What is a Man's Magazine in 2021?

Esquire’s Editor In Chief, Michael Sebastian To Samir “Mr. Magazine™” Husni: “When It Comes To Creating That Print Magazine, I Want Something That Is Going To Really Lean Into The Printy-ness Of It.” The Mr. Magazine™ Interview…

“I think the print experience should be its own experience. The website, the YouTube channel, the Instagram page; these things and the print magazine should all talk to each other. They should all be part of the same Esquire universe.” Michael Sebastian… 

Listening to the reader, an amazing part of the media publishing process. For without your reader, your user, your viewer, your audience, you have nothing to publish. Esquire magazine has been around for over 85 years, definitely a legacy brand that knows a thing or two about thee fine art of publishing. Its editor in chief in its current form today is Michael Sebastian, who knows a thing or two about listening to his audience.Michael was named editor in chief of Esquire in June 2019 and he oversees print and digital content, strategy and operations. He comes to the job as the former digital director of Esquire since 2017 where, during his tenure, he expanded Esquire’s digital content to include more in-depth feature reporting and writing, exclusive interviews, ambitious political coverage and a new fashion vertical. He spearheaded the launch of the “Politics With Charles P. Pierce” membership program, and says it’s one of the most successful membership programs at Hearst Magazines.I spoke with Michael recently and we talked about the rejuvenation that has been going on at Esquire under his careful eye. The new front of the book look and new franchises within. Keeping it fresh and current is important to Michael and when it comes to listening to the audience, Michael believes it’s crucial to do just that. In fact, not long ago he received an email from Seasons Hospice Foundation, reaching out on behalf of a longtime Esquire reader, Scott LaPointe. Scott loves Esquire and had a few thoughts on personal style, ideas he wanted to leave his son as a legacy.Not only  did Michael read Scott’s email, he personally called and spoke with him about his thoughts and his own personal style and how important Scott felt it was. And Michael decided that there should be a section in the upcoming issue of Esquire dedicated to personal style. And so there was.Now I’m not saying that Michael has time to personally call every reader who writes into him, but he does read the emails and he does listen. And I feel sure that for Scott LaPointe, that’s what Esquire is all about and why he reads it. And that’s what it’s about for its editor in chief too: listening to your audience and giving them what they want.

So, please enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Michael Sebastian, editor in chief, Esquire.But first the sound-bites:

On how listening to his audience impacts his decisions as editor in chief of a major brand like Esquire: Obviously we’re listening to readers on the website just by the data that we have from them all of the time, there’s no question about that. And I think to some extent that informs the print magazine. But from the perspective of what we’re putting in the print magazine, that is still guided pretty strictly by editors and by what we think is important for our readers.On whether he feels his audience is platform specific or there is a cross-platform taking place: Well, both. And I know that’s not a very satisfying answer, but I think that we have readers who only bump into us on certain platforms. There are people who only read us in print; there are people who only read us online; there are casual readers who follow us on Twitter and read a story every once and a while from us. But then we have the super-users and those are the people who subscribe to the magazine, they read us online, they follow us on social media and they watch our videos on YouTube.On how he is handling as editor in chief the social awakening of diversity, inclusion and equity in the nation: If you go back to things that I said, interviews that I had done, as soon as I was named editor in chief, one of my main priorities was to diversify who is an Esquire man, who is an Esquire writer, and who is an Esquire photographer. And I don’t just mean diversify racially, although I did. I meant in terms of age, geographic diversity, the life experience people bring to the table.

On how he would define Esquire with a new tagline for the men of today: It’s a very good question because it’s an existential question about the brand. And it’s one that we talk about internally every day. I think that there is still room for, in the media landscape, a magazine that is essentially about what it means to be a modern man nowadays. That’s not the tagline by the way. But that’s what Esquire is: what it means to be a modern man today.On why the magazine is only sold every other month: There are now monthly magazines that are piling up on my bedside table. It goes back to the idea that there is so much media out there, and we have a contact point with our reader on a daily, practically minute-by-minute, basis already, so I’m not worried about them losing sight of us because we publish a dozen good stories a day. So, I think the every other month is a really good cadence for our reader.On where he sees Esquire in 2022: I think that we want to make sure that if I’m talking to you in one year this voice of the new Esquire is synthesized in a way where it’s unmistakable. I do think that’s something that we’re still in the process of honing. It’s really about zeroing in on what that voice is. I want to make sure that it’s unmistakable.On the major challenge he’s faced: When I came into the job, the thing that I said, and I would say this to advertising clients, to people at  Hearst, is that it was an evolution, not a revolution. I didn’t want to come in and do that and suddenly you have a brand that nobody recognizes. I wanted to evolve the brand so that it felt very current and very fresh, but not leave traditional readers behind, I wanted to bring them along with us. And I think a challenge has been when to slow down the pace of that evolution and then when to hit the gas on it. I’m still figuring that out.

