The Mr. Magazine™ Interview With Glamour Editor-In-Chief, Cindi Leive

“I think that print has the ability to commemorate a moment. I think it was a top executive at ESPN Magazine years ago who was talking about being at Tiger Woods’ house and he went down into his basement and there alongside all of his major trophies, he had framed his first cover of ESPN Magazine. And his first cover of Sports Illustrated. And that’s something that magazines can do; they can commemorate a moment in time and they do convey, when done right, a sort of importance.” Cindi LeiveFrom the “Glamour Woman of the Year Awards” to the latest in fashion, style, beauty and trends; Glamour has been one of the leading authorities in women’s general interest magazines for over 70 years. Legacy and longevity, with no signs of slowing down; the magazine is just as relevant and important today to the social and personal highlights of women’s lives as it was all those years ago when it was first introduced to readers.Cindi Leive has been editor-in-chief of Glamour for the last 15 years and knows the intricacies of her brand better than most. She is a confident and stalwart believer in the magazine’s content-driven purpose and its readership. From her very first beginnings with Glamour to her stay at Self Magazine and then her ultimate return to Glamour as its editor-in-chief, Cindi revels in the magazine’s broad view of women’s lives, giving her the opportunity to connect with her readers on many levels of interest.I spoke with Cindi recently and we talked about the magazine’s balance when it comes to age demographics and her ability to maintain that even keel with established readers and the new set that’s coming onboard every day. And how her role as editor-in-chief has changed over the years and what that means to the overall environment of the magazine and its team.And I must confess, I also had to find out what keeps her up at night, since I interviewed her colleague and dear friend, Jill Herzig, (Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Oz The Good Life) the previous week and Jill answered the question: what kept her up at night with the answer – Cindi Leive. Well, of course, curiosity had to be satisfied. I’ll let you read Cindi’s response for yourself.But despite my own ulterior motives, it was a most interesting and dynamic discussion with a woman who owns both of those adjectives herself completely. And one that I think defines the celebration of the printed word and its attributes with a beautifully-done magazine that has stood the test of time and is still going strong today.I invite you to take a moment, sit down and enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Cindi Leive, Editor-In-Chief, Glamour Magazine.But first, the sound-bites:On how her role as editor-in-chief has changed over the last 15 years with Glamour: I think the most interesting thing is that constant change is the new norm. When digital first became a part of all of our lives, as former print editors, I think there was this idea that we were going from print to digital and all you had to do was build a bridge to the other side and then you’d be over there and everything would be fine.On whether she believes in today’s magazine media world someone could graduate with an English degree and still work at a magazine: No, I think someone could do that. Honestly, I loved my Liberal Arts education, but I definitely felt like the most hands-on training I got was with working at magazines during the summers. And obviously, the skills are different now. I just hired a new assistant and I looked at not just her writing skills, but also her digital skills, her social skills and her deftness with video. Those are new things, but you’ve always had to get practical work experience alongside your college education.On leaving Glamour and going to Self and then coming back to glamour as editor-in-chief: In some ways it was like coming home, but it was so much of a bigger job than the one I had had before that nothing felt comfortable or easy about it. I do remember that when I was editing Self, the focus was very much on getting down to brass tacks; this is a magazine about fitness, health, nutrition and the body. But people were constantly pitching us stories about other aspects of women’s lives: relationships, politics and their family lives. And they were very interesting stories, but I’d have to say we’re definitely not going to publish that, and I’d have to tell them to pitch it to Glamour. So, it was fun after that to be able to move to Glamour and have a much broader view of a woman’s life: fashion and beauty, in addition to their social and personal lives.On how she manages that audience balance of college-aged women and an older demographic with Glamour: If you think about that college reader and then think about a woman who might be twenty years older than her; first of all, women share a lot of things now. For example, fashion tastes are not, if you look at what a college student is wearing, very different. It’s often quite similar to what a woman 20 years her senior might wear. A woman who’s 40 no longer has the same kind of ridiculously old-fashioned parameters around what she should or shouldn’t wear or do beauty-wise or anything else, as she might have had 10 or 20 years ago. And I do think that many more things are shared now than they used to be.On how she’s managed to guide a ship the size of Glamour through the