Deez Interviews: Meet GQ’s newsletter wiz who’s also reimagining the sex & dating conversation in the post-#MeToo era
Happy Friday, Deezers! This week’s interview is with GQ’s Stephanie Talmadge, the editor behind the site’s v. stylish newsletters — and some of the most fun sex & dating content out there (see: official coinage of the term “sick hornies”). We talked to her about her very first newsletter project (see: “Bold Ass Dudes”), figuring out how to use the terms “fit” vs. “kit” properly, and navigating a men’s lifestyle publication as a one-woman team. Enjoy!
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The interviewee: Stephanie Talmadge (follow her @srtalmadge!)
The gig: Manager of newsletter strategy, and also the sex & dating editor!
The day-to-day:
Due to the dual-role sitch, it varies a lot! There are some things I do every day, like curating the stories that will appear in that day’s newsletters and working with web producers to fine-tune the copy. The goal for most of our newsletters is to drive traffic, but there are others aimed at driving affiliate revenue, so sometimes my job involves shopping for stuff that GQ guys would wanna buy.
Then there are other things pertaining to newsletters that I do regularly, like working on our email acquisition strategy (a.k.a writing copy for those newsletter pop-ups everyone loves, don’t hate me!) monthly reporting, developing concepts for new newsletters we could offer, and thinking about creative ways to keep readers engaged.
On the editorial side, I publish around two stories a week for the sex and dating section, so a couple half-days each week are spent editing drafts, workshopping pitches, reaching out to or meeting with writers. Once in a while, I’ll get pulled into work on larger projects that have a sex or dating component, too.
Can you tell us a little bit about the path you took to GQ?
My first media gig was a part-time (paid) internship at TheWeek.com, where I was essentially a web producer — building posts in the CMS, writing some quick-hit blogs, managing some social feeds, photo research — that kind of stuff, which eventually turned into a full-time editorial assistant position. My background was in news and current events, but I knew I wanted to move more into the lifestyle space, mainly for my sanity’s sake, since news is such a grind (especially, uh, in 2016.)
I got a social media editor gig at Racked (RIP) where I ran the Facebook and Twitter programming, as well as the newsletter. My friend and I were doing our own newsletter at the time, called Bold Ass Dudes, which was a weekly digest of the most bonkers shit we saw on dating apps. When Racked decided to go all in on their newsletter and social video programs, I was promoted to newsletter editor, and producing that became the majority of my job. Moving from that gig, which I loved, to GQ, where I’ve had the opportunity to work on newsletters across a lot of different genres, seemed like a logical next step.
What's it like being one of the only women on editorial for a men's lifestyle magazine?
Good question! There was a brief point in time last year when that was the case, but thankfully it’s not anymore. I’ve been in what I considered an overtly sexist workplace, where women were never given opportunities to rise above a certain level, and it was miserable. GQ is not that, in my experience. That doesn’t mean it never feels like a bit of a boy’s club. There have been some games of catch played over my head (at my desk! In the middle of the day!).
The biggest thing is that I still don’t understand all the menswear terms. I have one coworker who I always Slack to ask if I’m using the words “fit” or “kit” right, and sometimes I come home from work and my boyfriend will call me out on using my GQ voice when I let a “rad” or “fly” drop. Also I always feel underdressed, because my coworkers show up in cool af suits all the time.
At a lot of publications, newsletter management usually relegated to one person or maybe a very small team. It sounds a little lonely! How do you deal with being a one-person team?
Oh man, it really can be! There were definitely a few days last year where I didn’t talk to other humans all day. I think one thing most people don’t realize — I certainly didn’t before I was doing this job — is how technical email is.
Even though I’m part of GQ’s audience team, it’s different from social distribution for a couple reasons, but one of which is that there’s no virality component to growth. An over-performing email isn’t going to earn you 5k more subscribers, and you can’t just launch a new newsletter like you could a new Facebook page or Insta handle. There’s so much work that has to be done on the back-end to set up the data flow, create sign-up forms, and design the look and feel of the email. Things that an editorial-first person with an English degree, hi, can’t do by herself! So it’s really crucial to have the support and buy-in of the people in your newsroom who can help with that stuff.
At Condé Nast, there’s a centralized email team, which has been wonderful, because they support the more technical things and help me develop the overall email strategy for GQ that takes into account the limitations of the medium (which you don’t always get in a room full of editors.) It’s something I didn’t have at my last job that’s made a huge difference.
At GQ right now, I’m trying to move to a place where all the newsletters contain exclusive content — stuff you’ll only have access to by being a newsletter subscriber, so I work with the other editors and writers to create those pieces. That helps!
Finally, tell us about your vision for the GQ sex & dating section you edit!
It’s such an interesting time to be doing sex and dating stories at a men’s magazine, with the #MeToo movement having brought a lot of conversations about consent and sex and gender power dynamics to the forefront. (It was not all that long ago that we were publishing stories that were just lists of hot models to follow on Insta. Now we publish explainers on birth control.)
Guys are (hopefully) re-examining what it means to be a good dude, and GQ.com is very much in the business of providing that kind of service content, but I also want to take some big swings on some deeply reported features. I want to make sure that I’m pushing our content toward inclusivity, from story subjects down to the language and pronouns we use within them. And that we’re talking to guys in a way that is fun, funny, and involves them.
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Don’t forget to follow Stephanie @srtalmadge on Twitter, and have a splendid weekend!