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Lindy Hess, Matchmaker to Publishers and Their Staff, Dies at 63

July 17, 2013 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

The cause was lung cancer, said her sister, Elizabeth Hess.

For more than two decades, Ms. Hess helped shape the publishing industry by training a good percentage of its new recruits in an intensive six-week summer course and by acting as an industry matchmaker.

“Lindy was the greatest employment agent the publishing industry has ever seen,” said the literary agent Ed Victor. “She would get jobs for a staggering number of her students.”

Notable graduates of the course include Jordan Pavlin, vice president and executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf; Molly Stern, the senior vice president and publisher of Crown Publishers and Broadway Books; and David Granger, editor in chief of Esquire magazine.

The course was established in 1947 at Radcliffe College in Cambridge (and originally called the Radcliffe Publishing Course) as a summer program in which recent college graduates were taught the basics of book and magazine editing, design, production and publicity.

By the time Ms. Hess took over the course, however, the consensus was that it had lost touch with the industry and its major players. Ms. Hess, who had worked her way up in publishing, was well connected. She arrived with a prodigious Rolodex under her arm and set about inviting many industry leaders to Cambridge to lecture to the students.

Among the speakers were the industry veterans and former New Yorker editors Robert Gottlieb and Tina Brown, and William Shinker, the president and publisher of Gotham Books.

“We all schlepped up there for her,” Mr. Victor said.

Her biggest innovation was to turn the program into a kind of boot camp. Students put together mock publishing houses, acquiring books, making deals with agents and then editing, designing and marketing the books.

The course moved to the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2001 and changed its name.

Ms. Hess sometimes persuaded publishing executives not just to lecture but also to teach for a week.

“I can say no to anybody,” said Nan Graham, the publisher of Scribner. “But I couldn’t say no to Lindy.”

Linda Ann Hess was born on April 1, 1950, in Manhattan, where she attended the Spence School. She graduated from Wheaton College in Norton, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in English, in 1972.

Alfred A. Knopf hired her the same year to work as secretary to Mr. Victor and Judith Jones, the cookbook editor. She rose through the publishing ranks and became editorial director of Dolphin books, a division of Doubleday, in 1978.

In a business with its share of rivalries and tensions, sometimes hiding beneath clenched-teeth cordiality, Ms. Hess seldom made enemies. And with her multiple contacts in the industry, she made it her mission to find the right job for each student.

“She had a sixth sense about which student would fit well with which person in publishing,” Mr. Shinker said.

In addition to her sister, Ms. Hess is survived by her husband, Dr. William S. Appleton; a son, Samuel Appleton; a daughter, Eliza Hannah Appleton; and a brother, Mortimer Henry Hess III.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/business/media/lindy-hess-who-trained-many-for-publishing-industry-dies-at-63.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business Tagged With: ed victor, schlepped, tina brown

The Media Equation: Britain as a Breeding Ground for Media Leaders

June 23, 2013 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

On Thursday night, the host of “The Daily Show” riffed on Paula Deen’s liberal use of both butter and racial slurs, chatted about journalism with Tom Brokaw and parodied the gangster code of honor that has been in the news in the Whitey Bulger trial. Along the way, he did a honey-dripped Southern accent and dropped into a Cagney-esque wiseguy voice.

None of that is totally surprising for a talented entertainer raised in Birmingham, except the town that John Oliver grew up in is in England, not Alabama, and he is a big fan of Liverpool Football Club, not the Crimson Tide.

Mr. Oliver is filling in for Jon Stewart, who is directing a film this summer. We could dwell on the oddity of a British comedian replacing the host of a deeply American show, except that everywhere you look in the United States media landscape, you find people from that small island.

Piers Morgan came from Britain to take over for Larry King, The Wall Street Journal is edited by Gerard Baker, a British newspaper veteran, and the chief executive of The New York Times is Mark Thompson, who spent his career at the BBC. Anna Wintour has edited Vogue for more than two decades and, more recently, Joanna Coles took over Cosmopolitan, which defines a certain version of American womanhood.

NBC News recently looked to the mother country for leadership and found Deborah Turness, the former editor of Britain’s ITV News. ABC’s entertainment group is headed by Paul Lee, also formerly of the BBC, and Colin Myler, a Fleet Street alum, edits The New York Daily News.

The list goes on, but the point is made: when it comes to choosing someone to steer prominent American media properties, the answer is often delivered in a proper British accent.

The observation about the thicket of British talent has been made elsewhere and is hardly a brand new phenomenon — it’s Tina Brown’s and Nick Denton’s world, we just surf it. But something is at work here, beyond the joke about a British accent adding 10 I.Q. points.

The easy answer is the triumph of British charm and politeness set against American brashness and confrontation. I actually think it is exactly the opposite. As Geoff Dyer wrote in The Times in 2009, Americans strive, underneath the loutishness, to be liked, while the British care more about being right.