transitions of today without upsetting established readers, while simultaneously adhering to new trends to attract new readers as well: Some of it you do by trial and error; some of it is I think that I genuinely like our broad readership. I grew up in Virginia and while I love New York and love living here, I do make it a point to get out of the New York bubble whenever I can. We’re very careful to make sure that our editors come from a variety of different backgrounds and really mirror our readership.On whether her job today is easier or tougher than it used to be: I wouldn’t say that my job has gotten easier. I think anyone in the magazine industry who has told you that might be indulging in mind-altering substances. (Laughs again) I definitely think it’s a tougher business than it was five or ten years ago. You’d have to have your brain turned off not to say that. But it is a lot more fun. I learn something new every single day. I certainly don’t feel like I’ve been in the industry for two decades; I feel like I started a year ago and I’m kind of the new girl because that’s how all of this change makes you feel.On how she deals with controversy, such as the backlash about Caitlyn Jenner being chosen as one of Glamour’s Women of the Year, in this digital age where responses can be immediate: First of all, there’s a controversy every day, so you can’t get too rattled by it. Whatever the epic thunderstorm is that’s happening around you right now, tomorrow it’ll be around somebody else, so I don’t think that you can edit well if you’re constantly paying attention to that. Obviously, you need to know what people are talking about, especially if they’re in your audience and then you can decide whether to respond. But you can’t get rattled to your core. The news cycle now is so incredibly and sometimes, horrifically short. For better or worse, everybody will be onto something else in a matter of minutes.On any words of wisdom, as a former ASME president, she would offer her colleagues about magazines and the magazine industry: I do think the magazines that will survive will be the ones with strong points of view, whether it’s stated political points of view or points of view meaning particular journalistic values that they endorse. Or you’re a magazine that really cares about and celebrates incredible photography, one that really champions and gives great real estate to beautiful writing or do you have a really strong point of view.On what role she thinks print plays in this digital age: I think that print has the ability to commemorate a moment. I think it was a top executive at ESPN Magazine years ago who was talking about being at Tiger Woods’ house and he went down into his basement and there alongside all of his major trophies, he had framed his first cover of ESPN Magazine. And his first cover of Sports Illustrated. And that’s something that magazines can do; they can commemorate a moment in time and they do convey, when done right, a sort of importance. I just think that no magazine editor can rest on their laurels about that.On what someone would find her doing if they showed up unexpectedly at her house: It depends. It definitely could be a magazine. Usually for me it’s not my iPad, unless I’m reading a book or watching a movie. It is quite often though my phone. My phone is the thing that I am most frequently not without and that’s true for our readers as well. We’ve had incredible audience growth on Glamour.com and in all of our social platforms the bulk of that now is on mobile.On anything else that she’d like to add: With our digital platforms, video has been growing nicely for us. We have 18 million video views per month now. I’m proud that it’s been a really strong year for us. We’ve taken from franchises that have been around for a while at Glamour, and about which we are very proud, and we reinvented them for what our audience wants now. We grew the social media footprint of Glamour Women of the Year in a really remarkable way so that we have a 30% increase in media impressions this year over last year.On what motivates her to get out of bed in the morning: There’s that moment when you get to see something go out into the world; something that your team has created and worked on and then you get the audience feedback, which I still get a rush from. In the old days, as my staff could tell you as they roll their eyes, I used to delight in reading reader’s letters and emails aloud to the team because that’s why we’re all doing this, to connect with that reader, whether she’s in L.A. or Des Moines or wherever she’s reading the magazine.On what keeps her up at night: Everything. I am a total insomniac. (Laughs) One of the things that keep me up a lot at night is talent. I think we’re constantly redefining what talent is and so I’m constantly thinking about how we can make sure that we’re making Glamour the place to work for the best and brightest people across all of these different platforms.And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™interview with Cindi Leive, Editor-In-Chief, Glamour Magazine.Samir Husni: You are approaching your 15th year as editor-in-chief at Glamour and a lot has changed when it comes to the role of an editor-in-chief, and with the industry as a whole. Can you briefly describe those changes that you’ve experienced as editor-in-chief of a major magazine over the years?Cindi Leive: I think the most interesting thing is that constant change