THE VIEW FROM THE WINDOW SEAT

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Despite its name, Direction of Travel is not a travel magazine. Sure, it’s a celebration of a certain kind of travel, but this is not a publication that takes you somewhere. Unless you think of Air World as a destination. Which I do.

Founder Christian Nolle is an AvGeek. Which is not an insult. More an acknowledgement of a state of mind. Christian loves all things aviation. And mostly he loves how it looks and feels and, perhaps more importantly, how it looked and felt.

Direction of Travel is a loving homage to route maps, in-flight entertainment, ticket offices, and airports. It is a magazine about the culture of flight and the aesthetics one finds in Air World. And for anyone with even the slightest interest in flight, it is a glorious—and loving—celebration of that world.

Regular listeners of this podcast may have noticed that I’ve been speaking to quite a few people from travel magazines recently, and there are reasons for that. One could argue that no other type of magazine has had to weather such a variety of competition from the digital space. And travel itself is subject to forces that have nothing to do with travel itself. But it remains aspirational even to those lucky enough to travel often.

So whether you’re a frequent flying business person, or someone who might fly once in a while, the magic of lift off—and touch down—remains.

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

A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

WHEN EUSTACE MET FRANÇOISE

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 I first met Françoise Mouly at The New Yorker’s old Times Square offices. This was way back when artists used to deliver illustrations in person. I had stopped by to turn in a spot drawing and was introduced to Françoise, their newly-minted cover art editor.

I should have been intimidated, but I was fresh off the boat from Canada and deeply ensconced in my own bubble—hockey, baseball, Leonard Cohen—and so not yet aware of her groundbreaking work at Raw magazine.

Much time has passed since that fortuitous day and I’ve thankfully caught up with her ouevre—gonna get as many French words into this as I can—through back issues of Raw and TOON Books. But mostly with The New Yorker, where we have worked together for over 30 years and I’ve been afforded a front-row seat to witness her mode du travail, her nonpareil mélange of visual storytelling skills.

Speaking just from my own experience, I can’t tell you how many times at the end of a harsh deadline I’ve handed in a desperate, incoherent mess of watercolor and ink, only to see the published product a day later magically made whole, readable, and aesthetically pleasing.

Because Françoise prefers her artists to get the credit, I assume she won’t want me mentioning the many times she rescued my images from floundering. I can remember apologetically submitting caricatures with poor likenesses, which she somehow managed to fix with a little digital manipulation—a hairline move forward here, a nose sharpened there. Or ideas that mostly worked turned on their head—with the artist's permission, of course—to suddenly drive the point all the way home.

For Françoise, “the point” is always the point. Beautiful pictures are fine, but what does the image say? Françoise maintains a wide circle of devoted contributing artists—from renowned gallery painters to scribbling cartoonists, and all gradations between—from whom she regularly coaxes their best work. I thank my étoiles chanceuses to be part of that group.

And now, an interview with Françoise. Apparently. 

—Barry Blitt

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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

A 5-STAR MAGAZINE (DO NOT DISTURB)

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Orlando is the magazine as hotel, quite literally—we’ll explain what that means in a bit—a magazine that one can inhabit and live in, a love letter to culture in the most expansive use of the word. It’s also very Italian. Maybe because it comes from Italy. More specifically, from the mind of Antonella Dellepiane Pescetto, who is Italian. But more importantly, she is someone with exquisite taste.

And, yes, the magazine is set up as a hotel. Just go to the table of contents and you start to see how this concept works. Or visit the website, it’s obvious there, too Ad the concept structures all various—and sometime disparate—ideas that go into the making of Orlando.

And if you visit the website, again, you’ll find courses and tours and podcasts and a Spotify playlist to accompany each story in each issue as well as a boutique, and you can sense the publishing plans as well. But mostly you’ll find yourself in a charming confection of a magazine, kind of like something Wes Anderson might have come up with had he been Italian, which might work for you, or not—not everyone loves Wes Anderson, sure—but just like you know a Wes Anderson movie when you see or hear one, once you enter the hotel that is Orlando, you know. You just do. And it’s the kind of place you can get comfortable in very easily.

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

A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

ONE CITY AT A TIME

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There are two kinds of travelers. The first group are those that need to see as many attractions as they can. The second are those that would rather wander around, get a feel for the place they’re visiting, and live as much like a local as possible. Neither is better. There’s no judgement here. But the people who are behind the bi-annual Fare Magazine are definitely of the latter group.

Founded almost ten years ago, each issue of Fare explores a single city, using food as an entry point to talk to locals and tell stories that you won’t find in your typical guidebook. You do not read Fare to find lists of must try restaurants. You read it to meet the people that make a city worth living in and worth visiting. You will learn something. And, maybe, this city will go on your list of places to visit. 

Going from city to city is, of course, not the easiest way to make a magazine, but ten years in, Fare is still going strong, and the business is growing to include new titles and new offers. It’s a big world. And I get the sense Fare is going to keep wandering it, meeting the people who make every city taste better.

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

A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

A MODERN MAGAZINE EDITOR IN A POST-MAGAZINE WORLD

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In the media storm that is 2025, the person you want captaining your ship is smart, decisive, and cool, calm, and collected—in other words, she’s Nikki Ogunnaike.