On Esquire’s cover of the band BTS: The other thing we publish is era-defining covers and stories and I would put BTS in that category. To be honest, when this was first pitched to me, I was like I don’t know about that. But the more that I thought about it and the more I talked to people, I realized that this is the biggest band in the world. They’re huge. And the fact that we would get to put them on our cover and tell their story and relate them to our reader was great. I also love their message around masculinity too, the way that they were challenging the  norms of masculinity and things like that. I thought it was a really good message to send.On anything he’d like to add: We’re on this path right now to really redefine who the Esquire man is. And it’s not going to happen overnight, but I think that we’re making really good progress when it comes to that. From a business perspective, I’d love to get across that the membership program that we’ve introduced has been more successful than we had anticipated. And that is so heartening to know. That after years of putting our content out online for free, people want to pay us for it. And that feels really encouraging.On what makes him tick and click: My answer to that is the promise of what we’re going to be able to do that day. And what I mean by that is that when I wake up in the morning, it kind of goes back to my referendum on relevance. When I wake up in the morning it’s a clean slate. And I’m thinking about all of the cool things that I can do with my job. So, all of the fun stories that I’m going to get to edit, the great people I’m going to be able to talk to, the awesome photographs I’m going to get to look at and help edit. It’s the potential of being able to do that every day that gets me out of bed. I’m still excited about my job.On how he unwinds in the evenings: A little bourbon or wine, maybe reading a book, but really the things is I have two daughters, a five-year-old and a two-year-old, and when I go into the office, which is about once a week, they’re literally waiting at the front door for me when I come home.On what keeps him up at night: Probably going back to what we’ve talked about, I’m at the helm of an 88-year-old brand. An iconic, American brand. One of the most iconic media brands that still exists. And the people who have sat in the seat before me paid into the equity of that brand during their time. So that when I got here we’ve had a lot of brand equity. And I want to make sure that I’m paying back into that so that whoever comes after me can reap the fruits of our labor. And this amazing brand can live on for another 88 years. And that keeps me up at night.

And now the lightly edited Mr. Magazine™ interview with Michael Sebastian, editor in chief, Esquire. 

