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What Works for Me is a new part of the ASME website—an opportunity to find out what ASME members are reading, seeing, doing, thinking. This month it’s Peggy Northrop’s turn. Peggy is the editor-in-chief of Reader’s Digest, which just a few weeks ago won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in the 2 million-plus category. Before joining Reader’s Digest in late 2007, Peggy was the editor-in-chief of More; before that, she was the editor-in-chief of Organic Style (and before that, she worked at Real Simple, Redbook, Glamour and Vogue). Peggy is also the vice-president of the ASME Board of Directors. Peggy grew up in a newspaper family in western Pennsylvania and now lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.
What magazines are you reading? I try to keep up with everything my friends edit . . . which means I do a lot of skimming of fashion mags. There are magazines necessary for my life here: New York, The New Yorker. There are publications I read for my ongoing business education: BusinessWeek, Fast Company, The Economist when I can. I love shelter magazines, and although I live in a 150-year-old townhouse in Brooklyn, Country Home was a longtime favorite; I was really sorry to see that one go. Wired and The New Scientist satisfy my geek streak. I love the new Time, and The Week is increasingly necessary. And I run to the mailbox for More.
What piece have you read recently that you wish you’d commissioned or done? Jeffrey Goldberg’s cover story in The Atlantic, “Why I Fired My Broker,” where he tried to find out what regular people with 401ks should do with their money, was brilliant, funny, scary and exactly right for my audience. Of course, we wouldn’t have been able to run 5,000 words. . .
What are you watching on TV? I am mesmerized by any drama featuring people with British accents. My husband calls it Master Race Theater, but I can’t help myself. And even though I laughed out loud at the last episode of Lost—shootout at the hatch! retirees in the jungle!—I remain faithful. I watch those awful teen reality shows with my daughter, alert to teachable moments (as in, “If I ever catch you doing that, you will be grounded for life”). News—CNN mostly. And lots of Netflix.
Which websites do you visit every day? The New York Times (Note to management: Please start charging me!), The Daily Beast and Tricycle.com. And Facebook, of course. I’m a Scrabble addict.
What are you listening to on your iPod? An eclectic household mix of rock, gospel and country, on shuffle. My chill-out playlist includes Jimmy Dale Gilmore, Alison Krauss, Dolly Parton and Solomon Burke.
When you send your teenage daughter to her room, what do you tell her to do? And what does she in fact do? I tell her to clean up. She responds by clearing a barely discernible path through the carpet of clothes, makeup and Vitaminwater bottles, and then she goes back online. Though now that I’m paying her to read books, she sometimes reads in bed. (Don’t blame me, I was desperate. And it works!)
What is the one piece of advice you wish you’d gotten when you were first starting out as an editor? Besides save more money? “You can never be too bold.” I got a lot of great advice, actually, from many generous mentors, not that I was always willing to take it. Maybe that’s the advice I really needed: “Keep your ears open, you’ll learn something.”
So how do you put it all together—reading, watching, listening, parenting, growing—to win a National Magazine Award editing a magazine like Reader’s Digest? I delegate—at work and at home.
Beatles or Rolling Stones? Superman or Batman? Whitman or Dickinson? Football or baseball? Foreign or domestic? Beatles for inventiveness, Stones for dancing. Spiderman. Dickinson. Football (Go, Steelers!). Foreign cars—not really by choice.
When you’re done with magazines, are you going back to Pennsylvania to work on the family paper? I’d have to wrestle the rest of the family for the honor, so no—although I did rejoin the board this spring. The next three months are going to be . . . interesting. As a small-town independent daily, we are somewhat insulated from the big-city newspaper meltdowns. On the other hand, we don’t owe enough money to go bankrupt! I’m hoping I’ve learned enough in the last few years to be helpful. After this? I still consider California home, so I’m aiming for that.
