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Scott Dadich (Media Exec, WIRED)

Published on Mon, 20 Aug 2018 10:00:00 +0000

This week, we sit down with media exec and vintage Rolex enthusiast Scott Dadich. Scott got his start as creative director of Texas Monthly magazine before moving on to Condé Nast, where he would spend the decade from 2006 to 2016 reinventing Wired magazine. He's now a partner at Godfrey Dadich Partners, a creative agency that works with a diverse array of brands ranging from magazines like Wired and National Geographic to the Obama Foundation. It probably comes as no surprise, but in addition to having a taste for great clothes, classic design, and delicious food, Scott is something of a watch guy. Enjoy.

Synopsis

In this episode of Hodinkee Radio, hosts Stephen Pulvirent and James Stacey sit down with Scott Dadich, a legendary figure in media and design. Dadich is a partner at Godfrey Dadich Partners, a creative agency working with clients like National Geographic and the Obama Foundation. The conversation explores Dadich's journey through the media landscape, from his early days as art director at Texas Monthly to his transformative tenure at Wired magazine, where he served as both creative director and editor-in-chief. The discussion delves into Dadich's personal watch collecting journey, particularly his affinity for vintage Rolex pieces. He shares how he was introduced to the world of watch collecting by dealer Yaasek Kozebek, leading to his first purchase—a 1969 GMT-Master ref. 1675. Dadich explains how he uses watches to mark significant milestones in his life, including his prized gold Submariner with an electric purple dial. The conversation also touches on his interest in sneaker collecting, sparked by his work on the Abstract episode featuring Nike designer Tinker Hatfield.

The episode explores Dadich's philosophy on media, design, and storytelling. He discusses how he approached expanding Wired's editorial vision beyond pure technology coverage, developing a framework based on values like being "unapologetic," "optimistic," and "authoritative." This strategic approach, developed with his now-business partner Patrick Godfrey, allowed Wired to feature diverse cover subjects from Serena Williams to Edward Snowden while maintaining editorial coherence. Dadich reflects on career highlights including the Snowden cover, developing iPad apps for Condé Nast publications, and working with President Obama. He also discusses the changing business models in media and his current work developing new television projects and AI-related design challenges that won't be publicly visible for several years.

Transcript

Speaker
Unknown If you're in the media game, Scott Daddic is a damn legend. He spent over a decade shaping major magazines like Texas Monthly and Wired, and now he's a partner at Godfrey Daddicch Partners, a creative agency that works with clients like National Geographic and the Obama Foundation. It sounds like a huge cliche, but Scott is someone who sees the future and then actually makes it happen. The best part is that he does it all in the most humble way possible and like it's just another day getting to do his dream job. Hodinky senior writer James Stacy and I sat down with Scott during a recent trip to San Francisco, and he really does make it sound that easy. I'm your host Stephen Polverant and this is Hodinky Radio This week's episode is brought to you by Tudor. Stay tuned later in the show for a look at the Black Bay Chrono, a new take on one of Tudor's most iconic watches. You can also learn more at TudorWatch.com. All right, uh, thanks so much for being here, Scott. We really appreciate you coming on the show. Thank you so much, Steven. So happy to be here. Yeah, and we have James here also, so we've got every everybody in the room. Great to meet you, sir. A pleasure, for sure. Yeah, I'm excited for this. Scott, I think uh our readers might have seen you recently in volume two of the Hodinky magazine, where you contributed an essay about your watch collecting, specifically Rolex collecting, and how you use watches to mark milestones in your life. How did that end up being something you were interested in doing? Well, first of all, thank you for asking
Unknown me to contribute to the magazine. That was a thrill. It's a beautiful, beautiful object. Thank you very much. I think um as a fan of magazines and longtime maker of magazines, it's a real joy to see care and craft put into the medium and to have something to hold in your hands that's luscious and beautifully designed and and well written and and gorgeously photographed. So congratulations on that. Thank you. I will cer certainly take that compliment from you. Thank you. Well it was it was a thrill to do and I was really happy to contribute the thoughts because um I certainly I as I wrote in the piece it wasn't ever anything that I could envision myself uh participating in and the the idea of collecting watches, let alone uh being fortunate enough to have some some prize pieces from Rolex. Um and it just sort of the origins of of how I came to it and and the introduction from friends and the the joy and and delight that I get out of uh collecting and wearing them and using them every day as timepieces. Aaron Pow
Unknown ell Was there something about Rolex in particular that drew you in? I mean, James, I know from being around Watch Guys all the time. There's there's something about Rolex, right? That's just a little different
Unknown . I I wonder I've I've experienced a lot of people go through phases where when they first get into watches maybe they don't understand the appeal fully and they kind of back away from Rolex and you explore other avenues. But it does seem like if you stay in the waters long enough, you start to see a charm that's not there with a lot of other brands, especially when you consider like a length of lineage of design and product development and that sort of thing. I wonder if that was how you came to it or if you kind of saw it with your o
Unknown wn eye and No, I I think think I you're right. think that's exactly what drew me to it. I I had older um friends and mentors who sort of looked out for me in the early part of my career who one was an omega uh fan and and just wore his omega the the length of his career. And it wasn't until I met uh Yasek Kozebec. Uh okay. And Yasek introduced me to the world of Rolex, and I I remember spending a whole afternoon, I think it was five or six hours at his shop. Just literally that's easy to do. That's a quick he was so generous and thoughtful in both describing the watch and the company and the attention to detail. And then from my side on the the love of design and typography and materials and the the industrial components of of assembling a piece of design like that just really spoke to me. I also, from Yassick's knowledge, just the depth and experience there, the ability to talk talk about the thickness of typography, the color uh meters first, the r what a red sub is, and to sort of go through all of that um just as a total novice and learn that much in one afternoon. I sort of it just sort of uh clicked in for me and I I felt uh felt really tied to the brand and really had sort of uh a