Samir Husni: I’ve read hundreds if not thousands of letters from the editor over the years in magazines, but I have never seen anything as personal as what you wrote in the March issue introducing a new section in the magazine, based on a letter you received from one reader. Tell me more about how listening to your audience is impacting your decisions as editor in chief of a major brand like Esquire.Michael Sebastian: I’m so glad you brought up that letter from the editor because getting that note about Scott (Scott LaPointe, a reader diagnosed with ALS, who is now in home hospice care) and then talking to him on the phone was one of the most affecting experiences I’ve ever had. I don’t know if it was the weight of this pandemic; we’re doing so much figuring out right now. How do we make a magazine when we’re all remote? What do our readers want? And then to be reminded of the impact that we make in our readers’ lives. It’s not just entertainment or service, it’s formative and it’s something that this guy was wanting to hand off to his son. And that was so important.Interesting, I’ve gotten a lot of notes about that editor’s letter including from my own staff, which essentially said “I needed that.” I needed that to remind me of the importance of what we do.But to your question, obviously we’re listening to readers on the website just by the data that we have from them all of the time, there’s no question about that. And I think to some extent that informs the print magazine. But from the perspective of what we’re putting in the print magazine, that is still guided pretty strictly by editors and by what we think is important for our readers.And to me, that cracks open a bigger question, which I’ve thought a lot about. I was the digital director at Esquire prior to becoming the editor in chief. And during my time there the audience basically exploded, we grew the audience by three or four times across multiple platforms. And we even brought the age down, which was also interesting to see the age of the reader, at least online.So when I got into the editor in chief’s seat, I thought that what we could do was create a print magazine that was going to really appeal to that readership that we had attracted online. And so there were some decisions that we made and I’ll point you to a very specific one which was we redesigned the front of the book.I wanted the front of the book experience to kind of mimic or mirror the experience that people had when they were scrolling on their phones, scrolling on Instagram. And by that I mean we created a fairly broad rubric called the short stories and within that rubric you would have fashion, culture, food & drink, politics; the whole thing. Because to me it wasn’t very jarring for a reader who’s used to scrolling through Instagram and seeing a post from The New York Times or a post from wherever. And so we basically did that for a year.And we would have a lot of internal conversations about it, because there was one faction of people who were like no, that’s all wrong, we shouldn’t be doing that. And there was another faction of people who said right on, you’re making the right decision. And I have to say that after a year of doing that, I’m now eating crow on that decision, because I think it was the wrong one.And so we’re pivoting from that, because I think the print experience should be its own experience. The website, the YouTube channel, the Instagram page; these things and the print magazine should all talk to each other. They should all be part of the same Esquire universe. There’s no question about that. But when it comes to creating that print magazine, I want something that is going to really lean into the printy-ness of it. By that I mean a certain curation that makes sense to the print reader.Scott certainly inspired it, but the broader impetus behind doing that was essentially saying let’s create a front of book experience and a middle of book experience that is really leaning into that print magazine experience.We have a YouTube channel and the growth of that is really off the charts right now and that’s because for a time we thought we could adapt digital stories, print stories into kind of YouTube videos. And they failed miserably. Then we realized that if we lean into what YouTube viewers want we’ll have better success and that’s what we did. And that’s what has led to the growth there.And I think the same thing can be said about print. We’re not going to take lessons from YouTube and put them into print; we’re going to do what print does best essentially and hope and know that is going to appeal to our readers.Samir Husni: Being platform agnostic now, do you feel your readers, users, viewers and listeners are platform specific or there’s a cross-platform taking place?Michael Sebastian: Well, both. And I know that’s not a very satisfying answer, but I think that we have readers who only bump into us on certain platforms. There are people who only read us in print; there are people who only read us online; there are casual readers who follow us on Twitter and read a story every once and a while from us. But then we have the super-users and those are the people who subscribe to the magazine, they read us online, they follow us on social media and they watch our videos on YouTube.We’ve actually created a membership program that is tailored to all of the things that I talked about. It’s called “Esquire Select.” We’ve had an interesting journey with asking people to pay for our content, particularly online. In 2018, we introduced a membership program specific to our politics columnist Charles. P. Pierce. It basically said we were going to put a metered paywall in front of him and we’re going to ask you to pay if you’re going to read more than three articles.And I was really nervous about that when we introduced it in 2018, because for years people could read him for free. And as soon as we introduced that, we got this outpouring of people who said take my money, I’ll happily pay for Charlie. And I have to tell you that was such a relief. I was up nights thinking about that because I was afraid we would fall on our face. But it was very successful.Then last year we introduced what we call “Esquire Select” and it’s similar to what you see with a lot of other media companies. Essentially, we give people options. For $40 you can get the whole thing. And the whole thing is the print magazine, access to almost 90 years of archives, Esquire every day without having to worry about a pay meter, exclusive deals from friends of the brand; you get newsletters, access to Charlie, just the whole thing.Or maybe you just want the print magazine, you can subscribe for that. Or maybe you just want Charlie, you can do that. Or just the website. It’s basically giving readers a menu to choose from. We’re about three or four months into this experiment and so far, knock on wood, it’s one of the most successful membership programs at Hearst Magazines. 

