon, who helped select works from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences archive that line the walls: on one side, a wall of screens powered by Rockwell LAB software display digital images from socially conscious, Oscar-winning, and Oscar-nominated films, while on the other side, 14 framed works features images from classic screwball comedies—one of Sarandon’s favorite genres.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

House Beautiful, Hearst’s shelter magazine for affluent women that aims to deliver expert takes on personal style, decorators’ influences and homeowners’ lifestyles, seeks writers with not only strong reporting skills, but also a passion for the world of design.

The pub pays up to $2.50 a word and many sections are open to freelancers. One thing to remember is that other than a few special issues dedicated to international design, the mag primarily covers home design in the States.

“We are devoted to presenting the best in American design and decorating domestics,” said executive editor Shax Riegler. House Beautiful typically presents insider information using the Q&A format everywhere from the front-of-book to the feature well. “We like to hear directly from the mouth of the designer to understand the decisions they’ve made, their inspirations and how they made it happen. It’s a hard format because it has to be an interesting conversation and not just a transcript of the conversation,” Riegler explained.

To hear more about this pub, including specific pitching etiquette details and editors’ contact info, read: How To Pitch: House Beautiful.

The full version of this article is exclusively available to Mediabistro AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, register now for as little as $55 a year for access to hundreds of articles like this one, discounts on Mediabistro seminars and workshops, and all sorts of other bonuses.

–Aneya Fernando

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Driven by a primal instinct to explore, observe and theorize, Yonder Journal exists to document largely unknown areas of the Americas through the unfiltered lens of wide-eyed, self-taught anthropologists. Founded by writer ,…

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