Unknown a great affection for it right away. Yeah, that's great. That's I mean that's like being thrown right into the deep end going to talk with Yassick. But it's it's a it's a good way to learn because you you start kind of with the real deal. You don't you don't have to like dip your toe in first, you get to kind of experience it in all of its minutiae and sometimes insanity and and you know, kind of find find your own path
Unknown . Exactly. And and the level of discourse and genuine enthusiasm from him I think really rubbed off on me that it was just a pure delight and and affection for for the work. And I think that was something that just felt really pure to me and and made made perfect sense with my first my first purchase. And what was that purchase? It was uh 1969-1675. Okay. That's a great watch. Beautiful. In a beautiful shape. And it was actually he had just gotten it in a couple days before, single owner. A guy who um uh Bill Brady, it's in g engraved on the back of the uh of of the the case, and uh it was a single owner and he bought it in Vietnam and it actually had this really ornate handmade silver bracelet at the time and uh so we swapped that for something uh a little bit uh more contemporary. A little bit easier to wear. bit Little easier to wear. And uh but the the fade on it, uh everything was just uh in miraculous shape. So I fell instantly in love with it. And that was the first one
Unknown . Yeah. A GMT is a a great watch, and it's a watch I think a lot of people come to a little later as well. That's kind of again, like that's a that's a pretty deep endway to start. A sixties GMT
Unknown . Yeah, I think that's a few layers deeper than like I think subs are are at the entry point, but I think like yeah, the GMT, Sixplore ones, stuff like that are are are a little bit on the deeper side. So I mean it's nice that you had some someone to kind of guide you in and get you to that to a a stronger point. Something like it sounds like you still have the watch and I do. Yeah, so I mean it's found a good home then, which is awesome. I think that you know a lot of the the collect first phases of the watch collecting is buying and deciding it's not quite right and moving on to something else. And when you can have someone who can
Unknown guide you through that process, it's special. And even looking at all the subtle variants there, the color of the loom, the dials, the fading, it just uh it's just a really
Unknown rich um vein to dive into. For sure. And you know, Stephen had mentioned minutiae and you had mentioned enthusiasm, and I think those things they operate so closely in anything, cars, watches, design. These details become things that we fixate upon and and attach meaning to that may not have been there even at the design at the original design level. But it's an interesting context for a product like that to take on, you know, forty plus years after it uh after it would have, you know met its usefulness. Aaron P
Unknown owell And I think you feel the history in wearing it. I I I certainly do the idea of bringing it into to contemporary life and and finding utility and and beauty in it just as an everyday thing to wear, for su
Unknown re. Yeah, I totally agree. That that idea of utility and these old things that were very purpose driven, getting to kind of keep living their lives is is really exciting in a sort of fun, silly, nostalgic way. I mean yesterday we were shooting a review, James, James and I along with uh our producer Gray, and uh, you know, walking up into the Marin Headlands, you know, I was wearing a vintage explorer. And there's something fun about going on a hike with an old watch that was meant for hiking that like now is mostly, you know, I wear it to work in the city or out to dinner, and there's something fun about like taking it back out into nature. It feels like you're like really putting it through its paces a little bit. I love that ide
Unknown a. And and and the idea of contrast too, I think about that a lot. You know, what is the piece that you're gonna wear that day, thinking about sneakers you're gonna wear, the suit you're gonna wear, a t-shirt. Like that was another piece that I wanted to write about, that idea that of personal comfort and um marking accomplishments with the way you carry yourself and and the things that we tend to define ourselves with. There was something really interesting about that and w and I wrote about it was not really until I brought it into everyday life and could feel comfortable wearing it with a t shirt and not feeling like I had to get dress Including a gold sub, right? Trevor Burrus. So the gold sub, that's that was uh the the big one. It was an amazing watch the first time I saw it. I I totally fell in love with it and was really smitten with it. And I remember talk also got it from Yassick and um remember talking to him about it and he's like, Are you sure you really that's a very loud watch when the dealer is trying to talk you out of buying the watch, you know it's it's like I have other things over here. You should we we should take a look at this. I said no, this is this is definitely the one. It just spoke to you? Completely. It was uh this is the silliest reason for wanting it. I have you watched Million Doll Monilli Dollar Lingist New York? Yeah. So Frederick Eklund wears that I I I think it's a contemporary, it's a gold sub. Oh. And I never noticed. He it's a beautiful piece. And I w I just sort of got interested in what what it did and just sort of And um went in to see Yasik to sort of look at look at options there and saw this one with this almost electric purple dial. Oh wow. It's it's pretty nuts. Very cool. So I I tend to wear that probably three or four times a week now. Cool
Unknown . And I can't remember, is that on a bracelet or do you wear it on a strap? It's on a bracelet. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's the way to wear it.
Unknown If you're gonna have fun with it, have fun with it. You might as well. Yeah, and there is something like fun about a gold watch in general, but especially fun about a gold sports watch. Right. Yeah. It has like a levity to it. Yeah.ah, ye Kind of belies its original intention, but not in a way that seems to mess with its with its overall appeal. Like I th I think there it becomes something distinct. It's cool. Ver
Unknown y very well said. Yeah, I've I've moved the sixteen seventy-five over to uh strap now Cool. Nice. Leather and otherwise. But um the bracelet on the the gold boy is is really something it's got some weight too. It does. It does. You don't forget that you're wearing it.
Unknown That would be a little hard. Yeah, without question. People obviously can't see uh through through the podcast, but you're not wearing a vintage Rolex today. Wearing an application.