Samir Husni: You’re background is in journalism, you started as a newspaper reporter. After the killing of George Floyd, there was a big awakening about social injustice throughout the country, in newspapers and magazines as well. And the politics, the diversity and the inclusion topics also appeared in Esquire more than ever. As an editor, how are you dealing with this new social awakening? Are you moving too far to the left, to the right? What are you doing with your audience who may or may not agree with you?Michael Sebastian: That’s a great question. If you go back to things that I said, interviews that I had done, as soon as I was named editor in chief, one of my main priorities was to diversify who is an Esquire man, who is an Esquire writer, and who is an Esquire photographer. And I don’t just mean diversify racially, although I did. I meant in terms of age, geographic diversity, the life experience people bring to the table.We published a story in our last summer issue from a transgender person about their difficulty in the transitioning process. And I don’t think anything like that has ever run in Esquire before. So we’ve had a commitment since day one to this.To your question when it comes to politics, I have a very strong point of view when it comes to my politics and the way that I feel about the topics that you brought up. And I’m not going to shy away from that in service of this soft, both-side dualism that we’ve seen. I think that there are readers who probably agree with me and want to go along for that ride. And I think there are readers who are open to a broad swath of ideas and who also want to see what we’re doing when it comes to that. And then there are probably readers who don’t like what we’re doing there and there are other magazines for them, is what I would say.We’re at a time right now where I don’t want to be muddy about this. Again, I don’t want to be in that squishy middle ground. The point of view that we have is very progressive, but that also doesn’t mean that we’re not going to put voices in the magazine or the website, which we do frequently, that might not necessarily agree with my own personal politics. And I think that’s really important, because I do want to hear from people who have different perspectives as well.Samir Husni: From Esquire’s beginning in the 1930s, it has been the man’s magazine. And after Playboy came it was still the man’s magazine, but a little bit more on the modest side. What would you tell men today that Esquire is? There is no tagline under it anymore; if you were to tagline the magazine for men today, what would you tell them?Michael Sebastian: You bring up a big question here, asking for a tagline, which by the way we talk about a lot. A new tagline for Esquire. It’s not ready for primetime yet, but a good question though. (Laughs)It’s a very good question because it’s an existential question about the brand. And it’s one that we talk about internally every day. I think that there is still room for, in the media landscape, a magazine that is essentially about what it means to be a modern man nowadays. That’s not the tagline by the way. But that’s what Esquire is: what it means to be a modern man today.Over the course of the last year, I’ve thought about this a lot. And one of the reasons is, I guess by nature of the pandemic, I have spent a lot of time talking to male friends of mine who are not in media and don’t live in New York City, some do, but the majority do not. And finding out what they want when they have time to consume media. And I have gotten some very clear takeaways from them.First of all, they have limited time. Obviously, that goes for everyone, but what I would say is that they have jobs and familial responsibilities. And Netflix that they want to watch, sports that they want to watch. So, when we have their attention, we can’t bore them. So we need to create a magazine that is never boring; it’s always going to be entertaining. Because once they look at us, we need to prove to them why they’re giving us their time.The other thing too is we need to talk to men on this eye-to-eye level, like if you pulled up a barstool next to them or something. There are a lot of places that are talking to men right now. And I think a lot of those conversations are toxic, or at least don’t point them in the right direction.So that’s very much what we want to do, but we also don’t want to go to the other side and preach to them, because I don’t think anyone wants to be preached to either. It’s basically having a conversation between you and I about what does it mean to be a modern man right now.I can give you an example of a middle of the book franchise that we’re introducing starting in our next issue, April/May, which is called “How Did I Get Here?” And it dispatches from the new middle age. I’m basing this partly on my own experience, but then also experience of men that I’ve spoken with, which is that yesterday it felt like I was 27 and today I woke up and I’m 40-years-old with two kids. It’s like how did I get here? And I don’t mean that in a bad way. I don’t mean that I’m going to go buy a Corvette and grow a ponytail and leave my family behind. (Laughs) I just mean that these are things that we need to reckon with.So, we’re introducing this two-page franchise and the aim is to have writers from different perspectives weigh in each time. That way we get a really broad swath of writers so that it can be people from all kinds of backgrounds. My dream is to have a dozen of these under our belt and then have a book out. So when you’re browsing through the bookstore or on Amazon, then you see a book from Esquire that’s tackling the new middle age.And I’m very intent on talking direct to this reader and saying look, there’s a lot going on in your life and you can come to us and be entertained and informed, and there’s a lot of great stuff like fashion, how you can dress, but there’s also a lot of things that relates to where you are in your life.Samir Husni: These conversations are evident in the magazine, you’ve even changed the table of contents. Instead of reading Table of Contents, it reads