If I Could Be a Magazine Editor

Plinky asked, “If you could be an edi­tor for any mag­a­zine, which would you choose?”

Oh, that’s a dif­fi­cult ques­tion. There are mag­a­zines like Wired, that have enor­mous dis­tri­b­u­tion with­in a cer­tain demo­graph­ic and cov­er fas­ci­nat­ing sub­jects. Then there are lifestyle mag­a­zines that have the poten­tial to be very influ­en­tial among women, such as Real Sim­ple (the only one I per­son­al­ly ever read). I’m afraid I’d be bored pret­ty quick­ly with their con­straints, though. More seri­ous­ly, there are mag­a­zines like Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can (and Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can Mind) or Skep­tic. That would be chal­leng­ing. Do you think Nation­al Geo­graph­ic edi­tors get to trav­el much? I haven’t even touched the online mags, like Salon, yet. They count, right? Then there are all the lit­tle niche pub­li­ca­tions, like the mag­a­zines for var­i­ous sorts of col­lec­tors, needle­work­ers, cross­word enthu­si­asts, and so on. Is there a mag­a­zine about mag­a­zines, oth­er than Writer’s Digest?

I keep com­ing back to the breadth of mate­r­i­al Wired cov­ers. Tech­nol­o­gy, books, music, sex — that sounds pret­ty good to me. If I got to play with the lat­est tech toys, it would be even better!