Unknown Actually. This is um yeah, I love this watch. A friend of mine obviously uh worked on it at Apple and so I I I think of him when I wear this. Um he's a wonderful designer and and dear friend and but this has been great for the gym and I I went to the gym this morning, so it was one of those that sort of it it prompts me. I the the health utility of it I think has been really interesting. I found less um utility for it in the early days and I think the more that they've tuned in Watch OS to really sort of prompt and and uh uh identify the benefits of of your workouts and keeping moving and standing. I've I've really enjoyed that. So I I wear those
Unknown a few times a week now. So that includes like uh you find the metrics for like step counting and telling you to get up and move around. That's that's helpful in your li
Unknown festyle? It definitely is. And especially, you know, in the last year the sort of nature of my work has changed in being in a lot more client meetings and presentations and a lot more computer work. Um and instead of sort of the roaming the newsroom that I did at Wired and so the the prompt to get up and and m move my ass and go do something else. And especially to go to get to the gym and and feel uh a little bit better about myself maybe once or twice a
Unknown week. For sure. Yeah. It's funny. don't kind of stay up on the Apple Watch or who haven't been wearing them miss. But I remember you know when it first came out, it was really about notifications. It was about bringing apps to your wrist. It was it was a lot more texting and emails. Yeah, it was Yeah. It sounds kinda redundant but like active interactions. Whereas now it feels a lot more like it's about passive interactions and monitoring and rem
Unknown inders. It feels consumptive. Like it it does feel like a little mini dashboard that just sort of gives me quick indicators of what's going on which I I do enjoy. Especially if I know I'm gonna be in meetings all day and I don't want to be rude and pull out the phone and in front of folks I can sort of take that quick glance and and uh get a sense of what's going on. Do you ever do the the one on each wrist I've never done that thing
Unknown . I've seen it a couple times, yeah. Jack, our uh our esteemed editor in chief, uh likes to likes to pull that move from time to time. Yeah, I don't know. Probably. There should be. We should come up with something. Yeah, that's definitely Jack. I'm gonna call you out right now. You gotta come out come up with something. He's pulling a blank. Yes. There you go. All right, you have you have homework, Jack. Um, I mean you mentioned you know somebody on the on the design team. What is it about the industrial design of of that product that appeals to you? I mean, it's it's in many ways the total opposite of the industrial design of something like a Rolex. And then in other ways kind of similar, I guess
Unknown . It's um I I the I'm wearing the white ceramic one right now, the series two. And uh when that came out, I was just totally smitten with the design. The the high contrast black and white, I think, is really special. And I love the the bands, the silicone bands, the the sort of white on white. Um it reminds me of the early days of the iPod. Yeah. Has that sort of clarity and and the sort of bright signal that that high contrast black and white carries with it. Ye
Unknown ah, I agree. I wish you could put those rubber sport bands on other watches. Right? They're so good.. They're pretty great They might they might be my favorite other than Rolex bracelets, they might be my favorite straps in the hatches.
Unknown They have the benefit of the strap slides under itself. So if you if you work at a computer all the time and you have that problem that I think a lot of people have where you hate your bracelet touching your the MacBook, like the metal of the MacBook. Yeah, exactly. Or just the it's kind of that rubbing, especially on the sharp edge on the MacBook.
Unknown And I I think they've done a magnificent job with the colorways. I agree. With the white. I mean they're really sort of out there and moving um moving the culture forward and thinking about use of color and color story. I think they've done a a really brilliant job of that. I agree. Completely. Um
Unknown I'm just waiting for a white ceramic iPhone. Oh that's Yes. Ooh, that would be nice. would That be so good. You can just take all my money now and uh have you seen the new red eight? I have iPhone eight. That that's a really beautiful piece of design. It's really cool. It's something that when I first saw pictures of it, I wasn't into it. And then the first time I saw one in person, I was kind of like, I I might be able to get behind this. It defin it actually caused
Unknown me to think about giving up the 10 for a little bit just because I love that that anodized red. It was just it was so handsome. I had the seven in the red, but that had the white frame around the screen. So you have that white, black, red thing that I didn't I didn't love as much, but uh the new one with the black face is quite handsome
Unknown . It's cool. So obviously we know that you you collect Rolex as as a way to mark milestones. Are there other things you collect? Uh I am uh I have become a bit of a sneakerhead. Okay. This was it's a deep hole. This is a deep hole. I'm kind of like right
Unknown on the precipice, so maybe you'll push me over the edge here. I don't know if that's good thing or a bad thing. It's really dangerous. Uh my colleague Rob Caps, who is the editorial director at Wired and is now our partner and and uh head of editorial at our firm. Uh we have been debating this in the office and there's just been some back and forth about sneakers and what are you wearing. Uh Rob wears the uh Janoski and so we were going back and forth about this. I actually I'm wearing the new um Jordan three uh Tinker Hatfield edition, the ones that Timberlake was wearing at the Super Bowl today. And I got those yesterday and Rob and I were going back and forth about the great perils of sneaker collecting. Alright. Well I I came came to it um in my research for the Tinker Hatfield episode of Abstract. Right. Uh I had known of Tinker and just thought the world of him and he was right up at the top of our casting when we were producing the first season, it uh there's such a fervor and fanaticism, I think for some of the same reasons and that I identify with collecting uh watches or Rolexes, color material, the line work, the sort of formal values of the sneaker I think speak to different people in different ways. What is beautiful to me isn't to everybody else and I I love that about it. I love the sort of diversity of entry points. Um so I in researching the episode and and working with Tinker I just saw I got to go to the kitchen uh at Nike with Tinker and be on campus with him for multiple weeks as we were filming and it just sort of rubs off on you. You just sort of can't help um but but f find yourself immersed in it. And as a designer, it just all of those elements came together in thinking about possibility and performance and uh the sort of cultural values of sneakers and the the very, very rich history and what it what it uh sneakers say to people, both about their personal values and and their their personal outlook. And would you say like before that experience with Tinker you wouldn't have had the context to have understood the aesthetic? I think that's right. I I remember being in school when Jordans were a thing and it was it was a lustworthy object and I remember the kids who had them and being so deeply envious of them. But it was not something that I I could understand I think in the current context, my my adult and contemporary context. Um it was really the education again that Tinker gave me, sort of being able to be around him and have him explain some of the choices that he made and why he made them. Like on the original Air Max, cutting that little window in the foam to show the air was influenced by the Centre Pompidou and Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers design. The idea of putting the inside of the building on the outside and making the the normally invisible visible. And that was his that was the influence that drove him to make that decision. Once you know those things, it's really wonderful to think about and the he always comes to it from a sense of story. And so he'll he'll talk about this and he talks about it in the episode quite a bit, the the stories of his work with MJ and thinking about the decisions around these meetings and the events surrounding MJ's career and thinking about color choice and materiality and being late for a meeting influencing a choice that he made even in the Jordan 3. So there's just so much there and such such richness to to the context. Ye
Unknown ah. Do you do you like to keep your sneakers pristine and kind of in their original boxes and up on a shelf or are you a kind of wear them, beat them up, live with them, kinda double may care.