Welcome to Esquire, Mr. Holland Will See You In. There is an invite for that conversation to start. So why am I having to wait two months now to get this invite? Why did you go bimonthly? Michael Sebastian: I like the bimonthly cadence. The joke before used to be that issues of The New Yorker would pile up on your bedside table. And now I read The New Yorker on The New Yorker app, I don’t get the magazine anymore. It’s a great magazine and they publish great stuff every week, but that’s how I like to experience it.And there are now monthly magazines that are piling up on my bedside table. It goes back to the idea that there is so much media out there, and we have a contact point with our reader on a daily, practically minute-by-minute, basis already, so I’m not worried about them losing sight of us because we publish a dozen good stories a day. So, I think the every other month is a really good cadence for our reader.The idea is that we have the lasting power of a coffee table book with the urgency of a magazine that really seeks to meet you right now. So there’s a little bit of both in there. The term coffee table book is actually kind of thrown around a lot in the magazine world. I have a lot of coffee table books and I never look at them. And that’s the thing about coffee table books, they’re set pieces that are meant to decorate your house.That’s not what I want Esquire to be. I don’t want it to be something that you put on your coffee table and never look at. I do want it to be on your coffee table and I want you every time you put your feet up, look down and grab it to read.Samir Husni: Hopefully, beyond the pandemic, where do you see Esquire in 2022?Michael Sebastian: I think that we want to make sure that if I’m talking to you in one year this voice of the new Esquire is synthesized in a way where it’s unmistakable. I do think that’s something that we’re still in the process of honing. It’s really about zeroing in on what that voice is. I want to make sure that it’s unmistakable.As we come out of the pandemic and we’re allowed to do things that we haven’t been able to do in a year, I think that you’re going to hopefully see an explosion in different touchpoints of Esquire. With the various touchpoints, what I mean is we are a media brand first and foremost. We publish stories that are meant to have impact, but at the same time we’re talking about different ways that we can license the brand in really smart ways, in partnerships with brands that we love.I’ll give you an example, one that we just did. Our creative director, Nick Sullivan, who is a legend in the fashion world, worked with the brand Anderson & Sheppard to design a field jacket that we are selling on the side and they’re selling in the store. It’s these sort of smart brand extensions that I think you’ll see in 2022.And again, it all revolves around that print magazine and the content that we publish, in these stories that we publish, in the celebrities that we put on the cover and so on, but ultimately it branches out in all of these different smart ways.Samir Husni: What has been the major challenge you’ve faced with the changes to Esquire and how did you overcome it?Michael Sebastian: When I came into the job, the thing that I said, and I would say this to advertising clients, to people at Hearst, is that it was an evolution, not a revolution. I didn’t want to come in and do that and suddenly you have a brand that nobody recognizes. I wanted to evolve the brand so that it felt very current and very fresh, but not leave traditional readers behind, I wanted to bring them along with us. And I think a challenge has been when to slow down the pace of that evolution and then when to hit the gas on it. I’m still figuring that out.There have been times when you’ve probably seen a great leap forward with a redesign of the print magazine and so on, and then other times when we’ve been a little slower to progress. So controlling the pace of that is a challenge. There are people who have read us for decades that are coming along for the ride and new readers who are coming onboard as we continue to evolve.There is something that I think about a lot, which is Esquire has this almost 90-year legacy. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote for us,  Ernest Hemingway wrote for us; how would I get out of bed in the morning if I woke up thinking well. Hemingway was writing for us, so what can we do to match that? I don’t want to think about that too much because it would just be too overwhelming.But at the same time, the thing about Esquire is that people loved to point to Esquire in the sixties. Of course, the stuff that they were doing was legendary, no question about that. But that wasn’t the magazine’s only Golden Era. There have been multiple golden eras throughout the years.And the inspiration that I take from those golden eras of the brand is that those editors were never looking backward. The editors of the sixties weren’t looking at the editors of the thirties for inspiration, they were looking at right now. They were trying to meet the moment right now with this urgency that all great media brands have. The same could be said of the eighties or any other great period in Esquire’s history.And that’s the inspiration that I want to take from it, the idea that we are meeting the moment with an urgency that’s undeniable. And I think my experience as a digital director actually helps with that because my mantra to myself and my staff and to my bosses, from the moment I became a digital director, was that every day on the Internet is a referendum on your relevance.So when you wake up in the morning, you have to fight for that relevance. You have to be publishing stories that people are going to be talking about. Sometimes you succeed, sometimes you fail; the terrible part about this is that it never ends. And it’s exhausting because every day you’re fighting for people’s attention.The good news about it though is if we fail today, we wake up tomorrow and we get to go at it again. And I think that’s true of the website, true of the magazine; it’s true of all extensions of the brand right now.

