Adam Moss was the best magazine editor of his generation. When he retired, he took up painting. But he wasn’t very good, and that made him sad. So he wrote a book about how creative people work— and, in the process, he made himself happy again. SOURCE:Adam Moss, magazine editor and author. RESOURCES:The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing, by Adam Moss (2024)."Goodbye, New York. Adam Moss Is Leaving the Magazine He Has Edited for 15 Years," by Michael M. Grynbaum (The New York Times, 2019).Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking, by Samin Nosrat (2017). EXTRAS:"David Simon Is On Strike. Here’s Why," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2023)."Samin Nosrat Always Wanted to Be Famous," by Freakonomics Radio (2023)."What’s Wrong with Being a One-Hit Wonder?" by Freakonomics Radio (2023).
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Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner, and I would like to remind you about two live shows that we are putting on soon. The first one is on January 3rd in San Francisco. The second is in Los Angeles on February 13th. We have got some excellent guests for both shows, so please come hang out with us. Tickets are at Freakonomics.com slash live shows, one word.
Again, January 3rd and February 13th, San Francisco and LA. Meanwhile, today on the show, A conversation with someone I know quite well, or at least used to. Someone who is smart, shrewd, very good at his work, and someone who taught me a lot, even if not always on purpose. Why don't you just say your name and what you do?
My name is Adam Moss. That's easy enough. I am an editor by lifelong profession and recently an author and sometimes a painter.
for a long time adam moss was widely considered the best magazine editor around he was the founding editor of seven days magazine a clever and slightly transgressive arts and culture weekly from there he went to the new york times magazine and after many years there he took over new york magazine which he radically remade for the digital era He won all the awards an editor can win.
He directly shaped the careers of hundreds of writers and editors. Indirectly, he did the same for millions of readers. He left New York Magazine in 2019, still on top, but feeling a bit too old for the game, a bit burned out and ready for something new. The something new eventually took the form of a book called The Work of Art, How Something Comes from Nothing.
The book is 43 cases of building something from first notion to finished product with all that kind of torture in between.
Many people who know Adam Moss were surprised that he wrote a book. He was one of the few magazine editors who didn't either start out as a writer or want to be a writer or think of themselves as a writer. He was a full-fledged editor. An editor is mostly backstage. There's a lot of power and a bit of risk. A writer, meanwhile, is out front, directly in the line of fire.
You work on a thing for months or years, and then it goes out into the world with your name on it. So if people hate it, they know where to find you. That's why it was so intriguing that Adam Moss would write a book. So we will talk about that today, but some other things, too. Especially his tenure at the New York Times Magazine, where he happened to be my boss. This was in the late 1990s.
I was what's called a story editor, which meant I came up with ideas, assigned them to writers, and then shepherded those pieces through the editorial and publishing processes. The Times Magazine was considered a great magazine during this era, and it was a thrill to be inside of that.
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