Unknown I I do a little bit of both. Okay. Um the I've been so fortunate that Tinker has given me a couple of very rare pairs that are uh I'm actually having a couple of cases fitted out uh very nice acrylic UV protection so that there'll be little uh little vitrines in the office that I'm I'm very proud to to show those those couple off. Um including the original Earl, the white employees only um hyper adapt. So I've worn those a couple of times, but I think they're they're going into a glass case. Okay. Yeah. Pull them out for special occasions. Exactly. And then another a dear friend of mine, a guy named Steve Stout, introduced me to sort of more contemporary collecting and and I wear those shoes and I have I have probably about a dozen. Okay. That um a range of designers and and thinking about different use cases and the ones that I wear to Giants ball games uh or something that I'll I'll wear with a suit end up being pretty
Unknown different. Okay. Is there any pair right now that's like a new a new release like around this summer that you think is like the hot shoe right now
Unknown ? I just I I just picked up a pair of the um Air Max two seventies. Okay? It's the one with the really tall, big air bladder under the heel. Okay. And it's fully transparent around the entire outside. I think I have seen this, yeah. And the colorways are really interesting. They're they're doing there's sort of a three component system to the shoe where it's sort of a fly knit upper and then this sort of harder rubber encasement around the heel and midsole. And each one of those can be colored in a different way. I just picked up a pair.' There ally white except for the heel cup is like tennis ball neon optic yellow. Oh cool. So it's very high contrast white laces, white, white upper and they're the two seventies? These are the two seventies very cool. We might have to go sneaker shopping after this. I think you should the Nike sneakers app.
Unknown Highly recommend it. One one slightly insider question for uh Tinker is uh I watched the episode and loved it, but I did notice he's wearing an uncommon watch, a Helsin gauge, I believe. Oh, good eye. And uh that's an interesting piece and it's not why we keep James around. Well, I didn't notice that. Yeah, just I didn't found him like if he was watch interest interested or if that was more like he connected with the design. It's a distinctive design and one that I've always really liked. And uh Helson makes a variety of designs with that gauge was always one of their kind of clearest, uh-huh um uh I would think more most successful designs. And it's fun just to kind of see it especially on the arm of a designer. Yeah. I I haven't asked him
Unknown about that. I I last time I was with him he was wearing it had sort of a a rubberized band with a a Jordan jump man on it. Oh cool. So he's definitely got some specific uh some customizations
Unknown . I love it. Yeah, for sure. And as a as a design guy, I know you're also uh interested in kind of furniture and graphic design. Do you collect in those spaces at all uh eit Aaron Powell I've started to
Unknown uh get a little bit more wise uh in the furniture department. Uh a friend of mine recommended um I've been wanting an Eams lounge f for a very long time. And uh my friend connected me with a guy who was selling a nineteen fifty six Series One. And so uh that was a a very uh happy acquisition uh that's a charity. Late l late last year that I picked up. Uh the then I probab had the problem of moving and now I don't have the place uh to to to feature it prominently. Um I I love art. Uh Christoph Niemann is another artist whose art I've been collecting now for more than ten years. And as he's produced um screen prints and originals, I've collected a f a few of his. And then in books I've definitely because of my love for graphic design, um back from the earliest days of working at Texas Monthly, collecting type specimens from turn of the 18th, 19th century all, the way through contemporary um design moments and thinking about first editions and and rare books. And I definitely find myself when I'm traveling I'm looking for uh great bookstores, art bookstores where I can sort of rummage around and find something special
Unknown . And now a word from our sponsor. Over the last couple of years, tutors made a real name for themselves with their heritage collection. These are watches that have old school styling but are built using real modern watchmaking. One of these watches is the Black Bay Chrono
Unknown . It's a very distinctive design, you know you're crossing the lines between a dive watch and a typical kind of racy chronograph, and
Unknown I think they've done really well with it. Yeah, you've got all those tutor features like the distinctive snowflake hands, uh, but then under the hood is a manufacture caliber, the MT5813, which is both chronometer certified and has a silicon balance spring. For sure. Easy wearing, it looks great and a great movement. If you want to see one of these for yourself, you can go visit your local authorized retailer or you can go to TutorWatch.com to learn more. Let's get back to the show. So you mentioned your start at Texas Monthly and I think a lot of people identify you with with Wired and more kind of specialty media, I guess, or enthusiast media. Um but you started at at a massive general interest publication that that really has to cater to I'm I'm also from Texas. I don't know if you know that. I don't know that. Yeah, I'm I'm from Austin. Oh, look at that. Well done. It's a publication that has to cater to a really diverse audience in a large state and feel kind of intimate to all of those people. How how did that training kind of impact the later parts of your career or or kind of the traje
Unknown ctory of your career? That's a great question. I I first want to ask you, how did you um uh first come to Texas Monthly in your your time in Austin? Um how did I first come to
