Andrew Nusca

An inspiration board.

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“Le doute n'est pas une état bien agréable, mais l'assurance est un état ridicule.”

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd one.”

—Voltaire

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Why do so many footballers covet the No 10 shirt?

Being a team's No 10 clearly means something in branding terms, but in football ones it is even more important

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“We share the privilege of working in the world of ideas, of empathy, of imagination. Sometimes we make entertainment, sometimes we make art. Sometimes we're lucky and make them both at the same time. And if we're really fortunate, we also get to make a living."

—Harrison Ford

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“What the [New York] Times got right is that aligning incentives with the audience leads to loyalty — and loyalty pays. Subscribers don’t just visit; they return daily, linger longer, and actually engage with the product. That gives advertisers something they can’t buy on the open web: a verified, attentive audience.”

—Brian Morrissey

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“What is the history of the last 25 years of digital media? A bit more than half of that time was, first, a period of immense creativity and increasingly grandiose expectations followed by another decade or more of continuous carnage.”

—Josh Marshall

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“Whether or not my fingers bled, I don't remember”: Billy Corgan on the making of Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

With no let-up for 86 days straight, Mellon Collie was the double album that spooked the label, pushed Corgan to the limit, and would become

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“Los Angeles is a terrific place to live, you know. Because it's right on the edge of destruction. The ground itself is trembling. The landscape is about to blow apart. The social fabric is about to tear, and many novelists have documented the fragmentation of the psyche. So it's a place right at the edge of things where everything is about to fall apart, and it's a very nourishing place for that reason.”

—Leonard Cohen

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“We’re moving from this attention era to a retention era, where the smarter brands are figuring out how to build a narrative people are invested in. Magazines at the end of the day are about building a community.”

—Tom Bettridge, I-D

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The Art and Science of Online Media Exit Valuations

By Dorian Benkoil and Rafat Ali

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Bryan Burrough on Graydon Carter's Memoir and Vanity Fair’s Golden Era

Lavish budgets, high-society gossip, and headline-making journalism— Vanity Fair under Graydon Carter was the last great magazine empire. Br

“For twenty-five years, I was contracted to produce three articles a year, long ones, typically ten thousand words. For this, my peak salary was $498,141. That’s not a misprint—$498,141, or more than $166,000 per story.”

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The Keeper Test by Reed Hastings

Reed Hastings is the founder of Netflix.

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Towering Inferno

Usually, I find the parade of stricken people interviewed during climate calamities blur after a while. Not this time.

“It’s not the stories of the big celebs who lost their mansions that are so compelling but the curtain the fire has lifted on the unseen strata of the entertainment industry: the makeup artists, set builders, lighting and camera crews, and aspiring writers who have had to flee their wooden bungalows perched in mountain foothills or along twisty trails, people whose everyday challenges with getting and keeping work were always ameliorated by waking up to that warm winter sun and a shower of lemons in the backyard.” —Tina Brown

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Buying In

The editor of Los Angeles magazine recruited new owners, who promised to invest in ambitious journalism. The trouble was, he believed them.

“What’s happened at Los Angeles [magazine] seems increasingly common, as owners appear to believe they know something that those who have built careers in publishing do not.”

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In June the magazine launched a premium membership for $85 a year that includes a weekly newsletter, “snobs guides” (insider travel tips) and a digital package released every August about college admissions. “It is driving over 50 percent of our new member acquisition and accounting for 73 percent of new member revenue,” said Alicianne Rand, senior vice president and general manager of the fashion and luxury group at Hearst Magazines.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/03/business/media/town-and-country-hearst-stellene-volandes.html

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Greatness is breaking news, beating others, holding people to account, dominating a beat, truly mastering a topic or space, writing confidently, crisply and clearly.

Jim VandeHei

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For better or worse.