The editor-in-chief of Marie Claire, whom we got to know when we worked together at Elle, is the very model of a modern magazine editor, in that—unlike the lifers of old—she hopscotched through a ton of jobs, accruing skills as a writer, a fashion editor, a digital editor and a print editor, and, oh yeah, a social-media savvy multi-platform operator—to become what she is now: someone uniquely equipped to lead a new era of Marie Claire.

We talked to Nikki about what it’s like to run a modern media brand in a post-magazine world—what does the job of “magazine editor” even mean now? Also: how is the post-Hearst Marie Claire evolving to meet a new reader, or should we say “follower,” and which parts of its original DNA Nikki is working to preserve. Also: Is the “girlboss” back?

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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 PURPOSE OF TRAVEL

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The world is adrift in travel magazines that tell you to go here and stay there, to order certain foods at “of-the-moment” restaurants. And when you go to these places you find yourself surrounded by other travelers like you, and the only locals you interact with are, maybe, the waiter, or your Airbnb host, or the tour guide taking you on a generic definitely-not-what-the-locals-do tour of the trendiest neighborhood in town. 

Or you might not even meet a local. Or ever stop looking at the screen on your phone.

You will have ticked items off your travel bucket list, but will you have actually traveled? Travel becomes consumption and as with all manner of consumption, you are never quite sated, and hey, there’s a media ecosystem out there to help you along.

And then there’s Ori. Founded by journalist Kade Krichko, Ori bills itself as a “travel, art and education platform” that allows local storytellers to tell their stories on a global scale. It is a magazine that understands travel is an experience first and foremost, and that traveling well means an immersion into people and places, an opportunity to grow and to heal.

It’s a magazine that assumes you should think about and experience the world around you, and that if you think about it and experience it enough, the world becomes a more interconnected and better place; it becomes a place of wonder.

And isn’t that why we travel?

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

A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

PART OF THE STORY

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Susan Casey has won National Magazine Awards for editing, writing, and design—a feat that may well be unprecedented in the industry’s history.

In her native Canada, they call people like this “Wayne Gretzky.”

She has worked—under various titles—for the following magazines: The Globe & Mail, Outside, Time, Esquire, eCompany, Business 2.0, Sports Illustrated Women, National Geographic, Fortune, and O, The Oprah Magazine. She also worked for the iconic 1990s fashion brand Esprit. 

These days—literally on any given day—you’re likely to find Casey in the water, where she spent much of her childhood, later with the swim team at the University of Arizona, and, as an adult, as the author of four immersive books—all best sellers—about the ocean: The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean; The Devil’s Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America’s Great White Sharks; Voices in the Ocean: A Journey Into the Wild and Haunting World of Dolphins; and her most recent, The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean.

A self-proclaimed “outspoken designer” early in her career, she refused to accept the career path limits others imposed and instead laid the groundwork for a rich creative life.

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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

FOOD IS FOR EVERYONE

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That meal your grandmother always cooked. Or your mother. Or your father, for that matter. The odors that permeated a kitchen or the entire house. The first taste. The idea of comfort food.

So much of who we are and what we remember are about food, sure, but also about place, and most definitely about the person doing the cooking.

While many food magazines go beyond food to create the context about the recipes they print, writer and editor Kyle Yoshioka felt they lacked the backstories that make food about more than taste or trends or wine accompaniments. And with no experience in the form, he was part of a team in Portland, Oregon that decided to launch Provecho, a magazine all about the backstories, and especially the culture and communities, behind each and every ingredient that goes into each and every lovingly created dish. And without a single recipe.

Provecho, then, is not really a food magazine at all, but a cultural review that uses food as a focal point. It’s anthropology that tastes good. One that is, in its own way, creating a community all its own.

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

A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

LOST IN TRANSLATOR

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There are more than 7,000 languages in the world and there’s a good chance that you don’t speak or read most of them. Being an English-language speaker is, among other things, a huge privilege in this multilingual world because while it may not be the most widely spoken first language, English is the language that is most widely spoken.

There’s a chance that you can get by in English almost everywhere. And so English speakers tend not to learn other languages. To their detriment. (And to the resentment of others. But that’s another story.)

Not all of the world’s 7,000 languages are robust enough to support their own media. But guess what—there’s a lot of media in this world that isn’t created in English. Enter Translator, a magazine of translated journalism and reportage from around the world for, “the open-minded and the language-curious.”

And in a world where much of our media is controlled by fewer and fewer people, this kind of wider view of what others are saying and thinking is, perhaps, more necessary than ever. 

Maybe the only surprising thing about Translator is that it wasn’t created … sooner.”

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

A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

AN ELEGY FOR THE ELITE

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Michael Grynbaum is a correspondent for The New York Times, where he has covered media, politics, and culture for 18 years. He’s reported on three presidential campaigns, two New York City mayors—they're always so boring—and the transformation of the media world in the Trump era. He lives in Manhattan and he’s a graduate of Harvard.

His first book, Empire of the Elite: Inside Condé Nast, the Media Dynasty that Reshaped America, was published by Simon & Schuster in June, 2025. In the book, Michael chronicles the origins of the company, its go-go boom days in the eighties and nineties, and its more recent post-print transformation into whatever Condé Nast is these days. We’ll figure that out later.

Michael’s bestseller captured a lot of attention when it was published—it’s a bestseller and it’s the latest in the line of books by and about Condé Nast magazine makers—full of great anecdotes and good stories. The kind of stuff we love here on Print Is Dead (Long Live Print!), and it’s extremely readable.

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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