is the new norm. When digital first became a part of all of our lives, as former print editors, I think there was this idea that we were going from print to digital and all you had to do was build a bridge to the other side and then you’d be over there and everything would be fine.But what’s happened is it’s a much more fundamental shift than that. It’s a shift that’s not from print to digital, but from status quo to constant change. At first it was about how do we get our websites up to par and how do we grow our audiences there, but wait a second, we shouldn’t just be doing that, we should also be developing great content on all of these social platforms and we should be doing video.We should also be doing apps; I just saw a presentation this morning about how people now largely ignore most of the apps they have and the new way that you’re really going to reach them is through notifications on their notification screens, so you should think about the content that you’re actually delivering through those notifications. (Laughs)Samir Husni: (Laughs too).Cindi Leive: The old way of thinking, it wasn’t that it was just print; it was that this was an industry that had kind of existed one way for a really long time, maybe too long. And now we’re in a period where it’s not that you just needed to learn one new set of skills and then you could put your feet up on your desk and everything would be fine. It’s now that you’re constantly learning new skills and the second you master whatever the platform du jour is, a new one comes along.And that means not only do you need the people on your team, who have the right skills to get you onto those platforms, thinking this new way, it also means that you need a totally different way of thinking about what you do too. So, whatever you’re doing right now, you’re going to be doing it fairly differently in a year or two.Samir Husni: Do you think somebody today could actually major in English and minor in Religion and after graduation work as an assistant editor at a magazine, or has that level of skills changed as well?Cindi Leive: No, I think someone could do that. Honestly, I loved my Liberal Arts education, but I definitely felt like the most hands-on training I got was with working at magazines during the summers. And obviously, the skills are different now. I just hired a new assistant and I looked at not just her writing skills, but also her digital skills, her social skills and her deftness with video. Those are new things, but you’ve always had to get practical work experience alongside your college education.I do think that the great original thought and terrific writing are, if anything, more important, contrary to popular wisdom, which is that we’re turning into a bunch of knuckle-dragging droolers who don’t read. Actually, people read quite a bit. And it may be that some of the things they’re reading are very short, from a headline to a Tweet; long-form has its own aficionados and some people say it’s also growing online, but whatever it is, writing skills are crucially important.And that’s true, by the way, in all parts of business. A lot of business used to get conducted by people talking on the phone, now most everything is written and if you can’t nail your point in good, clear, crisp, concise writing with a voice, you’re in trouble. And that’s true whether you want to go into media or medicine.Samir Husni: I tell my students constantly, and I took it from an editor in the U.K. where she wrote: typing is the new talking. It’s exactly as you’re saying.Cindi Leive: Yes.Samir Husni: You started at Glamour and then you left and went to Self and then you came back to Glamour as editor-in-chief. Can you go back to 2001 when you were offered the job of editor-in-chief and tell me, was it like coming home? Or what was your feeling moving from Self back to Glamour since Glamour was your first paying job?Cindi Leive: In some ways it was like coming home, but it was so much of a bigger job than the one I had had before that nothing felt comfortable or easy about it. I do remember that when I was editing Self, the focus was very much on getting down to brass tacks; this is a magazine about fitness, health, nutrition and the body. If I’m a woman buying this magazine, I want to know that it’s going to make my abs better, and didn’t mean to be a general interest magazine.But people were constantly pitching us stories about other aspects of women’s lives: relationships, politics and their family lives. And they were very interesting stories, but I’d have to say we’re definitely not going to publish that, and I’d have to tell them to pitch it to Glamour. So, it was fun after that to be able to move to Glamour and have a much broader view of a woman’s life: fashion and beauty, in addition to their social and personal lives. It was really a 360 degree view, so that was definitely gratifying.I did feel like I knew on a gut-level what the brand needed to be and should be and I had an appreciation of who the readers were, so that made parts of the job easier. I don’t think I was stressed about what the content should be, but at the same time I was running a much bigger team than I had before and with a much bigger budget. And my boss liked to tell me every time I ran into him in the hall: as Glamour goes, so goes the company. (Laughs)Samir Husni: (Laughs too).Cindi Leive: So, that was new. In some ways, it was like coming home, but it certainly wasn’t