Unknown it? I guess it was just always there. It was like you know on every shelf at H E B grocery stores and you know, just always always something that was around and as long as I've been aware of magazines, you know, just like people would say, Oh, did you see this thing in the New York Times? Did you see this thing in the Wall Street Journal? In Texas it really is like another flagship publication like that. It's something that people are referencing all the time
Unknown . I'm so glad to hear you say that because that is uh so often the the case and it was for me too. I just remember it just existing. I remember uh my parents picking it up at the checkout aisle at the grocery store. It was just like it was the thing. It was just it existed and I I grew up in Lubbock, Texas. And um I was lucky enough that uh when I was in design school at Texas Tech University, one of the alum, a guy named DJ Stout, who was the art director of Texas Monthly came to talk one day. And I didn't even really get it was probably a sophomore, 19, 20 years old, in um design communications and DJ came in and just showed his work. He showed uh his doodles, his sketches, talked about what it meant to be an art director, to work with illustrators and photographers and editors and journalists, and put all those elements together into a journalistic package, into a magazine package. And for me, it just sort of clicked in and I I formed a friendship with DJ and he mentored me to the extent that I ended up getting his job. And as he left and and joined Pentagram as a partner, um vouched for me with Evan Smith, the editor at the time. And um I I found my way into it. It was just the most perfect click in for me of my interests, um, my pride as a Texan and my love of story. And at twenty-two years old found myself the art director of Texas Monthly, this thing that had just always existed for me. And I felt um sort of protective of it and I felt this great burden of responsibility or mantle of responsibility being placed on me. I was there for probably six and a half years working for Evan. Okay. And he taught me how to be a journalist. It was really I didn't go to school for it, but Evan and the team there, and all of my colleagues, um, all the edit great editors and writers around me taught me how to write and edit and think critically in that context. Then the for Texas Monthly it was the context of Texas. And I think one of the great um gifts of that magazine is it does serve um the state but also the country and so many important stories have come out of that title. Um I think of people like Pamela Koloff who's gotten multiple people off of Death Row through her her work. And at the same time it can go and profile the the best barbecue joints. And it really is um meant to be highly inclusive. It's for red and for blue, it's for the the issues of the state and the country and the world and thinks really uh uh it thinks highly of itself and for good reason because it is so important to so many people. Yeah. In terms of the context and what that meant for me, it it it helped me transition into Wired when I came out to the West Coast in 2006. And so you went right from Texas Monthly to Wired? I did. So It's a big it's a big change. It was a big change. I w I was sort of looking for a perch at a national title. I felt that I was I had learned what I needed to learn out of uh that context and and I was really looking for a big challenge and uh had gone through some interviews at a couple of books in New York um that didn't work out and and I one day I got this phone call um would I be interested in interviewing for the the creative director job. And it was a couple month process, and I ended up accepting the job. And it was interesting, Wired in a way is almost the exact same magazine as Texas Monthly. If you think about it from it is it can cover anything through a specific lens. And Texas Monthly did the same thing. Texas Monthly could talk about just about any story as it pertained to or affected Texas. And Wired was founded in a similar context that it could cover and look at just about any topic as long as it was influenced or or viewed through the lens of technology. And that changed a bit over time and I I tried to change it even more as editor-in-chief. But um it it that was really sort of the founding set of principles. And and Kevin Kelly, the the founding executive editor, talked about it as a letter sent back from the future. And that's a that's a v both a narrow and specific context, but it also allows you to to think um uh in a fairly broad format about what it's
Unknown able to do uh in terms of coverage. That's interesting. It's so funny to hear hear you say that in some ways those magazines are the same magazine with different contexts. It's uh I can't imagine having thought of that on my own. You know, that's that's such an interesting kind of out-of-left field perspective, but once you say it it makes total sense. Did you find that
Unknown the skill set that you developed in Texas transferred well to the West Co
Unknown ast and to Wired and such? I I I did. I felt um I was terrified taking that job. Absolutely terrified. That's how you know it's the right job of the case. I um I first came to Wired our unlike Texas Monthly, I remember very specifically the first moment that I that I came to to know Wired and and encountered it at Book People Bookstore there at uh Oh yeah. Yes, on uh what is that, Sixth and Lamar. Uh yeah. In uh in in Austin. Um so I had this very finite sense of it and its importance. And so when I got there, I just I thought there's no way I can do this. But what I very quickly discovered that the the set of editors were just as smart and just as committed and just as willing to help me succeed. And that my confidence soared when I when I could understand that the the broader and more inclusive the view uh of the work we were doing, the more that I was going to find um uh success and opportunity there. And it sort of manifested itself in really simple ways, like the the kinds of stories we would do, the packages, the inventiveness of um infographics and the w kinds of photo shoots we like doing and the length of stories and the investment and and quality um concerns that were were sort of front and center in in actually making it. So there was enough similar that I felt I felt really well prepared and really well embraced by the team there.