Samir Husni: How many letters have you received form people after you put BTS on the cover asking who are they? (Laughs)Michael Sebastian: (Laughs too) I’m glad you brought up the BTS cover, I think of the well, the Esquire well and the well doesn’t just exist in print, it’s also the feature stories we publish online. So you have stories that make a social impact and the public service stories. We just published a story last week from Scott Raab as a matter of fact about the sexual abuse scandal at Ohio State. It’s a really powerful story and if you haven’t read it, you should. It’s incredible. We published a story last year about teen suicide and there has been an unfortunate uptick in that. Those are very important to the mix.We also publish what I call adventure stories and I’m very keen on publishing them. I don’t just mean guy-climbs-a-mountain-almost-dies-but-doesn’t, I mean like these pulse-quickening reads that are tailor-made for Hollywood. And from the first issue I edited until the most recent one we had; we’ve had stories of heist and stories of prison breaks and stories about feuds in weird small communities.And the other thing we publish is era-defining covers and stories and I would put BTS in that category. To be honest, when this was first pitched to me, I was like I don’t know about that. But the more that I thought about it and the more I talked to people, I realized that this is the biggest band in the world. They’re huge. And the fact that we would get to put them on our cover and tell their story and relate them to our reader was great. I also love their message around masculinity too, the way that they were challenging the  norms of masculinity and things like that. I thought it was a really good message to send.I did get a couple of letters asking who they were, but the amount of fan mail on all platforms that we received was overwhelming. And I would do it all over again.Samir Husni: Is there anything you’d like to add?Michael Sebastian: We’re on this path right now to really redefine who the Esquire man is. And it’s not going to happen overnight, but I think that we’re making really good progress when it comes to that. From a business perspective, I’d love to get across that the membership program that we’ve introduced has been more successful than we had anticipated. And that is so heartening to know. That after years of putting our content out online for free, people want to pay us for it. And that feels really encouraging.Samir Husni: What makes you tick and click and motivates you to get out of bed in the mornings?Michael Sebastian: My answer to that is the promise of what we’re going to be able to do that day. And what I mean by that is that when I wake up in the morning, it kind of goes back to my referendum on relevance. When I wake up in the morning it’s a clean slate. And I’m thinking about all of the cool things that I can do with my job. So, all of the fun stories that I’m going to get to edit, the great people I’m going to be able to talk to, the awesome photographs I’m going to get to look at and help edit. It’s the potential of being able to do that every day that gets me out of bed. I’m still excited about my job.Of course, by the end of the day I’m exhausted because there are a number of things that have gotten in the way. Administrative stuff, bureaucratic stuff, emails, all of that. By the end of the day I may have lost a little momentum. But when I wake up in the morning I’m full of it.Samir Husni: How do you unwind then in the evenings?Michael Sebastian: A little bourbon or wine, maybe reading a book, but really the things is I have two daughters, a five-year-old and a two-year-old, and when I go into the office, which is about once a week, they’re literally waiting at the front door for me when I come home.And when I’m here working from home, I’m upstairs and they’re downstairs and I walk down the stairs and they’re at the bottom of the stairs yelling daddy. And that is the thing that I close my computer, leave my phone in the other room and I spend as much time as I can talking and playing with them. It’s amazing how all the stress from the day can just melt away at that point.Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?Michael Sebastian: Probably going back to what we’ve talked about, I’m at the helm of an 88-year-old brand. An iconic, American brand. One of the most iconic media brands that still exists. And the people who have sat in the seat before me paid into the equity of that brand during their time. So that when I got here we’ve had a lot of brand equity. And I want to make sure that I’m paying back into that so that whoever comes after me can reap the fruits of our labor. And this amazing brand can live on for another 88 years. And that keeps me up at night.Samir Husni: Thank you.