Magazine Quality Matters

When I was 13, a university student lived with us for a while, watching my brothers and me after school. An avid Glamour magazine subscriber, she would pass her old copies on to me. I devoured it, imagining the styles on myself (in real life, at school I was always the last to catch on to a trend, if at all). I read about being a career woman, and dealing with boyfriends--things I had little use for at the time. I drew braces on all the models in one issue to see if their beauty could be marred. While models with braces, I discovered, still shone like models, when you scribbled a headgear like the one I wore on them, they didn't look so hot. That was depressing.

My dad had little respect for Glamour magazine. Once he leafed through it, pointing out how everthing was so colorful and in ebulliantly large type, as if the women who read it were too stupid to understand words printed in small black serifs. In retrospect, his Playboys and the like (hidden, of course, but my brothers found them) were not exactly the New Yorker either. Indeed, nothing, at least for a long time, was like the New Yorker--until, years later, the New Yorker became much more like everything else.

As a result of my father's disdain, I stopped reading fashion/beauty magazines, though they remained a guilty pleasure. Attending Bryn Mawr College further cemented my feminist/literary rejection of Glamour (I remember a student waving a fashion magazine and screaming in class, "High heels are a trap! Makeup is a trap! Everything a woman is forced to wear is a trap!"). Of course, I don't begrudge the breakup with beauty during my short stint in college--reading George Elliott and Wallace Stevens was worth it.

Fast forward a few years to my first job at Miller Freeman, a large San Francisco trade publishing company whose roots went back to the Gold Rush (rather than a pickaxe, the founder had wheeled a printing press out West and published a magazine for miners). My boss, the editorial director of several medical magazines, had a number of strict rules to which we adhered (how to crop headshots, how to write headlines, how to set up and attribute quotes). My small, quarterly magazine was in Spanish and Portuguese; despite the language barrier, he still critiqued its layout. I never wanted to cut copy to fit, but he would insist: "You have to put subheads and pull quotes on every page." "But what about the New Yorker?" I'd retort, recalling its gray pages. "No one reads the New Yorker, all they do is look at the cartoons."

Peter (the editorial director) used to circulate examples of good trade journalism with a few comments scrawled on a memo. When we attended conferences, we were expected to churn out daily copy that turned the nearly impenetrable talks on magnetic resonance and positron emission tomography into highly readable vignettes. We worked long hours and were totally isolated from the sales staff.

Three years later, I transferred to a large software magazine as its editor in chief. What an exciting contrast! We were sold on the newsstand, so I met with the circulation manager to learn how to improve our covers. We received letters to the editor every month (previously, I'd had to solicit letters myself), so I resolved to publish them every month and make that section of the magazine nicer rather than an afterthought (think of how many letters Harper's gets--they're good, and they're free copy!). We had a team of widely respected columnists and a conference and an art budget and a cover photographer. While the publication was significantly more flush than the one I'd cut my teeth on, it lacked the journalistic practices I'd learned--so I applied them, adding an advisory board and staff-written conference coverage.

Setting about a redesign of that publication showed me how much the magazine world had become like my old Glamour over the years. While Glamour was not a paragon of design like Texas Monthly or National Geographic, women's magazines did pave the way for flashy layouts that competed for the reader's attention with words and pictures--and then Wired took that concept to its extreme, making advertising and editorial indistinguishable from each other.

I worked exactly a decade at Miller Freeman/CMP, which, coupled with the time before that spent freelancing for Miller Freeman, gives me nearly 15 years' experience in writing and publishing. Over that time, I've observed the age-old--and perhaps unavoidable--battles that editors wage with their financial bosses.

The "content is king" concept is everywhere now--and nowhere more than at trade publishing companies. But it is now taken to mean that generating reams or screens of unedited text pulsating with key words is more important than assembling articles into a periodical and presenting them all to their best advantage. As often happens, the craft is being discarded as new technology--the Web and multimedia, primarily--takes precedence over old. Whether or not the magazine as a medium will last is not a debate I'll get into here. Media come and go (see 8-track, LPs, CDs), but the skills of journalism, information presentation and graphic design are widely transferable.