If that’s so, then the renewed British invasion on our shores makes sense because media are becoming more competitive and less mannered with each passing day. Apart from the fact that Mr. Oliver is a very funny man, “The Daily Show” continues to storm along partly because, like Mr. Stewart, Mr. Oliver suspects everyone and everything and says so aloud.

It’s a very British way of thinking. The one question all young reporters on Fleet Street are taught to keep foremost in their mind when interviewing public figures can be best paraphrased as, “Why is this jerk lying to me?”

The news that flows from that mind-set is often far more interesting than American media, which frequently bow to power even as they seek to hold it accountable. (Mr. Stewart, so rapacious when annotating video clips, often goes soft when confronted by an actual interview.)

Other dynamics are at play as well. The dividing line between the business and editorial side in British journalism has always been thin, and those who rise to the top have a good grasp of numbers. That’s a characteristic that is increasingly prized in corporate America. And an endless supply of talent is seeking to leave the crab pot of British news media because they want to work on a larger scale.

Ms. Coles is a former reporter at The Times of London who came to work in the United States for The Guardian before going to New York Magazine. She went on to More magazine, Marie Claire and now runs Cosmopolitan.

I crossed paths with her when we both worked at New York Magazine, where she stuck out for reasons other than her accent. To wit: while the rest of us would nod assent when senior editors spoke, she frequently argued points to the point of impertinence.

“I was taken aside and asked why I was doing that and I said, ‘Doing what?’ ” she recalled when I spoke to her last week. From her perspective, she was doing what all good journalists do, which is pushing back.

With more than a dozen newspapers that compete for national attention and a publishing model that is based on appealing to readers far more than advertisers, the British news media market is a brutal and competitive crucible; it breeds frankness, excellence and a fair amount of excess. In that context, American journalism’s historical values of objectivity and fairness seem quaint.

“We are used to adversarial relationships,” Ms. Coles said. “The value of ideas — articulating them and advocating for them — is what sets people apart.”

And with point-of-view increasingly included in more contemporary forms of media, the British are ahead of the game.

Ms. Coles also pointed out that in the United States, there are discrete spheres of influence. Los Angeles, New York and Washington all have their domains, while in Britain, there is only London, a place where entertainment, politics and news media all live in the same petri dish.

More so than in America, journalists end up on television and politicians are often drawn from the ranks of news media. As the hacking scandal revealed, it’s a very small tree house in which the various elites not only know one another but socialize as well. Newspapers and radio still play a central role in the civic life of Britain, and Parliament is a kind of gladiator pit that can make Congress seem like a Montessori school.

Greg Gutfeld, host of “Red Eye” and co-host of “The Five” on Fox News, is the rare American who reversed the polarity, having been drafted to edit Maxim in Britain from 2004 to 2006. His newsstand numbers, the only ones that matter there, weren’t great, but he learned a few things.

“I benefited from the novelty of being from somewhere else to begin with, but that wears off,” he said by phone. “We are mirrors of each other, and while Americans are smarter at a lot of things, in publishing and media, the Brits take what we do and just do it better. They have to or they won’t be around for long.”

In a cluttered informational economy, communicating in pithy, seductive ways is a matter of survival. So the demand for British editorial imports will stay high. As anyone who has ever attended a wedding at which Brits and Yanks are trading toasts can tell you, the English know what audiences want and how to deliver it. Cheers, mate.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/business/media/britain-as-a-breeding-ground-for-media-leaders.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business Tagged With: anna wintour, paula deen, tina brown

Conversations: AHAlife Brings Sense of Discovery to Online Shopping

August 26, 2011 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

But have we lost the thrill of discovery? Faced with a deluge of content, do we need a trusted adviser to steer us toward products that are special or unique, that we would otherwise never know to search for? Shauna Mei, an entrepreneur with an impressive list of investors and contributors, thinks so. Last September, she introduced AHAlife, a Web site that offers niche products suggested by a variety of “trendsetters and tastemakers.”

Ms. Mei, who had worked previously in leveraged finance at Goldman Sachs, raised $3 million in three months from a list of angel investors that included the chairmen of a global bank and a management consulting firm, as well as the chief executive of one large luxury retail operation and the chairman of another. Ms. Mei counts Diane von Furstenberg, Wendi Murdoch, Tina Brown, Tim Gunn and Lauren Bush among her tastemakers.

Ms. Mei, 28, recently talked about why online retail should be more like real-life shopping, how she met her investors and why AHAlife, which is based in New York and has 10 employees, is projecting annualized revenue this year of more than $4 million. A condensed version of the conversation follows.

Q. What inspired you to start AHAlife?

A. I had this aha! moment. Both online and in stores, companies market to men. Only the fashion industry targets women, but we make most purchasing decisions.