Unknown Aaron Ross Powell And and how would you I mean you talked about the the publication kind of changing under your direction? How would you describe that change? You know, what what do you think it was before? And then what do you think it kind of became as as you kind of shaped it
Unknown ? So when I took over, I took over from the editor-in-chief that I worked for as creative director, a guy named Chris Anderson. Um, every editor puts their own mark on the book. And Chris's was uh focused on areas that he was interested in that included 3D manufacturing, um, added additive manufacturing drones, um, his personal economic theories around long tail or or or uh the book that he wrote free, which um introduced the idea of freemium. And uh Chris also taught me a lot, and so I I understood that I could sort of put a a bit of my own personal topspin on the work. But what I wanted to do and I was charged with was growing it significantly. Okay. I wanted to expand um people's view into it because we as we saw with the arrival of the iPhone at tech or um the idea of technology and and the way technology was was changing our lives was really going mainstream. And that adoption of technology was um something we just saw rocket uh ahead, uh just sort of um uh huge amount of growth there. So what we wanted to do was expand people's definition of it and the their ability to look into it and see themselves or the issues that they cared about and the way that the world was changing. So that was actually part of the strategy work that my now business partner, Patrick Godfrey, led. I was interviewing firms as I took over in editor-inch as editor-in-chief in late 2012, early 2013, to both help us unify the newsrooms. At the time that the founders sold the title, they sold the website and the magazine to two different organizations. So Connie Nast bought the magazine. Wow. And Lycos bought the website. That sounds like a logistical nightmare. Yes. And so Connie Nast ended up buying the website back in uh This was one of the first content sites on the internet. It ran the very first banner ad on the internet. Oh wow, I didn't. Sorry about that. It uh it it was there was so such history there and uh sadly it was it was sitting on a single hard drive in this closet in Baltimore. It was this rickety crazy such history there. Um anyway, long story. The uh the mandate to sort of bring the two together had involved these two cultures. And so you had the old Lycos team and now becoming the wire.com team, and just the idea of unifying it in principle just to be wired and not to be defined by the platform it goes to, that wired ideas can populate across the web or social or video or live events or the magazine itself. And so I needed some help there. And that was where I started interviewing firms and ended up settling on this firm called Godfrey Q. And the lead strategist there, a guy named Patrick Godfrey. And Patrick ended up and Danielle Byrd, um, his head of planning. Patrick and Danielle ended up building this strategy that didn't include the word technology. It was about where tomorrow is realized, that idea that um the the ideas that that wired champions can extend well past um tech technological applications. So I think that was part of what allowed us to grant the set of permissions to the editors, designers, producers, art directors to have as diverse a a set of coverage that you could have Serena Williams on the cover, you could have Edward Snowden on the cover, and you could have President Obama on the cover. It sort of rationalized and made sense for us inside of the newsroom and that that's really what what allowed us, I think, to grow so significantly over the the four years that we we were doing that. And that that Snowden cover is uh it's pretty incredible. For sure. That was that was a wild one. I would imagine that that was pretty amazing. I I I put that in the Aaron Powell What would uh the other two top career moments be? I think the the whole period of working on the iPad apps um both at Wired and then with David Remnick at the New Yorker was something I'll never forget and am so so proud of. And building the team that led that change at Connie Nast. I work with many of them still today. And some of my dearest friends and and family members now. And then working with President Obama, I just I I can't say enough about what a wonderful experience that was, his staff at the White House, uh him personally. Um I will never forget a moment of that that experience. Set of experiences
Unknown really. And would you say those experiences mirrored the at some stage of those experiences did you feel that same sort of trepidation that you felt when you were s moving to go to wired in the first place? Absolutely. Did you kind of chase that? Absolutely. Is that how you kind of touch down
Unknown on knowing you were making good decisions? With the iPad in particular, I remember we created a whole vision demo for what we believed uh a digital magazine ought to be. Okay. Before the iPad came out. And we went to Apple. This is the craziest story. We went to Apple with this whole mock-up thing. Like, if you guys were gonna make a big tablet device that sort of look like a big stretched out iPhone, we think that content ought to look like this. And they was just lots of, oh very interesting, very interesting. And I talk I talked to a friend of mine who's now at Apple who was in that room. He said that was really quite something. So uh yeah, a bit of discomfort uh thinking about how we try to do those things. Aaron P
Unknown owell You you talk about this idea that wired you wanted Wired to be more inclusive. We deal with this this conflict all the time internally, which is we have a core base audience of people who who are diehard watch lovers, who are enthusiasts. They're enthusiasts. They're real the real nerds, we'll call them, you know? And we want to serve that audience. That that's kind of where we grew from. It's where many of us fall into that category. And we want to make sure that we're providing things that are compelling and interesting to those folks. But we also want to grow who can kind of come come in in contact with our our products and our stories and our brands and and come to have an appreciation and can learn and can grow and can have touch points. Even if they read one hodinky story a year, hopefully that's a good experience for them and they get something out of it. And it's always this idea of balancing those two things. How do you create stories that are interesting to both of those audiences on a consistent basis and build a brand that's interesting to both those audiences? Um how how did you think about that as you as you grew wired to make sure that you really wired something that grew out of a very distinct culture? How did how did you balance those things, I
Unknown guess? Aaron Powell It's a great question. I think one of the things that never gets solved. It's it's an ev always on sort of rumbling question as as an editor, as a designer, someone who makes stories. Um for us, we ended up attacking that problem with a set of values that that Patrick had identified through our strategic strategic process. Um we had a problem as a group of looking at an opportunity and describing it with one word, wired. Is this story wired? Is this cover wired? Is that cover line wired enough? Is that advertising package with that partner wired for us? Is Aaron Powell And is that more of was it were you developing that more as a a framework or as a general philosophy to understand? A general philosophy as we as we as a collection of editors and magazine makers, there was sort of a voracious appetite to learn. That that place i is just built with intellectual horsepower and people who are curious about the way that the world works. That curiosity is fundamental. And so by nature, you can be curious about just about anything. And so that ended up informing that question is this wired I don't know, is is Edward Snowden a wired story? Absolutely. Is Serena Williams looking at at at values of uh gender and inclusion inclusion in sports? Is that wired? Well, yeah, w by our definition it was. We were saying the same thing, but we actually meant different um different things under the hood of that question. And so what Patrick and Danielle did for us was identify these four values. Is the story unapologetic? Is it optimistic? Is it authoritative? We could actually go in and assess the particulars of that story and look at the lead of the of a story. We could look at a photograph. Is that an authoritative take? Is that an optimistic uh an optimistic take and and actually test the values against the work we were doing. And if we were lacking, we knew we had other work to do to sort of bring it up to that to that standard. And so what the what the values did was replace Wired with almost a new vocabulary. We could actually make true assessments and look at each other and agree on the outcome. And that that ended up helping us, I think, both expand and also lock into the the kinds of stories that we wanted to do that were beyond just the sort of air quotes uh technology coverage that we would see as just sort of commodity. Mm-hmm. And it
Unknown also kind of speaks directly to the type of audience. You know, are is your audience optimistic? Is your audience, you know, it it it it it it's an interesting kind of two-way uh philosophy that I think is probably that's where you find the growth is by not not connecting directly with people who you already were talking to. Exactly. But connecting with a type of reader that would share a mindset that would see the value of the work and uh and understand the framework and the philosophy
Unknown between the other. Exactly. And I I I I think we see that in in particular optimism was one of those that we really were able to harness both before. You can see it in the work for sure. Yeah, thank you. Be because of being here in in San Francisco in the valley, people who participate in changing the future believe they can make a difference. It it I will butcher the chomsky quote, but that ended up being really at the center of the work that we were trying to do about participating in positive change. I think designers in particular try to do that because they believe they can go and and make and create solutions for for a better trans
Unknown Yeah. I th I think this is is interesting in that context of Wired and then additionally interesting because now you're working with Patrick and you're working on other brands. And so, you know, lately at Patrick Goffrey or at sorry, at Goffrey Dadic, you've um you've worked with some pretty iconic brands, some brands that I think everybody knows, things like National Geographic. Yeah. And you've also launched new brands. So with David Chang, mate major domo media. How do you think about that kind of structure when you're approaching both an established brand and a new brand
Unknown ? That's a great question. And we've actually been informed by that that process that Patrick ran with me and the team at Wired. And we learned a lot from that. I think the the chocolate and peanut butter of uh of my side, the editorial and design function of making magazines and making content. On Patrick's side, the importance of brand and rigor around strategy and putting those two things together was sort of uh the founding set of ideas that that we built the firm on. And it helped us, and it was in in particular when we got the call from our friends at at Natgeeo, Emmett Smith and Susan Goldberg, um that we were able to sit down with them and talk about how we did it and it was just just really about experience, about having done it and having done the reps and lived the values and built them into the journalism itself, that we were able to talk about w the way that NatGeo was changing and looking at its 130th anniversary and the the idea that exploration isn't just about the physical world. It's about exploring ideas and looking at things like race and gender and athleticism. That that too is exploration. Just as we're continuing to find new ways to map the earth and and beyond. And so that that assignment actually started as a strategy assignment to develop a a new kind of editorial strategy to help them see um their work in a common language um across the website and the magazine and the channel and and um events. And it was coming out of that that Emmett emailed us one afternoon and just said, um, hey, what do you think about redesigning the book and rethink Uh with Dave, it's been one of those equally ambitious, ongoing conversations. I got to know him. I invited him to write for Wired in 2013, and he contributed great essay about M MSG uh for our first food issue and then um we just stayed in touch. He spoke at an event called Wired by Design up at Skywalker Ranch and then uh wrote for wrote for the magazine a few more times after that. We just really enjoyed it. He obviously had Lucky Peach at about the same time, so but my time as editor in chief of Wired coincided with his time his time working on Lucky Peach and and starting that. And as he was winding that down and I was thinking about leaving wired, we were just in touch and said, let's just keep talking about what's what goes on and think about new ways that we can continue to collaborate. And And in particular, the work with Netflix I think really bound us together in thinking about the power of story to to ask really thoughtful questions and and drive culture forward and and uncover new truths, whether it was about the way people look at food in ugly delicious or the way people look at the world around them in abstract and try and bring that sort of big lens to to big topics. And we compared notes. I was sort of finishing abstract with uh my co-creators um uh Dave O'Connor and Morgan Neville and then Morgan was moving off of of of abstract to go start working on a The Delicious with Dave. So it's like this whole universe of people coming together around the same set of questions. Yeah. More than answers. And for us it's it's very much about what does a a media brand for curious people look like in in the next decade? How are you going to think about telling stories in context like this, like sitting around with a couple of microphones? Yeah and uh or or the sort of high production values of of eight hours on Netflix. And what's the spectrum look like in between those two events and and how do we create business models around that and and keep doing it and keep engaging people in really meaningful ways? Aaron Powell
Unknown Yeah. That's I mean that's another interesting thing that kind of we can sit here and talk about telling great stories and designing great products all we want, but at the end of the day, you know, we're not all charities. Like we we have to make money and we have to, you know, these are businesses, whether it's Hodinki or whether it's National Geographic. Um so how how do you think about the changing business conditions of media as you build these new products? I mean you were apologizing a minute ago for the uh the first banner ad, but the the way that media businesses make money is is rapidly changing. Yeah. Where where do you see these things going
Unknown ? Well, i it's interesting, I think, for us three sitting in this room to have be living in the transition. I I certainly have friends and colleagues who were able to close out their careers before this drastic set of changes in the heyday. Um thinking about the the prime days of uh two martini lunches and uh at the four seasons grill. Um must have been nice. I think it is. Yeah, I don't I don't think we do that anymore. Um It was uh No, it's it's a profound set of changes. I think it's really exciting because it's forcing some real innovation. U And I think the the best and most successful in this new era are are pursuing it with the same sort of models in mind, what regardless of the medium. And the fact that looking at the success of the times, looking at paid models. Some of my favorite media platforms now are are paid. And in some cases, I'm happy to pay uh for for to great expense because they're really good and they provide great value to me. And they're they're narrow enough that they that they don't need to compete with a lot of other folks, and yet they provide a great value to the readership or to the audience. I'm thinking about Ben Thompson's email Stratekery, which is must read for me every morning. And I'm happy to pay Ben the hundred and thirty bucks a year to get that newsletter delivered into my inbox. Two years ago, if you had told me that some of my favorite media brands are in email format. I would have told you you're crazy. But I think it's that set of conditions that is so exciting for for the team at Major Domo, thinking about the way we push this forward, the new kinds of models that we're gonna try, and some are not gonna work and some are. Um, but the willingness of audiences to to pay in other models than just consuming advertising and the idea that it was free uh you know is and and was false. There was there was payment uh uh it was just applied in a different kind of way. So I I'm excited to see the models emerge and and follow the the folks who are who are charting the course.
Unknown Aaron Powell Yeah do you do you think that you you mentioned experimentation. Do you think that favors kind of small up up and coming media brands over the larger players who might be less willing to take those risks, or do you think some of the larger players can afford to take those risks and might end up winning out? I
Unknown you see both. You see the spectrum. I think it's both and I like the position that we are in, both at Godfrey Daditch in in helping those brands and helping organizations reach audiences in in new ways. That's so much of what we're we're about. I think the challenge as we see this across broadcast, cable, uh, magazines, digital. These organizations are tied to business models that are in transition in one way or another, and dollars are moving in different ways than they used to, and they're the the very nature and expense of advertising is so dynamic um that it's it's going to prove a continued challenge um for those who aren't willing to uh disrupt their own
Unknown businesses. Aaron Powell Sounds like the watch industry. Aaron Powell Yeah, sounds very much like the watch industry in a lot of ways. I think, you know, as you said, new ways of reaching customers, new ways of reaching readers, new ways of telling stories, new ways of making ideas exciting for people. Opens up lots of opportunity, but also comes with a lot of ch
Unknown allenges. most significant changes in certainly in my work as a a designer and an editor is the notion that a collection of of people with a common set of ideas or values um can be reached by a media title or by an organization or a platform or a brand. Whether that's the Obama Foundation or National Geographic, you sort of think about and look at the needs of those audiences in consistent ways and the delivery of those messages uh is also highly consistent. And so there's an opportunity for brands to be publishers. And sh it it sort of harkens back to where some of this started before interruptive advertising, where there's a collection of people with a common set of ideas and and a great communication pattern. IBM had a magazine started in nineteen thirty-four called Think. It was a beautiful magazine. They published it for never heard of this. Wow. And it had poetry and spoke in favor of globalism and free trade and it was just about promoting a a worldview and a world that IBM wanted to live in. Um started by Thomas Watson. It's an an amazing title and I think there's a lot of opportunity for for brands, especially to connect with their their audiences on these new kinds of platforms. Aaron Powell So what what is coming next for you? Uh we have a lot going on. Something you can talk about and something you can't. I think one of the uh more frustrating things about the new job, the new firm is uh we are getting to work on some incredible projects that I can't talk about for probably four or five years. Wow. They're uh they're very much at the intersection of what we were doing at Wired in terms of coverage, but also thinking about design challenges. And they center on the way people interact with AI in particular. Okay. And so that that work is really, really exciting and and ongoing and we probably won't see that publicly for at least a f a few more years. The on the media side, um, we've got a few new TV projects that we're spooling up, um, especially in conjunction with uh Dave and Major Demo that we're out pitching right now and and a couple a couple green lights coming in. So that's really exciting thinking about um creating a new in in that format. I really enjoyed making abstract with Dave and Morgan and um uh hope to be able to talk about new things in that area especially. Co
Unknown ol. Well, we're running out of time. I think we could probably sit here and talk for another hour or two within the house. This has been a blast. Yeah, this is great. Um so we're gonna end every episode uh with a cultural recommendation. So I think we'll start with you, Scott. I'm putting you on the spot here. But you should feel free to plug something great that you've worked on. You shouldn't feel obligated to plug something else
Unknown . Uh something that I've worked on. I I'm really impressed and proud of um Dave's new podcast. Uh the Dave Chang Show. Uh new episodes every week um Thursdays on your favorite podcast platform. Dave's doing an amazing job there. Again, speaking of someone who's curious about the way that the world works, he just has such a thoughtful and unique set of experiences. And great guests. We've got Alan Yang on there. He had Ryan Johnson on. Many more folks in the pipeline. It's a really cool way to get into Dave's brain, learn a lot more about the restaurant and food business and really interesting and thoughtful conversations about where culture is going. So highly recommend Dave Chang show. Yeah. I've been
Unknown listening also. I think it's uh it's pretty great. All right. Found something for all three of us. There we go.
Unknown Do you have another recommendation, James? I do. Mine's a book. I'm a huge fan of uh Outside Magazine. I've been for a long time. And they recently published uh compendium of all of their misadventure. So it's some of the finest writing in my opinion that they ever put out. But they went back through they're celebrating their fortieth year, they did a photo book that was also fantastic of some of their best photography from over 40 years. But I love a collection of essays because I don't have a lot of time to sit down and read. Uh you know, I have stacks of books in my office that I probably won't get to in the foreseeable future, but this one is called Out There and it's uh a collection of these relatively short essays that were published in the magazine at some point in the last forty years. And every story, like there's no there's no through line except it's an adventure of some sort that didn't go well. It's not a disaster. It's not into thin air. It's just like things didn't go that great. Mishaps. Exactly. And it's that's really, really fantastic. What is that called? Out there. Okay, I've gotta pick that up. Ste
Unknown ven? Uh I'm gonna go with uh some music. We'll go with uh Janelle Monet's Dirty Computer. I don't know about this either. It is so good. Uh she's such an interesting person. She's a a musician, she's an actress, she's doing basically anything she can uh artistically uh and doing it all really well. Uh and this album is it's definitely the most poppy thing she's done uh and probably the most accessible, but I think also in some ways the most profound. I think it's a way for her to get her ideas out there in a way that more people can maybe, you know, kind of get their teeth into. Um, I think it's probably gonna clean up the Grammys this year. I hope so at least. But uh I highly recommend listening to it. It's super fun, it's super smart. It gets better and better. Uh I've been listening to it pretty pretty nonstop lately. Going right in the queue. Yeah. Good recommendation. Love it. Great. Thank you. Awesome. Well thanks thanks so much for being here, Scott. This is a true pleasure. I'd be delig
Unknown hted. Thank you guys so much.
Unknown Thank you to Scott and to James for joining us. This week's episode was produced by Grayson Korhonen and was recorded at Disher Music and Sound in San Francisco, California. Please remember to subscribe and rate the show. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next week.