Indeed, as bandwidth widens, websites begin to look more like magazines. Even Slashdot's starting to look snazzy. Gee, are those pullquotes and subheads and sidebars I see in CNet's articles? The pendulum will swing back, I believe, and the craft of journalism will return as we settle into this new mix.

In the end, the cynicism of some publishing houses is simply short-sighted. While they're firing writers and spending millions to have Bangalore pimp their websites with reader-tracking technology, institutional knowledge about how to make information exciting is being lost. It's true, many subscribers will never notice the (sometimes) subtle difference between edited copy and crud scraped from an email without fact-checking.

But let's take Runner's World as an example (man, if Rodale was in the Bay Area, I'd work there in a heartbeat). Now, this is a magazine about jogging and long-distance running for amateurs and professionals. What could they possibly have to say, month after month, on that topic? It turns out there's plenty. What's more, this magazine, since its redesign a few years ago, is simply spectacular. The writing is flawless and literate, and the photography is inspirational without ever sliding into celebrity or beauty mag territory. I can hear some publishing cynic now: "They're runners. What do they care about the writing? Why waste the money?" (At my old company, they substituted "software developers" for "runners.") I believe there are millions of runners, hikers, bikers, babes, travelers, drivers, developers, decorators, musicians, scientists and animal lovers out there who notice high-quality writing.

Ever plebeian, I'm holding the July 2006 issue of O: The Oprah Magazine. The issue is dedicated to summer reading; in addition to lovely bookmarks on cardstock with quotes on them, it offers a tie-in with Amazon, printing a discount coupon for recommended titles. It's beautifully done, including:

-- a typically entertaining Anne Lammott confessional;
--"microfiction" by Suart Dybek, Anna Deavere Smith and John Edgar Wideman, among others;
--"How to Read a Hard Book," covering Moby Dick, War and Peace, In Search of Lost Time and The Man Without Qualities;
--"The Reader as Artist" by Toni Morrison; and
--a letter to Oprah on the joys of reading by Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird.

It may be aimed at the masses, but O does not stand for "opiates," as this list demonstrates. This is what good publications are all about: intellectual theme and variation, knit together with enthusiastic writing and exhilarating eye candy. Bless you, Oprah, for keeping it alive.

It's 3 AM ...

...and I just finished writing another piece for DevX: 1700 words on concurrent programming for game developers. Am I seeking praise, sympathy and/or tokens of monetary appreciation due me for my heroism (did I mention I've got to go feed my two-month-old baby now)? Yes, I am.

Beautiful Beckham

While watching the World Cup I've been thinking about how each country's team looks different--the Serbians and Czechs look so Eastern European, the French and American teams are ethnically diverse, the Koreans are all Korean. The English, I found myself thinking, were quite an unattractive team, mostly skinny and pasty. Then the camera closes up on a golden boy with a curvaceous kick. Wow! David Beckham is so gorgeous!

Just an extremely shallow female take on the whole thing.

Exotic Husband Training

This is brilliant: "What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage." Must try immediately on spouse & sons!

Studio Life: Ups and Downs

This week has been interesting and fun. I'm very honored to be on Wayne Wallace's record and hang out with the cats, as they say in jazz. The band (Rhythm and Rhyme) is as follows:

Horns:
Louis Fasman, Ron Stallings, Melecio Magdaluyo and John Worley (plus Wayne "Doc" Wallace on bone)

Piano/synth/keyboards:
Murray Low and Frank Martin

Drumset/percussion:
Paul Van Wageningen, John Santos, Mikc Spiro

Bass and guitar:
David Belove and David Yamasaki

Voice:
moi

Ron is a very mellow, nice man--he's played with Huey Louis and the News for years. I hadn't met him before.

I just love sitting around and hearing their stories.

The hard part is the singing. There hasn't been much--we're going to do a lot of the singing as overdubs once the basics are done this week. One song I was going to sing has been cut, it looks like, and I'm mostly doing backgrounds, coros and doubling some horn lines on others. Then there are my two lead vocals, Use Me and Afro Blue. I have been shedding these songs for two weeks, and they're getting better, but they present challenges in style, tempo and key!