Q. Is that true? Target and supermarkets don’t market to women?

A. When products are more generic, like cars, companies tend to market more to men. Apple is the only technology company that knows how to market to women. When other industries target women, they market to a woman my mom’s age who’s in the kitchen wearing an apron. She’s frumpy and her hair is in a Scrunchie. Who aspires to look like that? The fashion industry, however, does a great job of making women believe they’ll feel fantastic if they buy a $3,000 handbag. I want to feature all sorts of products, using that same idea.

Q. That sounds like the format of many women’s magazines.

A. In print I’m sure it’s covered, but I haven’t read print for three years and neither have my friends. None of these magazines do a good job engaging the online viewer. There’s a ton of content online, but it’s not curated. We can’t separate the good from the bad.

Q. How is this different from, say, Martha Stewart?

A. She’s quintessentially American and more home-oriented. Her audience is housewives. We’re completely global; almost half our products are foreign. We want early adopters, people willing to pay full price for the coolest new thing.

Q. Don’t other retail sites do that?

A. Internet shopping was designed by men and reflects the way men like to shop. It’s all about practicality and efficiency.

Q. What about Zappos? Is returning 10 pairs of shoes and keeping two efficient?

A. No, but I’m talking about the way e-commerce sites are set up. Men go shopping when they need a pair of boxers. They find it in a department store, they buy it, and they leave. For women, shopping is about discovery. Girls go shopping as a pastime, not because we’re looking for anything in particular. We buy things because our stylish friend recommends them. Take something like a hand-blown glass paperweight from Italy. You don’t search for that on the Internet, but when you find it you’re inspired by its beauty or craftsmanship. We’re trying to recreate that aha! moment, as if you’d stumbled upon something in a street fair or out-of-the-way place.

Q. Can you give us other examples?

A. One of our best-selling items is a high-end, high-design vibrator. Maybe women wouldn’t normally search for that on the Internet, but we show you things that make your life better without you asking for it — which is exactly how off-line shopping works.

Q. How do you find these things?

A. Sometimes we find them because one of our curators recommends a product directly to me, like Daniel Boulud did with preserved roses. The other way is that our staff tries to identify a pain or problem, and then find a way to solve it. Right now, I’m looking for a nicely designed surge protector because I’m constantly looking at the ugly ones in my apartment.

Q. Do you pay your curators?

A. No.

Q. How do you know how much of a product to buy?

A. We don’t buy products; we hold them on consignment. We try to anticipate how much we’ll sell, which is part art, part science. Our e-mail to subscribers goes out at 11 a.m., and we can tell by the number of purchases within the first hour how much of a product we’re going to sell. If something is selling like hotcakes, we call the vendor and order more.

Q. How much of a markup do you take?

A. We’re like any standard store, and we get paid like a wholesaler does. The markup is about two times on fashion, beauty and jewelry, but on food and technology it’s a lot lower.

Q. Has your concept evolved since the company’s start?

A. Every day we give people an opportunity to talk about something new. We don’t feature that much fashion, but we’re getting fashionista subscribers to talk about other things like food, art, design, travel and philanthropy. As a result, I realized AHAlife is not an e-commerce company. It’s a media company. As the C.E.O., I’m now thinking about whether I should feature a product because it will sell well or because it will start the most conversations.

Q. How did you find your angel investors?

A. I left Goldman because I felt like taking a leap, but I always understood the power of the Goldman network. I made a huge effort to stay in touch with Goldman people. They became my initial investors.

Q. How did you pitch them?

A. I didn’t really pitch the first few people who invested. I went asking for advice and they said, “If you do this, I want to invest.” I had such positive feedback that I felt confident I was sitting on something big.

Q. What has been your biggest problem?

A. The dirty little secret of flash-sale sites is that brands now make cheaper products directly for the sites. You’re not actually getting inventory Saks couldn’t sell, and it’s not 80 percent off. They’re selling items that are cheaply made and cheaply priced, things Saks would never consider carrying. But these sites convince people they’re getting a deal, which attracts customers. So we have a harder time with customer acquisition. It’s harder for people to discover us.

Q. On April Fool’s Day, AHAlife offered two tickets to the British royal wedding and a package that included a hotel room, a Rolls Royce with driver and other high-end accoutrements for about $25,000. Was this a joke?

A. We did it as a test to see if we could sell unique, once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Instead of offering a direct sale, we put a wait-list button and in no time we had 15 people on the wait list. People were frantically calling the office and offering to pay a higher price. We ended up telling them it was a joke and giving them a free gift. It convinced us there was demand.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=59a45b7310f9346a498a46d577cb93fa

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With: management consulting firm, tastemakers, tina brown

Conversations: Bringing a Sense of Discovery to Online Shopping

June 29, 2011 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment