Whither Magazines

The first session I attended on Thursday was "Whither Magazines? A Look at the Future." The speaker for the session was Keith Bellows, the editor-in-chief of National Geographic Traveler. This was one of my favorite sessions I have attended so far. Keith Bellows had a authoritative yet relaxed style so that his discussion did not drag on, even at the end.

Of course, he was misguided and arrived a few minutes late. Mr. Bellows discussed, generally, the query letter and what an intern or writer must do to be considered (be smart, willing to do anything, get involved and be nosy, tell your editors what you want to do).

However, he really lit up when he discussed the new movement he was taking with his own magazine. At the beginning of the session he provided a slide show of old magazine covers. He commented on the National Lampoon's cover of a dog with a gun at its head reading, "Read this issue or we will kill this dog," saying it was the best magazine cover and conveyed the desperate nature of trying to get your magazine read.

His idea, however, is to return National Geographic Traveler to the passion of the older magazines. He wanted to keep the stories, of which he wanted more narrative stories, and the photographs in the magazine and save an on-line Web site for the less passionate aspects of a magazine. He was pumped.

Mr. Bellows has had a long history in the magazine business, working for over, I believe he said, seventy magazines. He edited for Readers' Digest, as well. To me, he looked and sounded like an older version of the actor in Almost Famous, so I imagined that movie to be a true story, and he to have written for the Rolling Stone. This is not the only reason I enjoyed his session, but I think it had something to do with it.

--Andi