Yesterday, I told Gary (engineer) as he was setting my mike up, "You do have that button ready for me, right?" "Which button?" "You know, the 'good' button you push when I sing so it won't suck?" "Oh, of course--but I'm saving that for your record." "Oh, is that the idea? I'll sound crappy on this record so people will buy mine instead?"

This is actually helping to motivate me to get my record done and be focused on a project entirely my own. It's just scary, and hard to stay positive when you mess up entrances and aren't sure you're sounding your best. In my head I'm yelling, "Count, Alexa! Why can't you count!" Then I realize I've got to focus on the music or I'll miss my next entrance. Then it's "Oh no--I come in after the percussion solo with no piano to set me up? Hell, what's my note--after 19 bars I'm not entirely sure of it!" It would have been nice to have charts--I'm doing this all by either memory or Wayne's cue. But again, my part is a small one in the whole thing. And it is awfully educational.

Today's the last day--I'm not singing so baby and I will just hang out for an hour or so.

Sinatra's Mike Style

One of the fun things to do in the studio, aside from hang out with the musicians, is read the various books and magazines they leave lying around to pass the time. I picked up Sessions with Sinatra: Frank Sinatra and the Art of Recording by Charles L. Granata (A Capella Books, 2004) and found some insight on how Sinatra became one of the first singers to use the mike as an instrument rather than an afterthought. Here’s an excerpt:

The microphone was of primary import to Frank Sinatra from his earliest days as a band singer. Building on the foundation laid by Bing Crosby and Billie Holiday, he brought the microphone to its fullest and most creative potential as a logical extension of his voice. “One thing that was tremendously important was learning the use of the microphone,” Sinatra said. “Many singers never learned to use one. They never understood, and still don’t, that a microphone is their instrument. It’s like they were part of an orchestra, but instead of playing a saxophone, theyre playing a microphone.”

He likely drew this conclusion from the reaction of the largely female audiences to his early stage appearances. He would grasp the tall microphone stand (seemingly for support) and lean into both the mike and the note, physically communicating the dynamic he desired. …

Although other performers of the day followed suit and used the modern microphone to their advantage, none handled it more fluidly or effortlessly. To some singers, it was a barrier between performer and audience; to Sinatra it was a tool that strengthened the intimacy between himself and his listeners—a stage prop. Whether on stage in the 1940s, when the microphone was a birdcage or Unidyne mounted on a tall stand, or in the 1980s, when the cumbersome older mike had been replaced by a handheld cordless model, Sinatra’s facile use of this instrument became as important to his musical persona as his fabled breath control.

Of his technique for handline the mike, the singer observed, “The first rule is to use it with great economy. You don’t crowd it—you must never jar an audience with it, unless there’s a reason to as part of a song—a comedy number or the like. I think you must keep it as subtle as possible. A simple example is popping ‘P’s and other plosive sounds. They’re easy to avoid.” His technique reduced the effects of popping and harsh sibilance and also served as a natural dynamic range expander during a recording session. “You must know when to move away from the mike, and when to move back into it. To me, there’s no worse sound thhan when a singer breathes in sharply, and you hear the gasp over the microphone. The whole secret is getting the air in the corner of the mouth, and using the microphone properly.” …

“When I’m using a microphone [for live appearances], I usually try to have a black one, so that it will melt into my dinner jacket and the audience isn’t aware of it,” he said. In the April 1965 Life article, Sinatra chastised a friend whose talents he greatly admired, citing her lack of proficiency with a stage mike. “Many years ago I found that I could take the mike off the stand and move around with it. That’s a boon, and so many singers don’t take advantage of it. Ella Fitzgerald, poor girl, still doesn’t. They set up a mike for her, and she never touches it. You can’t even see her face.”

The book goes on to describe how his mannerisms and hand gestures helped complete the emotive power of Sinatra—again, a new development in a world where prior generations of singers performed deadpan, according to Sammy Davis Jr. This passage also makes me realize that the stereotyped lounge singer mike machinations also come from bad imitations of Sinatra’s style. Still, I think there’s wisdom in this. I hope I get a chance to read more of this book.

