AN ART BAR FOR EVERYONE

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ArtBar is the perfect name for ArtBar magazine and that’s not always the case with the names of magazines. Founded by photographer and filmmaker Sarah Ingram in LA, ArtBar is like a dive bar for artists and their art. It’s democratic in its tastes, and wide in its scope. And fun.

Sarah wanted to hang with artists and so she created a space for them. Literally. From a recent editorial: "Art Bar is a hole in the wall where the graffiti artists, punks and poets, filmmakers, philosophers, painters, photographers, musicians, and wild-eyed creatures find themselves at the end of the day to tell our stories and share our work."

So. A dive bar. And that bar was going to be in print. And she wanted to get the magazine in your hands no matter where you lived. ArtBar is widely distributed, available on newsstands, and seeks more. Sarah wants to create a community, of course, all editors do, but she also wants to create a community of indie magazine folk. She wants to break things and rules and invite like-minds to her art bar and hang out and see some cool stuff and do some cool things. Think I’m taking the dive bar thing too far? Here’s that editorial again: "We wanted to foster a place to gather, a common ground to share the stories of our human experiences and how they shape our work. This is a place where we can break things, break rules, get our hands dirty."

I wasn’t joking. I may joke about a lot of things but not about a magazine set up like a dive bar for artists. Are you kidding? Doesn’t this sound like a place you might want to hang for a bit? Can you tell I love dive bars?

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This episode is made possible by our friends at Freeport Press.

A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

THE LAST CELEBRITY MAGAZINE EDITOR

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Maggie Bullock: It’s 2016. Rachel and I are sitting at our desks on the 24th floor of the Hearst Tower working at Elle magazine when the glass double doors blow open—or at least that’s how I remember it—and a vision of white-blonde hair, metallic pants, and checkerboard platforms, breezes into the office speaking in a commanding British accent to two or three minions in her wake.

There are no cameras in sight, but it’s as if we’re watching a grand entrance and a reality TV show. You can almost feel the wind machines in the air, which is what it’s like pretty much any time you witness a Joanna Coles appearance in the corridors of Hearst. There’s just something cinematic about her.

Rachel Baker: Joanna started her career as a reporter in London, moving to New York in the late 1990s to be The Guardian’s New York bureau chief. Next, she shifted into editing. First, as an articles editor at New York magazine, then over to More magazine.

By 2006, she grabbed hold of the editor-in-chiefship at Marie Claire, part of Hearst, and in 2012 became the editor-in-chief of the company’s largest title, Cosmopolitan.

Maggie Bullock: By the time she strode into the Elle offices in 2016, she was much more than an editor. She was also a reality TV star, a television producer, an author, a public speaker, a driving force of the “girl boss” movement, besties with Sheryl Sandberg, and a celebrity in her own right, who famously ran meetings from the helm of a treadmill walking desk.

Rachel Baker: The Jo-Co who walked into our office in 2016 had been newly-crowned as Chief Content Officer of Hearst Magazines—the first to hold the title—and tasked with consolidating the creative side of the 100-year-old publishing giant in the new digital-first era.

Maggie and I are a longtime print editors, so you can imagine how that sounded to us. But even through our fear goggles, we could also see that Joanna was ready to do the necessary surgery that other print editors didn’t have the stomach for, so that legacy magazines might live to see another day.

Maggie Bullock: Joanna was certainly the most famous women’s magazine editor at Hearst at that time. But what wasn’t clear back then, and is undeniable now, is that she was the last of her breed. There was a rich history of iconic women’s magazine editors that came before Joanna, but can you think of an iconic, larger-than-life one that came after her?

Rachel Baker: Joanna left Hearst in 2018, roughly around the same time that both Maggie and I did, and today she’s a board member for major tech companies like Sonos and Snapchat and an executive producer for major Hollywood projects, including an upcoming Amazon series starring Priyanka Chopra.

And she is, as ever, a baller.

Setting up our interview, with what lesser individuals might call a “personal assistant,” but Joanna has anointed Chief Get-It-Done Officer, when we met JC via Zoom, she was without pretense or treadmill desk. She was disarmingly down to earth.

Maggie Bullock: And yet somehow she still emanated that chutzpah or moxie—or maybe we should bring back the word “pizazz” to describe it. The X-factor that, in a 44-floor media empire brimming with big egos and considerable talent, made her one of media’s biggest stars.ng.

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This episode is made possible by our friends at Commercial Type and Freeport Press.

A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

THE MAGAZINE OF THE MONTH CLUB

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One of the things I’ve learned while hosting this podcast is that there are a lot of magazines out there. More than I imagined. Meaning there was never a “death of the magazine,” simply a realignment of dollars and attention. If anything, there are more magazines being published than ever.

But, and it’s a big but, they are harder and harder to find. There are fewer magazine stores. There are almost no newsstands, at least in North America. And bookstores, well, ok, go to your local bookstore and good luck.

Which brings us to Steve Watson. He worked in the industry and he lived what was happening to it. And so he created Stack which is, essentially, a discovery system. Or a club. Call it The Magazine of the Month Club. Join it and you receive random independent magazines from around the world, chosen by Steve—or curated, let’s use the word—curated by Steve, and if you like the magazine, great, go out and subscribe to it, and you’ve just expanded your world.

I asked Steve about the changes in the industry, how he builds community and what the future of magazines might be. He’s an optimist. And that makes me feel good about things.

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This episode is made possible by our friends at Freeport Press.

A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025