cushy.Samir Husni: Glamour has managed to keep its connectivity to college-aged women and at the same time grow up with that college-aged woman. It’s not like once you graduate from college you leave Glamour. How did you manage that balance and have Glamour graduate with your reader, yet remain with the university-aged female as well?Cindi Leive: I think it’s a couple of things. If you think about that college reader and then think about a woman who might be twenty years older than her; first of all, women share a lot of things now. For example, fashion tastes are not, if you look at what a college student is wearing, very different. It’s often quite similar to what a woman 20 years her senior might wear. A woman who’s 40 no longer has the same kind of ridiculously old-fashioned parameters around what she should or shouldn’t wear or do beauty-wise or anything else, as she might have had 10 or 20 years ago. And I do think that many more things are shared now than they used to be.And other than that, I think that Glamour has benefited from a lot of big social phenomenon like this whole phenomenon we’re seeing now with college-aged women; women in their twenties, being incredibly close to their mothers. They share everything and they’re much more likely to talk on the phone every day, rather than the way a woman in her 40s might have grown up, separating herself from her mother. Her mother wasn’t as likely to have worked or had a career; even if you loved your mother dearly, you didn’t necessarily want to model your life after hers.And I think a lot of what we are seeing now is that a lot of young women feel that they’re mothers are their role models. So, there is this generational closeness that exists psychologically that allows a magazine to talk to women of a lot of different ages.And on a very practical level, we’re very careful, if you look at the print magazine or the website or our video content, to make sure that there are things that speak to women at a lot of different life stages. The thing that is the absolute favorite video series or favorite column of a 21-year-old might not be the same as a 40-year-old. But I do think we’ve sort of benefited from this social phenomenon of compression between ages.A lot of women in their late 30s are addicted to Snapchat and they got on it because their 13-year-old daughters were on it and so you see this phenomenon of pop culture obsessions, media habits, fashion trends and beauty practices being spread and shared among women of different ages.Samir Husni: And how easy was that phenomenon transition for you? You’re not an editor of a magazine with a hundred thousand in circulation or a half million; it’s a big, mass general interest magazine, with over two million plus. How were you able to maneuver that ship without scaring the established readers as you set a course to attract a new readership as well?Cindi Leive: Some of it you do by trial and error; some of it is I think that I genuinely like our broad readership. I grew up in Virginia and while I love New York and love living here, I do make it a point to get out of the New York bubble whenever I can. We’re very careful to make sure that our editors come from a variety of different backgrounds and really mirror our readership.And if you’re going to be a great editor at Glamour, you’re not just interested in talking to the chattering classes; you’re really interested in talking to American women of all different types, all political parties, and all viewpoints in cities and in small towns.The good news is that so much of our culture is shared now that I think there’s a real sophistication among all women. There aren’t really any small towns anymore.Samir Husni: Has your job today become easier or tougher?Cindi Leive: (Laughs) I wouldn’t say that my job has gotten easier. I think anyone in the magazine industry who has told you that might be indulging in mind-altering substances. (Laughs again) I definitely think it’s a tougher business than it was five or ten years ago. You’d have to have your brain turned off not to say that.But it is a lot more fun. I learn something new every single day. I certainly don’t feel like I’ve been in the industry for two decades; I feel like I started a year ago and I’m kind of the new girl because that’s how all of this change makes you feel. I do think it’s incredibly exciting to be someplace where some dilemma or challenge or interesting problem or phenomenon is landing on your desk every day that you could not have imagined a year ago. And I think that’s the fun of it.Some things do get easier, like it is an incredible pleasure now that you don’t have to wonder how your readership or your audience feels about different issues. You have the ability to post something or try something and get immediate feedback. The ramp-up to trying anything new in print was so glacially slow and epically long; you’d have to do templates, prototypes for print magazines and then any mistake you made was going to be preserved forever and now it’s just much easier to try things. Like if you want to have someone do a column for the magazine, you can try it online and see what people think.It doesn’t mean that we aren’t incredibly careful and that we don’t preserve quality, but it is just so much easier to experiment and so much easier to talk to your readership all of the time.One of the things that’s allowed us to build a strong social presence is that Glamour has always been very much by definition an inclusive brand; it was never the magazine that just existed behind glass to celebrate somebody else’s perfect way. It was always a magazine that intended to reach a hand out to the reader and say that we’re in this together and your voice is important too.And now we can do that in a very real way all of the time via social media. We can write about how we made certain decisions and if somebody has a question about why we made a certain decision, they can write me a letter or post on my Instagram and I’ll respond to them and explain our thinking and I think that keeps us honest and it also helps us know what readers really think and believe and who they really are.Samir Husni: Recently, during the 25th anniversary of Glamour’s Women of the Year, you had the controversy concerning Caitlyn Jenner being chosen as one of the Women of the Year and some people not approving. But you stuck to your guns and said that she was one of your choices and would remain so. In this day and age how does an editor deal with a controversial issue such as that, where you will definitely hear from people, positively or negatively, immediately?Cindi Leive: First of all, there’s a controversy every day, so you can’t get too rattled by it. Whatever the epic thunderstorm is that’s happening around you right now, tomorrow it’ll be around somebody else, so I don’t think that you can edit well if you’re constantly paying attention to that.Obviously, you need to know what people are talking about, especially if they’re in your audience and then you can decide whether to respond. But you can’t get rattled to your core. The news cycle now is so incredibly and sometimes, horrifically short. For better or worse, everybody will be onto something else in a matter of minutes.And I think it’s important in moments like that to think about how you really do feel about your decision. I’ve been in positions before where the magazine has received criticism over things that I thought were valid and I tried to be forthright and respond the other way, by telling them they had a point and I’d listened to the criticisms and here’s what I planned on doing about it.In this particular case, I didn’t consider there to be anything especially controversial about naming Caitlyn Jenner a Woman of the Year. We’ve had 397 Women of the Year over the last 25 years and two of them have been transgender and that was a choice that I felt confident the majority of our readers, most of whom are women in their 20s, 30s and 40s, would support the rights of transgender people. I understand that these changes don’t happen overnight, some people are going to feel rattled by it, and most of them were not in our readership and were encouraged by special interest groups. You just can’t let yourself get rattled by it. To quote Tony Kushner, who I had quoted in a blog post I read about this: “The world only spins forward.” And our ideas about how people live and who is afforded the right of basic dignity change over time. And that’s a good thing.I did not feel the least bit fundamentally concerned about it. I felt this was a decision that we believed in and we supported the rights of transgender Americans to be themselves and live their lives and that was that.Samir Husni: You’re a former ASME president; what words of wisdom or encouragement do you give to your colleagues nationwide in terms of sticking to their guns, continuing to be creators and curators with credibility, as reflectors of our society, because I’m one of those people who believe that magazines are the best reflectors of our society?Cindi Leive: I do think the magazines that will survive will be the ones with strong points of view, whether it’s stated political points of view or points of view meaning particular journalistic values that they endorse. Or you’re a magazine that really cares about and celebrates incredible photography, one that really champions and gives great real estate to beautiful writing or do you have a really strong point of view.We’re very strongly pro-woman and I think that’s not accidental; it’s how we are. You have to stand for something these days because information itself is ubiquitous. I used to race home from junior high school on the days that I thought my Seventeen Magazine was going to be in my mailbox because it was my only window growing up in Virginia. It was my only window on what girls were thinking and doing and to me, most importantly, where around the country and in fact the world, they were doing it.That’s not true anymore. Our readers have a million options, a million different ways she can get any information on the planet at any time and I think what’s going to make her loyal to a particular magazine is its lens on the world. What is the point of view? Is it energetic? Is it personal? Does it speak to her with a voice that’s different from what she’s getting everywhere else?So, I do think that point of view is important and there are lots of different ways that you can have a point of view. But having some point of view is more important than it used to be.Samir Husni: With all of the talk about the Vanity Fair cover with Caitlyn Jenner; nobody remembers that she appeared on ABC with Andrea Mitchell; the pixels on the screen disappeared in a few hours or a few days later. But with those magazine issues, people are still talking about the Vanity Fair covers; people are still talking about the Woman of the Year. In this digital age, what role do you think print still plays?Cindi Leive: I don’t particularly consider myself a print editor anymore. If you looked at my calendar, I easily spend as much time every day on digital and video and online experiences; all of that. And in all of those areas, we try to think what we can do there that we can’t do anywhere else.But I think that print has the ability to commemorate a moment. I think it was a top executive at ESPN Magazine years ago who was talking about being at Tiger Woods’ house and he went down into his basement and there alongside all of his major trophies, he had framed his first cover of ESPN Magazine. And his first cover of Sports Illustrated.And that’s something that magazines can do; they can commemorate a moment in time and they do convey, when done right, a sort of importance. I just think that no magazine editor can rest on their laurels about that. Anybody who believes that just because they’re doing something in print, it’s more important, that’s an outdated way of thinking.Samir Husni: If I show up at your house unexpectedly; what would I find you doing? Reading an iPad? Reading a magazine? Watching television?Cindi Leive: It depends. It definitely could be a magazine. Usually for me it’s not my iPad, unless I’m reading a book or watching a movie. It is quite often though my phone. My phone is the thing that I am most frequently not without and that’s true for our readers as well. We’ve had incredible audience growth on Glamour.com and in all of our social platforms the bulk of that now is on mobile.Our readers are most likely looking at our site and our content on their phone and I live my life the same way. Much to the chagrin of my husband; I can be sitting there during family time reading something on my phone. (Laughs)Samir Husni: Is there anything else that you’d like to add?Cindi Leive: With our digital platforms, video has been growing nicely for us. We have 18 million video views per month now. I’m proud that it’s been a really strong year for us. We’ve taken from franchises that have been around for a while at Glamour, and about which we are very proud, and we reinvented them for what our audience wants now. We grew the social media footprint of Glamour Women of the Year in a really remarkable way so that we have a 30% increase in media impressions this year over last year.We’ve been the trending topic on Twitter on multiple occasions over the course of the year with things that we’ve done. And I know it sort of easy to roll your eyes at these things and say that’s so superficial or shallow, but I’m as proud of those moments, which show that we’re connecting with our readers in new places, as I am of our National Magazine Awards. So, I think you need both. It’s and, not either/or, now.Samir Husni: What motivates you to get out of bed in the morning?Cindi Leive: There’s that moment when you get to see something go out into the world; something that your team has created and worked on and then you get the audience feedback, which I still get a rush from. In the old days, as my staff could tell you as they roll their eyes, I used to delight in reading reader’s letters and emails aloud to the team because that’s why we’re all doing this, to connect with that reader, whether she’s in L.A. or Des Moines or wherever she’s reading the magazine.And now we get that to the nth degree. We released our January issue recently and I’ve always wanted to do a cover of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler together and so we finally engineered it and being able to see it go out there and see our audience tagging one another over and over again in the comments, which you know is shorthand for how great they thought it was. That’s exactly what you want and that’s incredibly satisfying. Being able to see a story that one of our editors has worked on go out there and connect with readers is also exciting.Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?Cindi Leive: Everything. I am a total insomniac. (Laughs) One of the things that keep me up a lot at night is talent. I think we’re constantly redefining what talent is and so I’m constantly thinking about how we can make sure that we’re making Glamour the place to work for the best and brightest people across all of these different platforms. And how we can continue to attract editors and designers and developers here who can push us, because I think, in answer to your earlier question about how I take this huge brand, this kind of cruise ship in its own right, and do something disruptive with it. The places where we’ve been able to do that successfully have come from bringing editors and other staffers in who are going to push themselves. So, I think about that.Samir Husni: I don’t know if you realize this or not, but you keep one of your colleagues up at night.Cindi Leive: Uh-oh.Samir Husni: Yes, because she’s thinking all of the time about running with you. She runs with you in the mornings. Jill Herzig?Cindi Leive: Oh, yes.Samir Husni: I interviewed Jill last week and I asked her what kept her up at night and she said thinking about running in the mornings with you.Cindi Leive: (Laughs) Yes, and when we run, we end up talking about things like this. We never talk about our love lives or what happened the night before; it’s always something like: what’s your Snapchat strategy. (Laughs again) She’s a really dear friend.Samir Husni: (Laughs too) Thank you.