Motherboard Audio

My next article for DevX's Intel-sponsored portal is up: "Intel High Definition Audio: These Cats Can Play!" Check it out: http://www.devx.com/Intel/Article/31743

It's slightly fluffy but there are some phrase-turnings I'm proud of nonetheless.

The final product does suffer when you don't have Laurie looking over your shoulder. Oh well.

Understanding 'Duende'

Wayne Wallace's next album, which I'll be singing on next week in the studio, has a piece he composed called "El Duende Africano." While searching for some explanation of what "duende" means in this context, I came across this article, "Translating the Untranslatable":

duende [dwen-day] (adjective)

This wonderful word captures an entire world of passion, energy, and artistic excellence and describes a climactic show of spirit in a performance or work of art. Duende originally meant "imp" or "goblin" and came to mean anything magical. It now has a depth and complexity of meaning that crosses artistic borders, from flamenco dancing to bullfighting. The Spanish poet Garcia Lorca wrote an eloquent essay on duende that explores the complex and inspirational flavor of its sense, and I know no better introduction.

Excerpted from In Other Words by Christopher J. Moore. Copyright © 2004 by Elwin Street Limited.

I found this essay by Garcia Lorca, and it's a detailed review of the term and also of Spanish arts. Here it is in in Spanish and here it is in English.

The New York Times and Women

I don't know what's up with Man's Greatest Newspaper and its (female) writers' attitudes towards women. Two articles yesterday, "Breast-Feed or Else" and "The Ascent of a Woman", were typical sensationalist sloppiness from the former Grey Lady. The topic of the first was that public health officials are now going to take a stronger tack in promoting breastfeeding, including putting warning labels on formula.

I agree wholeheartedly with all the reasons for breastfeeding, from infant and maternal health to better bonding--I nursed my first son for a year, and pumped during my three days a week in the office for six months. It's not always easy: I got sick of dragging that pump around, and I had some pain with nursing both times, but it resolved and it's the greatest thing if you stick with it. But here the NYT first quotes a woman who couldn't breastfeed because she "didn't have enough milk." This is extremely, extremely rare. If you have some milk, unless you are starving or dehydrated, you can probably have sufficient milk if you feed the baby frequently enough. Sure, in the first two months it feels like the baby is constantly at the breast. But then it spreads out. The point is, women in our country increasingly say they don't make enough milk (an acquaintance recently gave up trying to nurse after three days!), and that's just statistically unlikely to be the case.

So then, ever the bastion of balanced reporting, we get a quote from a dedicated breastfeeder, a woman in her 30s with four kids who says she hasn't been a night away from her kids since they were born, that breastfeeding is an all-encompassing lifestyle. Now, that's an extreme too. Introduce that bottle before four weeks and find a sitter or a relative and go on with your life, if you so choose! Being a slave to your kids (if you don't want to be one) does no one any favors, and this type of statement, as true as it may be for some women, doesn't help those who are on the fence about breastfeeding.

Exhibit #2: "The Ascent of a Woman" (fabulous headline, as usual). This piece is about female presidents and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's political aspirations. The first part is enlightening, examining what prevents the U.S. from electing a woman chief executive when compared to many other countries that have done so (see Michelle Bachelet of Chile, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, Mary McAleese of Ireland, Angela Merkel of Germany, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines and Tarja Halonen of Finland). Is it our culture or our political pipeline, where women senators and governors are so underrepresented?

(An aside: I abhor the classic argument "America is not ready for a [fill-in-the-blank: black, Jewish, female] president." How will we know we are ready unless we try? Were we ready for civil rights? Not that I necessarily think Clinton is the answer to our troubles--I want the best candidate possible vying for the job.)

Then the article dives into Hollywood's views on Sen. Clinton. What's up with that? We get not only Martha Stewart's opinion, but also those of Susan Sarandon, George Clooney, Sharon Stone and Kathleen Turner! [Sorry, that deserves some more exclamation points: !!!!] So this is our intelligentsia? Since when are celebrities our go-to experts for the history of democracy?

From a paper of this caliber, presumed keeper of the fourth estate, this is just sad.

