Douglas McGray's first magazine doesn't look like a magazine. Pop-Up Magazine, currently on tour, is a live variety show that uses different techniques to tell a story onstage. McGray also runs the California Sunday Magazine (which does look like a magazine), a weekly magazine about California, the American West, Asia and Latin America. We talked to him how he organises a live show, his philosophy on cross-disciplinary collaboration, and his favourite shortcut - a literal one.
Heather Dietrick used to run this place. Dietrick was the beloved president of Lifehacker US' parent company, Gizmodo Media Group, before leaving in 2017 to join The Daily Beast as CEO. In How I Work's tradition of interviewing our past and present colleagues, we talked to her about building a career in law and business defined by the US First Amendment.
This week on The Upgrade, we spoke in front of a live audience at On Air Fest with journalist Jill Abramson, the first female executive editor of the New York Times, and the co-author of Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas. Jill is currently a political columnist for The Guardian as well as a Senior Lecturer in the English Department at Harvard. Her next book, News Wars, will be out in 2019.
Journalists, and bloggers who pose as journalists, get a lot of pitches over email. I get about 20 a day, so I'm pretty heavy on the archive button. But if you're trying to pitch something you've worked on, and you aren't a professional publicist, you're actually at an advantage. Last month, game developer Andrew Miller asked me for advice on how to pitch his work for coverage. Here's what I told him.
Australia is a world leader in passing the most amendments to existing and new anti-terror and security laws in the liberal democratic world. Since September 11, 2001, it has passed 54 laws. The latest suggested addition is the Turnbull government’s crackdown on foreign interference - and it has dangerous implications for press freedoms in our country.
Now that everyone has a blog and two podcasts, you don't have to be a rarified expert to field questions from a journalist, or to appear as a guest on a show. Talking to the media can be exciting but terrifying. What if they misquote you? What if they secretly want to do a hit piece on you? What if you're so boring that they cancel the show forever?
I only remember one practical writing lesson from my three years as an English major: Whenever you can, put the best bits at the end of the sentence. Put the next-best bits at the beginning, and put the rest in the middle. This trick works in every kind of writing, and I wish I'd spent my university years learning more tricks like it, instead of pretending to read The Brothers Karamazov.
