MAGAZINE WRITING
Draft Picks
Ten Young Editors To Watch
Virginia Heffernan, 33, Harper's
Track Record: She has a Harvard Ph.D. in English, but before turning to magazine editing, she wrote for VH1 and MTV. Currently the TV critic for Slate. Heffernan was an editor for Talk magazine and a free-lance writer/editor for The New York Times before moving to Harper's.
Editing Style: Stealth. "Many American editors are determined to rewrite everything," says the British documentarian Nicholas Fraser, whose piece on the cultural split between America and Europe Heffernan edited. "But she improves pieces very deftly. You are made to feel that you did all the work, which is always nice even when it isn't true."
Quote: "She's unusually sensitive to what a writer wants, and she doesn't try to rewrite it." — Peter Camby
Paul Tough, 34, The New York Times Magazine
Track Record: Started at 20 as a Harper's intern and rather than returning to McGill University to pick up a degree, stayed for nine years, rising to senior editor. Jumped mediums in 1997 to become senior editor of Public Radio International's This American Life. Returned to magazines as top editor of Saturday Night, in Toronto. Left to start openletters.net, an online experiment in personal narrative. Began editing at the Times in 2001.
Editing Style: Canadian. Raised in Toronto, Tough still
has a polite, self-effacing northern sensibility. Editing intimate
first-person letters at openletters.net
made him "less of an editor who likes to get involved in revising
text. I'd rather have a conversation with a writer and help them
say what they want to say."
Quote: "With Paul there is a Canadian kind of, 'Now, I'm going to give you people the truth,' but not like he really knows better." — Ira Glass, host of This American Life
James Ryerson, 27, Legal Affairs
Track Record: Started as a writer/editor for Feed. Became a writer/editor at the late Lingua Franca in 2000, then landed at Legal Affairs.
Editing Style: Philosophical. A list of subjects that Ryerson has edited reads like a grad school course catalog. A writer at Feed once jokingly compared an actress to Plato, and used the word "quintessential" in describing her. "Isn't quintessence an Aristotelian concept?" Ryerson asked. He brings a similar scrutiny to the logic of stories.
Quote: "Jamie can spot a non sequiter on the moon."— Alex Star, The Boston Globe
Clara Jeffery, 35, Mother Jones
Track Record: Started at Washington City Paper after a string of internships and a turn at Medill. In nearly seven years at Harper's, edited six pieces that were finalists for National Magazine Awards. Named deputy editor of Mother Jones this year.
Editing Style: Articulate. Jeffery can explain not just where a paragraph should go but why, says her former editor at City Paper, David Carr. At Harper's she focused on bringing in more journalistic political and environmental pieces. Now at the politically charged Mother Jones, she's on the literary end of the scale.
Quote: "She has a real literary eye, but she's also a good journalist, and that's a combination that's not that common"— Roger Cohn, editor of Mother Jones
Henry Goldblatt, 31, Entertainment Weekly
Track Record: Recruited to Fortune out of Medill in 1995 to compile stats for the Fortune 500 list ("still the hardest job I've ever had"). Worked his way up to senior editor in 1999, when he took over First, Fortune's front-of-the-book section. Moved in October to Entertainment Weekly, where he's an a.m.e.
Editing Style: Coordinated. Goldblatt refocused Fortune's First section, making it more news-driven and witty.
Quote: "He could probably juggle flaming sticks while balancing on one foot while playing the piano." — Rik Kirkland, Fortune's managing editor
Emil Wilbekin, 35, Editor-in-chief, Vibe
Track Record: After relocating from Cincinnati for Columbia's J-school in NYC, began editing at Metropolitan Home while stringing arts and fashion stories. Helped found Vibe in 1992, becoming top editor at 31. Bested The New Yorker by winning 2002 National Magazine Award for General Excellence.
Editing Style: Fly. After college, Wilbekin predicted he'd be editing his own magazine by the age of 30. Though the job arrived one year late, he has since done what many say is impossible: engage young, urban readers with long stories on music, politics, sexual identity, and race.
Quote: "Even in J-School, he showed the imagination and story sense that a good editor needs, but he also had the personality and leadership it takes to sit at the top of the masthead." — Martha Nelson, managing editor, People
Simon Dumenco, 35, New York Magazine
Track Record: Dumenco has had a hand in more magazines than some people read. In demand as a consultant, for big-picture shaping of stories and even whole magazines, such as O, The Oprah Winfrey Magazine; served as a top editor at Seventeen. Wrote media column for Inside. com, an advertising column for New York, and now, a magazine column for Folio.
Editing Style: Connected. These days Dumenco is most firmly associated with Michael Wolff, the New York magazine media columnist, and Jim Kramer, its business columnist. Wolff credits Dumenco for his success (which includes a 2002 National Magazine Award.)
Quote: "If you're not excited about working with a given writer, find another damn writer." — Dumenco
Jay Stowe, 35, Outside
Track Record: In college, inhaled the likes of Gay Talese and Tom Wolfe, and had an epiphany: somebody helped these great writers turn out this stuff. Tours at Esquire, Spin, and the New York Observer followed. Moved to Santa Fe to edit Outside in 1999.
Editing Style: Decent. "His relationships with writers are always founded in a core sense of decency, which always seemed to me the first thing that writers look for in an editor," says Peter Kaplan, Stowe's boss at the Observer.
Quote: "He has this hip side, but he really couldn't be more earnest and more trustworthy."— Hampton Sides, author of Ghost Soldiers
Meghan O'Rourke, 26, The New Yorker
Track Record: Interned at The New Yorker while at Yale, setting up a real job upon graduation in 1997 as assistant to the fiction editor, Bill Buford. Promoted to editor rank in 2000. Helped compile "Talk of the Town" section in the aftermath of 9/11. Now edits staff writers like Michael Specter, Jerome Groopman, and Ian Parker.
Editing Style: Surgical. Groopman, a physician, says that O'Rourke treats prose with confidence, precision, and delicacy. He says she has "the kind of calm, steady hand you'd want in a very seasoned, very experienced doctor."
Quote: "When I found out when she had graduated from college, I just about plotzed." — Jerome Groopman, New Yorker
Andy Ward, 30, Esquire
Track Record: Started as editorial assistant at Little, Brown and Company. Left in 1996 for a temporary job at Esquire, researching the annual Dubious Achievements Awards. Stayed on as editorial assistant, then associate editor, and then articles editor. Edited Sean Flynn's Worcester Warehouse fire story, winner of a 2000 National Magazine Award for reporting.
Editing Style: Candid. "It's great when you can get to the point with a writer when you can call him up and say, 'This sucks,'" says Ward. Brutal truth aside, Ward considers himself an advocate for the writers in the editing process: "Putting undue pressure on a writer can do more harm than good."
Quote: "Whenever I had some semi-impossible task we'd give it to young Andrew Ward. We started to notice that these things always got done." — David Granger, editor of Esquire
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