La Casa Editorial

Apparently, my first article for DevX, The Three Faces of Intel vPro Technology, has done rather well traffic-wise. So, thanks, if you've gone to read it--and if you have any idea why it may be popular, feel free to comment here...

Thanks to David Dossot for a great anecdote to start the piece off with (as you can see, it was trimmed). I tried to fit in your quote, Gary, but it got cut. Sorry.

Hopefully these results will outweigh any dorky comments I may have made recently while on a conference call with a client after having nursed the baby and held down the mute button for an hour. You know how you have to say at least one insightful or geeky thing on those calls so that the perception is that you participated and weren't just waxing your yacht the whole time? It's the ultimate fly-on-the-wall experience, listening to a group of people chat in a room.

Cool Gadget Blog

Start your car with your wristwatch remote? A USB medic alert wristband? A PSTN phone that does IM too? Find 'em all here at Gizmodo.

Oh, and how could I forget this one? "Photogenic Masks: Become A Convincing Girl Quickly And Easily." It's like Mission:Impossible. Is it convincing? Well, if you're Barbie--but if plastic surgery continues to gain in popularity, all bets are off.

I Did Not Know That

Trying to write an article, lacking information and not having luck with contacts, but the sleuthing is always fun nonetheless. Came across this tidbit written by the guy I'd like to interview but can't track down:

"There are many examples in the field of sound where we take the logarithm of a ratio of values. Being a ratio, the number is unit-less. However, to provide a descriptor of what the number is, the term Bel is used. The Bel is named after Alexander Graham Bell.

For example, if we wanted to compare a 100-watt (W) power source to a 20-watt power source, we would say the logarithm power ratio is log(100W/20W) = log (5) = 0.699 Bels. For common sound measurements, the Bel is too large a unit, so we
instead use a tenth of a Bel, also known as a deciBel (dB). The capital B is often omitted when writing out the term, giving us decibel. However, the abbreviation properly maintains the capital B (dB)."

From ftp://download.intel.com/intelpress/excerpts/excerpt_a21c1.pdf

Funny Names

At preschool yesterday a little girl was talking about her little white stuffed animal named Icing. Reminded me of some of Sebastian's names for his peluches and action figures... and other items. There's Sport, a black stuffed dog who attacks him in a hilarious manner similar to Leslie Nielson's battle with a hot towel in The Naked Gun. There's Jackie, an all-purpose name for several small stuffed animals and action figures. There's the small beige terry-cloth dog given to him in the hospital when he had surgery, whom he immediately and aptly named Zero. But my favorite came home from school the other day: It was a bean seedling in a paper cup, and he'd named it John 5.

Our Bellies Are Beautiful

Came across this wacky story of how Slate writer Emily Yoffe (aka the human guinea pig) was a contestant in the Mrs. Washington DC pageant. When one contestant "wondered why we weren't allowed to wear two-piece bathing suits, [another] explained, 'This is a Mrs. contest. Most of us have tread marks.'"

Yep, we do. The other day I was sitting in the sauna and two women came in with bellies like mine. While I avoid the mirror in the gym, when I look down I see the brown line that runs down my tummy and my poor off-kilter navel (it seems to be migrating back toward the centerline, but I fear a major exodus if I ever have a third child!). Another woman's mushy stomach and "tread marks," however, made me feel proud to be in the mommy club. It truly seemed beautiful in that moment--and I wasn't just looping some memorized affirmation to counteract cultural messages but realizing that we bear a glorious tattoo, a sign of our struggle and power.

They say Demi Moore revolutionized the image of pregnant women with her big-belly portrait on Vanity Fair's cover, but no one has done the same for the maternal body. Of course, I think we should find ways to do this celebration that are not centered around how we look or present ourselves--we're already too focused on that as women.

The other day in the grocery store a man stopped and stared at me shyly as I wore the baby in his carrier. "Am I in your way?" I asked. "No, I'm just--I'm just in awe of you guys. Women are so amazing." "Thank you," I murmurred. He continued, "I used to be into goddess worship..." I didn't catch all he said, but thanked him as we each moved on with shopping. Funny serendipity--I mentioned the goddess thing in my Da Vinci Code blog. It's always nice to be appreciated, anyway.